2/21/2018 What is a day in the life of a McKinsey consultant like?

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Ellen Vrana, former Consultant at McKinsey & Company (2009-2012)
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This is from the perspective of an associate or a business analyst (BA). I assume Do tech companies (Amazon, Apple, Google,
Microsoft etc) use consulting service from
the study is out of town, this is often the case M-Th, McKinsey people work at
consulting firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Strategy&,
client sites. Fridays are spent in home offices. Some projects (we call them Accentu...

studies) are in home towns but not

1 that often. Management Consulting: How much do partners
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at McKinsey, BCG, Bain make?

There are no standard studies or typical days. Things come up that you didn’t Why did you leave McKinsey?
anticipate, and each study is different. It depends on your partners and your
What are some of the best life sciences consulting
Engagement Manager (EM), your clients ... all sorts of stuff. companies?

If McKinsey consultants are so smart, why aren't

That being said, this is my attempt to capture a typical day; it's not universal, they running companies to begin with?
but most things will be common. What type of individuals do top consulting firms
like BCG, Bain and McKinsey hire?

It’s Monday, you take an early flight (maybe 7:30) out of your home town, usually
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to a smaller town nearby where the client company is located. The rest of your
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team could be on your flight or they might be coming from other cities. A taxi
picks you up at home, you bring your carry-on luggage and computer bag, get to
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airport, check-in, swipe your airpass (or whatever fast pass ticket you have), go
to Starbucks for breakfast, and then board the plane.  206 Public Followers

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You probably got an email on Sunday from your EM, capping up where you are,
Edits
what is in store for the week, and what needs to get done. In my experience,
clients didn’t usually email on weekends, but come Monday AM, the emails
would start early. So, you’re on your computer in the airport and on the plane. 

You land; it’s not a long flight. Grab a taxi to client site, or on some occasions if
you come in together, you might rent a car. You go directly to client site.
At client, the team usually has a reserved room - we call it a Team Room.
Sometimes, it’s a conference room, sometimes, it’s cubes scattered randomly.
McKinsey brings its own paper, pens, whiteboards, notepads, you name it. Even
snacks and printers.   

You will be around clients. You won’t know all of them, you might not even talk
to them. Some of them will know who you are, but do not assume they do.
Whatever you do, respect clients first. There will be specific clients that have
been assigned by their company to work with you. They might be working in the
team room with you. They are very knowledgeable and usually are personally
accountable for whatever their firm implements. They are not just a resource to
get data, they are thought partners to make the solution better and usable.

In the Team Room, you might have another associate and/or BA. You’ll have an
EM who runs the team. You usually sit around a conference table. There are
other rooms nearby you can go into to make calls or to get privacy. (I never
ceased to be amazed how much unused office space our clients had). Team

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norms are up on the wall (rules the group agreed everyone needs to respect, like
tidy up at night), as is a calendar and possibly an issue tree from early problem
solving.

The team rolls in. Once the EM gets there, you touch base on what is happening
that day, that week, and where you need help. The EM is responsible for almost
everything and the first one everyone blames when something goes wrong. It is
a tough, thankless job. The EM manages the powerpoint deck, which is the main
deliverable. It contains all of the analysis, data, issues, thinking, and solutions.
It is critical. It’s called the deck, as in PowerPoint deck.

You will likely own your own workstream, meaning you are responsible for your
deck pages, excel analysis, client relationship, and for ultimately “solving” the
problem assigned to you. 
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After the huddle, you finish up any work that you have lined up. Could be data
gathering (interviews, getting primary data from clients, researching). Or you
could be working on your deck pages. You probably got them back from VGI,
which is a group of amazing people in India who improve your powerpt visuals
overnight so they are ready to go in the AM. 

Around 11, you might regroup with the team to put the pages together into the
large Deck document. The EM has probably made some pages that summarize
the overall findings and offer a preliminary “answer.”

Around noon, you might head to lunch, either cafeteria if you’re at corporate HQ
or outside if not. Or, if you’re in the middle of Evanston, IN like I was, you go to
Texas Grill. Because that is all there is, and it is awesome. Sometimes, you can
eat there, not always. You return to team room.

At this point, a partner or an AP (associate principal, a partner in training) might

have arrived. They have multiple clients so are not with one client all the time.
They mean well, but you do not get actual work done when they are around.
What you do get done, though, is called Problem Solving. Yes, it is capitalized, it
is formal.

Problem Solving is the thing we do when we print out a deck, loaded with data
and analysis and concepts. We talk about what is good, what is bad, and my
favorite, what is missing! (i.e. what work you still need to do). Problem Solving is
how we engage partners who actually know what they are talking about and how
we make our solutions better and ultimately serve the client better. 

PS can last 1 hr and up to 2.5. After it’s done, you have a bunch of pages that are
marked up, sketched out other pages you need. Pick your ego off the floor and
send the deck off to VGI to make easy changes. You talk to your EM about what
to focus on and how to prioritize your time. Finish your busy work (analysis,
interviews etc.) and then return to your deck. Ah, the deck.

So usually, the rest of the day, you are working on the deck. Which is not just
literally working on pages, although you do that. It is finishing the analysis you
need, adding the details, positioning the points, and syndicating (that means
reviewing with in hopes of gaining approval) with clients.

You will connect with the team around 6:30 and review what's left in the day.
The EM gives you a time to get your new deck in so she can consolidate them. 

