Specialist - Professional Development at McKinsey & Company

About the job

Qualifications

• University degree required; human resources (HR) or other professional degree preferred

• 5+ years of experience in people related areas, especially in diversity and inclusion

• Familiarity with leadership and development programs in South Africa

• Experience in mentoring, coaching and advising diverse profiles

• Strong passion for people development

• Strong maturity and ability to always maintain highest level of confidentiality

• Excellent communication, interpersonal and influencing skills

• Ability to build credible and trust-based relationships, sound judgement

• Team player with customer service attitude

• Excellent organizational and multitasking skills

• Ability to identify and manage priorities and deliver high quality outputs under deadline pressure

• Great sense of ownership and can-do attitude; drive to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of the team and the work

• Ability to work independently, take appropriate initiative and problem solve, even in ambiguous situations

What You'll Do

You'll perform staffing and people development for the Johannesburg junior associate cohort and manage the McKinsey Black Network initiative.

In this role, you'll manage consulting staffing process including obtaining detailed information from partners regarding studies and staffing needs. You will develop professional relationships with consultants to understand their experience, aspirations and circumstances, and provide coaching and guidance to the consultants on their staffing and professional development. You will also recommend best available teams for each project, balance client, team and individual needs, and communicate decisions and rationale. You will coordinate with other relevant departments such as finance and recruiting.

You'll develop and implement tailored development and learning programs for the consultants, including new hire orientation and onboarding, leadership trainings, hard and soft skills trainings. You'll monitor and raise emerging people issues with office leadership and drive associated problem solving and program development as needed. You'll enhance consultants development by leading / participating in office initiatives such as cohort connectivity events, team talks, and development leader group meetings, etc. You'll maintain accurate and up-to-date information in all people information systems and develop these systems so that they are reliable and efficient. You will lead analysis and reporting of key staffing and professional development metrics for local office leadership. You'll develop a network of staffers / professional development managers within the firm to facilitate inbound / outbound staffing assignments and to ensure the flow and implementation of best practices.

Additionally, you'll manage other consultants personnel practices as needed e.g. budgets, exit / leave processes, mobility and work on a variety of relevant ad hoc people projects as needed.

You'll play a leading role in the McKinsey Black Network people strategy development, working closely with all relevant stakeholders and develop plans and initiatives to improve coaching and apprenticeship, mentoring and learning of McKinsey Black Network consultants in order to lay the foundations for a successful onboarding and career progression from pre-associate to partner. You'll define and track key impact/effective metrics and progress of initiatives, provide reporting to office leadership and stakeholders, and proactively propose actions to correct/ improve. You'll continually identify and raise emerging people challenges related to McKinsey Black Network colleagues and proactively drive problem solving and action plan as needed with key stakeholders. You'll develop a network of professional development managers for McKinsey Black Network consultants within the firm and work closely to ensure best practices and ideas for McKinsey Black Network initiatives and perform ad hoc projects as may be required, e.g. provide input into broader office and regional/firm initiatives (e.g. All-in & Diversity) as is relevant. Lastly, you'll provide the required coaching and support to other McKinsey Black Network consultants, as needed.

Who You'll Work With

You'll be based in the Johannesburg and will be part of our professional development team. You will work closely with the Africa office leadership group, consultants, and the professional development team.

You'll work within the McKinsey Africa Office and will be responsible for managing the junior associate cohort in our Johannesburg office. You will also manage our McKinsey Black Network initiatives across Africa.