McKinsey Careers: Life as a business analyst

[Music] [Music] I think what energizes me most about McKenzie is our opportunity to work with clients on a day-to-day basis clients at all levels of an organization from the project manager to the COO or CEO and we're working hand inhand with them on the pressing issues that are facing their company and I think that's what truly sets McKenzie apart rather than working in a room somewhere and just simply handing off what you did or what you learned you're actually partnering with them and that way we know that the Solutions we're delivering to the client will have long lasting impact because it's something that we're co-creating when I first applied and received an offer I really had no idea what a ba does the amazing thing is that what we do varies depending on the the study that we're staffed on so we get to see a a huge variety of problems a huge variety of clients and industries and geographies and we get to build a really diverse skill set one day I might be interviewing clients or stakeholders to understand uh the complexities of the problem that we're trying to solve uh next day I might be building a model to forecast an emerging market and understand what the opportunities are for for a client we also spend a lot of time problem solving as a team when we problem solve it's not just uh the the senior people who are coming up with ideas it's really that we have our whole team around a table uh the I'm there the the project managers who have uh a few years of experience the directors who have been with the firm for 20 or 25 years sitting at a table uh along with clients who are you know the CEOs of their companies and every voice is uh equally represented and equally respected the other thing which would be great is to show all the other broadcast stuff you know which I don't know but I think you do right all the other broadcast broadcast broken existing broadcast research groups you don't have to break it into insane levels of detail it's just I want people say look the whole broadcast group today is this many we're talking about splitting into two right and if we split into two how many are here how many are in the and the nice thing is that everyone else pretty discreetly falls back into their business businesses as I think she was pointing out so Sports and news if they were just to be decentralized that would be a clearcut there's a couple of lingering pieces like systems um that would have to find a home but they could fit quite naturally uh in this group and they're just a few people all right so then that's something we didn't even think of that we probably have to add up I agree at the beginning of a study we always kick off the engagement with something we called a team learning and I really think that sets the tone and the stage for the entire study there were four things we wanted to cover for team learning so one was um individual goals like development goals lifestyle preferences working Styles the second one is what does team success look like so setting some team Norms um the third one so Tom's going to come in and give us some context on the The Client Service team background on how we've been serving this client and then the last one would be aligning on a problem statement what's the scope of our solution space what are we trying to solve for during the next 16 [Music] weeks what one of the things I've really enjoyed most uh in my time as a ba is that I feel like I'm always being given opportunities to stretch myself to grow into new skill sets or uh new roles that that I really don't think I'm ready for I was really excited that I would be working on CEO level problems and presenting to Boards of directors but I was a little worried about the fact that I wouldn't really know exactly how to do that I wouldn't really have expertise and the problems that we were trying to solve and I wouldn't really have a skill set that I built in my liberal arts under undergraduate degree to know how to go about tackling some of these issues but the amazing thing about Mackenzie is you're really never doing it alone there's an incredible Network starting with your core team but extending so far beyond that that is there to support you and to make you successful so that your project is successful and having that support from experts who have written books in in in their fields and who will jump on the phone with you to for half an hour to get you up to speed on on an industry uh I often called our analytics group and they actually jump on my computer virtually and teach me how to go about doing the analysis that I need to do and our culture is open so you can just reach out to people and try to spend some time getting to know them their backgrounds learning from them getting advice from them being coached by them and being groomed and developed by them to fulfill your own personal aspirations so When approaching kind of this year in the public sector Fellowship do you have any advice I'm a firm believer in kind of the liberal arts approach to all of this whether as a ba at the firm or whether when you come as an associate I mean I think you come and Sample a lot of different things you know try and balance the different interests and I do something there that just gets you excited recently I was working on a document that we were presenting to the CEO of a large Media company and I realized as I was sitting there uh framing these different recommendations for this CEO that just three years ago I had been an unpaid intern for the same Media Company I'd gone from reading scripts in the back of a room uh with with very little exposure to to the real business to actually making recommendations to the CEO of the entire company I've worked with the mayor of a major US city on budget problems he was facing I've ridden the railways of the uni Western United States to look at rail track and infrastructure maintenance and I've served insurance companies consumer packaged good companies and other institutions in Telecom and media and now I'm transitioning to public sector work when I first joined Mackenzie I definitely uh felt that it was a very formal environment but I quickly learned that that that was not at all uh the reality Mackenzie is just full of interesting exciting people who love to have fun uh and who who play just as hard as they were the day-to-day interactions that I have are with people that I really enjoy and that I've come to call my friends and uh spending time in the team room laughing and joking and building real relationships with clients it's a very dynamic environment where you're problem solving with each other you get to know your colleagues on a very personal level get to know about them their background their unique story that brought them to McKenzie their family life These are mentors and coaches that you'll develop that you'll keep for the rest of your life one of the great things that Mackenzie has to offer is to be in a place where I would learn as much as possible and develop and grow as much as possible but always feel like I had a safety net a group of people supporting me and ensuring that I was going to be successful and and that's really what Mackenzie has been for [Music] me

Channel: McKinsey & Company

Views: 793,339

Keywords: business, leadership

Id: 2C5a2L5NHl0

Length: 7min 30sec (450 seconds)

Published: Tue Dec 03 2013