McKinsey PEI answers : how long should I speak ?

Dear Bryan,

For most candidates, the McKinsey PEI lasts in total around 12-15 minutes.

(Hint: Since the PEI takes place before your case interviews, you want to make double sure to perform well on this part of your interviews – as it might already frame your interviewer’s mindset in terms of your interview performance and spill over to your case interview)

For structuring your 12-15 minutes PEI, I always recommend the PARADE framework. As a rule of thumb, the total PEI time is split up as follows:

• Headline (~15-30 seconds)
• Bucket 1 (~1-2 minutes):
  • “Problem”
  • “Anticipated consequence”
  • “Role”
• Intermediate structure (~30 seconds)
• Bucket 2 (~8-10 minutes)
  • “Action”
  • “Decision-making rationale”
• Closing (~30 seconds): “End-result”

While talking about one specific example for 10+ minutes might seem long at the outset, you will be surprised how quickly this amount of time will pass – and finally how much work you need to put into your PEI examples to deliver all the relevant information in the necessary details as required into this few minutes of PEI time.

Addtional notes:

• In rare cases the PEI lasts up to roughly 20 minutes – mainly driven by your McKinsey interviewers interests in your PEI example or your (maybe not-so-good) PEI performance which makes it very hard for the interviewer to discover the relevant aspects of your PEI.
• Since your final-round interviews focus stronlgy on those areas in which you could not fully convince all your McKinsey interviewers in the previous rounds, you might not have any PEI in your final interview rounds at all, or you might even have a very intense foucs on the PEI.

Hi Anonymous,

I agree with Vlad; in general 3-4 minutes per answer should be fine; normally this is a sufficient time per question for a good application of the STAR method.

If you feel you could add value with additional details, I would recommend offering the interviewer the opportunity to dig deeper, rather than continue with a longer monologue (eg. “I would also be happy to detail how I applied this skill in my next project if interesting for you”).

Best,

Francesco

(edited)

Hello!

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Here I leave you the link > https://www.preplounge.com/en/shop/tests-2/integrated-fit-guide-for-mbb-34

Feel free to PM me for disccount codes!

Hope you find it useful!

Best,

Clara

You should talk for about 5-10 minutes, depends on years of experience. Then allow the interviewer to ask some follow up questions. Also it should be done in very structual way.

Good luck!

Hey there,

I have written a detailed insider perspective on the PEI that covers all aspects and will help you prepare strong stories here: https://www.preplounge.com/en/mckinsey-pei

Cheers,

Florian

Dear A,

PEI part takes usually 15 min, so arrange your time and your stories that each of them has up tp 3-5 min according to PARADE or STAR structure.

Best,

André