If you work in a creative field, chances are you’ve had some well-meaning person ask what your job entails. (Fun fact: many people don’t know the difference between copywriting and copyrighting.) Now, imagine that you’re the hiring manager for a company that everyone knows is highly impressive – but they don’t quite know why they should work for you. That’s a bit of a pickle, if not an entire pickle sandwich.

McKinsey & Company faced this problem in 2016. Potential hires knew the company’s name and reputation but had trouble figuring out precisely what working as a consultant was all about. The Firm tests its potential hires, but too many found the career site – the primary applicant portal – confusing and convoluted.

Enter the Critical Mass team.

McKinsey asked us to help revamp their Careers experience from the ground up. This was quite a challenge: we needed to explain roles that attract some of the sharpest people on the planet, a famously intense screening process, and represent hundreds of opportunities across expertises and industries. And the clients wanted to put a human face on the entire project.

We attacked the search problem first, applying predictive text and filters to guide potential employees to scan through hundreds of open roles to find the right one. Job listings were rewritten for brevity and clarity, and related roles were conveniently linked. From there, we built out the rest of the site, inviting the curious consultant to learn more about life at the Firm, company culture, their future coworkers, and even where their career might lead after McKinsey.

The interview prep section was one of the most challenging. Not only did we need to understand how this unique process worked, but we also had to present it so that it sounded achievable while maintaining its prestige. Fortunately, our partners at McKinsey were on point whenever we had questions. (Seriously, they’re great client partners.)

Lastly, we took on the massive effort of reorganizing McKinsey’s global office hub. This was my first toe-dip into the world of content strategy, and it was a doozy.

I also led the effort to set content guidelines for future site updates by McKinsey’s internal team. Although I last worked on this project in 2016, most of my original writing is still on the Careers site.