Vault’s Verdict

At Kearney, expect a personal career experience. Insiders say that the firm starts conversations about their broader career goals even at junior levels, providing ample opportunities to pursue work in practices or industries that align with their individual interests, as well as forge a specialist or generalist career. Structured training uses professional facilitators, often brought in from outside the organization, and some trainings occur on global off-site locations. International transfers are available for those who seek them out.

Culturally, the firm emphasizes collegiality and collaboration. Offices tend to be small enough to know everyone, but big enough to take on projects with a truly impactful scale, and leaders encourage everyone to be genuine and authentic. However, consultants still enjoy lots of personal freedom to work as they please. Leaders protect personal boundaries and effectively manage project requirements, enabling junior staff to participate in client interactions early. Work from home is prevalent, and while hours can get long, weekend work is rare and down periods allow time to rest and recharge.

The firm compensates its consultants above the market average, including both salary and bonuses. At senior levels, performance-based bonuses become a major part of the comp plan, but employees at all levels enjoy a variety of wellness benefits (that differ across offices), mental health support, and an annual offsite to support team building and internal networking.

Employee Reviews

Firm Culture

• “Kearney has an excellent and very collaborative culture. Makes the coordination with other people within and across offices very easy.”
• “Very genuine and authentic culture. Truly collegial and collaborative.”
• “Freedom for each consultant to pursue what they want to do, rather than simply following top-down directives.”
• “Small enough so that I know everyone, big enough to make real impact.”

Quality of Life

• “Our managers and partners try to ensure our mental health and wellbeing, within reasonable boundaries. They actively try to manage expectations of clients. Weekend work is rare and discouraged. We also have Fridays in office.”
• “The workload is reasonably heavy, but it depends on the project. Outside of project periods, however, there is a great deal of freedom and a well-maintained work-life balance.”
• “Travel requirements depend on requirements of the clients and projects. My situation is probably extreme due to nature of target industry (healthcare) and project (strategy). Junior consultants enjoy opportunities for client interactions as they support operation works and transformations.”
• “Mostly work from home and have general flexibility==.”

Career Development

• “You have the ability to move between practices within the firm, and there are clear expectations on requirements to meet next level. Senior promotions are done through independent selection committees, which removes risk of favoritism. Junior training programs are very structured often with external facilitators (some courses are run in other countries which is always fun). We have international transfers both into our unit and from our unit to other international units.”
• “Kearney provides ample opportunities for expansion outside of your specific industry of focus and provides juniors with a lot of opportunities to step up and progress in their career.”
• “Informal training and mentoring systems are great. I especially like the highly objective (i.e., well thought through) and thoughtful (i.e., considerate, not just robotic) process that covers our performance management and hence promotions.”
• “A wide range of options are available, including specialist and generalist positions. To enhance expertise, the firm aligns individual aspirations with the firm’ direction from the junior consultant stage.”

Compensation

• “Better-than-market compensation, reflecting our office performance. Strong pay-for-performance principles at senior level (i.e., good bonus for high performers).”
• “Pay is honestly pretty good. I think more differentiation between bonus bands would be useful.”
• “Multiple avenues to seek mental health support, gym membership.
• “We have an annual offsite for people to gather.”

Inclusion

• “Firmwide efforts to focus on inclusive culture. Will be good to continue to increase efforts.”
• “Big effort made to manage gender balances at all grades.”
• “Inclusive culture, with emphasis on DEI.”
• “I think decent inclusion even if not exceedingly strong, but long-term looking at promotions and company hierarchy and such, on a macro scale there is still a long way to go (this goes for most firms).”

Business Outlook

• “General outlook is very positive, with very high degree of repeat clients and pushing the boundaries on new thinking. Can do more in pushing the thinking on AI, especially from a value creation lens for clients.”
• “As a leader in Strategic Operations and Transformation, our position is well aligned with what the clients want. While scale is a challenge, our focused efforts to bring tangible impact to the clients' most pressing challenges create strong traction in the market.”
• “I think my firm's leadership is showing great aspiration and I am confident with the outlook. However, regarding innovation, I think, we need to consider more how we can be more innovative.”
• “Experiencing ~10% growth in SEA unit, while higher targets being set for next year(s).”

Hiring Process

• “3 rounds, and someone who has potential, as well as a good attitude. Jiving with the culture is important.”
• “I appreciate how diverse our recruitment pool is. No real need for a specific degree, but we do still focus on degreed candidates. Can either be straight from university or more senior consultants who have completed their MBA”
• “Candidates who possess fundamental consulting thinking skills and demonstrate humility and sincerity are ideal. In addition, it is preferable that they resonate with Kearney’s core values.”
• “Our process is efficient and responsive, and we are able to process a very high number of applications in a short timeframe and also respond in a very thoughtful way to candidates.”

Interview Questions

• “How much does a national Japanese sushi chain spend on salmon per year, and how would you optimize costs?”
• “For junior candidates, the focus is on tasks such as estimating market size and exploring strategies to expand sales. For mid-level candidates, in-depth interviews are conducted to discuss industry-specific challenges and potential directions for their solutions.”
• “Conducting structural analysis of a specific industry, including market sizing using Fermi estimation and identifying key opportunities and threats”
• “All cases are unique to each interviewer but should follow a trend of a real business situation, ask for structured problem solving, a quant section and interpretation of visually displayed data.”