Bain Tops List Of Best MBA Internships

Keith Bevans heads up global consultant recruiting for Bain

Which company offers the best internships to MBA students?

Vault.com, the career website, says that its survey of 7,700 interns earlier this year gave prestige consulting firm Bain & Co. the highest possible marks out of more than 100 internship programs. Students were asked to rate experiences from a high of ten to a low of one on five dimensions: quality of life, compensation and benefits, interview process, career development and full-time employment prospects. These ratings were averaged to determine an overall score for each program and develop a Top 10 ranking for each category.

Bain, one of the largest recruiters of MBA students, will hire north of 400 MBA graduates this year for full-time jobs, mainly from the top 25 business schools. In a typical summer, the firm will bring in slightly more than 200 MBA interns, but Bain says its recruitment of interns is open ended. “We will extend offers to every qualified intern we can find,” said Keith Bevans, global head of consultant recruiting at Bain. “It is a tremendous source of talent for us. The students get a good look at our people and our culture. They go thru a global training program. We invest in their personal growth and development. The more great people we can find the bigger the program will be.”

EVERCORE PARTNERS, BCG, ACCENTURE & PWC IN TOP FIVE

After Bain came Evercore Partners, Boston Consulting Group, Accenture, and Pwc. Rounding out the top ten were No. 6 Deloitte, No. 7 KPMG, No. 8 A.T. Kearney, No. 9 Hewlett Packard, and No. 10 Goldman Sachs. This was the first time that Vault broke out separate rankings for MBA internships, only naming a top ten list. Absent from the top ten were such big MBA recruiters as McKinsey & Co., Amazon, Google, Morgan Stanley, and J.P. Morgan/Chase.

Bain clinched the top position with the highest cumulative average score of 9.543 out of possible 10.0. No. 10 Goldman Sachs scored 8.418. Bain’s reviews from students were uniformly raves.

According to former Bain interns, the company has a “wonderful culture, great people, a real taste of consulting, fun social events, bonding with the intern class, seeing the impact of my work at the client, and feeling like a valued member of a team” — all factors that contributed to Bain’s high ratings.

‘I ALWAYS FELT MY BAIN TEAM WAS THERE TO MENTOR AND SUPPORT ME’

“I was able to own and shape my own work streams on each of the projects I took on,” said one former intern. “This helped me understand what it would be like to have these responsibilities in a full-time capacity. Despite this autonomy, I always felt that my Bain team was there to mentor and support me. They left me just enough room to think through problems, but were always available with coaching and best practices.”

“Bain is a fantastic employer,” said another respondent. “Everyone is very focused on developing all team members. We challenge each other when solving client problems so that we can make a true impact. While we work hard, Bain has a lot of fun. There is a lot of focus on building relationships on your teams, within roles, and across the entire firm..”

Summer internships have increasing become job tryouts for many MBA students, many of whom return to campus for their second year of studies with job offers already in their pockets.

“The economy has changed the job market in a way that makes internships a vital necessity for any jobseeker,” said Tara McCaffrey, vice president of marketing at Vault.com, in a statement. “Our goal is to help candidates find the right internship that matches their needs. What better way to do that than by surveying students and professionals on their own internship experiences. Our readers get a first-hand perspective of what it’s like to intern at these companies.”

(See following page for table of the top ten MBA internships and scores for the companies)