The challenge with any sort of decision related to college or a first-job is that nearly everyone only has one data point to base their experiences on. If you’re a high-schooler looking for information on where to go to college, you might (after making your way past college rankings that only serve your confirmation bias) begin to ask current students at those colleges what their experience is like - even better, you may ask students who had choices, and why they picked between one school or another.
This actually ends up being lower signal than you might expect, since by-and-large people don’t think they made the wrong decision. If things end up well for you, then clearly you went to The Right College, even though it’s quite possible that any number of options would have worked out fine for you. I myself was picking between UT, Rice, and A&M; I took the burnt orange path and while I enjoyed it, in all likelihood I would have enjoyed A&M or Rice just as much. Although I’m convinced I learned so much from my experience at UT, it’s unclear that the different experiences and learnings I would have received had I gone to Rice or A&M would have been any less valuable.
This is the same issue with a first job. I went to BCG and have, for the most part, enjoyed my experience. It’s unclear to me that my life would have been that much different had I gone to Bain or McKinsey in terms of Things That Matter; I don’t know how things would have played out had I started off in product management or some other field entirely.
Nonetheless, personal experience is as good of a signal as I can think of to share. In this post, I’ll give a peek behind the curtain for my first year at BCG, and hopefully in the process enable you to answer the ultimate question: “What can I expect out of a first job in consulting?”
The Scorecard
A while ago, I wrote this post outlining different dimensions on which you could evaluate a job. It’s a decent framework to use, so I’ll dive into my thoughts on each of those topics item-by-item.
Salary and Benefits
I’ve written about nonlinearities between salary and happiness here; they frame my attitudes toward salary (in short, “good salary” allows you to reach your happiness asymptote, every dollar beyond that is pretty much runway). For a job that’s fresh out of college, I think consulting pays quite well, even if it’s not the absolute best in this dimension. BCG has one nationwide set of salaries for their consulting staff, so whether you’re based in Houston or San Francisco you’ll be making the exact same amount, despite the massive difference in cost of living. First-year associates (fresh out of undergraduate) have a $110,000 base salary, with total compensation (TC) of about $135,000. For Houston, the salary is great. For SF or NYC, I can see it being much more restrictive.
Salary progression is very, very fast. With one promotion (usually 2 years), you’re nearly doubling your TC, and those who can make it to Managing Director and Partner (MDP) can 10x their earnings in 10 years. If you’re interested in more numbers, just Google “BCG salary site:reddit.com”.
My impression is that base salary is usually comparable to investment banking (another field that many folks recruiting for consulting are probably also interested in), though the IB bonuses are much larger. TC is generally lower than entry-level jobs in tech (e.g., product management), though those roles seem to be clustered in markets with higher costs-of-living.
Where consulting shines is benefits. Although the exact expense policy varies from case-to-case (consulting projects are called “cases”), you can generally expect your out-of-pocket expenses to be $0 when travelling. It isn’t a stretch to say that nearly everything is paid for, including some absolutely wild experiences that most 22-year olds couldn’t even believe (all of these have actually happened to me):
$3,000 for dinner at Uchi for 7 people feat. A5 beef cooked on a hot rock and a sea urchin
Several suites at Astros games, each of which is a low five-figure commitment
Five-digit annual budgets for social events with co-workers, by cohort (on top of several other five-digit budgets for specific events and the office as a whole) - we’ve used this for weekend retreats to other cities, karaoke nights, secret santa parties, etc.
Practice Area affiliation events where everyone got their choice of a VR headset (Quest 2), AirPods Pro, or a Theragun mini (Nobu was catered and they had a caviar bar)
Dinners hosted at the very, very nice homes and ranches of MDPs
Phenomenal healthcare plans with $20 ER visits and comprehensive mental health benefits
Bottom-line: consulting pays decently well; even if there are other jobs that pay better out of college. I can see your attitude on this changing based on what city you’re based out of, though. Benefits are unmatched.
Work/Life Balance
Work/Life Balance (WLB) is a tricky subject, because it’s mostly relative compared to your expectations of “normal”. Case in point: college can have anywhere from terrible to great WLB. Your typical engineering major is likely going to have “bad” WLB, whereas your typical liberal arts major will have “great” WLB (I’m stereotyping, but it gets the point across). Most people interested in consulting are probably already working a ton in college, devoting Sunday through Friday to nearly nonstop work between classes and clubs and jobs; social time is usually reserved for Saturdays and whenever you could squeeze time in. If that sounds familiar, then relax — consulting might be an improvement over your current lifestyle in some ways. All-nighters will be a thing of the past; while I’ve heard about weekend work happening, it’s quite rare*, and it’s not too difficult to tell which cases will be “burners”. That said, some cases are burners - this is the start of a theme here, but your WLB will be 99% dependent on which case you’re on at any given point in time.
