| Topic Name: |
Up or Out policy |
| Message Name: |
Good question |
| Date Posted: |
03/07/2006 |
| In Reply To: |
I don't agree with the notion that there's a much larger number of GE employees and therefore their "CEO-yield" must be lower. I remember that McK hired around 60 people every year at my B-School - compared to 3-5 who went to GE.
Reality is that it is much tougher to get into a mgmt development program at GE than to land a job with McK once you're at a top B-School. Consequently, McK's yearly throughput of top MBA grads also exceeds that of GE (also taking into account that the average associate leaves after only 2 or 3 years). If you just look at that small sub-segment of GE's employees and compare it to McK their career prospects will be similar at least.
I've been with McK for about 7 months and I've seen many people leave the firm already, including around 6 or 7 principals. My observation is that only 2 of those principals got interesting jobs (C-level). The remainder ended up in some upper/middle management staff functions, where they likely will continue producing 100-page slide decks.
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| Message: |
I agree with your thinking in that it doesn't make sense to compare GE's 320,000 employees to McK's consultants. That's apples to oranges, and calculating "yield" makes no sense. Though I suppose we could compare some guy assembling a washing machine with someone in Madras turning my hand drawn charts into PowerPoint....
The population we need to compare are the ~ 5,000 or so people in GE's "Executive Band" and above levels, and the folks on the management development fast track, with folks in consulting.
The interesting question your comment raises, is "For someone coming out of a top MBA program (where both GE and McK recruit), what is the best path if General Management is your end goal?"
To me, there is no one right answer. I think a lot depends on the pre-B School profile of the individual, and what they need to develop.
BTW, this is a topic I cover probably 100 times during the recruiting season....
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