OFFICE SELECTION
You find an office hiring aggressively.
Perfect.
More growth must mean more seats, more projects, and a better chance of getting in.
Maybe. But growth is not one thing.
An office can be adding people because demand is expanding, because a particular practice is scaling, because attrition created gaps, or because the firm is shifting work into a new market.
Those stories do not mean the same thing for a PhD applicant.
“They are hiring” is the signal everyone sees... so look one layer deeper
Job postings are useful.
But a generic Consultant posting tells you surprisingly little about what is changing inside an office.
- repeated hiring across levels
- new partners or senior leaders in a practice
- visible office expansion
- growing clusters of employees in a sector
- recent local client work
- new specialised teams
- consistent recruiting over multiple cycles
One signal is noise. A cluster becomes a story.
If you want to compare firms across markets before going office by office, Top Consulting Firms by Geography gives you the broader map.
The fastest-growing part of the office may have nothing to do with you
Imagine an office growing rapidly because of digital transformation work.
You are a life-sciences PhD choosing it because “the office is expanding.”
That fact may be true and still be almost irrelevant to your recruiting logic.
Growth only becomes useful when you can answer: What is growing?
| Signal | Tempting conclusion | Better interpretation |
|---|---|---|
| More job postings | Office is booming | Which roles and levels? |
| Larger graduate class | More opportunity | Is ADC hiring growing too? |
| New practice leader | Entire office is expanding | Which capability is being built? |
| New local clients | More project volume | In what sectors? |
| More office space | Headcount must rise | Is it expansion, consolidation, or relocation? |
Follow the work, not the headline.
Your PhD gives you another clue that MBA applicants may overlook
Search for domain adjacency.
If you study oncology, semiconductors, climate modelling, neuroscience, energy systems, machine learning, public health, or another specialised field, ask whether the office sits near a client ecosystem where that knowledge has commercial relevance.
Not because you need to become a specialist forever.
Because early credibility can help.
An office with growing work in a sector adjacent to your research may let you combine technical depth with generalist consulting skills instead of abandoning one to prove the other.
For an example of how an office network can be examined more closely, explore Top BCG Office Locations.
There is one signal candidates rarely check
Look at movement out of the office.
Where do consultants transfer?
Where do they exit?
Which practices seem to retain people and build senior leaders?
A growing office that gives you weak access to the work you care about may still be the wrong choice.
A smaller office with a dense practice, strong mentorship, and recurring clients in your target sector may give you far more exposure.
Growth is a clue, not a ranking.
So when someone tells you, “That office is growing,” do not immediately move it to the top of your list.
Ask one more question.
Growing in what?
That answer is where the useful information begins.