Book me to speak

Prospective McKinsey consultant seeking advice on connecting with current staff

by | Jul 17, 2012 | career, consulting, management consulting, McKinsey, professional advice | 1 comment

I received the following email from a reader who is interested in applying for a position at McKinsey & Company’s London office, but is hoping to speak with someone working in that office before submitting his application. As I mention in my response to him, he may have a bit of an uphill battle with connecting with someone from McK before applying, but, if he’s willing to hustle, he may be able to make it happen.

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NE wrote:

Dear Marquis,


I’m interested in applying to McKinsey in London. However, before submitting an application, I wanted the opportunity to find out as much as I can about life inside McKinsey by meeting and talking to a professional(s) at the organization.


How do I go about doing this? Is it the done thing?


Please advise?


Yours sincerely,
NE

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My response:

NE,

I hope this message finds you well. Thanks for checking out my website and reaching out to me with your question. I totally understand your desire to understand what life is like inside McKinsey because I wondered the same thing when I moved toward the application process. Fortunately, I was in business school at the time, so there was an established method for me to meet people. It looks like you’re currently a working professional, so what you’re trying to do is far from a non-trivial task. Just wanted to put that out there at the beginning…

Now that I’ve got that warning out of the way, I’ll address each of your questions individually:

  • “How do I go about doing this?”: Before giving my thoughts on how you might be able to meet McK folks, I’ll start off by saying that it can be very difficult to do so for a few reasons, including the busy lives of the consulting staff, potential difficulty in identifying people who work for The Firm (LinkedIn has made this much easier), and finding an avenue for interaction with the person. Despite these issues, the following are some possible approaches that you could try using:
    • Personal introduction – If you have a personal or professional connection who knows one or more McK Consultants, you could ask that person to facilitate an introduction either in person or via email. A warm introduction is always best when you’re trying to ask someone who is likely very busy to make time to speak with you.

    • Information session – McK does information sessions all over the globe during its standard recruiting season, but I believe that most, if not all, of them are held in the context of recruiting from academic institutions. As an experienced hire, I’m not sure how you would gain access to one of these info sessions, but perhaps you have some sort of professional, academic, or social connection that could make it happen.

    • Request to office recruiting team – I believe that the McK website lists contact information for the recruiting teams in each office. You could simply send an email to the London office’s recruiting team and ask them to connect you with a Consultant who would be willing to talk with you. This will be much harder if you make the request before submitting an application because it could turn out to be a waste of the Consultant’s time in the end.

    • Networking – Check out the alumni network for your undergraduate or graduate school to see if there are McK people from the school working in the London office. If so, you could look the person up in your alumni database and find his/her email address. At that point, you could send an email to request an informational call while making note of the alumni connection. I’m not guaranteeing that this would work, but a few kids from Princeton did that when I was at McK and, if I was able to carve out the time, I scheduled time to speak with them.

  • “Is it the done thing?”: As mentioned above, it can be pretty tough for you to connect with people who currently work for McK and, even if you can connect with them, they may be too busy to carve out time for a conversation. So, in response to your question, I would say that people interested in applying to McK definitely TRY to meet current staff, but I don’t think that many of them are successful in doing so without the benefit of a personal introduction or an information session.

Although it isn’t necessarily easy for you to talk to folks inside of McK without an introduction, there are a couple of really good resources that can help you get some insights from people who used to work at The Firm:

I hope this email was helpful. I don’t think it was the kind of “do this to meet McK people” roadmap that you were seeking, but I think it should help you to get an understanding of how life is inside of The Firm.

If you’re thinking that there’s any chance that you might want to work for McK, my recommendation would be to submit your application now and wait to hear from the recruiting team. You can always try to connect with current consultants while your application package is under review, but I don’t see why you would wait to apply based on whether/when you can talk to people about what life is like there. In other words, this is something that can be done concurrently and doesn’t necessarily have to be sequential.

Take care and good luck on your *potential* application to The Firm.

Marquis