What are the most common personal questions at the Mckinsey first round interviews?

Question

how is the best way to prepare for PIE ? And how important is to perform well at them? I read people commenting about using the right structures and the right stories, additionally justifying well why did you choose them but I do not know what kind of answers they are going to expect and what is the kind of candidate profile that they are looking for. Thank you very much

Answer 1

Hi Anonymous,

in general, the most common fit questions are:

Tell me about yourself (personal overview)
Why consulting (motivational)
Why McKinsey (motivational)
Give me an example when you led a team (leadership)
Tell me about a time when you had to convince someone not agreeing with you (impact)
What has been your major achievement so far (drive)
Why should we hire you (motivational)

For McKinsey PEI, there is a particular focus compared to other companies on the leadership, impact and drive areas. Many candidates think PEI is less important than the case, since it’s shorter, however they actually have equivalent importance – if you are not convincing in your stories you won’t move to the next round.

The best way to prepare is to complete the following check list:

Understand the difference between, leadership, impact and drive areas. You can find a link with their differences here: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/mckinsey-pei-difference-drive-and-personal-impact-918#a1780
Identify good stories for each area. Ideally you want to have at least two stories for each area. Three would be even better.
Use a structure for your story. Both STAR and PARADE structures would work well
Identify for each story one sentence clarifying what you are going to discuss and start with it. Think of it as the title of a journal article.
Practice live, collect feedback from people listening to you, reiterate till when you get fluent and convincing

Best,

Francesco

Answer 2

Hey anonymous,

Francesco already gave you some ideas on how to prepare...so let me just address the following point: "how important is to perform well at them?"

It's critical, really crucial (as important as the case itself), and you would be surprised with the number of people that arrive to the actual interviews underprepared for this part...and fail due to it

Best

Bruno