A (consultant) friend is presenting, along with representatives from 6 other consulting firms, to a well-known university’s* advanced degree students. Each presenter has 8min to share about his/her firm, experience, and projects. The representatives from McKinsey were the first up and to my surprise, had no slides, neither preparation. The guy, a PhD himself and a manager encouraged audience to join McKinsey because it hires the best talents. The lady who is newer/ junior shared a project that she called it the first real project she has done. They left right after their talks without joining the later Q&A and breakout session. It’s not fair to judge a company by 2 people and they may do excellent work yet compared to other presenters, they were the worst. I don’t know if their performance would impact McKinsey’s attractive to candidates or the big name could carry out the slips.
What’s even more interesting is that (I was told) McKinsey has a placement agency for their leaving employees. The agency helps McKinsey alumni to find the best job possible. This may seem strange at first yet it’s a very smart strategy because the alumni could be a client to hire McKinsey or help hire other McKinseyers. Both reinforce McKinsey’s network and reputation. Perhaps it’s one of the key ingredients of McKinsey secret sauce besides talents.
The takeaways from this experience are (1) learning from good examples (presentation style, Q&A) by consultants from BCG, ClearView, and Deloitte as well as special types of consulting, e.g. IDA and ESC; (2) big shots or people work in big name firms are also ‘human’, they make mistake and label isn’t equal to value. We define our worth and can add values wherever we are.
* to protect people’s reputation, excluding the names