What your first months of BA in McKinsey looks like?

First off, congrats! There was definitely no hiring mistake. The recruitment process is incredibly rigorous and assesses you across stringent dimensions. You earned your spot.

Your start will generally follow three phases:

1. Onboarding week: You will start with a onboarding week to meet peers and learn the essentials (values, IT tools, internal portals, and PPT/Excel basics) - There is also a specific "Business Fundamentals" training designed exactly for non-business backgrounds like yours
2. 1st Staffing: You’ll likely hit the "beach" briefly before being staffed on your first engagement, ideally matched to your preferences
3. Training week: Typically within the first 1-2 months, you will attend a fun, highly practical training week to simulate client situations, engage with other peers from various locations and solidify the McK operating model (esp. from more senior colleagues)

Rest assured, many of us (myself included) invested heavily in prep and felt that same anxiety. It will subside once you settle in and get a couple of projects under your belt. Enjoy the ride!

P.S. Specific prior business knowledge only helps to a limited degree anyway. Every project requires you to learn new, situational knowledge and adapt to the specific client context.

Hi!

First, rest assured that your offer was not a hiring error. It is common to feel imposter syndrome early in your career. While it's true that many smart, qualified candidates are denied, this in no way means your acceptance was undeserved.

Second, problem solving and critical thinking skills are paramount in consulting, and always trump any prior skill or experience. This is especially true at entry levels. The reality is even folks with "traditional business" backgrounds learn little in school that is directly applicable to client case work. Real projects are messy, dynamic, and value delivery at MBB requires creativity and ingenuity- thinking qualities that cannot be taught in a classroom. I managed 200+ consultants in individual contributor roles and 50+ managers at BCG, and I assure you that educational background had very low correlation with performance. As an analogy, I would've staffed someone who is adept at learning languages but already knew few over the reverse any day. 

To directly answer your headline question, when you first start you'll have about 2 weeks of general onboarding, after which you'll be staffed on your first case. My best advice to you if you're still feeling doubts at that point or anytime thereafter is to not be afraid to ask for help or ask the "dumb" questions. The BA level consultants who distinguish themselves are the ones who consistently seek to challenge themselves, push the envelope on creativity- all of which is enabled and accelerated when you have a steep learning curve. Best way to get there? Be a sponge- with your formal managers, informal mentors (seek folks you want to learn from proactively and early on), and with the experienced consultants on your teams, all of whom were sitting in your shoes not too long ago. 

Congrats again on your offer, and best wishes as you begin your journey!

I feel you. 

This is also classic impostor syndrome. 

I also felt like a fish out of water when I started. Lots of people do even if they don't speak about it. Even those that have the traditional background struggle with something else. You can safely assume that everybody, in one form or another, struggles in their first year. 

From the second year it tends to get better. You know how to do the job, at least on a basic level, you have a few projects under your belt, you've met some people and have a general sense of how the firm works. 

My advice to you would be to find a sustainable pace and to be open to feedback. I've also put together an article with other suggestions for new joiners:

• • Expert Guide: How to Become A Distinctive Consultant

Best,
Cristian

First off, huge congratulations on the offer. That anxiety is absolutely universal, especially coming from a non-traditional background. Let me put your mind at ease: there was no error. They hire candidates from Philosophy and Classics precisely because those fields demonstrate superior structured thinking and communication ability—the two foundational skills of the job. They can teach you valuation; they cannot easily teach you how to synthesize complex arguments.

You won’t be expected to be a functional business analyst on Day 1. Your first 4-8 weeks will be intentionally structured to bring you up to speed. This typically involves a major global orientation (sometimes a multi-week mini-MBA equivalent) where you learn the internal methodologies, financial basics, and proprietary software. When you land on your first project, you are viewed by the firm as an apprentice. The entire system, especially the Engagement Manager (EM) role, is built around coaching and quality control.

The key to being functional early on is not knowing advanced business strategy; it is mastering operational excellence and managing up. Your initial value comes from flawless execution of analytical tasks: building models cleanly, synthesizing slides efficiently, and making sure the data is perfect. When you get an instruction, don't disappear for six hours. Get clarity on the output required, run a quick sanity check, and set up proactive checkpoints with your EM. The highest-value action you can take in the first month is simply flagging, early and clearly, any time you are stuck or expect a delay. That removes risk from the team.

Focus on mastering the process and the tools (Excel shortcuts are your friend), not the historical business context of the client. The context will come.

All the best!

hey there :)

congrats on the offer! your first months as a BA are mostly about ramping up: learning the firm’s way of working, tools, and industry basics, and gradually contributing to real projects under guidance. You won’t be expected to know everything from day one—what matters is structured thinking, curiosity, and learning quickly. You’ll often work in small teams where senior colleagues guide you, and you’ll pick up the business knowledge on the job. Mistakes are normal, and asking smart questions is part of being effective. Your case prep actually gives you a huge advantage in problem solving and communication, so focus on learning the business and processes, and you’ll be functional sooner than you think. Feel free to reach out if you want tips for your first weeks.

best,
Alessa :)

Hi there,

What you are feeling is extremely common, especially for people from non traditional backgrounds and commonly known as imposter syndrome. Even those with traditional business backgrounds would feel the same.

The first few months as a BA are mostly about learning how the firm works, building basic problem solving habits, and being a reliable teammate, not about having deep business knowledge. You will get training, clear tasks, and a lot of guidance, and no one expects you to know everything on day one. Focus on asking good questions, being structured, double checking your work, and showing a strong learning mindset. 

If you REALLY want to get a head start instead of enjoying your last moments of freedom, you could try to learn how to build a business model in excel. You'd learn this on the job so this would be more to comfort yourself by being productive.