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Sometimes the team goes out to dinner, but again, I preferred to go back to
hotel, kick off shoes, and work from there. And room service!

Get the deck to my EM around 10:30 or 11. Take a hot shower, watch a movie
while doing other busy work, and get to sleep. Get up around 7:30, expect the
same day, but really, it will be completely different.  

You visit factories, retail locations, you could be doing interviews. I got to go
down into a coal mine once.

Nevertheless, I didn't realize I liked my job until I had been there for 2 months. I
was asked to speak to a “new” associate about the firm. What?! I'm new! Then I
realized just how much I had to say, already. I wasn't new anymore.

Nothing in the day-to-day is glamorous or amazing. It is pedantic and it is hard.

It is only when you step back and realize what you've accomplished, the
knowledge you put together, the relationships you've formed, what you’ve
learned, and the assistance you've hopefully provided, it clicks. 

And then you get calls from new people wanting to get advice on how to solve
things that you just figured out a week ago. Awesome.

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Ellen Vrana upvoted this

Caio Ishizaka Costa, currently MIT Sloan MBA Candidate, former
McKinsey business analyst
Answered May 8, 2015 · Upvoted by Ellen Vrana, Former McKinsey consultant

Someone asked me to answer this question. While I read Ellen Vrana answer, I
kept thinking "why would someone still ask for more answers when there is such
a good one already there".

She gave an awesome overview of what a "typical" workday looks like. Of course
there are small variations (like, instead of splitting up in the end of the day, some
teams prefer to stick together until all is done. You gain efficiency, you lose
flexibility), but the core is that.

I'd just like to add intensity. Usually, a team (meaning, the associates, business
analysts and manager) starts an engagement knowing nothing at all about the
client, the business, the industry, the subject. Sometimes the manager knows a
lot, sometimes not. Sometimes one of the team members have done something
similar, most times not. But within, 2-3 months, every single person on that
team knows more about the company, the business, the industry and the subject

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than 95% of the actual client people, in each isolated topic (I'm being generous,
you can probably count those people with your fingers).

I can actually quote one client "after 2 months you probably know more about
our company than anyone around here". Each person in the company has a
limited view of it, they are usually experts in what they do, but have little or zero
visibility of other areas. It is now wonder why some companies have a hard time
developing executives in house, and often hire former consultants for that
position.

But my point is, for someone to learn so much in so little time, great effort is
required. It's pretty intense. When the engagement kicks-off you're already late.
Then you spend the entire engagement running to make things work in time,
and then the engagement ends, and you delivered probably more than what was
originally scoped.

That translates in long hours of work, spent, studying documents, talking to

experts, interviewing clients, developing models, doing Problem Solving
Sessions, making a lot of charts, aligning with every possible stakeholder. Over
and over again. And when you finish the engagement, you are thrown in another
one, in which you have no prior knowledge and repeat the exact same steps.

It's wonderful how much consultants generate and learn in a short time frame.
But not all the work is productive. We spend (way too) much time aligning
things with Partners, Directors, APs (Doing a deck when the partners on the case
don’t agree ). Not all client interviews are productive (I cannot recall a single
client interview that didn't end up with the client complaining about something
totally unrelated to the engagement). Building decks sometimes are not the
most fun thing to do (especially formatting and wording edits suggested by the
Partner at midnight).

Well, that's it, I hope I could add some value to someone with this answer
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Ellen Vrana, former Consultant at McKinsey & Company (2009-2012)

Very nice. This def. added lots of value!

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Steve Shu, Author of The Consulting Apprenticeship,

www.ConsultingApprenticeship.com
Answered Jan 25, 2017

A2A.

Ellen Vrana has a great post. You might also want to check out these “day in the
McKinsey life-type” posts by folks:

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2/21/2018 What is a day in the life of a McKinsey consultant like? - Quora

Typical day in the life of a McKinsey consultant - why your McKinsey

boss expects so much from you

Week in the life of a McKinsey consultant

A Day in the Life of a Strategy Consultant from McKinsey & Company

CasePreparation | Bits and pieces of Consulting (McKinsey BA)

A day in the life of a McKinsey consultant

Also for more of mechanical point of view (albeit simplified and stylized), I
always recommend the book, The McKinsey Way, as a reasonable start.

_______________

Steve Shu specializes in incubating new initiatives with a primary focus on

strategy, technology, and behavioral science. He is author of Inside Nudging:
Implementing Behavioral Science Initiatives and The Consulting
Apprenticeship: 40 Jump-Start Ideas for You and Your Business .

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Michael E. Cohen
Jan 25, 2017 · 1 upvote from Steve Shu
I read a couple of the listed items, Steve. Some wanna be consultants might abandon
their interests after reading “A day in the life of a McKinsey consultant”

Do today’s generation consultants just say anything that pops from their cluttered
minds, whether gross or not (lol)?

By the way, I’ll be aw...(more)

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Steve Shu: There is plenty more entertaining consulting stuff out there. Not sure …

Raj Kiran, works at McKinsey & Company

Answered Mar 19, 2014

Adding on - the 'lifestyle' (alternative word) is very different across geographies

(no. of hours, in office Fridays etc).
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Sonali Mangal, Founder @Learn Educate Discover

(http://www.learneducatediscover.com/)
Answered Jun 17, 2017

This discussion with a consultant at McKinsey on what working as a

consultant is like should give you some idea. All the best!
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