Bain & Co is recruiting smart, passionate, achievement-driven strategists: Spring MBA recruiting from LBS

Bain & Company presented at LBS today to our first year MBA class to encourage applications for summer internships this year around the world.

To sum up Bain’s appeal, it is a top tier strategy firm with a strong private equity practice. The culture is intensely results-focused, youthful and energetic. Bainies are all highly driven by achievement. If you don’t get passionate about anything, it’s probably not the place for you… J-P

Bain has a strong recent recruiting history at LBS, despite a blip in the 2010 downturn. Recent MBA level hires are shown below:

Year                  Permanent MBA Hires             MBA Internships                 MiF Hires
2006                                 2                                          4                                    0
2007                                 6                                          3                                    1
2008                                 7                                          8                                    1
2009                                 6                                          0                                    0
2010                                 1                                          6                                    0
2011                               10                                        13                                  TBA

Sanjay Dhiri delivered the main presentation, covering

• Why pursue a consulting career?
• Why strategy consulting?
• Why Bain?

Leah Johns, a summer associate at the London Office last year, described her project work and what sounded like a hugely enjoyable experience last summer, and Bain wrapped up with details of the application process.

What is consulting, and why choose it as a career step?

Why do firms use consultants?

• Fresh external perspective, from beyond the company and possibly the sector
• Incremental focus to critical issues
• Objectivity
• Change agents
• Diverse frontline experience

Rewarding careers

• Resilient and growing industry
• Incredible learning experience
• Work on the CEO’s toughest issues
• Work with incredibly smart people
• Unlimited career potential

Why Bain?

Bain sums itself up to potential applicants and clients in the same way:

People

• Incredibly smart
• Very energetic
• Very passionate

Results

• Although ‘results not reports’ has become an industry cliché, Bain invented it in 1973 – it was the company’s founding ethos and runs through the DNA of everything Bainies do

Passion

Global, office-centric model
Sanjay described Bain’s office-centric, generalist model. New hires are not expected to specialise by sector or function, but projects are staffed on a largely geographic basis. Bain sees two-fold advantages:

1. As a generalist, you get the best training in the general manager’s toolkit, best preparing you for C-suite positions later in your career
2. You are firmly rooted in a local community – you will work on case after case with people from your Office

However, there are still many opportunities to travel and work with people from around the world

• At any given time, around 20% of Bainies are on international transfer of some sort. These can be either
• Formal 6-month transfers to another office
• Single case transfers for the duration of a particular project
• As a contrast, Booz for instance tends to staff projects much more internationally and expect earlier sector specialisation, while BCG and McKinsey offer formal 1 year ‘ambassador’ programme transfers for higher performing consultants – J-P

Training
Sanjay elected not to talk about Bain’s office-based and virtual training, and only mentioned the apprenticeship ‘on the job’ training model in passing (all of these are strong at Bain, the virtual training in particular having been developed before other leading consulting firms’ offerings – J-P). Instead he focused on the flagship major worldwide training events. Occurring every 1 to 2 years through your career, each Bain consultant meets with all their peers from around the world in one location for an intensive training session – usually a week or more, somewhere nice (Cancun and Phuket were mentioned – when I was at Bain I attended sessions as a trainee in Puerto Rico and as a trainer in the Swiss alps – J-P). These events are not just great training (trainers being hand-picked in Bain from the manager and partner pool) and excellent fun, but also an opportunity to build a global network at your own level within the firm – and these networks stay with consultants long after the training sessions, and even in many cases after leaving Bain.
My fondest memories of Bain are from my two weeks as a trainer in Switzerland for a new global intake of graduate consultants – J-P

“Bain’s work is different”
1. Shared ambition, true results

• Care for clients’ business as our own
• Develop insight that clients act on
• Cross boundaries together to create value
• Energise client teams to sustain success
• Commit to doing the right thing, always

2. We deliver results and we measure them

• 60% of global revenue involves tied economics – Bain has something at risk
• Private equity – 2.5x average industry returns where Bain has post acquisition involvement; 2.9x average returns where Bain is involved in diligence and co-investment; > 2x returns overall for Bain clients
• Merger integration – on average, merger integrations where Bain is involved achieve 20% higher excess shareholder returns

3. Bain innovates in the strat consulting industry

Bridgespan and Bain Capital being two great examples out of many, and most recently Net Promoter Score – a quantifiable way of measuring customer satisfaction that ties directly to value

4. Strong growth and economics

• Worldwide cash revenue CAGR has been 15%pa over the past 20 years
• Despite a recession-hit 2009, 2010 was a record year and 2011 figures are expected to break that when released
• EMEA is the biggest region by revenue (just), with around 45%
• Americas also contributes 45%
• Asia-Pacific, my old stamping ground, is only 10%, although I did notice that Bain is finally opening a Perth office in Australia! – J-P

5. Develop a General Manager’s Perspective
“We are in the business of building business leaders” (contrast with Mckinsey’s ‘we see ourselves as a leadership incubator’ – J-P)

6. At Bain, uniquely, you will build a generalist perspective across sectors, across functions, and also across types of company

• Global 500
• Mid-market
• Small
• Private equity (the industry leading PE consulting practice, and 25-30% of Bain’s business)
• Non-profits

One of the biggest benefits to my career of my time at Bain was the small company perspective – which I took directly with me into my most lucrative venture, a PE backed FS business in the northwest of England - J-P

Where do Bain alumni end up?

• 22% - Global 500s
• 22% - mid-market
• 29% - small size and startups
• 20% - PE
• 7% - Government/non-profits

So who is Bain looking for?

• Strong drive for achievement
• Zest for problem solving and a love for learning
• Practical perspective and sound business judgement
• Solid team and communications skills
• Sense of humour (Bainies take their work, but not themselves seriously!)

Application Process

Apply online at http://www.joinbain.com/
Include:

• 1-page CV
• Cover letter (in the past Bain has said that motivation – for consulting, Bain, and your chosen geographies – rather than bullet pointed summaries of your skills, is what it is looking for - J-P)
• GMAT score

Deadline is Wednesday 11 January allowing time for coffee chats and limited networking before then! – J-P

Remember to select LBS as your school (every year some applicants get this wrong – your application may get lost as a result – J-P)

1st round interviews will be on campus on 30 January


2nd round for London will be 3 February, other offices TBC