Ex-MBB Consultant - Q&A

You need to find a core group of people you click with rather quick. Focus on building relationships with them, rather than hoping around engagements first.

My first project was technically a dead-boring, operational heavy procurement project. Not what I envisioned at all. Nonetheless, the same partners who were running it also had really interesting/sexy other projects in general. Dug myself in, was proactive and grinded hard and earned their respect and liking, which leas to this flywheel of them staffing me on a really cool DD as my second study.

In that sense the firm is organized like the mafia. Very decentral. You need support from your patrons (the core partners you work with), who will stand up for you and cheer for you when it comes to ratings.

What broke my neck in the later years and got me down from top bucket to average bucket was that I did too many studies with different leadership. Performance was still top, but imagine in a year you work with 10 partners of which some have seen you for 4 weeks max.

At the end of the year, they get tons of evaluation request and since everything is curved, they can‘t just hand out good ratings like candy.

Now they have their 3-4 close associates which they will rate v high naturally and then they have a bunch of people with limited exposure. Even though you did stellar work in those 4 weeks you worked with them, they will naturally not cheer for you or push a strong rating.

On the other hand I have seen rather mediocre or lets say average consultants who breezed through the firm with 5/5 ratings. I have seen absolutely cracked machines who ended up with only a 3. 

The 5/5 were basically everyones darling on a large and powerful CSTs with some important senior partners. 

Now I could go even much more in depth into here, but at least in my region I also had the feeling that the most money generating ans powerful CSTs also pushed the most strongest ratings for their people. The problem was that these CSTs were often the most disliked and toxic and in a sense there was this quid pro quo. You get grinded by us but if you stay and do not run a way you get your high rating.

So sorry for not being structured as I am just typing this out on the phone, but having the right senior partners on your list is likely the most deciding factor. That was the second disadvantage of me, as my roaster got less and less stacked. I did too much PE work and PE guys at McK are nowhere near the level of big industry CST guys.