PEI examples McKinsey

Hi,

The typical questions are:

1. “Tell me about yourself” or “walk me through your resume”- this is how Consultants usually begin the interview. It's an opportunity for them to learn about you and to pick some interesting facts.
2. “Why consulting?”, “Why McKinsey” questions are used to assess your motivation to be a consultant in general and to work in that particular firm. 
3. Next, the interviewer will also ask you to provide examples from your background to assess how good you are as a leader or a team player; how you can create impact and persuade people; or how you can achieve your goals. You'll have several dimensions and the interview will ask you to talk about one of them:

• Personal impact
• Leadership
• Entrepreneurial drive
• Achievement (asked in some countries instead of entrepreneurial drive)

Take into account that the questions may sound differently, however they will mean the same story. For example, there may be the following variations in the personal impact story:

• Team conflict
• Personal conflict
• Conflict with the boss
• Changing someone's mind
• Overcoming difficulties
• etc

Finally, don't forget to prepare your questions to the interviewer.

If you have time I would recommend to have 1-2 backup stories per question:

1. "This story does not fit. Do you have another story?" - an interviewer can easily say something like this if he is not convinced that your story is good enough or the story does not fit his criteria for some reason.
2. It is essential for you to prepare at least three stories for each area so that in case you get the same question by a couple of interviewers you are not telling the same story. I personally had 3 interviewers asking me exactly the same story. Originally the three of your interviewers are supposed to ask the different questions. In reality, interviewers don't often have a chance to meet before the interview, and sometimes they are urgently replaced by the colleagues. Of course, you can use the same story, but it is much better to demonstrate a diverse experience.
3. Finally, the interviewer may ask you the questions you didn't even expect. It's always good to have some backup stories and adapt them to answer those unexpected questions.

Best

Hi Anonymous,

as you mentioned, the PEI at McKinsey is structured around three key dimensions, leadership, impact and drive. I have provided a description for them below:

1) Leadership is about leading a whole team in a challenging situation and showing team management skills. Questions include:

1. Give me three examples of a time that you lead a group. 

2. What are some key lessons you have learned about motivating people? 


Here you want to emphasize how you overcome a difficult situation leading a team.

2) Personal Impact is mainly based on persuading someone about doing/not doing something. Questions include:

1. Tell me about a time that you persuaded your boss to go along with an idea you had.
2. Tell me about a difficult situation where you had to rely on your communication skills. 


Here you want to emphasize your influence on someone else, usually in disagreement with you.

3) Entrepreneurial Drive is about implementing something overcoming major difficulties. Examples include:

1. Which was a situation where you set a major goal and been able to achieve it?
2. What has been your major accomplishment so far?

Here you want to emphasize the achievement you reached and the process that led you there.

Hope this helps,
Francesco

Hi Konstantin,

typically, they will ask you to show one of the attributes per interview.

This means:

• Prepare at least one story (better two) per attribute
• The stories should not be the same or overlap, ideally they are from different areas of your life (e.g. university, internships, hobbies…)
• Make sure you know the stories in and out as they may dig pretty deep into them
• Always consider what you learned from them (there is nothing wrong with failing at some point, but it is super important that you reflect why something has gone wrong and how you can avoid failure next time)

A good strategy is to tell the stories using the PARADE approach:

• Problem
• Anticipated Consequence
• Role
• Action
• Decision Making Rationale
• End result

Hope this helps!

Hi there!

For anybody looking into this topic, I've just recently put together a video course on the PEI, which contains recordings of actual stories told during McKinsey interviews and which were successful. 

You can learn more about it here:

• Video Course: Master the McKinsey PEI

Best,
Cristian

Hi Anonymous,

Glad to see that you are preparing seriously for the McKinsey PEI - it's really an underestimated part of the whole McK recruiting process and an excellent opportunity to really stand out from the crowd of other applicants (the PEI counts for roughly 50% of your whole evaluation).

Key areas to address for each dimension:

• Leadership: Leading a team (formal or – even better – informal leadership role) in which you encountered interpersonal (!) challenges and focussing on how you overcome them
• Personal Impact: Convincing one specific other person (not multiple persons at once, no team included in this dimension) about a topic, so that he finally changes his opinion - focussing on how you strategically manage the process of convincing somebody

• Entrepreneurial Drive: Achieving a goal which is clearly outside your regular role and responsibilities - focussing on the key challenges and how you overcome them with a structured approach.

