How does McKinsey choose which candidate to interview first?

The overall key driver is the time of application. However, other factors can over-ride this, for example:

1) Candidate has an exploding offer with another firm: in this case, the recruiting team may do what they can to accelerate the process and interview the candidate ASAP

2) Candidate's compelling personal reasons: e.g. if a candidate is from a foreign country and will be leaving soon, recruiting may see this as a reason to "bump them up"

It is true that offices are super busy, and it can be very difficult to find time to interview candidates. I would definitely not interpret the delay to assume that it means you are a "low priority candidate" or anything like that. Just make use of the extra time to keep prepping!!

Best of luck!

Alessandro

1. Application date. They can simply have a backlog of applicants.

2. Availability of interviewers.

3. Candidates' preferences - some might ask to interview later (or in rare occasions earlier), so this might shift other applicants' interview date as well.

4. HR might introduce their own biases and put one candidate before another.

5. There might be urgent office needs in specific profiles, these candidates likely will get interviewed sooner.