It’s 9:30pm on a Thursday.
You’re at your second “consulting networking event” this month. The one hosted by your MBA club. There are 47 people in a room designed for 30, everyone wearing those adhesive name tags that peel off your shirt.
You’ve been holding the same warm beer for 40 minutes. You’ve had the same conversation six times:
“So what firm are you targeting?”
“McKinsey, BCG, Bain – keeping options open.”
“Same. Have you done any coffee chats yet?”
“A few. You?”
“Yeah, a few.”
Silence. Both scanning the room for someone more useful.
In the corner, a second-year who landed a BCG offer is surrounded by eight people. You’ve been waiting for an opening for 20 minutes. By the time you get close, they’re exhausted and giving one-word answers.
You go home. Update LinkedIn. “Great evening connecting with future consultants and industry professionals. The energy in the room was incredible. #MBBbound #consulting”
You both know what actually happened.
I’ve coached over 300 candidates into McKinsey, BCG, and Bain over the past decade. I’ve watched thousands more try and fail. And I’ve noticed something that nobody talks about:
The candidates who attend the most networking events rarely get offers.
The candidates who get offers rarely attend networking events.
This isn’t a coincidence. It’s a symptom of a deeper problem with how we think about building relationships in this industry.
Here’s the mental model most candidates operate with:
Networking = Meeting important people → Those people help you → You get a job
Simple. Logical. Almost entirely wrong.
Here’s what’s actually happening:
Every person you meet is making a calculation. Not consciously, but instinctively. The calculation is: “Is spending time with this person worth more than the other things I could be doing?”
For a McKinsey Associate with 14-hour days, a client presentation due tomorrow, and a personal life they’re barely holding together – the bar is high.
“Wanting to learn about consulting” doesn’t clear that bar.
“Passion for problem-solving” doesn’t clear that bar.
“Interest in your career path” doesn’t clear that bar.
What clears the bar? Being genuinely interesting. Having relevant experience they want to understand. Offering something useful. Being someone they’d actually want on their team.
Everything else is just noise.
Three Principles That Actually Work
After watching what separates successful candidates from unsuccessful ones, I’ve identified three patterns that consistently make the difference.
Principle One: Invest in Environments, Not Events
Principle Two: Create Through Action, Not Conversation
Principle Three: Deliver Substance, Not Gestures
Let me break each one down.
The most successful candidate I ever worked with never attended a single networking event.
She was a product manager at Stripe. She wanted BCG. Instead of working the circuit, she did something different: she joined a small working group of operators who met monthly to discuss growth challenges. Eight people. No name tags. No agenda beyond “bring a real problem you’re facing.”
One of the members was a BCG Principal who attended because he was bored of consultant-only conversations. He wanted to hear how operators actually thought.
Over six months, she contributed to discussions, challenged his assumptions, brought data from her work. He watched her think. Watched her structure problems. Watched her disagree respectfully and change her mind when presented with better arguments.
When she mentioned she was considering consulting, he didn’t just refer her. He walked her resume to the recruiting partner personally.
No coffee chat could have accomplished what those six months did.
The distinction matters:
Events are one-time. You show up, exchange pleasantries, leave.
Environments are ongoing. You show up repeatedly. People watch you over time. They see how you think, how you handle disagreement, how you treat people when nothing is at stake.
Trust is built through repeated interaction, not single impressions.
What makes a strong environment:
The people are selected somehow. Not everyone gets in. This could be through application, referral, payment, or demonstrated expertise. The filtering mechanism matters less than its existence.
The activity is substantive. People are doing something together – solving problems, building things, learning skills, creating work. Not just “connecting.”
There’s continuity. The same people show up repeatedly. Relationships compound over time.
For MBB recruiting specifically, strong environments include:
Case study groups that meet weekly with the same 4-6 people. Not the ones where random people drop in and out. The ones where you see the same faces for three months straight.
