Continuous Learning at BCG

BCG fosters an atmosphere of apprenticeship combined with constructive feedback to promote personal growth and shape career development.

Apprenticeship provides on-the-job practical learning from BCG colleagues and clients. The nature of consulting work is to continuously confront new challenges with fresh thinking. It requires not only expertise and experience, but also the ability to grasp information quickly, size up situations rapidly, and assess issues swiftly in order to develop innovative approaches to solve client problems.

Everyone you work with at BCG strives to be a role model for his or her colleagues. Team members have different backgrounds, experiences, and points of view, so each day you will have the chance to teach something and learn something. Working together provides a hands-on, real-time education that cannot be obtained in the classroom.

The backbone of the apprenticeship model is feedback, which is given formally and informally. You will work closely with colleagues in a team environment, one in which others depend on your skills and the knowledge you are building. Feedback from other team members will help you guide your personal and professional growth.

On-the-job apprenticeship also promotes self-evaluation. The team environment enables you to easily benchmark your performance against that of your peers. Observing the responsibilities and skills of more senior members of the team can help you set higher personal aspirations and goals and achieve your full potential.

BCG places every new hire with a personal career advisor, a more seasoned colleague who is ideally situated to help guide career development.

Your career advisor follows your progress closely, seeking your insights and collecting feedback from your colleagues on a regular basis. He or she guides, inspires, and coaches you as you strive for the next level of performance and the growth that comes with it.

At BCG, we believe not in one-size-fits-all solutions but in the importance of helping each individual chart his or her own course to success. Your career advisor works with you to help you define that path, tracking your progress on a regular basis. He or she makes sure staffing decisions and training help you develop your full potential. Your advisor also shares information about your progress when advisors in each office meet periodically to make career advancement decisions.

Our commitment to training is significant. During your first year at BCG, you can anticipate spending as much as three weeks of your time in core curriculum training. While time devoted to training does not remain as extensive as you gain responsibility at the firm, we continue to offer—and encourage our staff to take advantage of—development opportunities. Your continuous learning benefits you, our clients, and our firm.

For associates and consultants, training focuses on building analytical, problem-solving, and communications skills. As your career progresses at BCG and as you take on new responsibilities that require additional expertise, you can enroll in core training programs that we have designed to deliver the training you need to succeed.

At each of our core training sessions, you will have the opportunity to get to know and learn alongside colleagues from your city or region or, perhaps, from a country on the other side of the world. We consider networking across offices and tenures just as important as the new material you will learn at these sessions. Among the advantages of the networks you will build with colleagues is the ability to leverage BCG’s vast resources around the world.

Training sessions conducted by senior members of the BCG team give you the opportunity to get to know BCG experts, to explore their vast expertise and experience one-on-one, and to learn firsthand how training can provide you with the tools to ensure success for our clients.

We also bring in experienced trainers and coaches to conduct certain core-skills training sessions. These world-class professionals, many of whom have worked with us for years, apply their expertise to building yours. The combination of external trainers and BCG experts ensures that you receive the best training possible.

Because each career path is distinct and each consultant has different training needs, we have developed e-learning modules and virtual classrooms to personalize your training.

E-learning provides targeted access to specific practical skills. BCG offers more than 200 e-learning modules that deliver self-training on a vast range of subjects—from analytical tools to how-to guides. Easily accessible and easy-to-follow e-learning provides knowledge on demand—what you need to know when you need to know it.

Virtual classrooms offer the chance to learn directly from BCG experts across the globe. At these live online sessions, you will learn about the cutting-edge business thinking that is a result of our client work and that could inspire your own career.