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McKinsey & Company Bain & Company Deciding between Kearney and L.E.K for a summer associate role, looking at hopefully transitioning to MBB for full time (dream role, though I like both other firms perfectly fine). Between DT at Kearney and LEK generalist which profile lends best to switching up a tier?
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Why would a consultant in a Big 4 firm switch to another big 4? Outside looking in, they seem identical in experience and opps.
I dunno, I think OP is spot on with Big4 comparisons
They’re not. The better paying ones are Deloitte and Pwc. Kpmg has better culture. Deloitte probably has the most prestige and higher pre-mba salaries. Deloitte also has less of a fence around their strategy projects than the rest of big4.
OP is delusional about Deloitte
The people I have seen move between mck and BCG fall into the following groups: BCG top performers moving to mck for more opportunities (international, practice area, faster promotion, etc). McK to BCG for better WLB (but see less of this now) or didn’t make partner at Mck or got poached by BCG to start a new area.
Don’t think the rest of the world outside of big 4 really care about the levels of prestige inside the big 4 lol. Agreed it’s usually Deloitte/PwC > EY > KPMG but no one really cares
The few cases I know of BCG-McK moves in either direction were driven by individual needs the other company could meet better, eg transfer to a specific city / country, focus on a specific industry / client or start fresh to get out of a negative promotion momentum
I agree with both C1 and BCG1. I also think McK has a better feedback culture than from what I’ve heard at BCG. You can be super honest and open with feedback both up and down and actually share development better. Just from what I’ve heard anecdotally from friends at BCG, reviews there are inflated and it’s harder to get honest and tough feeebacj
@Bain2, all of MBB has a generalist model. Also I have friends at Bain who work way more than I do and more than mck people too. That’s hard to stereotype across an entire firm especially cause Bain relies so heavily on its independent office culture
So what are some of the nuanced differences between mbb?
McKinsey is substantially larger than BCG and the business is healthier. If I was a UG deciding between MBB I would go McKinsey. BCG isn’t doing poorly by any means, but if I had to bet on who’s still around in 15 years, I’d put my money on McKinsey first.
I was about to move to McK this summer at the 2nd year post MBA level. Decided to get out of consulting to move back in DoD/IC world. McK has a strong IC practice and offered me a lateral move there. While BCG has a federal practice, it's a few years behind McK in the IC. Just about made the move but decided on industry instead.
Strengths in different practice areas. Not too unusual to see. Given the chance, I would have loved to join BCG instead.
I'd say ZS > MBB > Big4
We have better work life balance, generalist model, and office-based staffing
We have a generalist model too Bain2 and we are moving to office-based staffing during first 6 months to a year and then you can expand your network but you can either do it for shorter or longer if you want. And the better WLB totally depends on project and manager. I have friends doing PEG who hate their lives and some McK colleagues doing 55 hours a week on org projects with almost no travel
Would be interesting to see the discussion we’re having for my big4 comparison with mbb. So we know Bain is much smaller, so tighter culture, and they do relatively more PE related work and DDs. Don’t see much different between BCG and McKinsey for someone to switch between them...perhaps for BCG’s culture?
At the consultant level, I don’t see it happen very much (if at all) — sometimes, at the Partner level, they’re trying to leverage client relationships.
Overall, the biggest difference is the culture between the three — they all work for the same clients, come with the same exit opportunities, and do similar work, but McK / BCG do more operations work than Bain. In addition, you can “specialize” sooner at McK and BCG than you can at Bain.
Bain2 chiming in with the firm advertisement
KPMG is def on the come up. EY cheaps out and PWC culture sucks and way too many layoffs. Deloitte is the best firm capabilities wise because it's been around the longest. Others are catching up since Deloitte never spun off