Staying power

Kim Powell, a principal at Boston Consulting Group, puts it succinctly: "If you can achieve your career goals without having to leave the firm, you stay." Powell should know. She graduated from Notre Dame in 1998 with a double major in French and history - "I didn't even know how to use Excel," she recalls - and got hired by BCG in Chicago.

After joining the company, she managed to take a sabbatical to work at a nonprofit. Later on she earned an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management and then returned to work at BCG's Chicago office. Two years later she asked to move to Atlanta to be closer to her family. "That transfer was approved within 24 hours - no fuss, no stress," she says.

Powell then took an eight-month maternity leave, and she now works part-time in Atlanta. Like most consultants at BCG, Powell gets offers from competitors, but she's not biting. "Of all my college friends, I'm the only one still with the same company after ten years," she says.

Steve Gunby, Chairman of BCG North and South America, admits that the firm bends over backward to be flexible and to ensure that its 3,900 consultants are developing the skills that interest them most. "That does make them more attractive to the outside world," he says. "But no matter how marketable people are, if they're really excited about what they are doing, they don't leave." BCG doesn't disclose its turnover rate, but Gunby says it is at its lowest level ever.

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