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Interviewing for a specialist role at McKinsey

I will be interviewing with McK for the position of Lean Manufacturing Consultant in Southeast Asia. I was wondering if the case interview process will be identical to the generalist positions or will it be more focused on cases related to manufacturing and if my interviewers will be from the same specialty. Also, since the pool of candidates must be significantly lower compared to MBA students, will the interview process be more lenient? 

Thanks!!

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Top answer
Vlad
Coach
on Jun 04, 2018
McKinsey / Accenture Alum / Got all BIG3 offers / Harvard Business School

Hi,

The interview process will be quite similar to the generalist interviews:

  • All specialists interviews have a specific industry (ops in your case) / generalist cases
  • You will have function-specific (ops, Lean) questions in the interview. Although they never go too deep
  • You will have the standard FIT interview questions (You story, why Mck / consulting, 3 competencies - leadership, personal impact, drive)
  • The total number of interviews may be lower (4-5 instead of 6)

For the functional expertise, I recommend finding the relevant POVs on the McKinsey web-site. You'll get a great perspective on what McKinsey is thinking about various industry issues and Lean Manufacturing. You should also know the main metrics, benchmarks, and numbers in your country.

Indeed for rare roles, they may forgive some mistakes in the interview, however, I would not expect it to be significantly easier

Best,

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