Take the McKinsey offer?

Hey guys,

I never thought I would go into consulting, but I did some practice cases and now have the FT offer. I'm feeling very conflicted because it's been years of work getting into IB, but the summer internship killed me (hours, snakey people, making many company profiles...), and the partners at McK genuinely seemed fun to be around. In IB, I found pitches to be death but the valuations were fun. I don't know - I feel like getting into IB has been my personality for so long, and I'm genuinely not sure if I'd enjoy consulting work. I'm sure there's the consulting version of deathly grunt work. Also, I don't want to take the 50% pay cut....

Does anyone have any advice?

9 Comments
 

If you really thought your summer was tough, I think you’d be dumb not to take McKinsey. Also, all that prep you did for IB and traditional finance is not a sunk cost— you learned. You can definitely get back to IB from McKinsey if you’re not a big fan.

 

Depends on what you want and your other offers-- if you want to do PE and have a return offer from any "reasonable" bank? Take banking 110%. Want to get some brand name experience and then do S&O at a startup? McKinsey is probably the move.

FWIW, McKinsey is a huge firm with a huge variety of people. From my experience as a former McKinsey BA, I would not characterize the majority of partners as "fun". They absolutely tended to be pretty smart, but the similarities between McKinsey and a bank are probably greater than the differences-- the biggest difference is weekend work at McKinsey is massively looked down upon and hurts you 

 

I’d choose to interview someone from McK over BofA/Citi (but I’d interview someone from MS etc. over McK).


Most consultants do not understand valuation or accounting whatsoever. So you might have a nice blended skill set to some degree with funds who hire consultants (which granted is not all of them). So basically you might end up with a stronger profile in a more narrow opportunity set by taking McK (but you only need to land one PE offer end of the day). 

 
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