MBB Riyadh vs Dubai

You’re right to sense that the perception you’ve picked up is more anecdotal than structural. MBB’s interview process is designed to be extremely standardized globally, whether you’re interviewing in Dubai, Riyadh, or anywhere else. The same case and PEI (personal experience interview) frameworks, scoring rubrics, and evaluation criteria apply across offices.

Where differences do sometimes emerge is in the candidate pool composition and post-offer realities, not in the interview process itself:

• Candidate pool: In Riyadh, you’ll often compete with applicants who are Saudi, have strong local networks, regional experience, or prior exposure to national projects. In Dubai, the pool may skew more international with diverse industry backgrounds, and tends to be more saturated since people prefer the lifestyle in the UAE over KSA, although that's changing
• Post-offer dynamics: Culture, pace, and client expectations can differ once you’re in the job. Riyadh engagements tend to be higher-intensity due to the nature of giga-projects and public-sector reform mandates, while Dubai serves a broader mix of clients across industries and geographies, but most MBBs have the majority of their project base in KSA, not UAE

If you’re deciding based purely on interview difficulty, it’s not a useful differentiator, the bar is the same. The real choice should come down to where you want to live, the type of projects you want to work on, your long-term career trajectory in the Gulf, but most importantly, each office's quota.

If you want, I can walk you through the current Dubai vs. Riyadh project mix and exit opportunities so you can decide on more than just interview perceptions.

Hello! I haven’t heard of major differences like that because recruiting tends to be pretty standardized across offices, and at the end of the day, it often comes down to the individual interviewer, not the location…

Instead of trying to game the process, I’d think more about where you actually see yourself living. After all, a lot of consultants in Dubai travel to Riyadh every week… Go with the office where you have a better match with current consultants / culture (and where you’d want to spend your weekends in!!) 🙂

I haven't gotten this sense based on the interview experiences of candidates of mine interviewing with these two offices. 

If there were differences, I wouldn't assume they were structural (the process is meant to be the same across offices) but rather specific to those interviews. 

However, if from the conversations you've had with the people from the two offices, you've gotten a stronger positive vibe from one of them, then follow your instincts and head there.

Best,
Cristian