Mckinsey Risk & Resilience

Hi there,

First of all, congratulations on the invitation from McKinsey!

I would be happy to share my thoughts on your questions:

• First of all, even if you are not wrong that for specialized tracks like Risk & Resilience, interviewers often use case studies that reflect typical client work in that practice, if they say the case studies could come from any area, I would strongly advise you to prepare broadly.
• Moreover, in addition to PrepLounge's Case Library, I would advise you to work with business school case books. The ones I like are: Columbia, Darden, Esade, Fuqua, Kellog, LBS, McCombs, Michigan, Ross, Sloan, and especially Yale.

You can find more on this topic here: How to succeed in the final interview round.

If you would like a more detailed discussion on how to best prepare for your upcoming McKinsey interviews, please don’t hesitate to contact me directly.

Best,

Hagen

You're not wrong to believe this, but if the interviewer has confirmed or proactively mentioned that the cases can be from any industry then that should be the case. 

You can use the case library on preplounge and search by key words. 

You might also want to brush up on your knowledge of risk as it applies to different industries. You could generate summaries of trends with AI on this to get started.

Feel free to reach out directly if you have any follow up questions.

Best,
Cristian

Hey there :)

You’re right! while you can get any generalist-style case, Risk & Resilience interviews often lean toward operational or risk-related topics, like supply chain disruptions, cybersecurity exposure, or business continuity planning. Still, the underlying structure stays the same: diagnose, quantify impact, and propose mitigation. You can prep with general operations or risk management cases from sources like Wharton or INSEAD consulting club guides, and adapt them with a “risk lens”, what could go wrong, how to measure exposure, and how to reduce it.

best,
Alessa :)

Hi there,

Yes there may probably be more risk-oriented cases such as crisis management, cybersecurity, or operational risk etc. but general business cases are still common enough to prepare for both. I’d suggest mixing in a few risk-related cases with your overall prep. You can try to search some on PrepLounge, or take an existing case and include a risk angle to practice how that would fit in the framework.

Hey there, 

I'm going to give you a slightly opposing view to what has been shared. You may not necessarily get risk related cases. It 100% fully depends on what cases the interviewer you are assigned to has chosen. 

I was a member of McKinsey's Risk & Resilience practice globally, and as an interviewer, we were not advised / guided nor instructed to use any specific case for interviewing candidates coming in to that practice. And the cases I had ranged across all topics and industries, and this was the case too for other interviewers in the Risk & Resilience practice.  

It may be the case that you can get more risk related cases, but not necessarily so. 

Happy to chat more about the Risk & Resilience practice or anything else you may wish to discuss

All the best