Mckinsey Operations Associate Interview

Hi there, 

CONGRATS on making it to the final interview! That is a huge accomplishment.

Here are my thoughts on your questions:

1. The cases the interviewers choose can be from any industry/function. But, in final interviews for a specific function at McK, it is most common that the interviewers choose cases within the function in question

2. No, the interviewers do not grade you (directly) in any way on how well you know concepts of Operations. That being said, the cases may still contain some concepts from Operations that you may not know - if that is the case, you can simply ask the interviewer to explain it briefly. 

3. The Quant/Math portion of cases vary a bit between cases in difficulty, but there is no clear difference in difficulty for OPS cases vs. other types of cases. Typically, the math itself is not very difficult, but most often contains many steps, so it's important to keep track of the steps you need to conduct and not loose track of what the objective of the calculation is mid-way.

Hope this helps!

Congrats on reaching the final round!

Actually, all the questions are connected. 

You should clarify with the recruiter whether the cases will also be only from the Operations practice. If the interviewers are from the practice that doesn't mean that by default they will use operations practice, it just means that it's likely. Some actually go outside of their main area to make the interview more interesting for themselves. 

Do they expect you to know specific concepts? Well, yes, because if you applied for this role, you typically also have an operations background, which comes with a certain extent of knowledge about the industry. But you can ask the recruiter this as well. 

Is the math tough? No, I wouldn't say it's tougher. In fact, I would say that strategy related cases tend to have more difficult maths, but even that is not a given. It's very case specific. 

If you're practicing for casing, you might find the following guide useful:

• Cheatsheet: The Must-Know Consulting Terms for Interviews

Best,
Cristian

Hey there :)

Yes, the cases will usually have an operations focus, topics like process optimization, capacity planning, supply chain, or cost reduction. You don’t need formal ops theory, but showing structured, practical thinking (bottlenecks, utilization, efficiency) helps a lot. The math is not harder, just more data-heavy and often requires interpreting tables or calculating throughput or savings.

best, Alessa :)

Congratulations on making it to the final round

1. In the final round, the interview need not follow a set format, the partner can decide how they want to test your skills. Often times they will select a case related to operations to see how you respond to real life scenarios that you will face as an ops consultant. They may do different types of cases if they want to test a particular skillset like quant but most often it will be related to the role you are applying for.

2. I would read up on concepts as much as possible. There is no expectation that you know super detailed concepts at the same depth as someone that has been working in the field for a while. However, reading up and being familiar with it shows that you are genuinely curious about it and eager to learn as much as possible which is always taken as a huge positive sign.

3. No - the math is not more tough for Ops, be prepared for challenging questions but in the same range as any other specialized role or the generalist role.

All the best,

Udayan