Are Management Consulting Firms Reducing their Dependence on MBAs?

Related Articles

• Elite MBA Students Are Spurning McKinsey, Bain For Freelance Consulting Sites 0 10.Feb
• Consultants lure MBA interns with better pay than investment banks 0 04.Feb
• Top MBA programs for getting a consulting job at McKinsey, Bain and BCG 0 17.Jan

Business schools’ and consultancies’ close ties led to the phrase “McHarvard”. But as the elite firms seek more diverse talent, the proportion of new consultants with MBAs is shrinking

For once, Keith Bevans is in Paris. As head of global consulting recruiting for Bain & Company, he travels the globe each year, searching for top talent from business schools. However, 2019 was the first time Bevans visited HEC Paris, one of Europe’s best business schools.

This reflects Bain’s desire to broaden its reach beyond elite US institutions such as Harvard where Bevans himself earned an MBA in 2002. He is turning to graduates with different degrees as well as those in varied countries, including specialized master’s degrees in data analytics, to satisfy the “rapid” growth of Bain’s global and digital businesses.

MBA class sizes are not keeping pace with the growth in Bain’s hiring needs. Falling MBA application figures mean US schools are having to accept fewer students, or risk reducing the quality of their cohort.

Bevans says some 500 people will join Bain’s 2019 intake, about the same as last year, with the majority of them being MBAs. But the proportion of new hires with MBAs is falling. “We need critical mass and so are forced to look elsewhere for talent,” says Bevans.

The challenge of recruiting enough MBAs has been made more difficult by their growing interest in Big Tech careers at companies such as Amazon, Apple and Google.

Consulting firms hiring a more diverse range of people

An MBA has long been a ticket to a job at one of the so-called “big three” consultancy firms — McKinsey & Company, Boston Consulting Group and Bain — otherwise collectively known as the ‘MBB’ firms. But there are signs that the firms’ decades-long dependence on MBAs is waning.

About five years ago, a third of new hires at BCG had MBA degrees, according to the firm. In 2018 that number dropped to less than a quarter. Meanwhile Kevin Sneader, McKinsey’s global managing partner, told the Financial Times recently he wanted the proportion of staff with MBAs to decrease from 37 percent to “less than a third”.

One reason is the firms want to hire people from a more diverse range of backgrounds, such as those from the creative industries. This makes sense, given that consulting firms serve diverse and global clients.

Nick South, a partner at BCG, says: “Whilst we are continuing to recruit MBAs and they remain a strong source of talent for our business, the relative share of MBAs in the overall mix of people we are recruiting is changing.

“To support our growth we have developed a wider range of entry points and are increasingly hiring employees from other pools like PhDs, medical doctors, data scientists, data engineers and experienced industry hires.” For instance, fresh hires without a business education can take “mini MBA” courses to pick up the basics of business and mix with colleagues…