I just had my second round with BCG and have mixed feelings after. I did well in R1 with no specific areas of recommended improvement, just to keep consistency. I feel I completely bombed interview 1 in R2 and had no chance for the second interview.
R2 I got a nontraditional case regarding a utility company assessing the feasibility of a plan in the public sector. The Partner mentioned I may not have experience in this industry (which was true) so my structure was a bit exhaustive. My first bucket was Market/Demand, but Partner ended up telling me demand had nothing to do with the case because the utility company was a monopoly (was not explicitly in the prompt, only that the co was gov regulated and this is a public sector project). So some time was wasted there and then we moved onto the math portion (cost focused), where I fumbled a bit on aligning the calculation but bounced back and aligned quickly and calculated correctly. I made it through the entire case with a recommendation but I think in the beginning was lacking business judgment in depth as I was unfamiliar with the industry. Do interviewers take case difficulty into consideration?
Second interview was with a MDP and he really drove the interview and cut me short frequently. It felt 100% like an interviewer led case vs the standard BCG candidate led and had no opportunity to drive the case. Thus I feel the performance might be sub par (finished the case and had good structure, decent judgment, good calculations, just overcomplicated a few calcs which he walked me through). Do the interviewers talk to each other beforehand? I felt my performance in the first was poor that the MDP didn't want to waste time and was rushing me. Am I overthinking this?
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