If you visit McKinsey’s job search site, you’ll see we are actively hiring for more than 500 open roles. How should you pick which one(s) to apply to? We’re here to help.
Location
The most natural place to start is location. We have more than 130 locations for you to choose from – yes, that’s 50%+ more than other global management consultancies. If you’re an experienced professional, you might not be looking to move far. If you’re studying or unattached to a specific city, think about where you know the local culture and language, have a personal support group, and would like to live and work. Where do you see yourself building a community? You might also consider the industry sectors that are most common in your preferred locations.
Type of role
The next thing to consider is the type of role you’d like to have. There are client service roles, internal roles, and some positions that are more of a mix of the two. All are important to the success of our firm in living our purpose of creating positive, enduring change. Here’s a bit more information about them:
- Client service: colleagues in these roles work directly with our clients to tackle some of their most pressing challenges. Some consultants are generalists, others focus in specific practice areas. Learn more about these roles in the next section.
- Internal roles: it takes thousands of talented colleagues around the world to keep McKinsey operating at its best. From executive assistants to lawyers, recruiters, cloud native software engineers, communications professionals, business presentation specialists, and more, our firm service professionals are at the tops of their fields and critical to our innovation, organization, and success.
- Combination roles: colleagues in the Client Capabilities Network build and deploy distinctive intellectual property and tech- and data-enabled assets internally. They also bring leading expertise to our client service teams. CCN colleagues ensure our clients have the best, most thorough, and accurate information with which to make decisions and the right tools to guide their organizations going forward.
Client facing roles
If you’re interested in client service, there are several options to consider based on whether you want to focus in a specific area or capability:
- Generalist consultant: As a generalist, you will likely work on a variety of projects in multiple industries and functions to build your consulting tool kit. Over time, you’ll start to develop specific interests within our practices. If you don’t know what you want to focus on quite yet, joining as a generalist is a great way to try new things and discover where your passions lie.
- Practice consultant: McKinsey has more than 20 industry practices (e.g., Advanced Electronics, CPG, Healthcare, Private Equity) and 10 functional practices (e.g., Digital, Operations, Marketing & Sales, Sustainability – check them out using the links along the top of the McKinsey homepage). A practice role might be the best fit for you if you know what type of work you want to do, have some passion or experience in that area, and are eager to go deeper – while still exploring other aspects of business. Joining a practice gives you the most comprehensive and direct access to that type of work and the people who do it. You will be guaranteed practice-specific mentorship and professional development. Similar to a generalist role, you will serve clients on various topics, have the same advancement opportunities, receive access to the same trainings, in addition to a few more that are specific to your practice. Please note, if you are a campus candidate applying to a North American office and interested in joining a practice, you need to fill out the associate or business analyst application form. In it, you’ll be asked to specify which practices interest you most. Otherwise, use the filters at the top of our job search page to explore open roles in practices (e.g., interest = consulting; function = technology or operations).
- Implementation consultant: Our implementation colleagues provide continuous support to ensure our clients achieve and sustain the full benefits of their change and transformation programs. Those who join McKinsey Implementation bring industry experience coupled with a track record of project management or transformation expertise. Implementation consultants serve clients across all industries and join teams early-on during strategy development and stay through execution. If you’re interested in McKinsey Implementation, select “Implementation” under the “Interests” drop-down menu on the McKinsey Careers site.
- Technologists: software-cloud engineers, data engineers, agile coaches, data scientists, product managers, designers, and digital marketers can join McKinsey Digital to bring the power of tech to our clients across industries. Learn more about those roles here. In addition, internal tech roles also exist to conceptualize, design, build, and run the technologies used by thousands of colleagues across the globe.
More guidance
The best way to explore these positions is to search on our careers site. Check out the job descriptions and apply to a couple of roles that interest you most. You can also subscribe to our weekly careers blog e-newsletter to see the latest open roles right in your inbox.
Keep in mind, our talent attraction specialists are phenomenal at guiding you through the process; if they think you’re a better fit for a different role, they’ll route your application to the best hiring team to support you through the process.
Whatever your background and interests, we believe there is a role for you at McKinsey. We’re excited to meet you and hope you’ll start your application to join our team today.