Hi there, 

great question - thanks for sharing!

What a partner is looking for here is really to understand whether you have solid business judgement, strategic thinking ("bigger picture") and the smarts (IQ as well as EQ) to navigate through intellectual conversations with senior clients and other stakeholders.

In essence, to tackle these kinds of questions try to keep it conversational, engaging and, most importantly, natural (as you rightly pointed out)…  

1. Show structure: organize your thoughts in a high-level structure to talk through the key dimensions / areas you want to cover. But key is also to not overdo it - 1-2 layers enough.
2. Actively listen & engage: this is massively underestimated by most people and key to keeping it natural! Don't just agree to everything you hear and move on. Ask follow up questions, augment the partner's view and challenge it, when it's obviously off. Don't be afraid to disagree, but when you do, make sure its communicated in a soft and objective way. Executed well, this can actually land big plus points (as usually nobody does it).
3. Demonstrate thought-leadership: pro-actively share your views & perspectives, personal experiences, your outlook on the topic  whenever possible.
4. Establish rigor and credibility: back your thoughts up with data points (partners are consultants after all), when you can, even if these just stem from personal experience / analogies (that's exactly what they do all day)
5. Keep it light: try to inject light fun / jokes into the conversation, but only do so when it comes natural. Interviewers are also just humans - charm works.

Some further thoughts on structure: as you said - key here is balance. A basic, high-level framework (1-2 layers max) will still be useful to structure the conversation. However, make sure you don't overdo it, as that would come through as mechanical. Focus here will not be on whether you can mechanically run through hypothesis-driven problem-solving (for which you'd require detailed structure) but just to organize your thoughts, which will help you communicate in a top-down, structured way. 

Hope this helps - feel free to reach out to me or other coaches for further questions or to run a simulation, if you have more partner interviews coming up. There are many small nuances one can work on to master it and maximize chance of success.

Regards, Andi 

(edited)

Hi there,

You've said it exactly right here “balance being structured but at the same time sound natural, engaging, and driving a “client dialogue""

The above is exactly what you need to do. With brainstorming questions you still need structure/organization (i.e. you need to group your ideas to the largest extent possible). I'm not sure why you say “balance” - there's no balance here as that's exactly what's required! (All of the above).

In terms of how, that's very hard to get down on paper. Feel free to reach out and I can support you in this. Essentially, it requires you to train you “frameworking” skills so to speak to think more quickly and come up with initial themes/groupings right off the bat.

Hi there,

I hope this didn't throw you off too much. A very typical situation in a Partner interview and also you response to the challenge, which is “being natural” vs. “being structured”.

In an ideal world, these two things shouldn't be at odds. However, a lot of people don't know how to communicate top down in “free flow”. Hence, at some MBB, interviewers are trained to be non-biased about this, the idea being that top down communication can be learnt on the job.

Hence, a very simplified answer would be to prioritize sounding natural and being a pleasant and natural conversationalist, as opposed to being a walking structuring machine.

Hope this helps a bit! Best of luck!

Hello!

If you want to deep dive on the topic, the "Integrated FIT guide for MBB" has been recently published in PrepLounge´s shop (https://www.preplounge.com/en/shop/tests-2/integrated-fit-guide-for-mbb-34)

It provides an end-to-end preparation for all three MBB interviews, tackling each firms particularities and combining key concepts review and a hands-on methodology. Following the book, the candidate will prepare his/her stories by practicing with over 50 real questions and leveraging special frameworks and worksheets that guide step-by-step, developed by the author and her experience as a Master in Management professor and coach. Finally, as further guidance, the guide encompasses over 20 examples from real candidates.

Hope it helps! 

TL:DR answer:  you have to practice top-down communication and how to present an argument. (start with the headline, and then follow up with the supporting ideas, based on facts and data/evidence). 

You are right - it has to be natural - so you should practice. A lot. So it becomes second nature to you. This is expected from a consultant.

Other than that, you have to know what's going on in the world, in your country, in the business world - so you have background content to support an answer.