AC Profile_Bain & Company

Name: Alexander McNab
Degree: BEcon (Hons)/LLB
Company: Bain International
Job Title: Associate Consultant

How did you obtain employment with Bain?
Like many students at UQ, I regularly attended the employer presentations coordinated by the university careers service. Bain was a company that consistently impressed me, through the quality of their presentations, the apparent calibre of their people, and through their strong reputation both in Australia and overseas. I applied through their annual graduate recruiting intake, interviewed over a number of days and was fortunate enough to be offered a graduate position.

Tell us about Bain.
Bain International is the Australian arm of Bain & Company, a global strategy consulting practice. Globally, Bain has 2,800 consulting staff in 31 offices and 19 countries, and Consulting Magazine named us the number 1 firm to work for in 2003.

Bain works with companies to help them beat their competitors and generate substantial lasting financial impact. We do this by advising senior management on their most difficult decisions: on strategy, operations, mergers and acquisitions and organisation. We pride ourselves on being results-focused: we judge ourselves on the results our clients achieve, not the elegance of the recommendations we provide.

What are your current job responsibilities?
It is difficult to be too definitive about the role of a Bain AC, as every project involves different issues and will require a unique approach. Nevertheless, a Bain AC would probably be involved in most of the following tasks in their first year:
Interviewing clients, industry experts, and our clients' customers or competitors to collect important data
Performing quantitative analysis on the data to draw out major implications for our clients
Building slide presentations that convey our recommendations in a compelling way
Presenting our findings to clients, either through formal ?stand-up' presentations or through more informal ?over-the-table' updates

We tend to work in small teams (usually about four people) and you are expected to contribute to the team's thinking right from the start. It can be intense, but is also incredibly rewarding.

What was the transition like from university to full-time employment?
Looking back to my first several months at Bain, the dominant impression is one of being faced with a very steep learning curve. I found myself in an environment where I was constantly faced with incredible challenges, whether that be a difficult problem to crack or a tough client interaction. These challenges often seemed insurmountable, which was intimidating. However, by using the experience and support of my colleagues, I've seen these challenges turn into unique opportunities to learn about doing business.

What has been the greatest challenge in your position?
There is an enormous amount to learn in a relatively short space of time. Each time we start a new project we need to learn about a new client, a new industry and a new set of issues requiring a unique set of analytical tools. It can be quite daunting. However, the training and support within the office are first-rate, and the end result is that we learn a lot about business very quickly.

What has been the most and the least satisfying part of your job?
Perhaps the most satisfying part of the job so far has been the diversity of experience I have had. I have worked in industries as diverse as financial services, telecommunications and consumer products, on issues ranging from customer strategy to implementation. I have also had the chance to work in a variety of locations in the Bain network. In 2003 I spent seven months in Singapore, and at the moment I am in the United States working on a project with colleagues from our San Francisco and Silicon Valley offices. In my time at Bain, I have seen colleagues travel to destinations as diverse as the United Kingdom, Korea and El Salvador. It was these sorts of opportunities that I was looking for when I left UQ, and I haven't been disappointed.However, in a high-performance environment like this there can be some lifestyle trade-offs. Like professionals in many similar firms, we can find ourselves working relatively hard, particularly leading up to important deadlines. However, Bain does a good job of balancing lifestyle over the long term, with an office-wide average of between 50 and 60 hours a week. After all, the job needs to be fun as well!

What advice would you give students searching for a job in your industry?
There are a few steps you can take to increase your chances of securing a consulting role:
Research the companies and the industry: Spend some time on the internet; go to the campus presentations of firms you are interested in. You should put the effort in well before your final year; after all, your graduate job is one of the most important outcomes of your university career.

Think early about how you'll position yourself: Competition for positions at companies like Bain can be intense; outstanding academic achievement is critical, but will not be enough. What leadership roles have you played? What are your extra-curricular activities? If you have gaps in your credentials, start thinking about how you can address them.

Be prepared for case interviews: Consulting firms like Bain use a unique interviewing technique know as ?the case interview'. In these interviews, you will be presented with a hypothetical business problem and asked to come up with your own recommendations. It is important to prepare properly for these interviews, and the websites of most major consulting firms will show you how.