McKinsey Hierarchy: The Different Position Levels

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Hello!

To add a bit more flavour to prior answers: the "know" and "normal" path is Business Analyst > Associate Consultant > Engagement Manager > Associate Partner > Partner (see in other comments the definition of each, since they are pretty well ellaborated)

However, we also need to take into consideration the "internships":

- Summer Business Analyst: 2-6 months summer contracts for people about to finish education

-Summer Asociate Consultant: 2-3 months summer contracts for people during the summer of their MBAs

Furthermore, there are some "intermediate" steps:

- Junior Associate Consultant: people with some previous experience that don´t enter as Business Analyst, but don´t have an MBA

- Junior Engagement Manager: associates transitioning to the new role, normally for 1-2 engagements

Finally, after partner, there is the Senior Partner role.

We also have to take into consideration tht McKinsey is currently offering more paths (e.g., Expert role path, Advance Analytics paths...) that are not exactly like those ones.

Hope it helps!

Hi,

Actually, it's a bit different at McKinsey:

1) Intern - Internship for students after which you are supposed to get a full-time offer

2) Business Analyst (BA) - an entry role, well-defined, with a strict time frame of 2 years

3) Senior Business Analyst (SBA) - Usually lasts 1-1.5 years. You can get this position on the job offer if you have 1.5-2.5 years of experience prior to consulting

4) Fellow Associate - The short role that some of the candidates may get. There are two possible scenarios:

• After the interview, if you don't have enough relevant experience for an associate role / performed not perfectly in the interview. If you have never worked in consulting this is a good starting point since you can get more experience before starting to manage projects and have more time to improve if you fail at something
• As a promotion from SBA position if you are not getting MBA and your performance is not good enough to get a DTA (Direct to Associate promotion)

5) Associate. An associate is a very short-term role - 1-2 years

6) Junior Engagement Manager (JEM) - In a year you'll start leading a project as an Associate and after the first successful project, you'll become a JEM - junior Engagement Manager. After leading several successful projects as a JEM you'll get promoted to an Engagement Manager.

7) Engagement Manager (EM) - basically leading the projects for 2-3 years

8) Associate principal - Leading multiple projects, guiding EMs. 2-3 years

9) Partner

10) Director

Best

(edited)

That's almost perfect! 

So the roles at McKinsey are in general:

- Business Analysts (BAs) - come in after undergraduate. Individual contributors who run a workstream.

- Associates - either come in after an MBA or sometimes as an experienced hire. Individual contributors who run a workstream.

- Engagement Manager - lead the day to day work of the team. 

- Associate Partner - manage two or three studies and focus on client development

- Partner - manage a number of studies and the client relationship

- Senior Partner - as per partner, but with more seniority

Some offices then add other levels e.g., London has a ‘Junior Associate’ role which is for those with around 5 years of work experience but who they don't think are quite experienced enough to be an Associate. The American offices often talk about Junior Engagement Managers, or JEMs, who are inbetween Associate and EM. 

Then there are a number of businesses that McKinsey has acquired / developed over the last few years e.g., product focused arms of the organisation, designed focused arms. These all have different roles e.g., product manager, different types of consultant. It's worth reaching out to the recruiting team to understand these positions more. 

Hope this helps! 

Hi,

further I would say that over the last time companies also tend to introduce additional internal chierarchies which are not always visible to extern.

In order to keep promotion cycles relatively short (12-18 months) companies have started to split existing career levels into informal 1 & 2 sublevels.

I can give you an example how this logic was applied at Roland Berger, but I know that other tier-1 also started to look at this approach.

Previous and current career grades:

Junior Consultant Assistent (Intern) -> Junior Consultant Assistent (Intern) and Masterand (intern in Master's semi final year); The company has started to differentiate the pay for bachelor's and master's intern, while in general significantly increased the salary for interns;

Business/Consulting Analyst -> Business/Consulting Analyst 1 and Business/Consulting Analyst 2. This is an entry position for bachelor graduates. A quick promotion from 1 to 2 is possible after 6 or 12 months depending on your development speed.

Junior Consultant -> Junior Consultant 1 and Junior Consultant 2. This is an entry position for master graduates. A quick promotion from 1 to 2 is possible after 6 or 12 months depending on your development speed.

Consultant -> Consultant 1 and Consultant 2. This is an entry position for PhDs or young professionals with up to 3 years of experience. A quick promotion from 1 to 2 is possible after 6, 12 or 18 months depending on your development speed.

Senior Consultant -> Senior Consultant 1 and Senior Consultant 2. This could also an entry position for PhDs or young professionals with 3-5 years of experience, if they performed very well during the interview. A promotion cycle between 1 and 2 could be 12, 18 or 24 months depending on your development speed. Normally it takes 4-6 years to get from the junior position to the Project Manager (PM) depending on your performance and luck.

Project Manager -> PM 1 and PM 2. Promotion between 12 and 24 months depending on performance. It usually takes another 12-36 months to be promoted from PM2 to Principle depending on your ability to sell projects and sell yourself in front of the partners.

Principle - is the only career level which has not yet been splitted furhter. You need to reach minimum turnover in order to be promoted to the Partner level.

Partner -> P1, P2 and P3. Even on the Partner level there is a huge differentiation. Partner P1 is a newly promoted partner who sells projects for less than 4m Euro/USD. Senior Partner P2 is a more experienced colleague, who is able to sell annually more than 4m Euro/USD. Senior Partner P3 is either a Regional Director or Member of the Management or Supervisory board of the company.

Even though this logic comes from RB, it also applies to McKinsey and other MBB/Tier-1 companies. They only call the career levels differently.

Hope it brings you furhter clarity.

Best,

André

Hey anonymous,

Let me just add to this conversation that McKinsey doesn't have Directors any longer. Since last year, the role was rebranded as Senior Partners (then for the remaining roles/positions, naming conventions may change as referred by Vlad).

Best

Bruno

Hi,

By the way, these are great discussions to have while networking. One goal of networking is to figure out where you sit. Honestly, your one and only priority in this whole discussion should be figuring out for what position you should apply.

Then, once you're in the company you'll just naturally learn the heirarchy.

1. Junior Associates,
2. Associates,
3. Engagement managers,
4. Associate Partners
5. Partners
6. Senior Partners

Hey anonymous,

Let me just add to this conversation that McKinsey also has expert roles, that are equivalent to the generalist roles (e.g. Specialist = Associate, Expert = EM, …).
In addition there are expert roles that also offer development into a Partner role (if they are client facing) - often via an Expert Associate Partner Track (to become Expert Partner or Partner - equivalent). 

Best

Simon