Hi All,
I recently completed my McKinsey Round 1 interview for an experienced role in Implementation (PEI & TEI). The interview was quite different from my expectations, and I’d appreciate your thoughts:
PEI (Connection): I prepared my story using the STAR method, but less than a minute in, the interviewer interrupted and asked me to summarize the opposing opinion and all my actions in under a minute. He then interrupted almost every 30-60 seconds with questions—some not really relevant to the story, such as asking me to explain a client process in detail—and jumped between situation, actions, and results in a haphazard way. This made it difficult to structure my story.
Time Allocation: Coaching sessions suggested ~15–20 min for PEI and ~30 min for TEI. Mine was ~35 min PEI and only 10 min TEI. The TEI felt smoother but still fragmented, with frequent jumps across situation, result, and technical points, and once again, I felt I never really got the chance to structure my story.
Repetition in TEI: After I explained the client context and problem statement, he asked questions I had already answered (“who was the client,” “what was the problem”), which felt like he wasn’t paying attention. He also seemed to read pre-prepared questions from his laptop.
Bundled Questions: The questions were often complex and multi-part. He would ask part 1, then say “this is a multi-part question” before moving to part 2 or 3, sometimes totally unrelated to the first. It almost felt like a memory test, since by the time he reached part 3, I often couldn’t recall the exact framing of part 1. Because it was a PEI + TEI, I didn't take notes while he was speaking, since I expected a discussion.
CV Drill-Down: In the final 5 minutes, he said, “I have gone through your CV in detail,” then asked me to list all projects I had worked on specifically with my current employer of the last 2 years (not sure why), giving 1–2 sentences on each. He then randomly stopped me on one of them and asked for deeper technical details. While I don’t mind CV deep dives, this was quite unexpected.
Overall, the interview felt very unstructured. Given McKinsey’s emphasis on structured communication, I was surprised at how chaotic the discussion was.
Do you think this was just a tough interview style, or does it sound like a very bad interview? Appreciate your thoughts.
