COVID-19 and interviews

Hi Theo,

For now I did not see any shift from planned on-site interviews to video calls, but from my perspective it's very likely that it will be happen.

At the moment in some European McKinsey offices all internal meetings involving travelling were already cancelled since ~2 weeks, so I would not be surprised at all if also interviews will be done via video call soon (especially since some interviews have already been done like that in the past anyway, so people are used to it..).

For now I don't see a complete freeze of hiring activities coming up, but I expect a slow-down until situation becomes more clear on how the global economy will develop.

Hope that helps - if so, please give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

Hi,

It highly depends on your location, company preferences, position. I can explain it in the following way:

Firms:

• MBB: less affected, interviews are still conducted, offers are issued for Q3 and Q4 2020 and Q1 2021; companies still have business and enough liquidity to survive; some offices expect to grow in terms of revenue for 2020
• Tier 2: highly affected, the general trend is that interviews are postponed, the majority of firms do not issue offers, some firms experience liquidity gaps and cut FTE or ask employees to take an unpaid leave
• BIG 4: less affected, advisory business experiences problems, but recurring revenue from Tax and Audit allows to manage through temporary uncertainty

Geographic coverage:

• USA: the strongest market for consulting, interviews are conducted, offers are issued, consulting revenues might even grow
• Europe: consulting is affected, but is expected to recover in Q3 and Q4
• CIS: consulting is affected, MBB and BIG 4 will survive, as well as Accenture, but boutiques have liquidity problems
• Asia: consulting revenues begin to recover, but Hong Kong political crisis still creates uncertainty around Financial sector and transportation (that affects consulting revenues from these industries)
• Middle East: MBB firms still conduct interviews, consulting business starts to recover slowly, low oil prices still slow down the economy
• Latin America: no info
• Australia: no info

Positions:

• Interns: affected, interns is a long term game for consulting firms (as well as a way to handle “monkey” tasks) and consulting firms at the moment are not super focuses on long term investments
• Junior and middle management: less affected, hiring is in progress across MBB and Big 4
• Principals & partners: less affected, consulting firms still look for experienced leaders

Programs:

• Summer programs: the majority of programs are cancelled, bad news
• Full time: highly depends on other factors

Career tracks:

• Generalists: generally affected as consulting firms currently have more demand towards digital and data driven projects
• Industry focused experts: depends on the industry, but oil and gas industry is affected
• Digital experts: almost not affected, high demand for digital projects and the supply of experts is weak
• Data scientists: not affected at all, consulting firms are heavily hiring data scientists

Hope this helps!

Anton

Hello,

No one can really know about the new hiring targets until we won't see which will be the impact of the corona virus on the economy. So far consulting companies are trying to move forward with the hiring process using the videocalls.
Anyway, even if a global crysis doesn't mean that you don't have projects (think about cost cutting or restructuring process and about all business plans that have to be reviewd) it's likely that they will slow down (but not freeze) the recruitments until they won't understand what is the real impact of the corona virus.

Best,
Luca

Hello!

To 2 of my coachees, interviews where shifted from in-person format to VC. In none of the cases they were cancelled.

For those of you who have started the process, probably it won´t be alterated more than a shift to VC, so don´t worry.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hello Theo,

Interviews are often conducted by video conference for cross-regional conversations.
As such, I believe similar approach will be implemented at these times.

Hope it helps.

Kind regards,
Nathan

Hi Theo,

in SEA some interview rounds are conducted over video calls since the beginning of the year, I would expect the same will happen in other countries so far that the virus spreads. I haven’t heard of interviews postponed, although, if not already scheduled, interviews could be temporarily frozen in the countries most affected.

Best,

Francesco

(edited)