Mckinsey Round 1 Experienced Hire

Hi Anonymous,

For experienced hires it's usually more about your expertise and background.

Let's say you have a lot of experience in financial services industry, most likely you will be hired for an experienced role in this industry, will be interviewed by interviewers from that industry, and most likely they will discuss situations/cases from their background which is again financial services. Obviously there are exceptions from this rule, but tactically speaking I would review your area of expertise to be up-to-date with latest trends and developments, and to prepare for cases in that area.

Depending on your level of seniority, the interview process could be completely customized to you. Recently I was coaching 2 partners of a tier-2 consulting firm to switch to associate partner role at McKinsey. The interview process was organized as follows (for each of them individually):

• 4 interviews focusing on motivation for joining McKinsey and in-depth discussion of their expertise/background
• 4 interviews similar to case and personal fit (although obviously on partner-level the requirements and focus is a different one)
• 4 relatively unstructured interviews mainly about personal fit, industry trends and issues as well as potential future engagements as well as their contribution to the firm in terms of revenue and intellectual growth

Depending on your specific situation case interview might not be the most important aspect to consider, so please make sure that you are heading into the right direction with your prep!

Hope this helps - if so, please be so kind to give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

It depends on what role you are interviewing for but if it's for an Integrative/generalist Associate role then your interviews will be industry agnostic. Appreciate there are certain types of cases (e.g., profitability improvement, market entry, customer experience improvement, etc.) but I would first recommend focusing on trying to understand the underlying problem solving skills that the case interviews are tesing for. Broadly, these are structuring, numerical analysis and conceputal reasoning. 

Dear A,

Since you are experience hire, it highly depends on which role you are applying, so the process might be customized to you. 

Best,
André

Hi there,

It depends on the office and the seniority you join. It is impossible to give hints without knowing that.

• Even for experienced hires with 10-15 years, there is not necessarily a relationship between the previous experience of a candidate and the case part. I helped a senior executive to join the O&G practice of McKinsey and he got zero case questions on O&G.
• In terms of sectors, there is normally a relationship with previous questions asked in that office. That’s because case question sectors are usually related to the projects the interviewers worked on, which tend to be consistent in a specific office. Sometimes that’s true as well for the actual case types. For example, market sizing is uncommon at McKinsey in general, but not usual in Italy.
• For experienced hires with 10-15 years, you may not even have a proper case in all the interviews, but just cover motivational questions.

Developing good case solving skills is even more important than knowing the possible sectors and case types. Having said that, I have 500+ real questions asked in MBB, please feel free to PM for more information.

Best,

Francesco

Most common case types:

• Profitability
• M&A
• Growth
• Market Entry
• Investment decision
• Operations / Business Improvement

Most common Industries: It depends on your office/country! Study the ones that represent the largest % of GDP, largest companies in the city/country, etc.