You can find many free PEI specific blog posts on my own McKinsey PEI blog: https://pei.consulting-case-interviews.com/blog/.

For in-depth prep, I recommend The Ultimate McKinsey PEI Prep ebook at https://pei.consulting-case-interviews.com (what else can I say?) which covers everything from finding the right examples to tactical fine-tuning.

Furthermore, you can also find a blog post here about how to prepare for the McKinsey PEI in more detail: https://www.quora.com/How-can-I-prepare-for-McKinsey-PEI-questions/answer/Robert-Steiner

For more detailed discussion on this subject, please feel free to contact me for a coaching session to help you preparing your PEI.

Hope that helps - if so, please give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

Hello!

See below plenty!

Leadership

• Please describe your most important leadership experience and the impact that you had as a leader
• Tell me about a time when you had to lead a team
• How do you lead others?
• Tell me about a time when you had to align multiple stakeholders
• Tell me about a time when you were faced with a stressful situation that demonstrated your coping skills

Impact

• Tell me about a time when you had to persuade an uncooperative stakeholder
• How would you deal with an uncooperative client in order to get the data you need?
• Describe a client relationship which was challenging
• What is your typical way of dealing with conflict? Give me an example
• Tell me about a recent crisis you handled
• Tell me about a time when you had to come up with a mutually beneficial solution for conflicting stakeholders
• Describe a project that challenged you. How did you cope?
• Tell me about a time when you had too many things to do and you were required to prioritize tasks

Teamwork

• Tell me a time when you were a team player
• Give me an example of a time you influenced or persuaded a team
• Tell me about a time when you had to come up with a win-win solution in a team
• Tell me about a time when you had to mediate in a team

Achievement

• What accomplishments have given you the greatest satisfaction?
• What do you consider your top three achievements to date?
• Tell me about a time you took the initiative to start something
• Tell me about a time you had to adopt a new approach/think laterally about something
• Have you ever failed at anything?
• What have been your three biggest setbacks?
• Describe a situation where you failed. What did you learn about yourself and how did you change as a result?
• Tell me about a project that didn’t go well and why and what you would do differently next time?
• What experiences/skills do you feel are particularly transferable to our organization?

Feel free to PM me for FIT prep, I do plenty!

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara.

Hi Anonymous,

Please bear in mind that the McKinsey PEI is a highly specific interview format of it's on - so it all starts with having a crystal-clear understanding of the 3 dimensions (Leadership, Personal Impact, Entrepreneurial Drive) and what your interviewers want to hear about. Once you have the content right, you are still not done - you need to deliver your example in a structured and persuasive way as well.

What is true for all 3 dimensions: nobody is interested in a situation in which everything was easy and straight-forward - so in really need to be a challenging situation for you.

Now the key areas per dimension:

• Leadership: Leading a team (formal or – even better – informal leadership role) in which you encountered interpersonal (!) challenges and focussing on how you overcome them
• Personal Impact: Convincing one specific other person (not multiple persons at once, no team included in this dimension) about a topic, so that he finally changes his opinion - focussing on how you strategically manage the process of convincing somebody

• Entrepreneurial Drive: Achieving a goal which is clearly outside your regular role and responsibilities - focussing on the key challenges and how you overcome them with a structured approach.

Hope that helps to guide you into the right direction now! For more detailed discussion on this subject, please feel free to contact me for a coaching session to help you preparing your pei.

More information on some detailed aspects of the PEI you can also find on my blog https://pei.consulting-case-interviews.com/blog for that purpose.

Robert

Hi,

They will be asking the following:

• Tell me about yourself (Walk me through your resume)
• Why consulting
• Why McKinsey
• The story about leadership (How you've taken an initiative and led the people to achieve something)
• The story about Personal Impact (How you persuaded people)
• Entrepreneurial Drive (Innovative solutions that you are proud of most)
• Your questions to the interviewer

In "Tell me about yourself" you should be talking about your career path till now. You can finish this story with an argument about why consulting is the next logical career step.

