Hey there,

Some very good answers here already.

I would just like to add my 2 cents to change your perspective.

See it as a game.

When interviewers try to stress you during the interview or are not friendly, 95% of the time it is a pressure test to see how you are reacting to it. Play along, just as you would in a daily life situation when dealing with a difficult person.

• Stay confident and calm
• Stick to your case habits
• Stand your ground (unless you really made a mistake and they are pointing it out)
• Keep your friendly attitude 

Increasing your likability would not have any impact on their interviewing style and behavior.

And what now for the remaining 5% who are just unprofessional and conduct the interview badly because they have a bad day or personality? 

The same approach.

Focus on what you can do to solve the case in a confident, calm, and constructive manner.

If the interview experience is really bad (e.g., insulting, poor setting with bad connection, et.c), I would definitely raise it with HR.

Cheers,

Florian 

Hi there,

So, first of all, there is no amount of “increasing likeability” that will change this! This is simply their interview style.

I always train my candidates to be prepared for anything. The interview may be 10 minutes or 100 minutes. The interview may interrupt every word or say nothing the whole time.

Worry less about likeability (trying too hard is “obvious” and defeats the purpose) and worry more just about being yourself (in a professional way).

In terms of keeping your cool, you need practice. Get a friend (or ideally a coach) to pressure test you.

Most of my candidates say “wow, the interviewer was so much easier than you”. That's the point! Train for a marathon at a high altitude so that at sea level it's a breeze!

In the moment, the way to keep your cool is to remember that it's all a test. They're seeing if you can handle pressure (which will be 10x in the real job). Remind yourself that, you have two options: Keep your cool/calm and succeed, or panic and fail. It's that simple!

Great question!

I would suggest a different approach. The danger of focusing on getting your interviewer to like you as that you can come across as inauthentic and the reality is you aren't going to instantly connect with everyone. Whether you connect with your interviewer or not will be mostly down to luck.

The interviewer is there to assess your skills and suitability for the role and even though it helps to connect on a personal level, it is not necessary in order to pass the interview. 

Even in fit or behavioral interviews, interviewers are reminded by their firms that they are focused on assessing whether your skills, professional background and values fit with the firm, not whether they connect with you on a personal level. In a world where these firms are trying to achieve greater diversity, ‘connection’ (which often happens based on shared demographics) can no longer be a fair judge of someone's suitability for the role.

The other thing to consider is that often interviewers will deliberately be unpleasant and challenging to mimic difficult client situations and test how you work under pressure. Remaining calm, confident and not reactive is critical in these types of interviews and the less you are concerned about whether your interviewer ‘likes’ you the easier this will be.

Hope this is helpful for you!

Hi there, 

I would not focus on likeability, the MBB interview tests how well you will work on projects solving the toughest problems in extremally short timelines with a very different types of people. It is not about "making it difficult for you", it is about proving you are the 1% of the candidate that makes it in. 

it is important to prepare well for your interview, test your stories, answer different types and versions of the questions and mock it in a more stressful environment (working and mocking with the coach gets pretty close to the real interview feeling based on my coachees' feedback). You need to feel comfortable and self-confident about what you bring to the game. This is what I focus on working my candidates

Good luck with the process!
Lucie
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Hi there, 

One thing to bear in mind is that with an interviewer that is role-playing and ‘acting’ like an unfriendly client, there's nothing that you can do to make them ‘friendly’ all of a sudden. They will stay in the role. The objective is rather for you to get all the info that you need and achieve your objectives, despite their attitude, i.e., the attitude is not what needs fixing. 

Aside from this, in terms of what you can do to have a better connection, try some of the following:

• Be curious and ask them genuine questions about themselves and their experience. Be genuine interested in who they are and what they
• Smile and maintain a confident posture
• Don't interrupt them
• Speak in a calm, relaxing tone
• Mirror their body language

Best,

Cristian

Hello!

To add on top of the great answers shared here before: you cannot really prevent that from happening. Sometimes that mood is precisely what you look for as an interviewer, to test you under that stress. 

Cheers, 

Clara

Have a look at this thread too for additional tips: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/how-to-create-chemistry-with-the-interviewer-8271

Consulting is all about iteration and challenging the details and so I would say it has nothing to do with likeability.  You are a likeable candidate if you can bring meaningful insights to a challenging problem (i.e., I want this person on my team TODAY!).

(editiert)