Class Of ’17: Meet Bain & Co’s Newest MBA Hires

Raiko Shareef

Bain Sydney

Hometown: Malé, Maldives

MBA program: INSEAD

Undergraduate school, major: Victoria University of Wellington, Economics

Focus of current case: Creating a post-acquisition strategy blueprint for a PE-owned company

Why did you choose to work at Bain?

I chose Bain because of kindness.

I wouldn’t have gone to business school, had I not wanted to accelerate my career and work at a firm with smart people on tough problems. There are myriad companies that offer that opportunity, to cut your teeth with the best in business. But until I came across Bain, I believed that there existed some trade-off between the commercial success of a firm and the degree to which people care for one another within it.

That trade-off does not exist at Bain. We work with the world’s leading companies on their toughest problems. We have brilliant people who crack those problems, and drive relentlessly towards positive results for our clients. But those same people will consistently check in with you over coffee or lunch just to see how you’re doing, even if they have nothing to do with your case. In my experience, they’ll welcome you into their homes, cook you dinner, and then surprise you by setting up a table tennis net on their dining table and challenging you to a game. These are people who genuinely care about you, and it feels different to work with them.

What lesson from business school best prepared you for your career at Bain?

Trusting and supporting your team. For the first four months at INSEAD, we were assigned to a study group, in a curriculum with a heavy grade weighting on group work. There was so much work to hand in over those four months, you had no choice but to lean into your group and work together, balancing the load and helping your teammates meet their other commitments, like recruiting. I had a phenomenal group, where the major concern was whether we were helping one another enough. They were incredibly supportive, particularly during the hectic recruiting season.

That is what a Bain case team feels like. It’s an extremely supportive environment. The first thing we do on a case is talk about individual working styles, and how best we can work with one another, followed by a discussion of our non-work commitments, and how we can help each other keep to those. If it’s the end of the day, and everyone else has completed their tasks, and you’ve got more to do, the team will figure out how to take some of that load off your shoulders. As the saying goes, “A Bainie never lets another Bainie fail.”

What’s the most valuable thing you’ve learned so far at Bain?

Answer First. It’s a core component of the Bain toolkit, and one that takes some getting used to. The ability to assert an answer for a problem, when you’ve not performed any analysis, seemed counterintuitive to me. But once you learn that “Answer First” is really an iterative process, and that the final answer may look nothing like the original answer, it becomes a powerful tool for getting to the heart of any problem.

What advice would you give to someone who wants to work for Bain?

Talk to as many Bainies as you can, be direct with your questions, and honest with your concerns. Notice their manner, how they treat you, and treat other people. Are they really listening to you? Do they laugh frequently? All the while, don’t think about whether this is the firm you want to work for. Instead, think about whether these are people you’d enjoy working with.

When it comes to interviews, your Bain interviewer isn’t interested in how swiftly to crack the case. They are more interested in how you carry yourself through the interview, and whether you are genuinely engaging with them. The sooner you stop thinking about the interview as a test, and start to think about it as a genuinely interesting business problem you’re solving with a friend, the better off you’ll be.

What do you want your career to look like in 10 years?

Part of coming to Bain was figuring out the answer to that question. The only thing I’m sure of is that, having seen what ‘good’ culture looks like, I will always want to be part of a firm where people treat each other with respect and kindness.

My greatest personal or professional accomplishment is…organizing our INSEAD class graduation trip, where over 400 of our classmates and their partners came together in Phuket for three days before graduation, to celebrate the incredible ten months that had just passed. I wouldn’t say we pulled it off without any hitches, but there was an overwhelming feeling of happiness to be able to spend one last weekend together.

A fun fact about me people would be surprised to know is…I’m an evangelist for fried chicken, brunch, and most of all, the combination of the two.