by Thoughtfox staff

McKinsey & Company, the well-known US-based management consultancy, has recently made a call on its website for the so-called McKinsey Achievement Award scheme; the link to this call has of course also been circulated on various social media outlets. But a large percentage of those who might take an interest in the call—and consider themselves eligible to apply for it based upon its summary description—would end up getting disappointed if they clicked on the subsidiary links through which they are required to make their applications.

How could that be? Well, the company has cleverly concealed from its front call a key specification: the specification that the call is restricted to (what the company should have explicitly stated) ‘members of marginalized communities’. The company has served up a cheap clickbait of sorts—unbecoming of any reputable firm—via this front call; and it has topped up that tactic with a drop-down menu of applicant categories pegged to a set of global geographical locations. When a prospective applicant to the award clicks on a relevant geographical location, then the specification concealed from the front call shows up in different avatars: All of these avatars of course preclude many prospective applicants falsely lured-in as eligible respondents to the front call.

Let us go through McKinsey’s advertising trap carefully below. The front call states the following:

To be eligible for a McKinsey Achievement Award, you should be an early professional with fewer than five years of work experience or a current student working toward a graduate or undergraduate degree. We welcome applications from all universities and disciplines, including law, medicine, and engineering, as well as PhD, MBA, and Master’s degrees.

But when one scrolls down, one sees the following drop-down categories: Africa; Asia-Pacific; Central and South America; Commonwealth of Independent States; Europe; Middle East and Turkey; and North America. That’s fair enough, one would think before proceeding to click on one’s relevant region. However, if one were to click

• ‘Africa’, then one would discover that it is in fact a call for ‘McKinsey Women Award’—meant only for ‘individuals who self-identify as women’.

• ‘Asia-Pacific’, then one would discover that the call is collectively, yet exclusively, for a ‘McKinsey LGBTQ+ Award’ (meant for ‘individuals who self-identify as part of the LGBTQ+ community’); a ‘McKinsey Social Mobility Award’ (meant for ‘individuals who have faced socioeconomic challenges and/or come from an under-resourced environment’); and a ‘McKinsey Women Award’.

• ‘Central and South America’, then one would learn that the call is restrictively for a ‘McKinsey Black Talent Award’ (meant for those ‘who self-identify as Black or African–American’); a ‘McKinsey LGBTQ+ Award’; a ‘McKinsey First-Generation and Social Mobility Award’; and a ‘McKinsey Women Award’.

• ‘Commonwealth of Independent States’, then one would learn that the call is exclusively for a ‘McKinsey Women Award’.

• ‘Europe’, then one would learn that it is a call jointly, but restrictively, for a ‘McKinsey Ethnic Diversity and Social Mobility Award’ (meant for ‘individuals from under-represented backgrounds in leadership positions’); a ‘McKinsey LGBTQ+ Award’; and a ‘McKinsey Women Award’.

• ‘Middle East and Turkey’, then one would learn that the call is for a ‘‘McKinsey Women Award’.

• ‘North America’, then one would learn that the call is collectively for a ‘McKinsey Black Talent Award’; a ‘McKinsey LGBTQ+ Award’; a ‘McKinsey Social Mobility Award’; and a ‘McKinsey Women Award.’

There is thus a big probability that a large percentage of individuals excited about the front call would discover—upon clicking on their relevant geographical links—that that call had in fact misled them: It was not really meant for them—and that McKinsey & Company has simply wasted their time.

Worse, given the nature of the actual awards—which are meant to be given to individuals belonging to geographically targeted ranges of marginalised communities worldwide—one won’t feel right admitting, let alone expressing, one’s frustration regarding this type of advertising. One may in fact feel a bit guilty about feeling frustrated. But that’s the whole point: In the given scenario, McKinsey & Company not only hoodwinks visitors into digging deeper into a call from which they are in fact precluded, but it also ensures that they don’t get to judge it for having done just that to them!

The company wishes to collect—via this front call, and at the expense of casual readers’ and prospective applicants’ time—as large a volume of ‘goodwill’ as possible in response to its global offer of a ‘McKinsey Achievement Award’ (and its underlying outreach to marginalized communities). Unfortunately, though, what the company ends up deserving is a citation for deceptive advertising—and for its brazen theft of many prospective applicants’ time in this Age of Attention Economy.