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.

How do you actually get staffed on projects at McKinsey, BCG, or Bain? We break down the official models, the four factors that really determine where you end up, the "staffing black market" nobody talks about, and how it all changes as you get more senior.

Lilli is the proprietary GenAI tool of McKinsey. Lilli has the ability to access McKinseys "KNOW" database. "KNOW" is McKinsey's knowledge database where all the knowledge from years of projects work is cofidied and classified in an easily accessible way for McKinsey consultants. Lilli has direct access to the "KNOW" database and thus can access all the project knowledge of McKinsey. It makes it a lot easier for consultants to draft quick letters of proporsal or structure a p

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

Many people wonder what the difference in corporate culture at McKinsey, BCG and Bain. There are many wild claims out there that each MBB firm hires specific types of people. Or that they uses certain approaches unique to their: for example BCG uses adaptive problem solving and McKinsey is more structured. But this is all nonsense. In reality, the culture at McKinsey, BCG and Bain is very similar. This is driven by the fact that the MBB firms serve teh same clients and hire t

To pass the McKinsey interview it is important to properly prepare for it. It is essential to know that the McKinsey case interview is interviewer-led and not interviewee-led. Additionally, it is crucial to prepare with authentic cases. There are many outdated materials floating around online with cases that are far from what you see in your actual McKinsey interview. Morever, memorizing 100s of frameworks is not the way t ogo. Instead it is crucial to be able to structure ca

McKinsey is known for the difficult case interviews but little is known about the evaluation scheme. The 3 dimensions analytical, conceptual, and quantitative thinking are tested in the case interview and the candidate is rated on a 4 point scale. To actually pass the interview, the candidate needs to show extraordinary performance in some areas. This is what McKinsey calls a "spike"

Regular trianing is a staple at McKinsey especially in the first year on the job. McKinsey offers many world-class trianing programs with the goal of speeding up the development of the juniors. Besides the mandatory training in the first year, there are many optional offerings like excel and powerpoint training. But there are also offerings to develop soft skills like team room presence and giving & getting feedback.

The exit opportunities at the MBB firms (McKinsey, BCG & Bain) but also at Tier 2 firms (Strategy&, Oliver Wyman, Arthur D Little) are endless. The most common exit is definitely to corporates - especially to former clients. It makes perfect sense for clients to hire a consultant they worked with in the past as they have proof of their work. Other very common exits are to Private Equity and to start-ups. But there are also uncommon routes like politics or straight into retire

McKinsey, BCG, and Bain are notorious for the up-or-out principle. So the fact that people get fired if they don't progress in the career ladder. In reality, most people leave consulting on their own terms and only a minority is getting laid-off. So the up-or-out principle is a thing but it is rarely executed.