What working at McKinsey is really like

What is working at McKinsey really like? What will you learn working at the consulting firm McKinsey? What will be the biggest takeaway after having worked in consulting for several years? This video gives great insights into how a day in the life of a management consultant looks like. It also provides some tips on how to get into consulting. Based on a thread of another former McKinsey consultant, Heinrich analyzes some key takeaways from his time in strategy consulting. You will learn THIS at McKinsey!

Chapters
00:00 What you will learn at McKinsey
00:26 Experts in business?
02:33 Perception vs. Reality
04:37 How to control your time
06:14 Having all the answers
07:37 Obligation to dissent

Original Twitter thread:

#consulting #mckinsey #career

🎓 COMMUNICATIONS AND SLIDE WRITING COURSE*
Learn to create PowerPoint presentations and communicate like leading consulting firms with this Firm Learning Signature Course:

💡 CORPORATE TRAININGS FOR YOUR TEAM*
Heinrich offers corporate trainings on Communications, Slide Writing and Problem Solving. Learn more about opportunities to train your team:

📄 CV AND COVER LETTER TEMPLATE*
Get a CV and cover letter template based on my own documents. With earlier versions of this CV and cover letter, I successfully applied to McKinsey as consultant:

🚀 BCG INVERTO - START YOUR CONSULTING CAREER*
Are you interested to join Consulting? INVERTO, part of Boston Consulting Group, is hiring for positions across the globe! These are the latest opportunities:

📊 THINK-CELL - EXTENDED TRIAL AND SINGLE LICENSES*
think-cell is the leading PowerPoint tool to create professional slides. It is used by 8 of the top 10 consulting firms and the entire DAX 40. Get access to an extended free trial and single licenses:

👍 CHANNEL MEMBERSHIP
Become a member of Firm Learning to support my work and get access to perks:

📩 NEWSLETTER
Sign-up to the Firm Learning e-mail newsletter for more regular content:

☑️ RECOMMENDATIONS*

💬 SOCIAL MEDIA

* Links are Affiliate or Sponsored links. I receive a fixed fee or revenue share whenever a purchase is made. The price for you stays the same. Thanks for your support!

All views expressed on this channel are private opinions of this channel's creator Heinrich. This is NOT an official channel of any consulting firm.

[FirmLearning]

Learn to create PowerPoint presentations like consultants from McKinsey, BCG, Bain:

[davidvega]

Heinrich, I’m not gonna lie. You have a name made for consulting. You the man

[YOUinConsulting]

2) is my favorite 🙂 I like to give it an additional spin, since perception management sounds quite sneaky. Having a goal in mind for a every meeting you plan/attend, clarifying questions, repeating arguments showing that you are an active listener, wrapping-up a discussion and listing the next steps just are generally very useful business/communication skills. McKinsey is very good in hammering these into your head. We know they prove useful whenever we attend a meeting that is mediocre. Btw, 1)+4) kind of go together 😃

[ieraj]

Hey Heinrich, thanks for all the work!
Please, make a video describing/explaing how studying philosophy (maybe German philosophy specifically Friedrich Nietzsche, Arthur Schopenhauer, etc.) as an undergraduate degree honed your mindset and approach to business, problem solving, and life in general. That would be an awesome video, thanks!

[PayneMaximus]

I know you have talked about all the points that supermode talks about.
I think the really funny one is the "obligation to dissent". I've had no trouble dissenting with anyone even far above my paygrade, but I think it does hurt you in most places, and I'm in awe to know that in McKinsey it'd considered an asset.
I'll keep in mind some of those anecdotes for when my PEI comes, and hope it will help me land a job!

[Minimalrevolt-m]

Thank you for sharing this! Feel appreciate of your hardwork Heinrich! Been always wanted to dream in working at McKinsey though. Your experiences at the McKinsey worth one's weight in gold.

[liortepper]

great video, every point and word are valuable. Thank you

[DEBIEL]

This guy sounds like every German character in any cartoon, but his points are great. Thanks!

[Spartanboy]

You are just awesome!! Thank you for all your informative videos..

[Metalblowing]

Honestly, I would be ashamed to admit that I've worked for McKinsey or similar business.

I worked with some of these guys on multiple engagements in the middle east. Literally, 0 subject matter expertise. They were always the first to show up, nice suits, lots of talking - never the ones to produce any results.

Did I learn anything from these guys? Yeah. I looked at some of their slide decks, I looked at the way they promise stuff, I was amazed by how they could always avoid any responsibility for anything. Did they actually deliver anything within the project scope? Nope. I visited the same client a few years later and he was talking about how involving McKinsey was all a big mistake/money waste :D Perception is reality.

[davidvega]

Let’s gooo, loving all the new videos!

[andreasu]

Great video as always, Heinrich! Do you have any tips on how to give pushback to leadership to better control your time?

[agamsharma]

Quite an interesting insight. Appreciating the work put forward. I can relate with my experience.

[NaadirDawood]

Hi Heinrich, is the amount of travel for MBB post the pandemic back to pre pandemic levels or has it transitioned to more work being done at the home office?

[rolltrollroll]

How about a video about expert path vs the general path in MBB?

[Anthony-xwbh]

Hi heinrich, been a long follower here. Just wanted to know what are all the possible ways to get into MBB at early career stage? I’m from Malaysia which MBB only has limited services offering, which means lesser quota and headcount aka even harder to get in. To my knowledge there’s such role called case team assistant which could then be possibly absorbed as full time entry consultant. Would appreciate if you could outline all other alternative pathways, I’m really keen to join MBB and have been preparing myself throughout my academic journey, really needed some guidance from industrial expert - somebody like you. Thanks in advance!

[riboch]

Now the question is: if senior executives don't have a clue, how can some McKinsey novice coming out of university have? Biggest mystery to me...

[fibryrruihf]

Can you expand on the context(s) where steel-manning arguments is most frequently valuable?

[sofyanbou]

Thanks for your video! I had à question about the last topic the obligation to dissent. Could you elaborate more on that. I have spoken with twi consultants from Amsterdam that told me that the influence you have as a junior is quite limited. Could you elaborate more on how much influence a junior has? Also related to the point of dissent. Thankyou so much again for your videos and efforts!🙌🏻

[bluegodofspeed]

What's the link to the sneaky video?