Bain's recruitment director reveals exactly how to land a 6-figure promotion at the consulting firm

• Bain & Company is known to be one of the best places to work. The firm has earned spots on both national workplace rankings and diversity awards.
• With 58 offices in 37 countries, the firm plans to welcome 600 consultant hires and the largest class of 200 associate interns this year, the company told Business Insider.
• Keith Bevans, the firm's recruitment head, shared some insights on how Bain approaches hiring and promotions.
• Bevans encourages candidates to not only demonstrate empathy during interviews but also have a clear career vision of where they see themselves down the line.
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Keith Bevans knows what it's like to succeed at Bain. He moved from an entry-level consultant role, to partner, and now recruitment head.

When Bevans joined Bain as an associate consultant in 1996, he had just completed his master's degree in engineering at MIT. He briefly left the firm in 2000 to pursue an MBA degree at Harvard Business School and rejoined in 2002 as a managing partner at the consultancy's Chicago office.

"Our recruiting system, the careers portion of our website, the social media feeds for recruiting - those types of things all fall in my role," he said. "I've given a lot of thought to the career path and what people need to do to get to the next stage of their career at Bain or how they should think about that, the universities, other opportunities available to them."

Bain frequently lands the top spot on national workplace rankings such as Glassdoor's Employee Choice Awards (the firm has been in the top four for the last 12 years). It has also earned diversity honors from Mogul and Human Rights Campaign for being one of the most inclusive companies.

Throughout the Bevans's 23-year tenure at Bain, he's taken on leadership positions on the firm's promotion committee and diversity and inclusion initiatives. Bevans recruits for MBA and PhD-level candidates from all industries.

Bevans said the company plans to welcome 600 full-time hires and 200 interns this year. New hires with an MBA degree can expect a $165,000 base salary or a $32,000 compensation for a 10-week long internship.

Business Insider caught up with Bevans to discuss exactly how to get hired at the consultancy.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Bain will pay for your MBA

Weng Cheong: You mentioned that you worked at Bain then went to Harvard Business School for an MBA. If you already had your foot into the door into consulting, why leave the firm for business school?

Keith Bevans: My goal was always about finding the right path after MIT that would get me back to business school. And while I was in college, I heard about consulting as an industry and met some people that seem to be doing really cool things. Honestly, the biggest attraction for me to consulting was that they sent a lot of people back to business school and pay for it. That was very compelling, relative to the engineering jobs that wanted me to go back part-time much further into my career.

And so I came into Bain knowing that I was going to go back to business school. I think what's more interesting is that my plan was to go to school, come back due to commitment and then go back into industry. But at every step of the journey, Bain has been a better answer for my career goals than the hundreds of phone calls I've gotten to take other roles.

Hiring managers look for people with problem-solving skills and empathy

Cheong: How do you assess candidates?

Bevans: For one thing, there are a lot of commonalities regardless of the level you're coming in at Bain. You have to be a strong problem solver, and you have to be somebody who demonstrates empathy and gritty skills and can basically build those types of connections with clients.

Somebody who we think can give and receive coaching, and value the development of themselves as well as their team's. We want people who think about not just winning as an individual, but winning as a team to stand out in the process.

Know why you want to work at Bain

Cheong: How can candidates stand out in the process?

Bevans: To me, the first thing is knowing the clarity of your career vision. I think a lot of people out there don't know what they want to do with their lives and can't really focus on anything. Somewhere along the way their mentors tell them, "Well if you don't know what you want to do, you should do consulting because they do a little bit of everything." That turns out to not only be terrible career advice because it doesn't force you to be as introspective as you should be, but it's also not the most compelling reason somebody can make as to why they should be hired. "I'm not sure what I want, but you guys really don't seem to care so I want to work for you."

That isn't really a winning sales pitch. For me, understanding the journey you're on for your career and how Bain fits into that journey is step one. Step two is understanding the value proposition of Bain and how it's different than other consulting options that you consider. We work with our clients to get really great results - that's what we're about. We might publish papers and win awards. But at the end of the day, we are maniacally focused on doing right by our clients.

Diversity and inclusion goes far beyond hiring practices

Cheong: You mentioned your involvement with the company's diversity efforts. How are you diversifying your hires?

Bevans: We have six diversity affinity groups that focus on different aspects within diversity. But the way we approach diversity - it's not solely for the members of those affiliated groups. Our diversity groups are focused on recruiting, mentoring, coaching feedback, pro bono work, external advocacy, and generating intellectual property.

