How to prepare for a second tentative after a negative response in MBB

Hello,

Sorry to hear that the interviews did not go well! Here are my thoughts:

1) This happened to me too during my first shot at consulting. But, glad to see that you're taking this positively and are preparing for your next attempt

2) First, you have to identify what went wrong. Examine the feedback that you received from both the companies. If you haven't asked for feedback yet, then please make sure you do. Typically, you get on a call with the HR or the Manager/Partner who interviewed you.

3) Apart from external feedback, I'm sure you have some degree of awareness on the areas that you have done well and the areas that you have done poorly. 

4) Start practising drills by yourself on areas that you are weak in. Weaknesses can be industries, capabilities, or skills i.e. you may be terrible at say Energy industry cases, or in M&A cases, or in structured communication. 

5) Do peers mocks with advanced candidates and ask them to stress test you in areas that you are week in.

6) Have weekly/bi-weekly check ins/ mocks with a coach to track your progress and adjust your preparation plan accordingly.

Hope this helps! Feel free to reach out to me via chat if you have any questions or want to work together :)

Best,

Rushabh

Hi there,

First of all, I am sorry to hear about the rejections!

I think this is an interesting question that may be relevant for many people. I would be happy to share my thoughts on it:

• First of all, I would recommend taking the feedback from Bain seriously and working on the areas that they mentioned. It's important to focus on improving your skills and knowledge in those areas in order to increase your chances of success in the next interview. Additionally, it's always helpful to have a strong understanding of business and industry trends, as well as staying up-to-date on current events.
• I also recommend reaching out to me or other experienced Bain coaches. We can provide valuable insights and advice on how to prepare for the Bain interview process and increase your chances of success.

If you would like a more detailed discussion on how to address your specific situation, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.

Best,

Hagen

Hi there, 

Sorry to hear it didn't work on the first go, but this happens often. 

There are a few things you can do to prepare:

1. Go through the feedback that you received following your failed interviews. Make a list of the development points, then research how you could improve on them and then methodically work on them over the coming months. Consider getting a coach to help you close these gap in a more certain and effective way. 
2. Get a professional assessment from a coach. A good one will tell you what are your strengths and weaknesses, what is the gap you need to close and how. They will also provide you with targeted materials and explain how to practice in the most effective way so that every hour you put into the process counts.
3. Apply to multiple firms. The reality is that regardless of how prepared you are, interviews are also about luck. The important thing is to apply to several firms to diversify your risk. From my own base of candidates, all those who have applied to at least 3 firms have gotten at least one offer, whereas those who applied only to one MBB (for instance McK only) they had about a 60% chance of passing (even this is amazing considering the general acceptance rate for McKinsey is under 1%, but still). 

Best of luck!
Cristian

Hi there,

Sorry to hear about the rejections. In terms of your question:

Q: Do you have some advice about what to study to be ready for Bain 2 tentative? 

We would need more information on what you think are your areas of improvement for specific feedback. 

For general tips, you can find some suggestions below:

▶ How to Prepare for a Consulting Interview

Additionally, unless you want to work in MBB only, I would recommend to apply also to Tier 2 companies - it would be quite risky to redo the whole preparation with only one target company that has not yet confirmed the invitation yet. Even if your final goal is MBB, in case you are not successful with Bain but get a Tier 2 offer, you could leverage that experience to increase the chances for your next MBB applications.

Best,
Francesco

Hello!

Mi dispiace molto!

However, the reality is that very little people do it the first time! Consulting interviews are hard, and most people need a few tries to get it done. Not at all is lost!

If you have 5 months, I would take a break for 3 months (it's impossible to keep the bar so high for so long, you would burn out) and come back to it 2 months after. It's so little time that you would have barely forgottten anything, and will catch up prettyfast. 

Hope it helps!

Cheers, 

Clara

I would advise you to keep practicing and hire a coach to help you focus on where you went wrong. It is likely that your practice was not sufficient for you to pass, either because you practiced too little or the practice you did was not effective.

Make sure you act on the Bain advice and do drills to focus on the areas where you were weaker. Happy to be in touch if you need guidance on how to develop drills.

Hi there,

Good for keeping at it! MBB like persistency in people and I had many colleagues at McKinsey who got in on the second try.

At this point, I would suggest preparing with a coach to uncover and fix your weak spots and make your strengths really shine. Both is very hard to do by yourself or even with peers, and the two failed interviews are testimony to that. 

If you have any useful feedback from the previous interviews or good self-reflection of your performance, feel free to share here to get better guidance. Absent any specifics of your situation, it's tough to give good guidance.

Feel free to reach out if this is something you'd like to discuss. 

Best of luck!

Hi there,

If at first you don't succeed…get a coach.

My strong recommendation is to get a coach as you were not successful in preparing on your own.

Now, short of that, you need to figure out exactly why you didn't get the offer and work on those issues.

We don't know where you fell short and so it's hard for us to advise. However, as you re-embark on the journey, hopefully these tips help:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/articles/pitfalls-case-interview-preparation

Firstly, you should try to be aware of what didn't work.

Secondly, I strongly suggest hiring one or two coaches to improve on your performance.