Industry working groups where practitioners discuss real challenges. If you’re in healthcare, find where healthcare operators gather. If you’re in tech, find the serious product communities.
Alumni networks with active programming. Not the annual cocktail party. The monthly dinners where the same 15 people actually know each other.
Professional communities built around skill development. Places where people are actively trying to get better at something together.
What to avoid:
Anything described as a “mixer” or “networking happy hour.”
Events where the ratio of job-seekers to job-havers exceeds 3:1.
Groups with no barrier to entry – if anyone can join, the signal-to-noise ratio is terrible.
One-time conferences where you collect business cards you’ll never use.
The second-best candidate I coached did something unusual during his recruiting process.
He was targeting McKinsey’s operations practice. Instead of requesting coffee chats, he spent two weeks building a detailed analysis of how a major retailer’s supply chain had failed during a recent crisis. He pulled public data, mapped the network, identified the failure points, and proposed solutions.
Then he sent it to three McKinsey consultants who had published on supply chain topics. No ask attached. Just: “Built this analysis. Thought it might be interesting given your work in this space. Happy to discuss if useful.”
Two of the three responded. One became his internal champion. He got the offer.
Why this works:
Conversations are forgettable. Actions are memorable.
When you ask someone for a coffee chat, you’re asking them to do work (clear their calendar, show up, carry the conversation) in exchange for nothing concrete.
When you create something and share it, you’ve already done the work. You’re offering value. The dynamic is completely different.
At different stages of your career, this looks different:
If you’re early in your career (0-4 years):
Your advantage is time. You can spend 10 hours researching something that a busy professional can’t. Use it.
Build an analysis of a company or industry problem. Not a book report – an actual point of view with supporting evidence.
Create a comparison of how different firms approach a specific challenge. Pull from their published cases, their partner interviews, their thought leadership.
Develop a perspective on a trend affecting an industry you know. Write it up. Make it specific and substantiated.
If you’re mid-career (5-10 years):
Your advantage is experience. You’ve seen things from the inside that consultants only see as outsiders.
Document a real decision you were part of. What was the context? What were the options? What did you decide and why? What would you do differently? (Anonymize appropriately.)
Share actual performance data from initiatives you led. Consultants live on benchmarks – your real numbers are valuable.
Offer frameworks you’ve built that actually work. Not theoretical models – tools you’ve used in practice.
If you’re senior (10+ years):
Your advantage is pattern recognition and access.
Make introductions that matter. Connect the consultant to someone they’d genuinely benefit from knowing – a potential client, an expert in a space they’re researching, a peer at another firm.
Open doors to information they can’t easily access. Industry events. Private data. Expert perspectives.
Collaborate on thought leadership. Offer to co-develop a perspective with them on a topic you both care about.
The key insight:
Every “networking” interaction is an opportunity to demonstrate how you think. Coffee chats demonstrate nothing except that you can ask questions. Creating work demonstrates everything.
Which would you rather be – the person who asked thoughtful questions about supply chain optimization, or the person who sent a supply chain analysis that made the consultant think “this person gets it”?
Here’s what fake value looks like in MBB recruiting:
“Congratulations on making Partner! 🎉” (LinkedIn comment)
“Thanks so much for your time today – really enjoyed our conversation!” (Follow-up email)
“Let me know if there’s ever anything I can do to help.” (Empty offer)
“I’d love to stay in touch.” (Vague commitment)
These gestures feel polite. They are polite. But they accomplish nothing. They’re what everyone does. They create no memory, no differentiation, no relationship.
Here’s what real value looks like:
“You mentioned you’re working on a retail engagement. I found this analyst report on inventory optimization that isn’t paywalled – thought it might be relevant.” (Specific, useful)
“I noticed your firm’s recent publication on healthcare pricing didn’t address the pharmacy benefit manager angle. Based on my experience at CVS, here’s why that matters…” (Expert perspective)
“You said you’re hiring for your team. Here’s a candidate I know who would be strong – she led pricing strategy at my company and is actively exploring consulting.” (Valuable introduction)
“Your article on PE operating models missed one pattern I’ve seen repeatedly – the tension between financial sponsors and management teams on technology investment timelines. Happy to share examples if useful.” (Constructive challenge)
The pattern:
Fake value is vague, public, and makes you look good.
