Possibility to move in Brussels Offices

Hi Lucia, 

Complex situation indeed. 

With B1, I believe it will be tough because most firms are looking for at least C1. 

I would connect in advance with the Belgian recruiters of your target firms to avoid disappointment. Explain to them the situation, say that you'd ideally mostly serve clients in English while your French gets better, but that you do have basic conversational french that you could employ in the meantime. 

It's not impossible for them to consider you, but language is a big obstacle in some offices. 

Best of luck,
Cristian

Hi there,

Congrats on the BCG offer as well as the Big Tech job! It sounds like you have a bright career ahead of you.

I think it's good to plan, but you also need to wait. See how the BCG role goes. See if you like it. Once there, start to see how the mechanics work and what's possible/not possible (speak to people in the office!).

That said, there are two really important points here:

• B1 language understanding is not sufficient to work in a top-tier firm. You need C1.
• Moves within 6 months are extremely rare (I've never heard of this), especially for an entry-level candidate. 

I do think you need to reset expectations a bit to be more of a 2+ year horizon and higher language proficiency.

That said, you need to see what they say! Perform well on the job and see what happens.

By the way, you know you don't have to transfer in order to work there? In Europe you can often get assigned to projects and do temporary office transfers etc. This would be an easier short term approach than a permanent transfer.

Good luck!

Hi Lucia,

Congratulations on the BCG offer! In terms of your question

Q: After the six months my idea would be to try to join the Brussels office of another MBB. Considering that my knowledge of French is B1, do you see it possible? I would be an appealing candidate for the Belgian Market?

If a company requires fluency in French, B1 most likely won’t be enough. Whether French is required depends on the company. 

The best way to find out would be to look for a referral, which would also make your application stronger. You can find more on that below:

▶ How to Get an MBB Invitation

▶ The Exact Steps to Get a Referral

At the same time, if you can wait a bit I would not discard the option to move internally with BCG after 1-2 years, in particular if you can improve your French in the meantime.

Good luck!

Francesco

Hi Lucia,

First of all, congratulations on the internship offer from BCG!

I think this is an interesting question that may be relevant for many people. I would be happy to share my thoughts on it:

• First of all, if you are set on strategy consulting, I would highly advise you to conduct the interviews with other strategy consulting companies either before or after your BCG internship, given that you will most probably not have sufficient time to thoroughly prepare while interning.
• Moreover, generally speaking, most Brussels offices of strategy consulting companies accept English-speaking candidates, so you should be fine here.
• Lastly, given that this seems to be a period of change and experimentation for you, I would advise you to wait for the first few months of your BCG internship to pass and see how you like the work in general and at BCG. Depending on your assessment, your career plans might very well change again.

If you would like a more detailed discussion on how to address your specific situation, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.

Best,

Hagen

Hi there,

based on my 6-year wokring experience in the BCG office you mention below

1) Strategy to move: If you can convert visiting associate to an associate position (full-time), I would wait after 1 year+ and make formal “permanent transfer” request internally 

• If backed-up by strong personal reasons (e.g. family needs, …) they are obviously taken very seriously and granted in most cases 
• Applying to another BCG office while working for one is a tricky and risky move - obviously you can explore the other consultancies, but if you have a fit w/ BCG, I do not see the advantage of cutting the “relationship” 

2) Belgium MBB offices

• Most MBB should accept english-speaking only - but please check through website, network. 
• Not uber competitive, so a good demand / supply balance that could increase chances of getting it   

Hope it helps

Generally you have to be fluent in Flemish or French to work in Belgium. Without it you stand a better chance if have strong support in the office - and they will staff you on cases where language won’t be a problem. Your best chance of doing that would be through BCG as you’ll have grown your network. That being said, it worth looking at the recruitment pages / reaching out to the recruiters in Brussels to see what they say. Id recommend nailing your time at BCG and seeing where the opportunities take you.

Good luck! 

Hi there,

Your best course of action should be to get a FT offer for BCG. Once you have that in the bag, you have more options. This includes mainly two things:

• Stronger applications to other MBB/Tier 2 firms in Brussels on the back for FT employment and having proven yourself as a Visiting Associate.
• Opportunity to initiate a ‘soft’ transfer within BCG from Milan to Brussels i.e. first get staffed on projects, build relationships, create pull from Belgium, then transfer permanently. This usually takes a couple of years minimum and you must balance your desires to move with your responsibilities toward your home office i.e. Milan.

What could be an issue is your language proficiency. If clients are indeed local and French speaking, B1 won't cut it. However, there's also a fair amount of English speaking clients so it may not be such a big issue.

Hope this helps a bit. Please let me know if there's anything more specific you need help with.

Best of luck!
Moritz

Hi,

your best way to land a job at MBB is now probably to perform well during your time at MBB and secure a return offer. However, this would likely be specific to the Milan office. If you want to change offices across countries and internal management regions, you have to have a longer tenure typically. And you need sponsors from the Belgian office. 

Of course you can try your luck by just applying to MCK or Bain in Brussels and maybe you just do that so you don’t feel any regrets. But with BCG you’d have existing relationships already and already a foot in the door.

Overall, I would recommend considering a timeframe of 1-2 years for a Brussels move if you took the BCG route. 

Good luck 

Brussels usually accepts well English speaking candidates.