Hiring management consultants is expensive, especially when companies engage top-tier strategy firms such as McKinsey, the Boston Consulting Group, or Bain.
The price tag for typical projects can range from USD 1mn to 10mn. So why are companies willing to pay a large premium for this external advice.
Below are the 5 key reasons.
Consulting firms offer an outside perspective
Consultants always bring an objective outside perspective into the company. Since they serve mostly very large corporations or governments, the clients are prone to suffer from management inertia, groupthink, and daily routines. Bringing fresh and objective thinking from the outside can go a long way in such environments to crack crusted structures and old paradigms.
McKinsey and others are drivers of change
As an external force, they are often called to evaluate a company’s issues, recommend solutions, and lastly, help overcome or circumvent internal politics to drive change in the organization. Consultants are not bound by the client’s internal political landscape or other issues. Therefore, their substantiated advice can often be used as a powerful force of change. Additionally, consultants increasingly support the implementation of their recommendations.
Consulting firms bring in expertise
Large consultancies are specialized in all industries and business functions. When adding up the experience of their consultants from junior business analysts to senior partners and knowledge experts, they can bring thousands of years of experience in each particular sector to the client. Additionally, top firms spend millions on industry-leading research each year. Lastly, they are able to tap into the best external knowledge via expert platforms.
Consultants are problem solvers
Consultants are the most experienced problem solvers in the business world. They have established processes, tools as well as access to data and experts to deal with every question a company, government, or NGO can imagine. It is amazing how the drive of a small motivated and experienced team of hard-working problem solvers can identify and solve business problems, that the client they are working for is unable to solve within a much longer timespan and a much bigger workforce.
McKinsey trains clients’ employees
Besides the analytical work, a typical consulting engagement often includes, consultants spend a significant amount of their time to train employees of their client, either in 1-on-1 coachings or full-fledged workshops. They transfer skills, build up the knowledge to help bring their solutions into the organization, and facilitate the implementation. Consultants usually train people from senior client leadership to sales staff and shop floor workers.
How we can help you to get a job with McKinsey, BCG, and Bain
We have specialized in placing people from all walks of life with different backgrounds into top consulting firms both as generalist hires as well as specialized hires and experts. As former McKinsey consultants and interview experts, we help you by
- tailoring your resume and cover letter to meet consulting firms’ highest standards
- showing you how to pass the different online assessments and tests for McKinsey, BCG, and Bain
- showing you how to ace McKinsey interviews and the PEI with our video academy
- coaching you in our 1-on-1 sessions to become an excellent case solver and impress with your fit answers (90% success rate after 5 sessions)
- preparing your math to be bulletproof for every case interview
- helping you structure creative and complex case interviews
- teaching you how to interpret charts and exhibits like a consultant
- providing you with cheat sheets and overviews for 27 industries.
Reach out to us if you have any questions! We are happy to help and offer a tailored program to help you break into consulting.
Ace the case interview with our dedicated preparation packages.
