If you have exceptional analytical skills, a good education, an enterprising attitude, and a healthy curiosity about what else there is to experience in the world, please consider McKinsey. Becoming a management consultant at McKinsey could be the best next step for you.
To become a consultant, you must be able to solve problems, get on well with people, have a healthy curiosity, and have the courage to take initiative. We look for people with exceptional analytical skills who have developed themselves substantially during their work or studies. We examine your ability to solve problems, your team spirit, communication skills, leadership, and drive. Your results at college and university are an indication of your perseverance and intellectual capabilities. To become a generalist consultant at McKinsey, your study background isn't important. If you aspire a career in the Business Technology Office, however, then we expect you to have a passion for IT/Technology, a university-level education or substantial work experience.
Ability to solve problems
The ability to solve problems to us means creative intelligence, i.e., the ability to extract essential information from an obscure jumble of data to subsequently form logical conclusions. It is not only a matter of IQ; creativity is just as important for developing genuinely new insights into complex problems.
The following skills and characteristics are important to us:
- Clear, logical reasoning: lending structure to complex issues; setting priorities.
- A naturally curious and inquisitive mind: the desire to understand the essence of things.
- The ability to synthesize: being able to form conclusions from various facts; always looking for the answer to the question, ‘so what?’
- Creativity in devising new lines of approach.
- Commercial insight: a good feel for commercial concepts and practical solutions.
- A way with numbers: an intuitive feel for the application of figures.
Team spirit
At McKinsey you will always work in a team with other McKinsey consultants and clients. Team members constantly help one another to get results, for which you bear collective responsibility. This is important for developing recommendations that work for your clients and for conveying these recommendations in an effective and appealing manner.
Specifically, we look for the following skills and characteristics:
- Ability to work in a team and play a leading role in them (directly or indirectly): to encourage, listen well; able to empathize with others and respond appropriately.
- Personal influence: an independent outlook; maturity, assertiveness, but not arrogance.
- Strong interactive skills: a clear and open way of communicating; getting straight to the point.
- Integrity: being genuine and trustworthy, and receptive to other people’s ideas.
- Ability to influence: able to build a working relationship with clients within a short time; able to make a good impression, also at top management level.
Drive
We view drive as the art of exercising one’s clout—in other words, being able to effect genuine change. This is something you will achieve through your leadership, energy and focus on the end product.
We look for the following skills and characteristics:
- Leadership: being prepared to take personal risks; undertaking things with others; encouraging colleagues to perform well.
- Good judgment and sound reason: being able to make a decent estimate about the feasibility and practicality of situations.
- Ability to cope with pressure: being untroubled by stressful situations such as an interview, deadline or presentation.
- Resourcefulness: being prepared to push aside ready-made solutions; managing to overcome obstacles.
- Focus on the end product, on action. Our motto could be: ‘We can make it work!’
- Energy: perseverance to get things done; preparedness to work hard and invest more than average in your own future.
- Personal achievements: setting high goals for yourself; wanting to do great things.