https://www.forbes.com/sites/arafatkabir/2026/02/12/mckinsey-is-hiring-more-just-not-for-your-mba/
I thought of ALL of you when I read this. Interesting on so many levels. Who will AI displace, why elite employers like hiring humanities majors, will our kids be employable….
Is this a trend besides McKinsey, Bain, BCG or will the rest of the “we recruit college kids market” follow? Who knows. Food for thought….
It sounds nice when companies make statements like this but can the existing senior employees / partners pivot during the interview process? In other words, can the legacy truly pull this off. Who is to say they can properly evaluate the answers.
That’s the unknown.
Any interactions I’ve had with McKinsey, I thought have lacked creativity and originality. I asked my college ex, who’s an exec in media about them a year ago and she said it’s the wealthy hiring the wealthy but little of strategic value comes. So she thought similar to me.
Can these same folks truly pivot ?
It’s tough to throw out the ‘what you thought made someone great’ ideals just like that.
I have had a number of interactions with McKinsey over the years as well as BCG and to a lesser extent Bain. I think there is a lot of variability in the creativity of the folks. I don’t see the wealthy hiring the wealthy so much as the credentialed hiring the credentialed. I think a prestigious degree has been more important in their hiring than social class.
McKinsey in the past seemed to think that their analysis/report back to the client figured out the Truth (the one true answer) and delivered it. Full stop. I find a more collaborative approach works more effectively. More recently, however, they seem to be reaching out to others who have skills they don’t have. More respectful and less arrogant than before. And they are definitely planning on building out various kinds of agents.
We are not wealthy or well connected, and my S’s MBB experience (and observing many of his peers) is not one of wealthy hiring wealthy. However, undergrad prestige and exposure to options for elite consulting internships likely made a difference for a good number of them. As the above article suggests, kids with a liberal arts background who are creative and demonstrate strong critical thinking and communication skills will be desirable for these jobs. While the linked article mostly focused on MBA hires, my S’s opinion and experience is that those hired straight from undergrad have generally been stronger in a number of areas than those coming to MBB after an MBA program. I’m sure others would disagree.
Was your S an Analyst? All the experienced analysts think they are stronger consultants than the MBAs coming in 
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We can agree to disagree on the wealthy hiring the wealthy part. It was absolutely the case in my experience in both Consulting and Banking. Of course not everyone, but the vast majority found commonality amonst prep schools, wealthy publics and fancy colleges, which are predominantly for and of the wealthy.
Ha, like IndySceptic, I will have to agree that this is common. My D says the same thing in IB (she came in as an analyst/is now an associate, those with MBAs come in as associates.)
I didn’t work in MBB, but in a respected boutique consulting firm for over 20 years. The two founders were both M7 MBAs, and hired only M7 MBAs (where I came in during the firm’s early days.) Over time, we completely stopped hiring MBAs when we realized PhDs (after hiring a couple) were smarter than many of the MBAs and cost less. We hired infrequently out of undergrad, because, well, clients didn’t love having ‘youngsters’ on their projects. To stay on topic with the thread, we were a pretty quant heavy shop, so we did not tend to hire those who were undergrad humanities majors. (Company sold to a large public firm about five years ago.)
Honestly, reading this, it seems entirely unsurprising and obvious to me, but I am really pretty out of this world at this point.
I feel like this is what I thought they were always hiring for…. Or maybe I am so old that it was just what they were hiring for when I was in college, and now they are just flipping back… I went to an ivy that hugely fed consulting… and hired from ALL sorts of majors. People I know who went to MBB were Language Majors, English Majors, Social Sciences, etc. Econ was more likely to go into i-banking. They hired for quick thinking 
I did some corporate recruiting but went a slightly different path in end.
Note, this is for undergrad recruiting, not MBA-level.. Obviously, those folks were expected to know more frameworks and actual business skills…
And the niche consulting firms - telecom, tech - ones even then, liked PhDs (my roommates both worked at niche consulting firms out of college, and the consultant levels were all PhDs - not MBAs - analysts were more likely quant majors).
I’ll defer to you and @Mwfan1921 since my knowledge of these fields is quite limited. It does seem like attending an elite university whether you major in humanities or not raises your chances of landing at MBB or similar. Maybe what I was noticing was in line with the increase in holistic admissions and diversity at these universities over the years. As more kids enter those colleges who are not wealthy and well connected, they also have a shot at some of those elite jobs. However, maybe they are still a small percentage.
@Mwfan1921- interesting point about what you noticed with hiring. My son was talking to me recently about a project and that a couple of his colleagues were very smart. I said “wow I haven’t heard you say that about many people from work”
. He laughed and commented about another person with whom he had recently worked who was very intelligent and said they worked well together on the team. Then he said let me see what their Ph.D. was in…..quantum physics. Ah yeah I’d say so.