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They generally hire smart people who are good at a combination of:

- understanding existing systems

- what the paint points are

- making suggestions on how to improve those systems given the paint points

- that includes a mix of tech changes, process updates and/or new systems etc

Now, when it comes to implementing this, in my experience it usually ends up being the already in place dev teams.

Source: worked at a large investment bank that hired McKinsey and I knew one of the consultants from McK prior to working at the bank.

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My take*: McKinsey hiring largely selects for staying calm under pressure and presenting a confident demeanor to clients. Verbal fluency with decision-making frameworks goes a long way. Having strong analytical skills seemed essential; hopefully the bar for "sufficiently analytical" has raised along with general data science skills in industry.

I don't view them as top-tier experts in their own right, whether it be statistics or technology, but they have a knack for corporate maneuvering. I often question their overall value beyond the usual "hire the big guns to legitimize a change" mentality. Maybe a useful tradeoff? I'd rather see herd-like adoption of current trends than widespread corporate ignorance and insularity.**

A huge selling point for M&Co is kind of a self-fulfulling prophecy based on the access they get. This gives them a positive feedback loop to find the juiciest and most profitable areas to focus on.

For those who know more, how do my takes compare?

* I interviewed with them over 15 years ago, know people who have worked there, and I pay attention to their reports from time to time.

** Of course, I'd rather see a third way: cross-pollination between organizations to build strong internal expertise and use model-based decision making for nuanced long-term decisions... but that's just crazy talk.

[alexpotato]

> Having strong analytical skills seemed essential

and

> they have a knack for corporate maneuvering

One way to view this is that the above combination of skills is both rare and very useful. That means it's expensive. So instead of hiring someone like that at "full rate" and keeping them around, you can "borrow" them from McK to solve a problem your regular crew can't (or isn't able to) for various reasons.

Plus, as one manager of mine said many years ago:

"We use consultants b/c they are both easy to hire AND easy to fire"