Invited for First Round Interview in Atlanta

Hi Anonymous A.,

I've attached below a thread where this matter was robustly debated. The take-away is clear: you should almost certainly re-schedule!

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/mckinsey-interview-plan-1936

To answer your other questions:

1. Try not to baldly state that you are asking to re-schedule due to a lack of preperadness.

2. What do you mean by 'verticle'? If you perhaps mean vehicle, I would resist on pushing this point. It makes you seem like you're shopping around when you project uncertainty about their offer to interview at this early stage. Surely your prior communications with them and the language in the invitation e-mail sheds light on this?

3. What do you mean by SOP? If you intended to say standard operating procedure, what you have stated above is not standard. It can happen, but it is the rare exception.

Hi Anonymous,

I always recommend to postpone interviews if candidates are not fully "ready"!

No problem with that. Your eventual interviewers will not even be aware of it, since they have nothing to do with the administrative side of recruiting.

Cheers, Sidi

Hi,

First of all, you absolutely should reschedule your interviews if you are not ready. Otherwise, you will just miss your interview opportunity.

Secondly, rescheduling the interviews is not dangerous at all:

1. Interviewers are EMs or Partners who will not even know
2. Even if they knew - they don't really care. There is no penalty for that

Finally, since you have not discussed the verticle by this point, I assume it will be the generalist role. There are not that many dedicated practices in consulting and usually, they mention the reasons for interest in your candidacy from the beginning.

Best!