A Day In The Life Of An Associate At Mckinsey & Company

What does a day in the life of an associate look like? This is a tough question because I don't think any associate at McKinsey will tell you there's necessarily a typical day.

One thing I will say is that in an associate role at a firm like McKinsey, you're on a project that can last anywhere from four weeks to eight months or more. The duration of your project will really influence what your day-to-day looks like. For example, on a shorter project, you might have longer hours and a different project structure for your day-to-day compared to a longer, perhaps implementation-focused project.

Typically, some of the standard things that happen in an associate's day are: I would be up early to get my workouts in. Then I'd log into my computer quickly to see what's going on. We usually get into the office between 8:30 and 9:30 AM.

A standard for every project team is a daily check-in and a check-out. This is an opportunity to sit with your engagement manager and the rest of your project team to discuss your priorities for the day. Everyone's on the same page about your plan to get your work done. It's a really helpful meeting to get strong alignment before starting work.

After your check-in, you might have independent work for an hour or two, followed by a client meeting. Often, you'll have prepared content to present to your client or you're looking for input from them. Then you might have a team problem-solving session around 10:00 AM.

Problem-solving sessions involve more senior folks on your team, like partners, associate partners, or senior partners. They help you problem-solve how to reach your desired solution. For example, if you're helping a clothing company increase revenue, you might have hypotheses on how to do that. In these sessions, you present your ideas to senior team members and ask for their advice.

Those are super helpful meetings where you have to come prepared to present your hypotheses to senior individuals at the firm who are there to advise and steer your work. Then you'll have lunch, which is often a working lunch. It's rare to take many breaks during the day, but you're always with your team, so it's always a good time.

You might have another team problem-solving session in the afternoon, perhaps around 2:30 PM. That's followed by more working time and your check-out, which I mentioned. You'll always bookend your day with your check-in in the morning and check-out in the afternoon.

Your check-in might be around 8:30 AM, and your check-out might be around 5:30 PM. This is when the team gets back together to discuss what remains for the day. I might still have to do some analyses in the evening or create some PowerPoint slides. I'd talk to my engagement manager to align on expectations for the evening.

This is also a good opportunity to say, "I think I have a lot left and might need some help because I don't want to be working all night." Your engagement manager will try to figure out how to reprioritize to avoid overloading your evening or who else can lend a hand if they have a lighter workload. Then you'll usually go for dinner. I would finish up my day between 8:00 and 10:00 PM.