Ex McK-Intern here: From my short-term experience, I'd say there are folks who genuinely want to help their clients while others are mostly in for the prestige

Ex McK-Intern here: From my short-term experience, I'd say there are folks who genuinely want to help their clients while others are mostly in for the prestige and the money. The business model of staffing young graduates alongside more experienced people is actually quite reasonable as the experts could steer the overall project while the juniors would do the number crunching and info gathering. I personally see their value for a broader circle in the sense that if the consultants can make a client $$$ or reduce costs, this can either lead to overall improvement of business and thus increase employment or - in case people need to be fired - save the rest of the employees from their whole company going out of business in the worst case. Just to briefly touch the most common criticisms. Nevertheless, I decided not to take their offer afterwards, partly due to exactly those shady practices that went well beyond even my quite relaxed sense of business ethics.