If you’re a woman considering joining a top consulting firm such as Mckinsey, BCG or Bain, you may be wondering how the work of a typical consultant may fit with family life or how the gender-diversity is within the top firms.
In this article, we share four insights about what it’s like being a woman in a top consulting firm.
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Varying client demands can be challenging
Today, one of the big questions many ambitious men and women have when considering a career is how to manage work-life balance, especially if you plan to have—or already have—a young family.
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New paragrah. When a project is done, under certain conditions, you can take a few months off and your work won’t be impacted. It’s not unusual for men and women in top consulting firms to take one or more “Leaves of Absence” of several months during their career. When a project is done, under certain conditions, you can take a few months off and your work won’t be impacted. It’s not unusual for men and women in top consulting firms to take one or more “Leaves of Absence” of several months during their career. Adding a new image form visual:
Project-based work creates flexibility
However, the job of a consultant is project-based work, and this has a huge advantage that lots of careers can’t offer: flexibility! When a project is done, under certain conditions, you can take a few months off and your work won’t be impacted. It’s not unusual for men and women in top consulting firms to take one or more “Leaves of Absence” of several months during their career. The benefit of project-based work, in this case, is that nobody has to cover for your work while you’re away. Consequently, when you are back, you are staffed on a new project and you don’t have to justify or even mention your time off.
It is well known that top consulting firms are investing a lot to retain parents of young children by avoiding scheduled meetings after 5pm, generous parental packages available to both genders, and adapting schedules during pregnancy.
But there are still challenges to solve
However, working at a top consulting firm means working with senior executive teams of the clients and these are still largely male-dominated, which can result in some situations that women face in all industries: sexist jokes, misogyny, and feeling out of place.Despite all the efforts for reaching gender parity at junior levels, there is still a long way to go at the Partner level. As of 2019, the rate of female partners at Bain, BCG, and McKinsey was only around 20%. Visit our Interview Prep Course for more details.
Key Takeaways
- Project-based work creates flexibility
- Gender diversity is better than in some other industries
- But there are still challenges to solve
- more take aways
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