After going through many rounds of interviews, I generally found especially the partners like to give very unconventional cases, that is nothing like the casebook, and with little data or charts.
Just wanted to get more exposure to such cases to prepare myself
Honestly, it could be anything!
How would you go about implementing Agile @ Scale across an organization?
What elements do you think are key to having a high-performing team?
How would you evaluate portable toilet/water purification impelmentation in Sub-Saharan Africa
Etc. etc.
The approach is to have a mindset shift towards solving problems and thinking through obtuse/complex topics in a structured, simplified, objective-driven way
Hi Anonymous,
The principle approach is still the same as for any other case interview. Just that the case question might be non-traditional, it doesn't mean that the interview format changes as such.
While the first-round interviewers are more junior and usually give time-tested standardized cases, second-round interviews on partner-level are oftenly made up on the fly. Since partners are the owners of the firm and can do/ask pretty much whatever they want, and they are usually rather smart and know precisely what they are doing - so nothing easier for them to make something up on the fly (and yes, as a partner you don't spend time preparing for interview cases...) or discuss something from a current study or just ask any other starting question.
While those cases miss the typical structure of a McKinsey interviewer-led case, your approach is still the same. You need to rigorously structure your analysis and drive the case forward. As simple as that.
Hope that helps - if so, please be so kind to give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!
Robert
Hi anonymous!
There is really no way to prepare for this beyond preparing for cases in general and building business intuition by immersing yourself in business newspapers like the FT or the Economist.
I've heard of very senior partners just asking "Tell me about a business idea you have". After any response, the partner will then poke questions to test if you understand the market and have the business judgement to make good assumptions on questions that go beyond what you understand about the market already.
Not helpful, but again: the preparation for these questions is the same as for cases in general.
Hi there,
You should be ready to have any type of case with Partners. I had two uniques stories with Partners: one in which I was asked to reply to make a pitch for a client he was meeting the day after (literally) and I was asked to the do structure the case for him. The second one was with a Partner from a different firm who asked me to crack a case in a totally different language (a dialect that himself did not speak fluently) as he wanted to test my ability to speak different languages with different clients.
So, in general, you can expect anything from Partners!
Good luck with your upcoming interviews.
Mehdi
Hello there!
Basically, they can be any type of cases and it's not possible to prepare specially for them, as they are too different.
The good news is that if you are prepared for solving difficult cases, you will easily deal with this one, too.
Do you need any further help?
GB
Hello!
The answer is that it can anything, but hte toolkit you need for successfully solving them is the same one as with the more structured cases.
Hope it helps!
Cheers,
Clara
