Hi,

Congrats on reaching the final rounds. Great achievement!

The final rounds are not harder. It's the same format - 30ish mins for the case and the remaining 20 mins for PEI. The difference is that most of the times these are actual cases that the Partners interviewing you have solved, so they are usually more passionate and can expect more creative and out-of-the box answers from you. But your preparation should not really be that different for final rounds vs what you've done so far. Bottom line - don't stress about it!

For PEIs - I'm sure you know by now that McKinsey interviews go deep on the answer rather than going broad. It is critical that you flesh out 4-5 good stories that cover topics like Leadership, Conflict, Personal Achievement and Entrepreneusrhip. Usually, these should be sufficient to answer all questions.

One thing I ALWAYS recommend is to start with a headline for your PEIs. For instance, if someone asks about Leadership say something like 'A time when I showed leadership is when I did X despite Y which helped us achieve Z'. This has 2 important benefits:

1) It shows top-down and concise communication which helps you stand out from the remaining candidates

2) It gives the interviewer the chance to tell you to change the story if they don't find the right content. This saves you 5-6 mins of going down the rabbit hole and then being told to change the story, which can be very frustrating

I'd be happy to do a Final Round McKinsey Case with you and work on fine-tuning your stories before your interview. Please let me know if interested. Thanks!

Nirmit

Hi there!

Here is my perspective as an ex-Mckinsey consultant and part of recruiting team:

How do these interviews with the partners differ from the first round interviews?

Every partner discussion is different and the direction the conversation takes depends on role that you are interviewing for, feedback that the partner has got from earlier rounds and of course the Partner’s personality.

However, generally it is advisable to keep the following things in mind.

1) Are the cases delivered with the same style of precision and structure as the first round?

- A lot of times, the Partner round case discussions are less structured. Partners tend to give real life case from their experience or sometimes they can also pick a situation from the candidate’s CV, make a few changes and turn it into a case.

2) Is the Fit format consistent with the PEI, or do the partners take these conversations in different directions?

- Generally, Partners will hit fewer topics but will go much deeper. So they will ask you about something and then you should expect a lot of follow on questions. They really want to understand the full story.

Hope this helps.

Cheers,
GB

Dear A,

The final round is similar to the first with its structure - FIT, case, questions to the interviewer. But Here you will be interviewed by partners. Specifically, the main difference you will find in a final round with partners is that at that stage they spend more time on fit questions and your alignment with the company.

Best,

André

(edited)

Hello!

For FIT in particular:

On top of the insights already shared in the post, 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.

Feel free to PM me for disccount codes, since we still have some left from the launch!

Hope you find it useful!

Best,

Clara

Hi there!

First of all, congratulations for passing the first round interviews!

To answer your questions - final round interviews are not necessarily harder, I'd say they are just different. Whereas first round interviews at McKinsey are highly standardized (including cases), second-round interviews are much more diverse and will be focusing specifically on those areas in which you could not convince your interviewers to 100% in the first round interviews - so in your case the McKinsey PEI part. Moreover, cases from partners tend to be much more open-ended, are usually not standardized McKinsey interview cases, and require more insight.

Concerning your PEI feedback - it sounds a lot to me as if you did not really go into the details of your actions and even more importantly into your decision-making rationale. So first of all you need to sit down and think about your PEI examples you would like to use in your second round interviews (contrary to many believes, McKinsey does not appreciate the same examples again - it simply won't reflect well on your experience if there is just 1 single example for the PEI dimensions from your whole life, and furthermore it does not allow McKinsey to gain additional insight..). Then make sure you focus on specific situations inside those examples, and prepare the detailed actions and decision-making rationale for each step.

I answered a lot of questions also on my McKinsey PEI blog which might be useful for you (https://pei.consulting-case-interviews.com/blog); furthermore feel free to contact me for a coaching session to make sure your PEI examples will be living up to McKinsey's expectations.

Hope that helps!

Robert