Vault’s Verdict

At BCG, culture and values reign supreme. Insiders frequently mention the firm’s commitment to partnering with clients and doing right by them (as opposed to simply finding ways to extend engagements), and insist that that approach comes from the top down. As such, the firm is looking for people who can not only display intellectual ability in a corporate setting, but include ethical considerations in their calculations at the same time.

In return for what can be a demanding role, BCG offers excellent compensation—although insiders note that pay is set according to a consultant’s local market, meaning there is some variability across the APAC region. Quality of life tends to be project dependent and, while BCG does have strong monitoring programs in place, they do still operate in the upper echelons of the consulting industry, which means that long hours and extensive travel remain the norm.

From a career perspective, BCG’s main strength is its ability to help its consultants develop their skills, both through world-class training programs and on engagements for some of the world’s best companies. As such, when it comes time to move on, BCG’s consultants typically have no shortage of offers from companies in whichever direction they wish to pursue.

Firm Culture

• “Although we are a management strategy firm, we believe that humility and understanding towards our clients is a key component to the success of both our clients and the firm itself.”
• At the end of the day, the work that the prestigious firms do is basically the same. But the difference is in how it is done, and with which attitude it is done. BCG puts honorable values first and works with all levels of the organization to tailor solutions that will change the way the client organization works. Internally we say we ‘work with the client, not on the client.’”
• “BCG has the highest client satisfaction rate, and as a consequence is taking projects from its competitors at an astounding pace. This is also reflected in our double-digit growth rate for the last few decades, which no other firm can match. Combine that with BCG's values and squeaky clean record of adherence to those values, and it's a no-brainer.”
• “The people in the firm are truly dedicated to my growth. They go out of their way to ensure I am learning, I feel supported, and I am ready to take on the challenge. And when I do grow and reflect that in my output, I am recognized and celebrated in a way that further motivates me to push myself further.”
• “We are the largest group of highly intelligent, capable consultants with diverse backgrounds and expertise you can find in Japan. Because of our large numbers and wide coverage, we can match your needs with the expertise that is necessary to solve your problem.”

Quality of Life

• “As someone young without family depending on me, I have not had to experience major trade-offs between job requirements and personal commitments. Traveling can be tiring at times, but it also comes with exposure and experience unavailable with non-traveling jobs. As for hours, the horror stories I heard about the requirements were more exaggerated than reality.”
• “BCG has weekly anonymous surveys on every case team to monitor the quality of life of the team members. The results of the survey are in the team leadership's KPIs, so incentives are aligned to make life good on the cases. Everyone takes the survey results seriously, and if they are in the red, a facilitator is called in to address the issues until the team is back in the green.”
• “Best aspects are the people you work with and the problems you work on. The people are intelligent yet humble. The problems are interesting, impactful strategic problems. Worst aspects are the up and down hours and unpredictable nature.”
• “Hours do vary between different systems, as often driven by the local market and culture. There are strong commitments to a set of processes to detect unsustainable workloads early (we call it PTO). A senior executive (ie, Managing Director/Partners) in the office is assigned to monitor and dedicate efforts to drive sustainability. In addition, consulting resources are put in place to identify evolving ways of improving work/life balance for the workforce.”
• “On average, the quality of life is actually now close to what you would see in a healthy, employee-caring Japanese company. On rare occasions, project management does not work out and members are put under substantial pressure, but several measures are taken to assure that such situations do not continue and adequate support is provided to resolve the issue.
  Travel requirements are not as intense, but as there are perks to working on the go some members willingly participate in travel heavy cases. Otherwise, if you communicate properly you will not be forced to travel against your will.”
• “The best aspect of BCG's quality of life is the deep respect people have on the norms set by case teams in a project. In BCG, before we start a project, we discuss specific team norms based on our working style and personal preferences, and the whole team respects those norms through the project. This helps boost productivity and ensure a good quality of life anchored to what the team agreed at during the start of the case.
  The challenging aspect of BCG's quality of life is usually a function of the client. Sometimes, clients can be very demanding, which affects team morale.”

