I quite quickly decided that consulting was the field I wanted to go into after university. I felt very strongly that I wanted to do something that would be meaningful and significant, that I wanted to work in a place where I would be valued and pushed to develop, and that I wanted to work alongside interesting and intelligent people who I would enjoy learning from. It’s rare to find all these in a first graduate job, but the more I found out about BCG, the more I was certain that it was the right place to start my career. 

Knowing that you are working on an important problem for a key player in a particular industry and being fundamentally involved with their business is extremely exciting. The challenge to add value in each of our cases is taken very seriously by everyone, even at the Associate level, and this leads to a stimulating but also very satisfying degree of responsibility, as you are encouraged to always expand beyond your immediate day-to-day work. For example, at the start of my first case, my manager was helping me determine my daily work plan; by the end, I was drawing on the knowledge I had built over the course of the case to draft our client’s 5-year strategic plan alone. The work that we do, and the close relationships that we develop with clients, means that we are frequently pushed to develop our client interaction and interpersonal skills as well as our analytical ones. 

The focus on career development is something that was a little surprising to me at first. In addition to detailed formal and informal feedback throughout and at the end of your case, everyone has a career advisor, a senior BCGer who meets with you regularly to discuss your overall development needs and career ambitions, in quite serious detail. This is then translated into action steps, both for BCG and for you. There is certainly the sense that BCG seeks to ensure that the experience here is as rewarding as it can be. 

It is very easy to meet people at BCG as everyone is very friendly and we are encouraged to meet with as many people as possible through the number of formal and informal activities going on in the office. This has certainly helped me to settle.  

Overall, I am extremely proud to be part of BCG. The nature of the work, clients and people here combine to create an exceptional environment in which to progress and develop, and I am sure will form an excellent foundation on which to draw upon whatever I choose to do in the future.