Whether you love management consultants or hate them, you can thank McKinsey & Company for their continued existence. McKinsey is widely credited with establishing management consulting as a key professional service. It wasn’t the first consulting firm, but its pioneering work in the US in the 1930s and 1940s focused on strategy consulting and positioned management consultancy as a profession on a par with lawyers and doctors. Today it works with private and public sector organisations in areas such as strategy, organisation, operations and technology and employs more than 12,000 staff in its 80 international offices, including about 750 in London. McKinsey recruits between 20 and 30 graduates a year to work as business analysts in the UK. There are separate programmes for those with MBAs or more than two years' work experience.

McKinsey — the bottom line: