Management Consulting Guide 2022: McKinsey, BCG or PwC!? :-)

Welcome to YOUnConsulting!

1. Who is this course for?

This course is the right course for YOU if you are

• An undergraduate or postgraduate student who wants to explore or firmly pursues a management consulting career as your primary career option

• A young professional (i.e., with some initial work experience) who considers switching to a management consulting career

• A knowledge multiplier or intermediary who serves or frequently deals with consultants for professional reasons and benefits from gaining a deeper understanding of a consultant’s life and challenges

2. Who is your instructor?

My name is Dr “Jack” Jörg Leib. I am a consulting enthusiast, who spent five years as a consultant and project manager with the world’s leading management consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, and since then has been serving as an independent management adviser.

Prior to joining McKinsey, I interned with several reputable consulting firms such as Roland Berger and EY. I have attended recruiting events of all the major tier 1 and tier 2 consulting firms and interviewed with all of them. And to this date, I am very passionate about my industry, doing a lot of research about it and build on a strong network of fellow consultants at these leading consulting firms – to bring the best insights to YOU.

As part of the YOUinConsulting project, I regularly educate, inspire and coach young candidates and experienced professionals about their successful entry, rise and exit as a consultant. Besides offering first-class content as you would expect it from a former McKinsey consultant, I place great value on well-structured didactics as well as a highly entertaining and creative delivery style. Let us be professional AND have fun!

3. What’s in it for you?

Summary

By completion of this course, you shall know whether or not a consulting career REALLY is the right fit for YOU. You will learn what consulting truly is about (and beyond the hype) and understand how everyday consulting life may feel for YOU. Put in a nutshell, you will understand consulting and benefit from these insights for the rest of your consulting career.

At the same time, you can be sure to receive authentic and truthful insights to the consulting industry, benefiting from my insider knowledge as a former McKinsey consultant, current independent management adviser and consulting industry expert. Last but not least, I have put my heart and soul into this course to make sure you do not only take the right decisions for yourself, but also feel entertained and have fun throughout this course… See for yourself! 😉

This course is organized in three parts:

PART A: Decide if you REALLY want to become a consultant

Chances are high that you are taking this course because you consider becoming a consultant and/or want to validate whether management consulting is the perfect career choice for you.

This is great! However, I am also aware that there is a lot of hype and brainwash around my industry. Therefore, I first want to help you ensure that you pursue a consulting career for the right reasons!

For this purpose, I have designed the interactive YOUinConsulting job test. At the beginning of this test, I I will ask you to rank your personal motivation factors to become a consultant. For each of these consulting myths, I will then reveal for you if they are true or false, and ultimately you receive an individual test result telling you how well your dreams and expectations about a consulting career meet the reality of consulting life.

While I want to pick you up from where you currently stand – an emotional idea about consulting that attracts you to become a consultant – I make sure that even while taking this test, you already gain lots of surprising insider insights about our industry that I promise will benefit you for the rest of your consulting career!

For the specific topics that I am going to cover as part of the YOUinConsulting job test, please refer to the course curriculum.

PART B: Understand what consulting truly is about

After these emotional highlights featuring your personal consulting career and life, in this second part I offer you a throrough introduction to the consulting industry. I will start by laying out for you in simple terms what consultants actually get hired for, what services consulting firms offer and how they organize it.

Since I reckon that you will probably love to work for McKinsey, BCG or Bain, I then deep-dive into the strategy consulting market. After presenting to you some surprising facts & figures, I will share my opinion on key players (tier one and tier two companies) as well as challengers (boutique consulting firms, inhouse consulting firms and smaller and medium-sized consulting firms), and will also devote special dedication to the Big Four companies (Deloitte, PwC, EY and KPMG). You will be able to understand commonalities and differences across these players and get further ideas on attractive employers even beyond McKinsey, BCG and Bain.

Furthermore, I reveal three megatrends to you that are currently shaking up the consulting industry and that I know you must be aware of – the earlier, the better. For each of these megatrends, I elaborate the implications for your consulting career and decisions.

PART C: Gain transparency on your individual consulting career path and life

In the third part of this course, I turn back to the personal and individual aspects of your consulting career.

First, I will help you explore the steps on the consulting career ladder you may take and help you understand the many roles you may adopt during your consulting career.

Second, I will invite you to take part in an exciting experiment – “consulting meditations”, through which I want to enable you experience truthful consulting project reports and thereby the light and shadow of consulting life yourself.

And there is so much more… I am excited to welcome you on the inside of this course 🙂

Your Dr “Jack” Jörg Leib

YOUinConsulting