Unconventional answers about management consulting

Hi ac,

Once hired, how easy is it to transfer from one office to another? As in, if you're hired into the London office, how easy it is to move to say NYC?

"Easy" is a very relative perception. I would say that transferring (permanently) to another office is easier to do in MC than in any other line of work. That said, it's still not a relaxing walk. Main criterion:

- The bigger your current office AND the office of your choice, the easier and faster it is (e.g.: London --> NYC? Assuming you are entitled to work in the US, it's gonna happen, but not overnight. You might wait for a whole year).

Being a top performer is a mixed blessing in this respect: on one hand the firm does not want you to leave, on the other the local office ...does not want you to leave. It's very difficult to give up star-status in an office to move in another. Empirically, the people who really do transfers are: slow-trackers and stars. Here follows my advice for the latter type of people:

If you want to move to a country of your choice, try to give alternatives (want to move to Dallas? Here you go, as soon as they need +1. Want to get into NYC financial services or strictly Palo Alto office and you are a French national with no MBA and a background in government? Not gonna happen).

All in all, you have got to make your own game plan. Offices are interconnected, so don't just go to the HR whining for transfer as that's not how it works in MC. Figure out why you want to go there (and if it's not professional, tie in a professional motive, much like the MBA thing). Tailor your CV. Made yourself known to the people there by working voluntarily for them in the spare time you don't have. Leverage the network you have built during the MBA, ideally set up 1-2 sales meetings and go along. No one is ever going to stop you doing these things.

The bottom line? Have a director of the office you want to go to call your HR and request you join them. You manage to do that, you can transfer to the Teheran office even if your family name is Cheney. And you're off with a great start.

That pretty much answer also to

2) What's the typical promotion path once you're hired? Are the first opportunities for promotion a few years after being hired? And then what?

MC is entrepreneurial to the point it is better defined as Darwinian. You meet expectations, you won't make partner. You understand what you neeed to do and overachieve? No one is going to stop you.

Hypothesis: consultancies go forward by means of those who deliver projects. Analysts and associates do not have a clue, senior partners and directors play golf. So the key people in the day to day are senior managers.

McK elects early to partnership. You make engagement manager 2-3 years out of your MBA and if you do sell you skip the senior engagement manager step and just get your frickin equity. You might be 30. Most partners make it around 35.

BCG and Bain usually wait some more to make you partner and the managementship is a long period which comprises people at radically different stages in their development. A "project leader" in BCG or a "case team leader" in Bain are basically associates that begin to have a clue what's going on, and this allows them to supervise analyst and brand new MBAs freeing time for the manager. You get there in 2 years and de facto in less time if you're smart.

You get "manager" in the strict sense, you are required to deliver small/no-risk projects by yourself, with a partner/senior manager who overviews your work once in a week. You are a project leader, you want to sell your first small project and be its manager too (could be an extension you figured out and sold to a VP of a big client, could be your mate from MBA which buys for his small-to-medium enterprise.

You sell more of these, the senior partners are going to give you the engagements they sell (big-time ones) to deliver. Congratulations, you have become a senior manager. You staff rather than are staffed, you juggle 3-4 things and about 10 people, you get a little more dough than junior managers and tons more responsibility.

From there: you sell a few millions one year, you get partner (real partner, not the 29-year-old McK one). You sell 8 digits one other year, you are director. Now go buy a Porsche you moron. Work is basically the same except from partner on you want to have your own smart people to give your projects too so that you can be home "early", and the game begins again for them.

So basically, position and years after MBA in ():

McK: Associate, Engagement Manager (EM) (2-3), SEM (5-6) or partner (5-6), director (???).

BCG: Consultant, Project Leader (2-3), Principal (5-7) or Associate Partner (5-7), Partner / Managing Director (???)

Bain: Consultant, Case Team Leader (2), Manager (3-5), Senior Manager (6-8), Partner (???), Director (???)

But in substance the game is the same. But: how do you get there, really?

Just one concept: being smart is not enough. The defining moment is the mid-managentship. The smart analyst can get there with no MBA as soon as he figures it all out by experience. Delivering a project, especially when you have so much cumulated experience you can rely on, is not really difficult.

The difficult thing is to sell, and to begin doing it far before you are a mid-manager (from day 1, basically). Overdelivering by content will pay rapidly diminishing returns (consultancies are not academic institutions and do not really value smart in itself; client are less smart and are usually put off by excessive delivery/intelligence). Everyone is smart at the manager level so frankly that's a given. You have got to be smart and likable and making these two traits work together. Just the traits in themselves are not often found together, even less easy it is to intertwine them. Much-talked MBA experiences should help you in this respect.

So don't bother showing us that you are smart and work hard. We are smart too and if we weren't, we would not realize you are smart. Go make those budget-managing, supposedly less-smart people believe you're actually smart to the point they take out their wallet. That's what smart is anyway. Now here's your frickin' Porsche, congrats!