Careers at macondaPerspectives for beginners and professionals

If you would like to apply for one of the advertised positions or send a speculative application, please send your complete documents to the email address bewerbung@maconda.de. We will get back to you promptly.

We welcome applications that fit our fields of work at any time. This also applies to freelancers (e.g., experienced restructuring experts).

Your application should primarily include a CV with all important milestones – ideally with a few informative explanations. We appreciate an individual cover letter that demonstrates your motivation for applying specifically to maconda. Also important are certificates (university, school) and employment references, as well as any other documents relevant to the position (such as track record, certificates, credentials). The number of references you include depends primarily on your professional experience.

Please send all documents as a PDF file via email only, not on paper. Your application documents are your entry ticket and business card. In addition to content, diligence is required, as we must demonstrate this same diligence to our clients every day.

We carefully review your application documents and, in addition to suitability, we also check timing, availability, and demand. This can sometimes take longer, especially during intense project phases. As a rule, however, you will hear from us within two weeks.

We do not have many application stages. We seek a balance between accurate assessment and pragmatism. If your documents are convincing, we will invite you to a personal interview. Please plan for about 1-1.5 hours. You can expect a mutual round of introductions, questions about qualifications, experience, motivation, and, depending on the position, technical matters, as well as the solution of a case study. Depending on the role to be filled, there may be further in-depth discussions, also with other team members, possibly on different days.

You are well-prepared if you have informed yourself about us and our consulting services in advance and have given at least some thought to the world of consulting. A natural affinity for the consulting industry does the rest.

Depending on the position, we naturally have different requirements and expectations regarding technical, methodological, and social skills. We expect a willingness to perform and commitment in any case. And you should be reasonably sure that working on changing tasks really suits you. Traditional routine is rather rare.

The duration can vary significantly depending on the position. However, since speed is one of our strengths, we do not take much time in the application process either. Under normal circumstances, if you are suitable, you can receive an employment contract as early as three weeks after receipt of the application.

You have various options for joining us, depending on your professional experience. We are looking for talented students seeking internships and motivated Master’s graduates as well as experienced consultants and seasoned project managers.

We like to work frequently with freelancers whom we deploy on a case-by-case basis – some several times a year, others more rarely for thematically appropriate engagements. These are, for example, experienced restructuring experts or former consultants who no longer want to work permanently because, for instance, they want to spend more time with their family. Our projects, which often run for a short time – sometimes only 3-4 weeks – are particularly well-suited for freelance consultants who want to combine exciting work with family life, at least temporarily.

In corporate transactions, we particularly often advise private equity investors and family offices – these are our main clients. In addition, we support mid-sized companies in various industries that are looking for a new shareholder or capital, or who wish to optimize, further develop, or transform their business model together with us.

In economically tighter times, the number of restructuring and turn-around management projects increases. In addition to analytical preliminary work on the company and market – very similar to what we do in a Commercial Due Diligence – the focus here is primarily on operational deployment on-site at the client. We get hands-on. For this, we primarily rely on experienced external colleagues, integrated into a team optimized for the respective challenge.

For everyday project life, this means a great deal of variety – in terms of clients, projects, and industries! A typical CDD project rarely lasts more than 3-4 weeks, whereas restructurings can sometimes take a whole year or significantly longer. Compared to typical strategy consultancies, travel activity is low. We therefore work mostly from the Cologne office.

The headquarters of maconda is in Cologne, located in the lively Friesenstraße and very well connected to local transport. It is two stops by subway to the main station, and less than ten minutes by bike. However, colleagues from maconda live in various German cities, especially in Munich, Berlin, and Frankfurt/Main.

We are currently considering opening another location in Frankfurt to better integrate colleagues living there and also to be closer to some of our clients from the private equity industry as well as multipliers from banks, M&A advisors, and restructuring lawyers.

We have cooperation partners in various countries and work with them as needed. This enables temporary assignments, for example, with our partner in London.

Unless it is an internship, Excel should be perfect, as should PowerPoint. In Excel, it is first and foremost about the reliable recording of data, the incorporation of test formulas for the immediate detection of possible recording or evaluation errors, and formatting that is well-thought-out from the start, based on maconda standards. In the subsequent evaluation, we work with common formulas and Pivot tables. In PowerPoint, you primarily need basic knowledge of formatting (the ThinkCell add-in also helps here) and a bit of “courage” to distinguish the important from the less important and to focus on the essence. As well as a good sense of language to present complex issues in a highly readable way. Gimmicks like flying images etc. are not found in our presentations, as they only distract from the content.

In addition to the usual Office programs, we use various tools for the analysis of web metrics and social media activities, as well as cartography software for the visualization of location data. There are also specialized programs for creating surveys or for evaluating larger amounts of statistical data (such as SPSS).

Home office has always been possible at maconda, but has only really been used since the start of Corona. It is up to each employee; everyone knows what needs to be done; the “where” is secondary. Provided that the tasks are fulfilled in the usual high quality, the project team works well together, and colleagues are reachable at the relevant times or times specifically agreed upon within the team. We make full use of the great possibilities offered by Office365 (and similar software).