MBB/Tier 2 Consulting with less travel?

Hi there - 

1. Firms with less travel in London: Travel cases in the London office are generally quite low. When I worked at OC&C, I barely ever heard of anyone on a travel case. Bain London as well has minimal travel involved. Mckinsey from what I hear also does not have much travel out of the London office. BCG - could potentially have the most amount of travel due to the staffing pool being London, Amsterdam and Brussels. 
2. Conversation with staffing to avoid travel: From experience and some understanding speaking to the staffing managers, one thing I have learnt is that you can have 1 or 2 non-negotiables. For you, you could always add travel as your non-negotiable and they are generally quite good about honouring that. However, you might need to compromise with something else. For instance, my friends who are parents basically try to avoid travel cases at all costs. 
3. Industries that don't have much travel: Doing PE diligence work almost never has any travel, so if you join the relevant practice in any of the firms and continue on there, you might manage to quite easily escape the travel aspect.  Financial services in the UK also tend to have considerably less travel as most of the institutions are HQd in London. 

In London it's totally possible to be at MBB and not travel - if you choose the industries which are based in London. If you work in finance, consumer goods - it's likely that the majority of your work will be in London. If you're in healthcare, oil and gas - it's likely that your work will not be in London. 

I recommend speaking with the recruiters at each of the firms and seeing how easy it is to choose your projects to optimise for travel (or lack of!). McKinsey has a fairly open staffing model where you essentially have to find someone to put you on their project, whereas Bain has one where you're more likely to get placed and so have less control. 

The question is how willing you are to trade lack of travel for industry / team. It's always a trade off but you do need to be aware that it is a trade off. 

Good luck! 

3 factors to consider if you want to work locally:

#1 - Company: 

• McKinsey, BCG typically requires frequent travel given their global/regional staffing model 
• Bain/Roland Berger/ Kearney/ etc. requires less travel given their more local staffing model

#2 - Office size: All firms have large offices in London which makes it more feasible for you work locally given the large number of local projects.

#3 - Industry focus: Private Equity practices require minimal travel. Public services would require less travel as well. 

In general, firms are also perspective to your preferences of wanting to travel less/ more during staffing. 

Hopefully this helps.

Jorn
 

OC&C is probably the firm with the least traveling.

This is due to the fact that OC&C focuses on commercial due diligence, that does not require major traveling. 

LEK also seem to be working out of their offices a lot.

Staffing always depends on the project situation. You can state your preferences internally of course but it shouldn’t be considered a guarantee. In any case, wherever a lot of due diligence work is done, the travel requirements are usually low.

Hello,

Staffing models differ between firms, but I want to echo and emphasize on an important point that Eishan and Emily have mentioned - which is that having a requirement to only work locally is really a trade off. 

This is something that can be very frustrating. It might take a while for the below to surface (after spending some time in the firm) but the below are real conundrums my friends (who only want to stay local) have struggled with:

• What if the only local projects available at your time of staffing are projects that you absolutely have no interest in/dread to do?
• What if you do not like working with the constellations that typically do local projects?
• What if the projects available to you locally do not really address your development needs?

Not something you can optimize and predict for before joining a firm - so join the firm that you think is the best fit for you, and be aware of the potential trade-offs of only working locally. 

Hi there,

Quite honestly, off the top of my head I do not know the answer to this question. That said, you should absolutely feel free to include this question as you network with the options. It's going to be so specific to the firm-office-function-role combo that you should ideally hear from the horse's mouth. Finally, during offer negotiations you can look to include a promise and/or discussion around maximum allowed travel.

Good luck in your recruiting!