Where it gets interesting is how that actually manifests itself. For example, Blacks at Bain and Latinos at Bain are focused primarily on four different areas. One is to significantly increase Black and Latinx talent at Bain, two is strengthening our community within and beyond Bain, three is developing successful diverse leaders, and four is fostering a culture for inclusion at Bain.

In February, all the offices across North America were doing different events for Black History month. We often do cuisine events, where we will have Caribbean foods, African foods, and Southern food. We also did a group discussion on podcasts. We do it because it creates the type of environment where people can bring their whole selves and best selves to work. It creates an environment where people from very different backgrounds can come in and thrive regardless of their backgrounds. We're proud of the success we've seen, but we also realize there's a lot of work to get done.

Unlike other consulting firms, you don't get your specialization right away

Cheong: So I understand that there are different divisions within consulting. Do you recruit by placing candidates in certain departments right away or do you evaluate these candidates first and figure out their fit later?

Bevans: Yeah. The people we bring in 99% of the time, we bring them in as general manager consultants, which means we don't expect you to specialize right away in your career. We don't expect you to pick a practice area in your first year. And that is different than some firms where you can come in and say, "Look, I really want to do retail and I want to join your retail practice."

At Bain, we actually want you to see a lot of different industries. Overtime, especially once you're a first or second year manager, you'll affiliate more closely with a practice area and build on it. That's not to say you won't be an expert early in your career. You'll be an expert probably in two or three different areas after a few years at Bain, but we're not going to keep you exclusively to a practice area right up front. You join Bain and overtime, you specialize.

Cheong: So is finding your specialization is how you get promoted?

Bevans: The way to think about this is - earlier in your career, we're looking at your progress in three main dimensions: Problem-solving skills, communication skills, and team skills. And we have a pretty robust set of sub-components.

These three areas are where you need to show proficiency at each stage of your career, and when you show the proficiency in all those areas at a level for promotion, you get promoted. That doesn't mean that you get promoted on a fixed timeline. Your specialization becomes more important the more senior you get. If you're an associate consultant trying to get promoted to senior associate consultant, I wouldn't be promoting you because you're an expert in a particular industry. I'd be promoting you because you've proven to be a very capable analyst that can oftentimes run independently on complicated work streams, communicate with equity clients effectively, and be a leader on the team.

As you get promoted to partner, that's where your expertise becomes very relevant in the unique expertise and the skills that you bring into the three practice areas we discussed.

Your success at Bain is measured based on three main areas, and that determines your chances for a promotion

Cheong: How do you determine who is ready for a promotion?

Bevans: Firms certainly look at utilization and billable hours, and all the other metrics. For us, we're looking at people who continue to grow in all the three areas. Are they growing in the problem-solving dimension? One is understanding their work stream and driving their work stream. As they get more senior, they're now managing people with competitive work streams and they'll be managing a whole project or multiple projects before they know it.

Success in problem solving is about increasing complexity and increasing the breadth of the problem that you're solving. A junior person on the team might be working on a manufacturing facility case to improve the inbound and outbound logistics. But a more senior person on the team might be managing two or three associate consultants across multiple facilities. A more senior person might actually be looking at the entire manufacturing network and trying to get that to full potential - it would be a transformation case for a client. We have a pretty well-defined criteria for what it means to show that you're ready for promotion on the problem-solving side. But the same is true in client and communication skills and team skills. We need to see you demonstrate that you're ready for the next level.

Bain hires with the intent to fill their leadership pipeline

Cheong: Why do you invest in young professionals right out of college or business school?

Bevans: We've been on a 16% growth rate each year for 20 years. We also tend to hire people and develop them to be our leadership team members.

When I'm on campus and I'm recruiting bachelor degree students or I'm on an MBA campus recruiting MBA students, I'm thinking about their potential to be leaders at Bain. From a promotion standpoint, it's a very rigorous job and you have to be very committed to doing it well. For us, I hire every single person looking at their potential to be a future member of the leadership team and I work like hell to get them there. It's nice to say we have industry-leading growth from a business standpoint, but for me what that means is that we are delivering the value proposition to our employees, which is we are hiring people with phenomenal potential and and realizing that potential because they're the leadership of the firm today.

What our growth means to me is that I'm hiring really great people, but I'm investing in them like crazy. We wouldn't be able to grow anywhere near the way that we've grown for the last 20 years. That takes you back full circle to us being the best place to work and all of those things and having great training and great diversity. We all have a mutually aligned goal. I want you to come here and be successful because your success helps the business. It becomes a virtuous cycle for us.

If you have a tip about a consulting firm that you'd like to share with Business Insider, please email Weng Cheong at wcheong@businessinsider.com.