For reference, I’d say my typical day on an average-workload case starts at 9am (unless I have a meeting earlier in the morning) and ends somewhere around 9-11pm (though I would have eaten and gone home during that time, which I don’t count as hours worked). Depending on the exact log-off time, I might workout (which happens 1-2 times during the workweek) and shower before I call my girlfriend for an hour, sleep for 7.5 hours, wake up, get ready, and do the whole thing again. If you’re talking to someone who’s working a standard 40-hour work week (which is to say, nearly everyone else), they’ll be absolutely shocked when you tell them that schedule — but hey, things could be worse. You could be an investment banker.
Bottom-line: expect to work 55-60 hours a week (give or take, depending on your case), but if you’re already working pretty hard in college then this usually won’t feel too bad.
* It’s not uncommon to spend a bit of time Sunday night working on non-case “chores” - things like filing expense reports, planning for the week to come, cleaning out the inbox, etc.
organizational prestige
BCG is prestigious - hence the number of people on LinkedIn who write “ex-BCG” in their headline (one of the more ridiculous LinkedIn mannerisms). McKinsey is slightly more prestigious, but they can’t seem to stop getting into scandals. The worst BCG has had (as far as I can tell in recent memory) is a bunch of people on Reddit wearing tinfoil hats saying that we tried to kill GameStop.
Bottom-line: Very, very good.
Social Impact / Deeper Meaning
Most cases at BCG are usually societally neutral, or slightly beneficial at best. If you care about climate, BCG doesn’t seem to do any traditional oil-and-gas work (from what I can tell), and seems to be making moves to really up the amount of climate/sustainability work they sell. Ultimately, however, most new hires shouldn’t count on reliably being able to create a better world on a daily basis. This is another area where things are entirely dependent on your case - some cases are legitimately very cool (e.g. public sector work, global health work) and some cases are very beige (e.g. building a new tool to help a client’s customers request a service online instead of having to call in).
Bottom-line: case dependent, but most of the cases out there have very little social benefit.
People and Culture
There are actually two groups of people that you interact with on any given day:
People on your case team, with whom you’re working with day-in, day-out
People in your home office, with whom you’re socializing with on weekends
Generally as an Associate (or Consultant), the Project Leader (PL) or Principal (Pr) on your case that serves as your direct manager will have the greatest impact on your day-to-day work experience. Like any other job, some PLs/Pr’s will be great, and others won’t. Most people end up (eventually) finding a PL/Pr that they work well with and stick with them, which means that eventually most people have positive experiences on the manager front - but until then, things are incredibly case-dependent (and there’s likely survivorship bias at play here).
The folks in your home office, however, are going to end up becoming some of your closest friends. Adjusting to post-college life is hard; becoming fully independent and finding a social group to spend time with are actually incredibly difficult tasks, especially when you’re trying to figure out work also. BCG has the rare advantage of placing you in the same position as dozens of other 20-somethings at the same time, the net result of which is that from Day 1 you’ll be with a group of people that are your age, that can relate to the daily ups-and-downs, in the same life-stage as you (usually - most A’s aren’t married and don’t have kids). I have yet to see another industry that offers that - as far as I can tell, tech doesn’t offer that, banking doesn’t offer that, and “industry” (for the most part) doesn’t offer that.
Bottom-line: Find a good manager and your day-to-day improves drastically. Friends you make in your home office are my favorite part of this job, by far.
what you work on
Back in college, I wanted to work for Tesla. They were cool, and pushing the boundaries for EVs more than any other company (I’d argue that that’s probably still true). I wasn’t sure what I would do there, but that was a problem for a later time – I just wanted a job at Tesla, so I ended up applying to 8 different positions there (and 6 at Southwest, 5 at Microsoft, etc.). I carried that mentality into my first staffing conversation (where you list out your preferences for cases), and said something more-or-less along the lines of “my first priority is to work in tech, but I don’t care what I do”. I ended up staffed on a re-organization effort for a very large tech player, learning (the hard way) that what you do matters far, far more than what company you do it for. A recruiter working at Tesla has more in common with a recruiter at Walmart than an HR rep at Tesla.
