Mckinsey PEI

Question

Hello the community,

I have a question on the Mckinsey PEI.

3 dimensions are tested, and the main suggestion found online is to prepare 2 good stories for each.

The question is: if i only have two stories per dimension, how can i ‘tailor’ the answer to the specific question of the interviewer?
this is due to the fact that a given dimension can be tested with multiple types of questions.

Here is an example to make it easier to understand:
the Personal Impact dimension seems that can be tested with questions such as:

Tell me about a time when you had to persuade an uncooperative stakeholder
How would you deal with an uncooperative client in order to get the data you need?
Describe a client relationship which was challenging
What is your typical way of dealing with conflict? Give me an example
Tell me about a recent crisis you handled
Tell me about a time when you had to come up with a mutually beneficial solution for conflicting stakeholders

there a lot of possible questions, but only two stories: how to deal with it?

Thanks

Answer 1

Hey there,

It's actually completely okay to have a few stories only in mind as long as you learn how to tailor these depending on the question.

Step 1 - Find flexible stories and know which skills they cover

There are 3-4 key skills that McKinsey interviewers test: leadership, problem solving, entrepreneurial drive and impact. What I recommend is taking a pen and a paper and putting down a big table in which you list your stories as rows and the 4 skills above as columns. For each of the stories, go skill by skill and add few notes on how that skill emerged in your story. Ideally, both stories you have should tick all 4 skills.

Step 2- Tailor your stories to the interviewer based on their question

Now that you have the full menu of stories and skills, I recommend that you practice picking and choosing these pointers depending on the question asked. For instance, if you are asked about a time you showed leadership, you don't need to mention what you did there in terms of entrepreneurship, you can just focus on the pointers you had in the leadership box of the table.

Step 3 - Keep in mind the typical PEI structure:

In general, each of your stories should follow the “Answer, Situation, Task, Action, Result” structure. This means that you should start with a quick recap of what your story is, then go into the context, what triggered your action, what you did and what was the result. The situation part of the story remains the same usually, but it's the other parts that are tailored based on the skills you want to focus on.

Hope this helps. Best of luck!

Answer 2

That's a great question.

Realistically speaking, you can't develop an answer for every possible question. So ideally you have a set of 4-6 stories that you can then calibrate live during the interview to fit that dimension.

Practically, the way you do that is that you run drills with someone to ask you these questions and test your ability to adjust the story live.

For anybody who is looking into the PEI topic, I recently released this end-to-end course covering PEI that contains the most often asked questions for the PEI. More on it here:

Video Course: Master the McKinsey PEI

Best,
Cristian

Answer 3

With the exception of the second how question, I would say the questions are broadly the same. McKinsey interviewers have guiding questions for each PEI dimension but at the end of the day, it's down to their discretion on how they ask the question. My advice is not to prepare for the longtail of questions/nuances and instead think about what are the 3-5 underlying competencies that each PEI dimension is testing for. You're absolutely right that its important that you are actually answering the interviewers question and a good way to do that is to first frame an answer with the summary of your story. For example, “you've asked me about solving a conflict amongst stakeholders, I'm thinking of [recent story] where I had to do x, y, and z - could that be an appropriate example?”. By doing this, you're already telling your interviewer that your story has the underlying competencies (i.e., x, y and z) that they are looking for in your story. The biggest anxiety for a McKinsey PEI interviewer is that they spend 15 mins listening to your story to realise that it didn't answer what they were looking for and you've run out of time!

Answer 4

Hi there,

This is a common misconception that is unfortunately also perpetuated knowingly by coaches on PrepLounge and elsewhere to sell their advice.

All you need to know in brief:

There are actually 4 PEI dimensions since Entrepreneurial Drive is replaced by Courageous Change and it is those 4 only
Each dimension has very specific evaluation criteria with an associated score sheet that interviewers are looking for, regardless of how the initial question is framed or asked. There is no leeway for the interviewers with regard to this evaluation
Coaches and websites that discuss more than the 4 PEI dimensions and related questions either do not know and copied their “wisdom” from another ignorant source or do this on purpose to sell their courses or services

Focus on the information in this article, where I discuss the PEI and the dimensions in detail and prepare stories that hit most of the criteria I outline and you will be fine. :-)

Cheers,

Florian

Answer 5

Hi there,

This is a great question. First, to provide some reassurance - the PEI questions are generally quite broad. Not everyone will have worked with clients, for example, and so they're very unlikely to ask a question that is focused on clients. Not everyone will have been in a situation where they need someone to give them data - and so again they're very unlikely to give you a question that specific.

That being said, I always recommend that everyone prepares at least two distinct stories for each of the now four PEI domains (leadership, personal impact, entrepreneurship and courageous change). This will give you the ability to flex should one of them not be quite right. These stories should be quite broad (e.g., how have you successfully led a team; when have you successfully navigated a disagreement with someone), rather than narrow (e.g., when have you had to lead a team where you had a disagreement with your manager over the direction of work).

Then, when you're asked a question you should be able to flex for the most appropriate answer.

Good luck!

Answer 6

Hi there,

It's better you have at least 3 stories for each dimension. You need to practice flexibility on how to frame an tell your stories. In general, interviews should frame a more open and high level question to let you select your best story along the dimensions they will be evaluating.

Best,

Alberto

Answer 7

Hello,

Preparing 2-3 stories for each dimension is a great approach. The PEI questions are quite general, and should allow you to tailor them to your specific situation. In the example you gave, not everyone will have worked with clients (or needed to obtain data from them), so those sorts of questions are unlikely to be asked if you don't have the relevant industry experience, for instance. The first and last questions, and the fourth and fifth questions respectively are broadly the same, and it should be easy enough to adapt your answers between them (for instance, by making sure at least 1 of your conflict stories has a stakeholder involved).

I know it sounds easier said than done, but if you are preparing 2-3 different (varied, deep) stories per dimension, you should be able to dig out enough details to tailor them to the specific flavor of question asked. You could look into getting some coaching / feedback from an experienced friend as to whether your stories are covering sufficient ground. Other than that, look up common PEI questions, and just see if you can answer them with your stories (omitting the ones that are clearly not relevant in light of your experience).