IBD in London or consulting at McKinsey?
Hi fellow monkeys,
I could really do with some career advice here!
Background:
Done with school
The ultimate goal: VC
I interned at a top U.S. bank last summer in one of their best IBD groups in London, worked my ass off and got a very competed full-time analyst offer
Set to start in a few months with no flexibility
The conflict:
With plenty of time in my hands, I decided to go for a consulting internship in my home country in Europe
Happened to land an offer at McKinsey and pretty much loved the small office culture, work content and more relaxed lifestyle
Received a full-time offer with little to no effort, with great flexibility regarding the start date
The question:
What should I do with my competing offers?
A) Go with IBD in London and say goodbye to McKinsey
B) Go with consulting in Europe and say goodbye to my much-competed offer in London
C) Go with IBD in London for the initial training, a few months or a year, then quit and start out at the bottom of the ranks as a junior consultant at McKinsey
What makes things worse is that apart from the actual sweat and tears that I put into my IBD internship last year, I have invested a significant amount of energy and effort in the pre-training and heavy background checks for London. This makes me more inclined to go with option C), even though all the effort should probably be seen as a sunk cost. The situation with corona makes things even more uncertain, even though I have heard that the deal pipeline in my team in London is solid (there have already been major headcount reductions).
I am aware that I cannot look at the situation objectively at all, and that’s why I am quite literally begging for your help here. Any advice is much appreciated! :)
Firstly, congrats on your offers. Unless you have an offer in GS, MS or JPM, I would recommend you take McKinsey. I have interviewed in quite a few places so far, and I came to realise that people only care about brand name. And McKinsey will open doors for you.
Then, regarding the execution, in an Pre-Covid world I would have suggested to directly take McK and go travel and enjoy your life.
However here best option is C), for a number of reasons. First is that training is indeed excellent (although I am sure MCK's must be just as good); Secondly, it will help you in the future in case you have doubts "I should have tried Banking, maybe this MBB life sucks and IB is better". Trying both gives perspective. Go for C. And resign gracefully from the IB, do not burn bridges.
Thank you - really appreciate your input! Quite ironically, my offer happens to be at GS/MS/JPM.
For option C, do you have a view on how long I should stay before resigning? Would it make sense to you just to attend the training and leave after a few weeks? Or spend a good 6 months and then leave? I guess around the 1-year mark would be best for CV-purposes?
Mckinsey - it's much easier to break into IB than MBB. But if you're scared to miss out on IBD you can do C.
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