At BCG, what you do on a day-to-day basis can vary immensely based on your case – so far I’ve done the re-organization work mentioned above, helped to launch a new product, and assisted with go-to-market strategy. The actual industry that my clients were in didn’t really mean too much. Tactically speaking*, you’ll be making a lot of slides, and (depending on the case) occasionally hopping into Excel, so the mechanics may not feel too different from case-to-case.
Bottom-line: Your day-to-day is not materially impacted by industry. This is heavily variable from case-to-case, but plan on getting really familiar with PowerPoint and maybe even Excel.
* “Tactically speaking…” is a consultant’s favorite phrase to replace “At a low-level…”
learning and growth
Consultants at BCG get formal performance reviews every 6 months, and the end result of that is a “matrix placement” that ranks you from 1-4 on two dimensions (performance at your current job, and your potential to take on the roles and responsibilities of the next position up). In college, you’re evaluated on a more-or-less weekly basis on a 100-point scale; moving to BCG involves getting numerical feedback 25x less often with 25x less precision. That’s not to say you don’t get other types of feedback – typically, I’ve had a feedback session every other week with my manager – but it’s harder to translate “here are some things you did well over the past couple of weeks, and here are some things that you can improve moving forward” into a strong sense of how you’re tracking over time.
Overall, it seems that BCG generally places a strong emphasis on learning and growth. Some managers are better than others, and some cases are more conducive to it (it’s inherently easier on an easy-going case for your manager to create development opportunities).
Bottom-line: very case-dependent, but you’ll have to get used to guiding your growth from qualitative feedback.
location
There are two sets of locations to consider in consulting:
Where you actually work
Your home office
Since travel is a large part of the job, those two places are usually not the same — typically, folks are travelling about half of the time (though I’ve managed to only travel for about 2 weeks in my first year). Most people who don’t travel much tend to want to travel more; most people who travel a lot (or have families) tend to want to travel less. Different cases travel to different locations (depending on where the client and the team are located); typically you’d travel to another large city. That said, your case determines how much time you actually get to spend around town; in my experience you often won’t spend too much time away from the office or hotel. Travel isn’t really as glamorous as you might think it is.
Your choice of home office is quite important, since it can influence which cases you’re on (more on that later) but also because it determines your cost of living the days when you’re not on the road. I’m obviously biased, but I can’t imagine paying $3,000 a month to live in a small apartment in NYC or SF only to be gone most of the time.
Bottom-line: You’ll travel based on your case, but I’d recommend picking a home office by prioritizing somewhere cheap.
Compatibility with Future Goals
Back during college recruiting, I always thought of optionality – I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do in the future, but I chose consulting understanding that when I did leave I’d be able to go anywhere and do anything. That’s somewhat true, if “doing anything” is non-technical. By-and-large, consultants (without prior experience in the field) don’t go to become software engineers, doctors, or lawyers (but then again, people getting degrees in computer science aren’t going into consulting in the first place, so perhaps this is just availability bias due to the low base rate). There are consultants who go into tech, healthcare, and law careers* – but everyone I know who did this had some sort of background in the field.
Bottom-line: If you’re not interested in going into a technical field, there’s lots of optionality.
* Note that by “tech careers”, I specifically mean doing technical work, not doing some business function (e.g., supply chain management) at a company that happens to be in the tech industry.
OTHER STUFF
Three comments that I wasn’t sure where to place, but I still feel are important enough to include:
Staffing is the process by which people get assigned to cases. It’s one of the most important processes to master as a consultant, since it determines your day-to-day experience. Typically, you’ll get to provide some input into what you’re looking for (and conversely, what you want to avoid). I’d strongly encourage new consultants to prioritize people (specifically, managers with a strong reputation for developing new hires) and teaming model (in-person or at the client site over virtual) over everything else, with day-to-day content (what you work on) as a strong runner-up. Everything else (e.g., industry, location, etc.) can be safely de-prioritized the first few times - most consultants stay for at least 2 years, so there’s plenty of time to co-locate in New York or work in whatever industry you’re passionate about.
There’s a very real adjustment period when you first join — nearly every single person I’ve talked to says it can take 6-12 months to begin to feel comfortable at the job (note: that’s different from actually being good at it). Especially for folks whose first job out of college is in consulting, it’s like drinking from the fire hose since you’re learning both how to work in general and learning how to work in consulting.
My best work-related decision was becoming friends with the folks in my office, by far. You don’t work with them that often, but they all understand the ups and downs of consulting life, which makes for a good shoulder to lean on when you need support. Most people are open to making friends - all it takes is a catalyst. I’ve found “Hey y’all, I was thinking about doing X at Y time at Z location this weekend, react with a ⭐ if you’d like to join!” to work well.