does anyone have any idea how many people typically apply to Bain (or Mck or BCG) during the Milkround? What percentage of these go through to 1st round, 2nd round, get offers, etc ?

in terms of percentages, i have heard from a recruitement agency for a top tier strat house that it is sth like 20-25% for the first two, and 50% in the third. That would mean that 2.5% of those that get invited actually get an offer.Not sure if that varies for grads.good luck

What you are saying is that 2.5% of those invited to interview are successful with say, Bain and McKinsey? Running over the numbers, say Bain London takes in 25 people, that means they must interview 1000 people..in the alloted 4 days? Perhaps the recruitment agency you were taking to recruit for a Chinese Paddy field, and not a strat house

See my recent comments on 21913 for more details.About 1 in 10 who get invited to an interview will get an offer.

Jim, to clarify: the percentages I mentioned were the actual "success" rates of the candidates this recruitement placed at a top3 strat house for experienced hires (not for a chinese paddy field; and not in the UK).

profblaumann, Perhaps you might consider sending forward candidates with a better chance of success.Do your clients know that they have a 2.5% chance of receiving an offer?Patrick Bateman

The "client" is the company, not the individual jobseeker. If the company asks for a list of 40 people to maximise their choice for the one post, that's what they get.

Job hunting success rate is always a scary number. My guess is that for a typical role the overall average is 150 applicants; 12 interviewed; 2 second interviewed; and 1 hired. This does not vary as much as you might think. A colleague of mine was interviewing "top" graduates recently - all with straight A performance and "playing hockey for england" type backgrounds. He still interviewed 12 people per role so there were still 11 rejections.

Patrick,what makes you think I am a recruiter? I was merely asking my headhunter how lucky I should consider myself, having just passed the first round....

Just thought I'd add to these answers to the original q - was told by a Bain manager that they had 3000 cvs this year. I don't know how many interviews they do though, I know it's 50 in Oxford, I guess the same in Cambridge, and maybe more in London? I think they only interview in those 3 places though. They normally take about 25 in a typical year, so the success rate from cvs to job in pretty low (1 in 120), much better if you get an interview. Given that they're only doing 2 days of 2nd round interviews I guess they'll be down to a maximum of 100 for 2nd round? Hope this helps someone out there.

Naomi - thanks for answering the original question and I concur that these success rates look pretty comparable with what I witnessed during my years as a strategy consultant with Roland Berger in London. 1000+ milkround CVs would not be unusual for any well-known strategy consultancy and then somewhere in the region of 100-200 being first-round interviewed across Oxford, Cambridge and London would be the norm.In essence less than 10% of finalists that apply will get an interview. And of those who make the first-round interview stage only 10-20% will go on to get an offer. Hope that helps and good luck to all those out there awaiting their graduation offers...Tony RestellTop-Consultant.com