7 Things Bain, BCG & McKinsey Look For In Their MBA Hires

Bain, BCG, and McKinsey hire hundreds of MBA graduates into consultant roles each year. But what skills and characteristics do the Big Three consulting firms look for?

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3. Teamwork

Nowadays teamwork in consulting goes beyond working with fellow MBA consultants and a manager. Digitization has changed the DNA of consulting case teams.

Keith Bevans, chief MBA recruiter at Bain, explains that the firm are investing a lot in Vector, Bain’s digital delivery platform. Solving digital problems means a classic Bain case team now consists of an MBA, an undergrad, then maybe an app developer, a design thinker, or user experience expert.

If you want a job in consulting you have to prove that your teamwork ability includes the ability to work cross-functionally with an array of experts. It’s no longer good enough to work just MBA-to-MBA.

Frances (pictured right) explains it’s the same at BCG.

“Our teams are becoming ever more diverse. We might have a team with a UX developer, software developer, data scientist, two core MBAs and a few more senior consultants all working in symphony. Increasingly, we need MBAs to become the conductors that can conduct those diverse teams.”

4. Digital-savvy

Following on from working cross-functionally with technology experts, today’s modern consultant needs to be digitally equipped themselves.

Brian of McKinsey (pictured right) explains that MBA graduates stand out to him when they’ve used their time at business school to enhance their knowledge of coding, programming, and other aspects of tech. This makes working with technologists or engineers in their teams much easier.

The biggest recent change to consulting has been the amount of data that is now available to consultants. In the past, Keith explains that the value lay in finding the data; now, he seeks MBA graduates who can identify the most reliable and accurate data source to solve the problem posed by the client.

“The pace of change is also radically more accelerated than in the past. When the entire way you need to work changes six months from now can you learn that and keep working?”

The impact of digitalization means that you can no longer graduate from business school and say, ‘well, I’m not really a digital guy’, Keith says.