How to prepare for Mck digital assessment?

Assessment BCG Bain McKinsey digital assessment Digital McKinsey McKinsey Assessment
New answer on May 12, 2020
6 Answers
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Anonymous A asked on May 11, 2020

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Anonymous replied on May 11, 2020

Hi,

Whilst you don't have to be a gamer to perform well, the game will certainly test your problem solving ability and your ability to navigate in challenging circumstances.

Which skills are tested?

The game records all of the candidate’s actions (e.g., every movement of the mouse, time spent to choose an action) and uses machine learning to assess candidates’ way of thinking. It’s as much about how close candidates come to the best solution as about how they tackle the problem through. During the game McK assesses 5 cognitive abilities that are critical for a career in consulting:

  • Critical thinking: the ability analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment
  • Decision making: the ability to select the best course of action among several options
  • Self-awareness: the ability to self-assess
  • Situational awareness: the ability to be fully aware of your surroundings at all times, allowing you to react effectively
  • Systematic thinking: the ability to understand different parts of a system and how they work together through cause/ effect relationships

How to cultivate these skills?

Let’s break down each skillset and find ways to improve.

Critical thinking could be broken down into the following subskills:

  • Think about a topic in an objective and critical way
  • Identify the connections between ideas and working out whether the evidence provided supports those ideas or not
  • Evaluate a point of view to determine how strong or valid it is
  • Recognize any weaknesses that there are in the evidence or argument
  • Notice what implications there might be behind a statement
  • Provide structured reasoning and support for an argument that we wish to make

In order to improve your critical thinking I would suggest using mind mapping technique. It exploits the fact that our brains process information visually much more effectively than they do when it’s presented in a written document.

The idea behind mind mapping is that you start with a central theme or idea, typically drawn in a box in the middle of the page, and then from that you create branches, which lead to other ideas, or to supporting evidence or ancillary information.

Decision making could be broken down into the following subskills:

  • Establishing a positive decision-making environment
  • Generating potential solutions
  • Evaluating the solutions
  • Deciding
  • Checking the decision

In order to improve your decision making skills I would suggest that you start applying it to your everyday life situations and start developing small decision making frameworks for each situation (e.g. going to the shop)

Self-awareness could be broken down into the following subskills:

  • Monitor Your Performance
  • Seek Out Feedback and Then Use It

The best way to improve your self-awareness is to reduce your EGO barrier and blind spots. You can read Ray Dalio Principles for more details.

Situational awareness could be broken down into the following subskills:

  • Identifying the baseline for the situation you are in
  • Recognizing any variations to the baseline

In order to improve your situational awareness I suggest that you take typical life situation and:

  • Monitor the Baseline. At first, this will require concentration effort. But after a while, you will find that you can monitor the baseline subconsciously
  • Fight Normalcy Bias. This requires you to be paranoid for a while as you develop your skill. Look at every disturbance to the baseline - this will allow you to stop ignoring or discounting any factors

Systematic thinking could be broken down into the following subskills:

  • Identifying all the elements in the system
  • Understanding the correlations between the elements

This skill could be largely improved by solving business cases.

ALSO I suggest that you should start investing your time into playing different computer/mobile game, where you can practice applying these skills.

Hope it helps!

Anton

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Vlad
Expert
replied on May 11, 2020
McKinsey / Accenture Alum / Got all BIG3 offers / Harvard Business School

Hi,

  • There are 2 tasks, 1 hour for each
  • One is based on logic, another one is closer to the online game (Tower defense)
  • Both tasks are super easy and an hour is more than enough
  • The key thing is to read carefully the descriptions

I believe there is no way to prepare, so just relax and have a good rest before that

One thing to know - it's not about winning the game, it's about how you do that. ML algorithms literally track the movements of your cursor and compare it vs the best consultants

Best

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Luca
Expert
Content Creator
updated an answer on May 11, 2020
BCG |NASA | SDA Bocconi & Cattolica partner | GMAT expert 780/800 score | 200+ students coached

Hello,

I have an interesting paper on Imbellus valuation metrics that I would suggest to read.
More over, I have had the chance to follow several candidates taking this test and I have written (together with them) a detailed guide on how to successfully approach Imbellus test.
Feel free to text me if you are interested.

Best,
Luca

(edited)

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Anonymous replied on May 12, 2020

Dear A,

You will be given 1 hour to make your test. To get more information, ust keep in mind following tips for the Digital Assessment.

  1. Focus on the process
  2. Follow time tracking. It is easy to get lost in the details and the sheer complexity of information overload the test presents.
  3. Look into the key skills that are being assessed by Imbellus and if you find any weaknesses - then work on them in advance.
  4. Get ready to make 80/20 decisions based on incomplete information. Likely you won’t reach the best answer within 60 minutes, however, you should reach a good answer, demonstrating a clever problem-solving strategy along the way.
  5. Take notes of your observations on the mechanics of each scenario so that you can analyze it.
  6. Get comfortable to calculate with pen and paper math.
  7. Enjoy

Hope it helps,

André

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Ian
Expert
Content Creator
replied on May 11, 2020
#1 BCG coach | MBB | Tier 2 | Digital, Tech, Platinion | 100% personal success rate (8/8) | 95% candidate success rate

Hi,

I have dozens of digital cases from a range of case books and would be happy to case you in some!

I also recommend 1) Looking through PrepLounge along search words such as "IT", "Digital transformation","Agile", etc. and 2) Scouring casebooks for those with a focus in IT.

Best of luck!

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Clara
Expert
Content Creator
replied on May 11, 2020
McKinsey | Awarded professor at Master in Management @ IE | MBA at MIT |+180 students coached | Integrated FIT Guide aut

Hello!

It´s much better than the old test used to be.

  • It's a gamified test
  • Divided into 2 games, 1h to complete both of them:
    • 1st one is a game about keeping an ecosystem balanced
    • 2nd one is a defense game

It´s fun and there is not really a "way" to prep for it.

My advise would be to be fresh when you do it and pick a right enviroment -during my BCG test in their office there was construction in the patio and the screen was even shaking-.

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

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