Real value is specific, often private, and makes them more successful.
What you can offer at each stage:
Early career:
Fresh eyes. You see things that insiders have become blind to. When you go through their firm’s website and get confused, that confusion is valuable feedback.
Research hours. You can spend time digging into something they don’t have time to explore. Industry trends, competitor moves, market data.
Testing and feedback. Try their firm’s published frameworks on a real problem you’re facing. Report back what worked and what didn’t.
Mid-career:
Insider perspective. You’ve lived the problems they advise on. Your experience is primary research they can’t easily get.
Real data. Not benchmarks from reports – actual numbers from actual decisions you were part of.
Honest reactions. Tell them what practitioners actually think about their recommendations. The gap between consulting advice and operational reality is often huge – you can bridge it.
Senior career:
Network access. You know people they should know. Make those introductions thoughtfully.
Pattern recognition. You’ve seen enough cycles to know what’s likely to work. Share that perspective directly.
Cover. If you’re in a position to hire consultants, you can be useful in ways that go beyond recruiting conversations.
Here’s something that will frustrate you: this approach takes longer.
Going to an event tonight feels like progress. You met 12 people! You have their LinkedIn profiles! You’re doing something!
Building genuine relationships in the right environments takes months. The payoff isn’t immediate. There’s no dopamine hit of collecting contacts.
But consider the math:
The candidate who attends 20 networking events might have 200 superficial connections. Of those, maybe 3-5 remember their name. Of those, maybe 1 will actually advocate for them in a recruiting process.
The candidate who spends that same time in one strong environment with the same 8 people? Those 8 people know them. Have seen them work. Trust their judgment. Any one of them might become an advocate.
8 real relationships beat 200 LinkedIn connections every time.
One more thing nobody tells you:
The consulting world is tiny.
The Partner interviewing you today might be the client executive you’re pitching to in ten years. The Associate who seemed junior and unimportant is a Principal making hiring decisions in five years. The candidate you dismissed because they weren’t from a target school? They’re at a competitor firm with a photographic memory of how you treated them.
I’ve watched careers get made because someone remembered a kind gesture from a decade earlier.
I’ve watched opportunities evaporate because someone was dismissive to the “wrong” person at a networking event in 2015.
Everything you do in this ecosystem is observed and remembered. Act accordingly.
If you’ve read this far, you’re probably nodding along thinking “this makes sense.” Then you’ll go to that networking mixer next Tuesday anyway.
Because what I’m describing is hard. It requires patience. It doesn’t produce Instagram-worthy moments. There’s no immediate feedback loop.
So let me give you something concrete:
This week, make one decision:
At the end of the month, compare your results. How do the relationships you’ve built in an environment compare to the contacts you used to collect at events? How did sharing your work change the nature of your conversations?
You already know which approach will win. You just need to experience it yourself.
Here’s the truth about networking that nobody tells MBB candidates:
The people who get offers don’t network harder. They network differently.
And they’re thinking in years, not weeks.
That’s how you build a network that actually helps you break into McKinsey, BCG, and Bain.
Not through events.
Not through small talk.
Not through LinkedIn connections.
Through environments.
Through action.
Through substance.
It’s harder than attending another mixer.
It’s also the only approach that actually works.
As a former Bain recruiter, I’ve helped countless candidates turn shallow networking into genuine professional leverage. Book a free intro call with me today, and let’s refine your relationship-building strategy for real recruiting results.
Good luck – and enjoy the ride!
As a coach with consulting experience, I can provide you with more tips and one-on-one practice to sharpen your estimation techniques. Book a intro session with my team to know more.
