McKinsey & Company is a mainstay on the Best Firms to Work For list, and this year is no different for the perennial powerhouse. The firm continues to excel in nearly all areas the survey measures, particularly in employee training and development, where the firm outpaces the next closest firm by some 32 training hours per year, per employee. It's this type of investment and dedication to its employees that keeps McKinsey among the profession's elite year after year.
"We do all we can to support our people across the board," says Brian Rolfes, director of global recruiting at McKinsey. "We are proud that our firm continues to be a preferred destination for talented people from around the globe. One of the first things our people notice when they join McKinsey is that we will go out of our way to help each other, both professionally and personally. We are excited to be recognized in the Best Firm to Work For survey for our culture of support, and the professional opportunities we provide to our people."
Those opportunities include several proprietary development programs. "We believe it is critical to give our consultants global experience. Half of our client studies have at least one consultant who is staffed internationally," says Rolfes. "To further support mobility, we will be expanding our global rotational program, where consultants spend two 6- to 9-month rotations in two regions outside of their home office."
In addition, McKinsey will be helping an ever-increasing number of consultants build deep functional skills through its L2 Program. As part of that program, consultants spend 12 to 24 months deepening their skill base in areas such as operations, marketing or finance, through a combination of client experience, training and mentorship, he says.
All of this, of course, contributes to the firm's outstanding culture. "We just brought together more than 500 new engagement managers from around the world for a week of training and exchange of experiences and ideas," Rolfes says. "Across the board, they were in a great mood, very engaged and as forward thinking as any we've seen."
And then there's the work. Several of McKinsey's consultants are quick to point out the significance of the client projects. "The work we do has the potential to help solve the world's most difficult issues, such as health care delivery, urbanization or climate change," Rolfes says. "We take pride in the fact that, in addition to serving major corporations, we also work with governments, public sector organizations, non-profit organizations and foundations."
Q&A with Brian Rolfes
On the survey, McKinsey & Company excelled in the areas of Culture and Leadership. We asked Brian Rolfes, Director of Global Recruiting at McKinsey, why he thought the firm scored so high in these areas.
Culture
We go to great lengths to nurture and maintain our culture of support, as well as our firm's values. At McKinsey, we have a dual mission: to help our clients make distinctive, lasting and substantial improvements in their performance, and to build a great firm that attracts, develops, excites and retains exceptional people. It is through this mission that we have grown into one of the world's premiere management consulting firms.
Specifically, we believe in adhering to the highest professional values, improving our clients' performance significantly, and creating an unrivaled environment for exceptional people. These ideas are not new—they have been at the heart of McKinsey for more than 80 years. Generations of firm members have lived by these values and McKinsey today is testimony to their strength.
Leadership
Recently, McKinsey was ranked by Fortune/Hewitt as one of the Top 5 companies globally for developing leaders. While we hire new talent in the hope of developing future partners for our firm, by developing leadership skills that are applicable not only at McKinsey but in any sector, we help our people become global leaders. Everything we do is oriented toward developing our people into leaders for the world: from our proprietary leadership training programs to our global mobility/rotation programs and our mentoring and evaluation processes. Most importantly, our consultants work with leaders on a daily basis: challenging them, advising them, learning from them.
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