10) Meet Bain & Company’s MBA Class Of 2018

Bain has a reputation for being the “fun” firm. For some, that conjures up images of karaoke duets, fajita bars, and Friday tee times. That’s not really the case, notes Keith Bevans, a Bain partner and global head of consulting recruiting. “Bain is the type of place where people want to get to know each other,” he explains. “It is less about having a rock band or a soccer team. It is more about finding ways for people to spend time with each other and build relationships that extend long beyond their time at Bain.”

That quality time feeds into Bain’s defining quality: teamwork. It is a firm, in Bevans’ words, founded on a “deep, deep, deep belief that we get the better answers as a team rather than as individuals.” That requires a specific type of hire: curious and creative doers who bring out the best in each other. “Bain’s people and culture make solving the problems fun,” writes Rachel Yorke, a 2018 Harvard Business School MBA. “My teammates are genuine, supportive, and invested in my success both personally and professionally.”

Yorke is among the 12 Bain MBA hires profiled by P&Q this year. They include stars like Faye Cheng, an MIT Sloan MBA who re-joined Bain after graduation. She describes the Bain culture as a “results over reports” culture that emphasizes pragmatism over theoretical purity. “Real-world data is messy and ambiguous,” she writes. “At the end of the day, the best answer is not necessarily the one that’s textbook-perfect, but rather one that is feasible and best tailored to the client’s particular needs.”

Luiz Pablo Fabre, a Chicago Booth MBA who designed an award-winning medical device, considers Bain’s biggest plus being its focus on simplicity. “Clients don’t hire Bain to solve simple problems; the problems we tackle will always be big and complex. One of the most important skills I have learned is to distill the problem down to smaller, more manageable, elements.”

Here are 25 additional rankings-based and data-centric articles that were among P&Q’s most-read in 2019.

Harvard & Wharton Tie for 2018’s #1 MBA Program

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You’d Never Believe These MBA Applicants Were Just Rejected By Harvard Business School

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Stanford GSB Cruises Into First In P&Q’s 2019-2020 MBA Ranking

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