Is travelling a good enough reason to join MBB ?

Hey there,

Love Ian's answer about becoming a flight attendant and couldn't agree more.

I get the question because the consulting lifestyle it does seem attractive from the outside in. However, here's the reality:

• RECRUITING: If you don't care about the work, you will not be committed to the process and simply won't get in. Less than 1% of people applying to McKinsey make it into the firm, and out of those, everyone is actually interested in the work.
• ACTUAL WORK: Let's assume you slip the net and get in, you will want to get out after or during your first project if you don't care about the work. The job comes with 14-16 hr days and there's no escaping that and only bearable if you're doing this for a reason. Travel surely isn't one of them…
• TRAVEL: It's not as sexy as it may seem. For example, I had to fly from Chile to Peru every Sunday for months (business class to be fair), so I could catch a small plane from Lima to a remote area on Monday, where a bus took me up a mountain to a mining site and back every day. No suits or fancy meals, just PPE gear and a below average cantine food. If you're into that kind of travelling, go for it :)

Best of luck!
Moritz

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Haha! This is hilarious. 

Yes, it fades quicker than you realise. 

In my last year in McKinsey, I had the highest membership status in the SPG/Marriott chain and had the top-floor apartment at the Ritz-Carlton for one of my projects. 

Sounds good? 

Great. 

Now, can you believe me that I never saw that apartment in proper daylight? :) I always arrived too late and left too early. 

So, no, don't do consulting for the fancy hotels.

Good luck!
Cristian

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Hi,

I think that's a good question.

It could be one of the reasons if you link that with the objective to discover other cultures. But you need to have other reasons for consulting.

Cheers,

Alexandre

Oh boy, that's a terrible reason to join…

If what you mean by travelling is taking planes, taxis and sleeping in hotels, you'll be doing a lot of that. The other part (visiting, enjoying, exploring, …) not so much.

Consulting is quite demanding. If you don't like what you do, you will be miserable. The price to pay to be able to travel is quite high.

Finally, be aware that the firm will try to staff you on “home based projects”, travelling is not always to a great location (e.g. client headquarters in a remote small town), when you travel you don't necessarily have the time or chance to visit (you'll be working the whole time; sometimes  you go just “in and out” and don't get to stay there); finally, when you stay you will spend some time over the weekend recovering from the week workload.

Of course, occasionally you may have a longer project on a nice location. This happens, but not necessarily to everyone. But then again, you may stay there for 3 or 6 months - and that will have impact on your personal life.

Hi there,

Q: If my reason to join MBB is only free travel and fancy hotels and have relatively less interest in the actual work, is that a good enough reason to join McKinsey?

Not really based on my experience, mainly for the following:

1. Most likely, you will use most of the travel time to work/sleep – you won't really enjoy free time for visiting a city
2. Travel schedules will often imply not much sleep
3. Constant traveling will clash with your routines (e.g., sports, friends, hobbies)
4. You won't necessarily control where you travel. Even without the above points, you might end up in places you would rather not visit
5. Work will take most of your time - you will need to like it to be fine with the consultant life, regardless of the traveling.

Best,

Francesco

Hi,

Like others have mentioned, you can't justify joining and staying in MBB with just travel and travel related perks. I did enjoy the travel aspect of consulting, but the time you spend on flights is a fraction of the total time in a week. The time you spend in the hotel is sometimes arguably even less than the time you spend at the client site, especially on tougher cases.

Oh please please please no.

If you want to travel for work be a flight attendant.

At MBB you FLY, you don't travel.

You get to the hotel 8am Monday morning, head straight to work, and get back 8/9pm. Then, you leave Thursday and get back home at midnight. You go to home office on Friday.

Then, your weekend is dedicated to recharging, because you either have to fly out Sunday evening (miss half your Sunday) or super early Friday morning (5am wake up).

Sure, you can stay at the client site over the weekend (and you can use your flight $ for food/accommodation + flying your spouse over!) BUT, you're so tired AND missing home, you probably just want to be back in your home city.

Remember, you're working 70+ hours a week. If you don't even like the work, is that worth 48 hours on a weekend to “enjoy” a city? Especially when you might be at that client/city for 3 months, 6 months, a year?

P.S. Nothing lonelier than a really fancy hotel when you're alone and unhappy.

P.P.S. I'm not saying consulting is completely miserable. And I'm not saying don't do it. I'm saying, that whole fancy “travel” thing is going to get old after, oh, I dunno, a month.

:))))

No, that's not a good enough reason to want to join McK.
Actually, many consultants hate constant traveling and not being able to stay with their families longer. Especially if it's an operations project in some remote god-forsaken place.

Besides, after covid many projects are done remotely, so there's now less travelling involved.

If the thought of consulting work doesn't excite you, it's probably not for you.

Regards,
Nick

Hi there,

the “actual work” will dominate your daily life. Traveling can be nice if:

• the destination you travel to is actually interesting and not somewhere in the boonies
• you are staying at a nice property (availability of that depends on where the project location is)
• you actually have some free time during your work trip

None of the above are guaranteed when traveling for projects. Plus a lot of work is still done remotely these days. So traveling is a nice add-on at best.

If you don't think you are very much interested in the actual consulting work, do yourself a favor and don't join a consulting firm. There are plenty of other opportunities to travel.

Best

I don't know of a single consultant at McKinsey that enjoyed traveling for work after the first 2 or maybe 3 months. It is absolutely nothing like traveling for vacation. You often have to work on flights/in cars, you fly very early on a Monday and come back later on a Thursday, deal with traffic on both occasions and lose way too much time to the transit which you would rather spend doing literally anything else. 

The only plus I saw were the reward miles, but even those are worth so little these days. So traveling is possibly the worst reason to join MBB in my biased opinion :)

Hi there,

This is a big no. Traveling in MBB is not as you might expect. You'll work long hours. You'll have zero time to visit places. You can't really develop a personal routine (e.g., reading, sports). You'll have very limited time to spend with family and friends. Should I continue? 

On the other side there are a thousand reasons to join MBB but trust me, fancy traveling is not a solid one.

Best,

Alberto

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You don’t actually get to see the places you visit. It’s straight from the airport to the client offices, work all day, back to the hotel for strictly sleeping, then back to the client offices to work all day.

haha no it's not enough, and I wouldn't say you only stay fancy. Yet, traveling can be a big motivator and part of the job that makes it exciting. I for instance loved this aspect of McK and got to work in Australia, China, Japan, USA, India and all across Europe. Warm regards, Freddy 

While the allure of free travel and fancy hotels may initially seem appealing, it is important to note that these aspects of the job are not the primary reasons why individuals join MBB firms like McKinsey. The work at McKinsey is intellectually stimulating and challenging, requiring a strong passion for problem-solving, strategic thinking, and making a meaningful impact on clients' businesses.

While the perks of travel and luxurious accommodations can be exciting, they should not be the sole motivation for pursuing a career at McKinsey.

This will get boring, fast!