Career Development

• “BCG and the leadership are very devoted to ensuring the personal career development of each individual, and we are encouraged to communicate our personal development needs.”
• “BCG has a sophisticated career development process that strives to be fair and transparent at each step. As soon as you join the company, you are assigned a Career Development Advisor who spends the next few years with you for evaluation, promotion, career advice, etc. There is a strong feedback culture here, and the leadership is committed to spending time and effort to make sure that people on their team are growing. Even during the busiest times, they will make time for constructive feedback, and more strikingly, actively seek feedback from their team, even their most junior members.
  Other than on the job training, BCG provides plenty of resources for training, ranging from frequent training events at different tenure to online classes (LAB).
  If there is anything that didn't exceed my expectations, it was a staffing process for new cases. It is true that there is a diverse range of projects we can be involved in, and the mobility in industries/geographies is fantastic, they say you have as a junior employee on which projects I get to work on is not as big as I imagined. Many factors come into play, including the business needs of each project, client requirement, and timing of case start/end date. This is more a reality of the industry though, rather than a process the firm needs to improve on.”
• “BCG offers an incredible range of career development opportunities through everything from geographical flexibility to industry secondments to exit opportunities. Every door in Asia is open to BCGers looking for their next role.”
• “Promotion depends on tenure e.g. you have to be an associate for at least 21 months before even getting considered for promotion to the next level. Should be purely performance-based i.e. whenever you are ready for the next level, you should be promoted.”
• “Promotion process ensures that those that deserve the promotion get promoted, but the promotion window is tight and could be stressful. Training opportunities are abundant and upper management is in general very favorable of juniors attending training as much as possible. In general, I am very satisfied with the level of training, both formal but also informal as well, offered. Level of diversity varies across the office, but I see room for improvement as most offices tend to select from a limited background.”
• “The best aspect of BCG's career development platform is the level of ownership you are given in every aspect of your career even as a junior consultant. Case in point, I will always remember my first case in BCG when I was entrusted to lead the launch of two digital products for a large real estate company hand-in-hand with a client team who was new to the idea of digital transformation. It was daunting at first, and there were many times when I felt like my back was pressed against the wall. But in each of those challenging moments, I found that my peers, my manager, and my mentors were always there to help me see it through. Ultimately, we were able to launch our first MVP for those digital products at a record-breaking 4-months’ time for the client, and I came out of the project with a completely new perspective on what I can do.”

Compensation

• “BCG's compensation package is extremely transparent and fair. No negotiation is involved, and everyone at the same level gets the same pay and benefit. There is no room for discrimination when it comes to the compensation package.”
• “Generally BCG has higher than average compensation compared to other consulting firms, but late-series startups and unicorns quickly catching up.”
• “More than competitive with the market provides us a good compensation for the challenging work we perform and the value delivery to our clients.”
• “Salary progression is significant and meaningful.”
• “Strong salary progression and excellent bonuses tied to performance. Diversity promoted across all cohorts. The paid parental leave policy is excellent and really supports new families.
• Would love to also have on-site childcare.”
• “The challenging aspect of the firm's compensation package is that it is adjusted to home-country living standards even though the work we do is global. This means that we can be doing the same work on the same client but be paid very differently because of the home country we are coming from.”

Outlook

• “BCG has been growing fast over the past years with interesting growth in the digital space.”
• “BCG is growing exponentially in south-east Asia, as we are able to capture the trends of Southeast Asian clients looking to expand and capture market share regionally. There is still ample opportunity in this space, which gives the office an upbeat, positive, entrepreneurial culture.”
• “Digital is a huge focus for the firm which will be key to winning the 20s. The changes the firm is making here to change its business model shows it is limber and equipped for a quick changing future.”
• “Going all-in on digital innovation and investing in capabilities there will position BCG well for the future. Currently, we have a number of high-growth subsidiaries in the technology/digital/ big data space, including BCG Digital Ventures (builds new ventures for corporate partners), BCG GAMMA (big data analytics), Platinion (senior technology architects), and DAS/TAO (technology consultants).”
• “We have a great grip on Japanese companies (including understanding their corporate culture and adapting to create implementable change with our clients), but also have expanded capabilities to work with international companies in the past few years. Also, the number of IT / digital professionals has grown exponentially as well, and we are well-positioned to provide consulting to companies with aspirations beyond the traditional, Japanese market.”

Hiring Process

• “2-3 interview days (each with 2 cases/experience interviews) with different BCG leaders. Very prompt call back process (same day). Seeking candidates who are intellectually curious, values-driven and want to make a difference in the world.”
• “Of the 3 informal interviews, one was a breakfast meeting with a senior partner, 2 were more of an informative QA session with employees who matched some element I wanted to discuss (i.e. a consultant with the same background etc). For the formal interviews, 1 was a case interview, the 2nd a traditional QA style interview with the hiring director.”
• “I believe BCG is looking for a candidate with sound logical thinking, diversity in background, and with aspiration. The aspiration can be diverse; to start your own company, to better the world, but fundamentally a will to create change in the world.”
• “I believe the ideal candidate did not originally set out to be a management consultant—they are typically from diverse backgrounds including quantum physics, aerospace engineering, or specialist medicine.”
• “People from all backgrounds that have demonstrated curiosity, intellectual stamina, and are not afraid to work hard. At the end of the day, we are also a people business, and you have to be good with people as we put our clients first.”
• “The ideal candidate BCG looks for is someone who has the curiosity to learn and at the same time has the ability to connect, engage, and influence people.”

Interview Questions

• “Case interviews, based on real-life project examples. Test the ability of candidates to think in a structured but creative way, against these real-life cases.”
• “Interview process follows the classic case interview format. The interviewer asks questions about personal motivation/CV (e.g. What is your greatest achievement? Tell me about your experiences in XXX) and proceeds to the case interview. The case interview is like a problem-solving conversation where the interviewer presents the interviewee with a problem a business is facing and the interviewee asks more questions to understand the context before providing solutions. Some of the case interviews I had with the firm included cases on European train stations and middle eastern telco.”
• “Tell me about a time you displayed/experienced leadership/teamwork/failure and how you [made the world a better place].”
• “We do coding test and candidates need to show enough depth in popular machine learning algorithms and proven track records to use data science to solve business questions.”
• “Why do you want to work at BCG? Why consulting?”