Hello everyone, my name is Kenton Kivestu. I'm an ex-Googler,
an ex-BCG consultant and the founder of RocketBlocks, an online platform that
helps candidates prepare for interviews. In today's RocketBlocks mini lesson
we're going to do something a little bit different. I'm going to sit down with one
of our RocketBlocks experts, Rob Reiling, who's a former Engagement Manager from
McKinsey and currently a general manager at the real estate tech startup Opendoor.
And in this conversation - which we're doing over Zoom, given all the
current status with coronavirus - we are going to touch on a few different topics
over the course of this series. We're going to talk about consulting
interviews in general and his advice, his insights from being an interviewer at
McKinsey and sitting on the other side of the table and, finally, what it's like to
actually be on the job at McKinsey as a consultant and an Engagement Manager.
So let's go ahead and jump in.
Tell me a little bit about what a day in the life of a McKinsey Engagement
Manager is like and I know there's a lot of variance and that's the hardest part, that it depends, but
you know, if you could talk about some of the common commonalities and give us
some sense of that. Sure. I mean I think the...you know the...like in any
management position, right, like your number one job should be doing
everything possible to keep the thrash and the pressure off of your team
members that's coming from like all different angles, and making sure that
they are focused on the highest impact things that are going to deliver to the
client, you know. So, obviously keep your your partners happy and like
the senior partners happy. Yep. And so like what does that look like, right? Like one - you know,
for better or worse - it looks like a ton of meetings during the day, right, where
hopefully you're able to Iike keep your team members out of a lot of those, right?
So that they are able to like keep working. Yeah.
The meeting umbrella. The meeting umbrella, right.
You know you got to keep the...you know, it's not that dissimilar
to like a you know a product manager where you're basically trying to like
you know save the developers and save the engineers from like any thrash
that's gonna hit them, so they can keep their fingers on the keys. Yep. Right and
so I think you know that that that is really important. So you're...you
know you're gathering you're gathering the direction from like all the various
stakeholders, and then hopefully you're crossing it with the insights that are
coming out of the team's work, right, seeing where that like is moving the
direction of the process and then pushing forward, right. One of the one
of the you know unfortunate things about being the meeting umbrella during the day is
that like that that means that you need to be like the worker and the reviewer
at night. Like you end up with like that mix of of work going on. And tell me a
little bit about - sorry to interrupt but - tell me a little bit about what are the
sources of thrash commonly for an Engagement Manager?
And then after that talk a little bit about what is that individual work - when
you say, like, you got to be the reviewer and the...it was the reviewer and the something else
at night. Yeah. I mean like what that sort of aspect of the job looks like. Sure. I
mean you know sources of thrash are multiple, right. Like they are they are
both like overactive clients and extremely demanding clients you know and
overactive partners and extremely demanding partners, right. And it like you
know you your job as the Engagement Manager - right, because like you end up as
like the nexus of a lot of these different parts - is making sure that you
are like continuing to reorient all of those players onto like the most
important deliverables that you have promised as a team and not allowing like
scope creep and making sure that like you are staying super super focused now.
Like you're you're not always right, right? Like and the thing that you thought
was the most important thing on Monday like you have to listen to good ideas as
they're coming from the client and coming from like the senior partners.
But you also need to put next things that feel like you know lots of work for for
a little return, and it's your job to like understand what that is. What was
your other question? You talked about the difference of - because you're the meeting
umbrella during the day - it means you're essentially the reviewer at night. So
talk a little bit about what you mean by that.
Yeah. So I mean so then then in the evening, right like ideally as an
Engagement Manager, and certainly as you get more senior in the role, you are
spending much more time editing than you are creating. Yep. And so like by evening
time you should be, you know, reviewing both like slides and analytics,
approaches that have been generated by the team, such that like you're able to
turn that around for them in the evening and they can work up in the morning and
like move things forward. Also a lot of your team meetings are
going to be at night where you're spending the one-on-one time talking
development - all of that's going to take place then.
Great, I hope you enjoyed that excerpt from my conversation with Rob Reiling. If
there are specific questions or topics you'd love to see us discuss with RocketBlocks
Experts in the future, please leave those in the comments below, and we'll
consider them for future interviews. So thank you so much for watching
We have a ton of great content coming on both the consulting and the product
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thanks again for watching, and have a great day!