The MBB Aren’t Hiring Fewer MBAs – They’re Hiring Different Ones

Four months, fifteen hours a week of prep on average. Fifty mock interviews. Dozens of conversations with contacts at prospective employers. This was Emilie Busquet’s path into a top consulting firm.

Her intensive schedule, which came on top of a full course load in her final year of a Master’s in Management, clearly paid off. This spring, the EDHEC student was among a few in her cohort to land a job at one of the hyper-competitive ‘Big Three’ firms, also known as the MBB: McKinsey, Bain and BCG.

“You can sense the competition when you’re applying and speaking to HR. I’ve done some women in strategy events. You can see how many people want to do the same thing as you,” she says.

In Busquet’s case, her persistence paid off. Of 15 consultancies she applied for, she was invited to interview for five, ultimately scoring a job offer at a top choice. But all those hours of work don’t guarantee a top job. A case partner from another business school applied to 20 firms and got only two interviews.

EVERYONE APPLIES TO THE MBB

Nicolas Verga, who graduates this summer from an MBA at INSEAD and will also head into an MBB role this autumn, attests to the stiff competition. “Out of our cohort of 500 maybe two-thirds want to go into consulting – and you can imagine everyone applies to the MBB.”

Verga credits his background, including an economics degree and five years working on industrial projects, with helping him stand out. “In my observation of the people who got the jobs is, they’re somehow vertically specialized.”

Each year, thousands of students graduate the world’s leading business schools and head into consulting jobs. The Big Three absorb a substantial portion of this talent, particularly out of the MBA. If you believe recent headlines, there’s been a cooldown in hiring by these top consultancies. If true, the knock-on effects could be significant, from shaping student loan decisions to internship strategies to curricula.

So are the Big Three in fact hiring fewer graduates? Has the ideal candidate profile changed? How are AI and geopolitical headwinds shaping the recruiting process and hiring timelines?

MBB SAYS HIRING GOING STRONG

To the first question, the answer from top consultancies is a hard no.

“It’s a tight job market, but our hiring is quite strong,” says Keith Bevans, a partner at Bain and executive vice president for consultant recruiting and talent acquisition. “Next summer is our second largest summer associate class ever,” with the recruitment target up in double digits, he adds. Like other big firms, Bain doesn’t disclose exact figures.

But Bevans says growth is “mostly on par” with recent years, with the proportion of hires coming from the MBA also relatively stable, according to Bevans, who has been at the company nearly three decades. “What has changed is we’ve added industry hires – Bain’s been adding double-digit growth each year in my time here.”

‘WE’RE THE COUNTERNARRATIVE’

It’s a similar story at McKinsey. “We’re so aware of narrative now around hiring slowdown – but we’re the counternarrative,” says Blair Ciesil, a partner at the firm and its global co-lead for talent attraction. “We’re quite bullish on demand for entry level consultants.”

Like Bain, McKinsey doesn’t share exact numbers, but Ciesil says its year-on-year hiring targets for both interns and full-time hires are up – and she expects them to grow again next year. “MBAs will remain an attractive talent pool for us and a critical one,” she says.

She notes that the “bulk” of its MBA hiring is for summer intern roles, with a smaller and more selective pool for full-time hires. “For MBA hiring we’re doing things a full year out. That’s part of the challenge…all firms have 12 to 18-month cycle where we’re hiring people before they start working and we don’t know how world will look in 12 to 18 months.”

At BCG too, consultant hiring is “in line with historic norms and growth”, which has been “steady and consistent” in the “high single digits to low double digits” over the longer term, says Brian Meyerholtz, its global talent acquisition lead.

THE VIEW INSIDE B-SCHOOLS

For London Business School, arguably the top ranked school in Europe, MBB hiring is “on par” with previous years, says Zoe McLoughlin, executive director of its career center. But she says there have been two notable shifts.

“Firms are in a thoughtful phase at the moment about how does junior talent fit with AI augmentation,” she notes. “If I think of MBA hiring, there’s a preference for expertise. A few years ago, it was very much a generalist profile. Now they’re certainly more interested in students’ pre-MBA profiles than in the past.”

She has also observed a broader shift in timelines, something she attributes in part to the increasing use of AI in the application process.

“There’s a few more steps and stages to make interviews longer and more complex to try to get to the authentic candidate.” In practice, this means the hiring process has lengthened. Rather than a two to three-week turnaround, it can last months. As a result, offers are coming in later. “In the past, 50 percent of the class might have a job by January – now that’s June-July in their first year.”

AT CAMBRIDGE, A TURN TO TECH

But the picture isn’t uniform, even across top schools. At Cambridge’s Judge Business School, consulting hiring is down overall: some 20% of the graduating class now heads into the sector, versus a third a few years ago.

“There’s a big shift away from consulting into industry and tech,” says Sadia Cuthbert, Judge’s director for careers. Its biggest employer in 2025 was TikTok, she notes. But the MBB are an exception to that retreat. “Last year, the majority of students went into other consulting firms,” she says. “Though numbers have increased into MBBs this year.”

She also believes the profile of the typical MBB hire is changing. “They’re recruited off the back of specialisms, though they’re going into the generalist program,” she notes, adding there’s been “a lot of tech, healthcare, and I think that’s going to be the way going forward.”

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