McKinsey & Company

I received more support than I ever expected! You'll be assigned a "DGL" (essentially a mentor at the Associate Partner or Partner level) that will usually check in with you every week. Also, as a "summer," just about any partner/senior partner/etc you reach out to will be happy to talk with you ...

While most business analyst interns assist analysts and associates in performing market research and data input (Excel), I was fortunate enough to be given the same jobs as full-time analysts. Apart from doing market research and data analysis, I helped in building financial models in Excel, wrot...

t depends on which stage of the project your team is working on. Analysts/interns are more occupied during the initial month of the project as there will be a lot of market research to do. You might have to work round the clock occasionally but it is not as bad as investment bankers. In the mid p...

I had a large portion of the ownership over my work. Once I was assigned a project or to work with someone, it was mine to work through from start to finish. I was paired with a project analyst as well as a project manager who was responsible for things at a greater or more detailed level but onc...

Getting the offer to be a SBA is the hardest part. You'll generally get an offer to join full-time unless something seems really wrong or it seems like a bad culture/role fit. Be excited about the job, show a willingness to learn, ask questions to help yourself improve -- all the typical things t...

My favorite part about this job was how much I got to learn. I was learning something new, or practicing skills, every day. I built a deep expertise in distributed solar markets and broader North American electric utility markets and policy. I also learned how to build excel models, make really g...

At McKinsey, you need to be hypothesis-driven, quick thinking, and have a "do-er" attitude. Quantitative and analytical thinking are also musts. Some of the more underrated skills that I didn't appreciate, but that are actually incredibly important for the job, are great email communication, emot...

Leadership, ability to drive impact, take initiative, work well in teams and solve conflict, come up with innovative ideas, passion for an industry and/or consulting itself. Also don't forget to show case your interests and personality. I hit it off with a partner by talking about the time I did ...

A KS works as a member of the firm's client facing support staff - in other words, this is not a pure consulting role. The KS' job is to be a content expert and researcher in the particular practice team they work within; for me this was the Electric Power & Natural Gas practice. When a consultin...

McKinsey works on up or out format. If you stay in the same level 2 years (might be different time span today and the exact time span may vary across offices) if you don’t promote you are invited to live the company. A successful career from analyst to partner may take more or less time depending...

Starts 9am, finishes 9pm on good projects, 3am on bad projects depending on your EM (some have very poor management skills), with tons of things to do during the day. E.g. a typical day on a project could include 10 phone interviews with different people (at least half an hour each, so interviews...

In a manner of speaking, yes. Each person is assigned a development leader who both serves as a "mentor" of sorts (helping you navigate your feedback and professional development plans) and also gathers feedback for your performance reviews. However, informal mentorships are important and common ...

I believe there are only two types of interviews: case/scenario or conversation. There are many examples of scenarios online and perhaps even training sessions at Stanford. The scenarios are used to determine the quick wit and problem solving abilities of applicants. The conversations are just th...

This role is very important as your research and analysis will be used by the managers and partners to make business decisions. For every case/project, we have to come up with a solution, usually a detailed strategy for our client, and it is based on all the fundamental level research done by the...