"Market sizing" question: How many undergraduates does MBB hire in the US each year?

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Recent activity on May 18, 2020
3 Answers
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Anonymous A asked on May 18, 2020

How many do they normally hire in a year like 2018 or 2019? To make this simpler, let's neglect the effect of COVID-19 on hiring.

Please use specific numbers in your answer :), I'm more interested in the answer than the thought process.

If you already know the answer/estimate for it, I'd love to hear that instead of the breakdown.

(edited)

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Ian
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replied on May 18, 2020
#1 BCG coach | MBB | Tier 2 | Digital, Tech, Platinion | 100% personal success rate (8/8) | 95% candidate success rate

Hi,

Is this a market sizing question? :)

While I could make an educated guess (i.e. find out how many employees in US, assume ~10% are ungrads OR assume 10-40 undergrads per office), I'm curious as to why this matters? Will this affect any actions you take? It shouldn't! More importantly, you should think about yourself as a candidate (irrespectie of # of hires) and evaluate your odds of getting in as an individual!

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Clara
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replied on May 18, 2020
McKinsey | Awarded professor at Master in Management @ IE | MBA at MIT |+180 students coached | Integrated FIT Guide aut

Hello!

Couple toughts here, in line of other answers:

  1. Why is it relevant? In the sense of, if this is what you want to do, knowing that indeed is difficult and little people get in, go for it!
  2. If this is a market sizing question that you tought you could encounter in a case, best practice is to actually give it a shot and then ask the community to proof those assumptions and numbers.
  3. The way to tackle it would be to quantify offices and assume the intake in each of them. If you are given some data, is a pretty easy task.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

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Axel
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replied on May 18, 2020
Bain Consultant | Interviewer for 3 years at Bain |Passionate about coaching |I will make you a case interview Rockstar

A few different ways you could approach this but ideally, it should be derived from the demand (and growth in demand) for consulting services in the United States.

1. Number of offices in US (segmented in to small, medium, large) x number of undergraduate hires

2. Looking at total employees in US, estimating what % leave each year, estimating how many need to join accounting for growth rate of the industry and then segmenting by entry stage (undergrad, post - MBA, experienced hires)

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Ian gave the best answer

Ian

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