| Topic Name: |
McKinsey in decline? |
| Message Name: |
Slight flaw in reasoning Let's take another example |
| Date Posted: |
02/01/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
Undergrad84:
WRT, ??What does it mean that consulting industry placement at Stanford stayed the same over the past 8 years. How do you know that the 'fixed' percentage of the class which goes into consulting is the b&b part of that class??
If you are willing, follow me through a simple thought experiment with below set of conditions:
1) McK extends offers of employment to Stanford MBA grads that satisfactorily passed the rigorous interview process. Those applicants that get an offer are b&b in McK??s eyes. Also, Stanford grads compete with other MBAs from top universities during the interview.
2) There is no minimum recruiting quota at Stanford. (min_accept = 0, max_accept < = extended offers).
3) Those that gets an offer from McK most likely have gotten offers from multiple companies/industries (On average, class of 2005 got 3 employment offers).
4) If b&b at Stanford with multiple offers felt that McK or BCG/B is not an attractive career option, they will opt for other more attractive offers.
5) If ??4)?? happened every year starting 1997, you will eventually see smaller and smaller b&b??s opting for management consulting and it??s overall placement will deteriorate. However, number of Stanford MBA??s choosing mgnt consulting have been steady for the past 8 years as data show.
Let me paste some relevant statements from previous posts to conclude this thought experiment:
Euc: ????if you look at the employment statistics of Stanford MBAs from 1997 to 2005, you would find that the percentage of management consulting accepted offers changed from 22% to 20% and financial services (IB/IM/VC in 1997; IB/PE/HF/VC/IM in 2005) did not change at all at 25%. Same number of ??b&b?? went into financial services and management consulting in 1997 and also 2005. So stating that the quality level of MBAs have deteriorated recently due to b&b pursuing PE/HF/VC positions seems to be incorrect??data suggests that it has been this way for quite a while, at least for the last 8 years.????
EUC: ?? The phenomena of 'recent' brain drain due to b&b migrating to 1) Tech companies 2) Financial-Banking 3) Entrepreneurship is moot as illustrated by Stanford data showing the industry placement trends have been essentially been the same for the past 8 years??
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| Message: |
Your reasoning is correct; your first assumption is not.
The "bar" has been lowered over time, at McK. This has happened insidiously for a very simple reason: There is no systematic comparison of "quality" of recruits from one year to another. So even is the "selection percentage" remains constant, it is in fact applied to a pool of decreasing quality. This is not a judgement on the quality of students at top B-Schools, it is an observation of who applies to MC and McK in particular, in those schools.
Let's take a feline example.
If you interview a batch of candidates composed of "tigers" and "cats", you will probably make a rapid selection and keep the tigers only.
If you interview a batch of candidates made essentially of "cats" with a few "tigers", the odds are you will recruit a few cats, because there are not enough tigers. You may even "ding" all the tigers becaus they are "too aggressive" (excuse me: "they display insufficient team spirit") in comaprison to the cats.
If you meet a batch of cats only, you will recruit the "best and the brightest" among these cats. Your less experienced recruiters (less than 4-8 years of recruiting practice, fewer than 100 recruiting interviews each) will even say they have recruited "tigers". But be assured none is a tiger.
B-Schools still have tigers, but fewer and fewer are applying to MC and McK in particular
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