Case Interview Hub Blog

How much do consultants at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain actually earn? We break down salaries from fresh business analyst to senior partner — in both the US and Germany — and explain the "MBB salary trap" that makes it so hard to leave consulting.

People often think that the lifestyle of strategy consultants at McKinsey, BCG, and Bain is glamorous. But is this really the case? The truth is that a lot of the glamorous elements of the job become tedious very soon. Flying business class and staying in 5 star hotels is nice. But doing this every week becomes tedious very soon because you spend half of your life in hotel rooms and in transit.

MECE is a core concept in strategy consulting and especially McKinsey, BCG, and Bain put an emphasize on structure, especially when it comes to the case interview. MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive Collectively Exhaustive. Mutually exclusive means that individual components are not overlapping. Collectively exhaustive menas that the components taken together cover the entire problem. When preparing for case interviews it is essential to understand and apply the MECE principl

How does GenZ entering the workforce change consulting? McKinsey, BCG, and Bain are known for thier challenging work environment. From travelling weekly to the client to working long hours, often past midnight, every day. Do the MBB firms change because GenZ prefers a better lifestyle? We believe not as consultants are driven by clients. A consultant will not hire an expensive strategy consulting firm like McKinsey to have the consultants only work from 9 to 5.

Candidates make several crucial mistakes when preparing for their case interview. The most common ones are using outdated material and unrealistic cases. Surprisingly, some candidates are not doing any mock cases at all which is a very bad idea. Some resources online also recommend memorizing 100s of frameworks which is also completely unnecessary. Moreover, using friends or siblings with absolutely no case interview experience as interview partners is also a very bad idea.

There are multiple reasons why consultants leave the MBB firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) voluntarily. One of the main reasons to leave is the desired lifestyle improvement. Closely linked to the work-life balance improvment is the desire to travel less. Travelling is cool at the start of the consulting journey but sitting in a plane multiple times per week becomes tedious relatively quickly. Morever, the desire to actually have P&L ownership is another big factor.

Consultants at the MBB firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) get fired for several reason. Some firing can be explained by the up-or-out principle. It means that if you don't climb the hierarchical ladder and progress in your career, you are fired. This is closely linked to bad performance. Later on as a consultant gets more senior, a reason for being fired can also be that they don't have the backing of partners. A partner is filling the project pipeline and if she doesn't bring you a

Should a Big 4 consultants make the move to join on of the MBB firms (McKinsey, BCG, Bain)? There are many advantages like a higher salary, more strategy projects, and more exposure to senior clients. But there are also downsides like the worse lifestyle/work-life-balance and the up-or-out culture.

McKinsey, BCG, and Bain all hold many recruiting events. Many students and young professionals attending these events wonder whether they are evaluated. And the short answer is: Yes! But no worries, the large events will not be evaluated. But the small events with prior CV screening are evaluated. So make sure you make a good impression as your performance in the event will decide whether you will be invited to join one of the talent programs. For example McKinsey Firsthand o

All major consulting firms, ranging from MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) ot the Big 4 (Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG) have on thing in common and that is a bad repuation. This is driven by multiple factors. Consulting firms are taking the blame if a project fails - this comes as a service to the clients/customers. But there are also many scandals in the consluting world.