How to get be fast-tracked in MBB?

As the title states, how can one be fast-tracked in MBB? Would appreciate if anyone can share their experience or observation.

Background: Recently got an offer from MBB. Am an experienced hire from the banking industry. Hoping to be fast-tracked through the system - didn't get the level I was expecting.

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Great, thanks for the context. Being hired as an AC2 makes a lot of sense to me. The SAC role at Bain is functionally very different than AC1 or AC2 because as an SAC you're supervising an AC1. That means you're teaching a new hire everything that is "Bain-standard", e.g. how to make slides, what to take notes on in meetings, culture, how often to check in with your Project Leader, etc. If you're an experienced hire and you don't know the way Bain specifically does any of those things, they're not going to let you teach it to someone else yet. Given you don't have an MBA (or didn't mention it) and don't have consulting experience at another peer firm, they can't make you a post-MBA consultant yet so AC2 is really the upper limit for you right now, unfortunately.

As far as fast-tracking, you can get promoted to the post-MBA role as a Consultant in 18 months (normal would be 24 months from start of AC2) and also to Manager in an additional 24-30 months after that (normal would be 36 months from start of C1).

 

That makes a lot of sense.

So on fast-tracking to Consultant in 18 months, what do I have to do to achieve it (i.e. be in the top 1% or 5% of the cohort)? Also is there anything else I should do before starting - I have a couple of weeks before I join.

 

It sounds simple, but just be really good. Take full ownership of your workstream, learn how to manage up to your manager, execute analysis effectively, know which analyses to run, be 80/20... all of the things that make a good consultant will be things you'll need to prove you can do. Fortunately, none of this stuff is "hard" it just takes a bit of time to learn. I'd say about 25% of people that want to end up getting promoted early, so it's certainly doable.

 

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