Management Consultant
Name: Christoph Buck
Degree: MA UZH (lic. oec. publ.)
Profession: Management Consultant
Employer: MMG Management Consulting (Switzerland) AG
Describe your job in one sentence.
I advise financial institutions on the strategic and operational development of their investment business.
What are the three main tasks in your job?
- Project work with clients: developing strategies and concepts for the investment business and implementing them together with the client.
- Business development: identifying new topics and further developing our range of services.
- Sales: maintaining existing client relationships, establishing new contacts, and positioning our services specifically in the market.
What do you think is the best/most exciting thing about this job?
The contact with different financial institutions and the opportunity to actively shape innovative topics in the investment business make the job varied and dynamic.
What is the biggest challenge in this job?
Managing different projects, clients, and internal issues at the same time. Expectations are high and priorities change quickly.
What does it take to enter this profession or be successful in it?
As a management consultant, you need initiative, strong communication skills, and analytical thinking. Curiosity, resilience, and the ability to quickly grasp complex issues and translate them into actionable solutions are important. Those who take responsibility, think proactively, are good with people, and focus on relevant issues have the best prerequisites for success in this profession.
What opportunities for advancement/further development are there?
In consulting, you can typically progress from project work to managing client projects to becoming a partner. As a partner, you take on entrepreneurial responsibility as a co-owner of the company and actively shape its strategic development. In addition, you can specialize in a particular field or take on leadership in a specific area.
As a graduate, what would you have liked to know about this profession?
University trains you to take an analytical approach to finding solutions. However, the best solution is not necessarily the most analytically perfect one, but the one that can actually be implemented (keyword 80/20). At least as important is the ability to recognize the motives and interests of stakeholders and win them over to this solution.
What advice would you give to students who are interested in this job?
Seek out people (ideally across different seniority levels) who work in consulting and talk to them about their everyday work. Try to determine whether the insights you gain from these conversations are compatible with your ideas and goals.
Looking back on your career, is there anything you would do differently? Why?
Honestly? I would worry less about having the “perfect plan.” Hindsight is always 20/20, but that's not how life works. So if I were to do anything differently, it would be to trust the process sooner. It's not about not making mistakes, but about looking ahead and, ideally, not repeating them.
Is there anything else you would like to share with current students?
See your studies as a training ground, not as the end game. Things will go wrong. An exam, a project, a job. That's normal. The world keeps turning. Your most important skill is not to never fail, but to learn how to deal with it and move on.
(Status: November 2025)