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MD wrote:
Dear Marquis,
I read the Management Consulted article which featured your experience as a consultant. Thank you for sharing your insights. I am writing to you because I am interested in becoming a McKinsey consultant based in the Atlanta office. I currently live in Atlanta and makes logical sense for me.
I am an experienced professional with an MBA from Georgia Tech and am aligning information I have read over the years to shape myself into a prime candidate. I get excited each time I learn a new piece of information that would help me obtain this goal. I have a strong work ethic and feel the variety of projects will keep me satisfied as a consultant.
One of my questions to you is where is the best place to learn excel modeling? I am a pretty advanced excel user and can probably catch on very quickly given the right resources.
What type of projects/industries are available in the Atlanta office? From a social perspective, do the consultants participate in volunteer/pro bono type projects? If so, what type?
I look forward to hearing from you.
Best regards,
MD
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My response:
Hi MD,
Thanks for reaching out to me with your questions. It’s amazing how many people still find me based on that Management Consulted article after all of these years (I believe I did that one back in 2007). OK, let’s jump right in to your questions…
First up…Excel modeling. For someone who is a complete newbie at using Excel, I would recommend finding a resource to lern the basics of Excel and then buying a good modeling book to get a sense for how to go from the basics to really being able to make magic happen. The book that I used to learn modeling in business school is out of print and likely would be outdated by now due to the many changes that have been implemented in Excel in the past decade. Instead, I did a quick Amazon search and the following book looks like it could serve as a good resource:
You’re in a different situation though because it sounds like you already have advanced Excel skills and, as such, you may already be doing modeling without even knowing it. First, it might make sense for you to buy a book (as mentioned above) purely to act as a reference guide for you. You won’t need it for in-depth training, but it could offer some tips to help you with the more hairy operations that you’d try to implement. After that, the old adage of “Practice makes perfect” should be your guiding mantra. The key to become proficient and then “deadly” at Excel modeling is to start building models to accomplish different tasks/goals. For example, one of my first Excel models was a simple model to keep track of my spending from month to month during my first year of business school. It wasn’t complicated at all, but it gave me good practice at linking cells, using functions, and putting in different bells and whistles. Later, I sharpened my skills by modeling out increasingly difficult problems, eventually getting to the point where I had enough of a foundation to get myself to the point of being deadly at it during my McKinsey years. You could probably do a Google search and find some examples of various business tools/situations that you can use to get practice in modeling…next thing you know, you’ll be off to the races.
On your question about the types of projects and industries available in the Atlanta office, I’d recommend checking out the McKinsey website and navigating to the page for the ATL office. When I last looked at it (which I admit was a few years ago), there was a list of the top industries for each office on the McKinsey website and, when I was researching The Firm myself as an applicant, I found it to be a great resource. It has been 5 years since I left McK, so I don’t want to risk giving you information that is incorrect. One thing to note is that the ATL office is part of the McKinsey Southern Office, which also includes Charlotte, Dallas, Houston, and Miami. If you were to join the ATL office, you could probably get staffed on a study out of one of those offices just as easy as ATL, so you might want to research those offices on the McK website too.
Your question about volunteer/pro bono projects is an interesting one, but I’m not sure if the answer that I’ll give is exactly what you’re looking for. The quick answer is that, while some consultants might want to work on volunteer projects, the nature of working at McKinsey (or any of its peer firms) doesn’t really lend itself to doing so. When consultants are assigned to a client project, the volume of work and travel is high and may involve having to put in work at night and on weekends. As you can imagine, this doesn’t leave much time for working on volunteer projects outside of client work. I have heard stories about people taking leaves of absence from their firms in order to do a volunteer project of some kind, but I’d imagine that it doesn’t happen very often. In most cases, folks will wait until they’ve exited the consulting world and gone back corporate before taking on pro bono projects. That way, they’ll have a more manageable work schedule that would allow for the side project work but can leverage the capabilities that they’ve picked up as Consultants.
I hope the above comments are helpful to you. Take care and have a great afternoon.
Marquis
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