Hi All,
I am completely devastated to receive the news that after a 5 month recruitment process, I did not receive the offer with McKinsey. Instead, they told me I was very close to getting the offer and am a “strong candidate” so they would like me to reapply in 6 months time. I haven’t received any further details on exactly what this means and why I am being held to such a timescale if I have already demonstrated my ability.
My feedback after the first round was mainly positive with some minor areas of improvement such as selecting the shortest approach on the quant section and being more structured when giving insights on data. I worked on these areas before my final round and feel I performed a lot better.
However, I received a call from one of my final round partners and he told me they weren’t able to give me an offer at this time. He said this was due to only one area of improvement for me, which is related to judgement and insights from graphs. The feedback was quite vague. He said it probably won’t take me 6 months to work on this, and I was strong in all the other parts of the interview (PEI, structuring and maths) but that’s what the decision is. The partner did not seem to know anything more about the 6 month reapply recommendation, and told me to discuss with HR. The call lasted less than 3 minutes in total and I felt he was uncomfortable sharing the news.
I am really disappointed with the news and in reality, I cannot afford to put my career on hold and wait for 6 months to maybe get the McKinsey offer. I’ve already spent 6 months applying to consulting firms and feel like this is the same as getting a full rejection.
Any advice on what I should do and what my options are would be greatly appreciated.
Many thanks!