McKinsey New Ventures Specialist? Anyone have information on this role?
I am a senior at a target and was rejected from my final round interview at McKinsey last month (for a BA position). Although I received a tier 2 offer, I was really gunning for MBB and am now unsure if it's worth entering into consulting to not be at a MBB firm. I came across McKinsey's New Venture role and originally ruled it out, but I recently saw a "Specialist - New Ventures Campus" position and am intrigued by the "specialist" designation.
Does anyone have any information about McKinsey New Ventures? Could I be a "specialist" and focus in their "Private Equity and Principal Sponsors" industry? And more importantly, is the McKinsey brand in a non-BA role better for exit opps than a normal consultant role at a Tier 2 firm?
Also interested in this question.
I think the answers to these questions are hard to come by because quite simply they are still unclear. McKinsey New Ventures is a very new part of McKinsey. There haven't been enough people who have exited yet to clearly give a sense of what the exit opps will be like.
At the end of the day, New Ventures is back-end. It's been described to me as a startup within McKinsey. Most roles will be non client-facing, with the exception of the Specialist role, which is client facing. I don't quite have details about what the specialist exactly does, but my understanding is that they specialize in one specific area (ex. Healthcare) and act as a liason between clients/other McKinsey teams and New Ventures.
Is the specialist role going to yield better exit-opps than the BA role/other BA-like client-facing roles at McKinsey (ex. Expert track's junior analyst)? I'm personally a bit skeptical. You're definitely not getting the traditional consulting experience: traveling, working with clients at their sites, etc. I don't quite see how working in New Ventures would be that much better than similar roles at startups or big companies that might have more expertise/depth than McKinsey in their respective fields. My guess is that B-school placement would be worse for that reason.
On the flip-side, the McKinsey name/network is still awesome, even if you're not in a traditional consulting role. I think exit-opps could be pretty good to companies that you specialized in. And my BA friend did note that he's seen a couple of BA's move to New Ventures, likely because they wanted to travel less and settle down.
This is my two-cents, but I would love if a current McKinsey BA or current employee in New Ventures could give more current insider insight.
Tl;dr it looks like an interesting opportunity for those looking for a greater degree of specialized, analytics-heavy, asset-based consulting and who are agnostic to S&O/implementation.
Some more information I've found, for posterity:
OP would be recruiting for a Junior Specialist position.
New Ventures has partner electable paths as an Expert track (Analyst/Fellow -> Junior Specialist/Senior Fellow -> Specialist -> Expert -> Expert AP -> Expert Partner), similar to other practices. You'd be responsible for and provide expertise in your specific practice (e.g. Healthcare Analytics & Delivery), including knowledge base (e.g. healthcare billing & payer reimbursement) and assets/IP offered (e.g. algorithms, models). This seems to be the primary client facing role, as you described, and is closest to the consulting you'd find in other McK practices. Most positions in New Ventures are not particularly client-facing.
Because you're tied to a product or set of products, there seems to be opportunity for P&L responsibility (not precisely sure on this). If true, this could impact exits in a positive way.
New Ventures seems to collaborate with other McKinsey wings at all stages - strategy, operations, implementation, and post-engagement services. This includes providing analysis for the engagement, pitching the products, or developing and integrating the products to the client. Not sure whether they do stand-alone engagements.
Travel can be almost none to 80%, depending on tenure, demand and interest (and probably whether you're on the Expert Partner or Master Expert track).
Regarding recruiting: they seem to be less discerning about which school you came from and more focused on the skill sets you bring to the table. They also recruit year-round. There's a decent representation of [Jr.] Specialists from T100 schools (e.g. Stony Brook, Alabama), many of whom had 0-3 years of experience in data science positions prior to McK New Ventures (and not necessarily at well known places).
Exits are as of yet unclear, but I'd reckon are still pretty good under the McK umbrella. Whether a T2 is better or not is also unclear, though if you're looking for a traditional generalist experience I'd say yes.
They're very different roles than being a consultant as far as I understand. If you want to be a consultant but didn't get MBB I'd go for T2.
The statement that a lot of positions are not client facing is not accurate. A specialist is equivalent to an associate position on the generalist side. The New Ventures side is generally growing faster than traditional consulting currently.
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Bump - anyone have first- or secondhand experience for an analyst/specialist in this role? How does it differ from the generalist route? Asking for a friend. Seems responses here aren't completely in agreement.
I’m currently working in one of these positions and travel just like any other BA or associate would. The other fellows and specialists that I know travel 4-5 days a week as well.
Good to hear. What would you say delineates what you do from other departments?
Would you mind posting more about the position or doing an AMA for those of us interested in this?
My questions would be
Thanks!
Bump. I am interested in learning more about New Ventures as well. What is so different from the generalist roles other than being focused on a specific industry. I am currently working at a T2 firm primarily focused on a single industry. Would a switch to New Ventures as an Analyst be a bad idea? The role I applied to fell under the "consulting" interests on the McKinsey job search and function is in "Strategy". From some of the comments above it seems that New Ventures generally is not like typical consulting? I would love to get more insights as information on New Ventures is not readily available!
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