I would recommend the following structure:

1. Start with a 1 sentence summary of your background, why you are relevant for McKinsey and what's your unique selling point
2. Talk about 3-4 of your roles (may be professional, education, extracurricular), 3 sentences each. The more experienced you are the more you should speak about professional roles. It can be also the distinct roles within the same organization. Typical structure: 1) What was the company 2) What you were responsible for 3) Greatest achievement in that role, that will stay in the memory of the interviewer (E.g. While working at Adidas supply chain I was personally responsible for the delivery of soccer balls to the Worldcup in Africa)
3. The main reason why consulting (or McKinsey if you were a consultant before) is the next logical career step for you

“Why consulting?”, “Why McKinsey” or “Why BCG” questions are used to assess your motivation to be a consultant in general and to work in that particular firm. They will check how you have done your homework and what you’ve learned about them. They also want to make sure that you have a clear intention to work in consulting.

• The answers to these questions are supposed to be short and take no more than 30 seconds each.
• For each question, you should provide three bullets points with different reasons.
• Make sure that you guide the interviewer through your reasoning. Words like “The first reason”, “Moreover”, “Finally” will help you.

When answering “Why consulting” questions, provide three reasons why you want to pursue a career in a consulting firm. A general rule is to find the reasons that are important for you and logically fit everything you have done before (e.g. you want to grow further in financial services and get exposure to these clients). You can always use some personal rationale like your experience of working with consultants on a client side.

"Why this company" is a more specific question and can include the following arguments:

• The general marketing story the company is trying to sell (e.g. Bain is a small "Family" company)
• Brand / positioning / market share in the region
• More clients / projects / expertise in the industry you are interested in
• More well-known stories of success in your city
• Your friends working there
• Your interactions with the other consultants before the interview
• Your prior experience of working with the Firm on a client side
• Office traditions
• Work experience with firm alumni
• etc

Please reach out if you need help with crafting your stories. I provide a dedicated session on that with lots of tips and tricks

Best

Hi Jahanzeb,

the PEI at McKinsey is structured around three key dimensions, leadership, impact and drive. I provided a description for them below:

1) Leadership is about leading a whole team in a challenging situation and showing team management skills. Questions include:

1. Give me an example of a time that you lead a group. 

2. What are some key lessons you have learned about motivating people? 


Here you want to emphasize how you overcome a difficult situation leading a team.

2) Personal Impact is mainly based on persuading someone about doing/not doing something. Questions include:

1. Tell me about a time that you persuaded your boss to go along with an idea you had.
2. Tell me about a difficult situation where you had to rely on your communication skills. 


Here you want to emphasize your influence on someone else, usually in disagreement with you.

3) Entrepreneurial Drive is about starting and implementing something overcoming major difficulties. Examples include:

1. What was a situation where you set a major goal and been able to achieve it?
2. What has been your major accomplishment so far?

Here you want to emphasize the achievement you reached and the process that led you there.

The best way to structure your stories is to use the STARR approach (Situation, Task, Action, Rational for action and Results), which helps the interviewer to understand all the key areas of your story.

Besides the previous dimensions, common questions also include:

• Tell me about yourself
• Why consulting
• Why McKinsey
• Why should we hire you

Please feel free to PM me for more info.

Best,

Francesco

Hello!

McKinsey is no different from from the rest of MBB in FIT. In a nutshell, there are two buckets of questions: 

• Why consulting/McKinsey: which can even include a "why this location" in particular. 
• Behavioural questions: testing the 3 key dimensions that are outlined in the website: leadership, impact and drive.

Cheers, 

Clara

Hi,

As an ex-McKinsey interviewer I prepare candidates to craft their PEI stories for McKinsey – DM me, I will be happy to share my approach :) 

Best,
Daniel

Hi, I recommend crafting a couple of stories for each main dimension assessed during the fit interview: leadership, entrepreneurial drive, and personal impact. Here the official McK video about it: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4sd9EuSVsHE&list=PL30C54D951E8E1688&index=3

Best,
Antonello

Hello!

On top of the insights already shared in the post, next week will be pusblished in PrepLounge´s Shop material related.

In concrete, the "Integrated FIT guide for MBB". 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.

Hope you find it useful!

Hello!

On top of the insights already shared in the post, next week will be pusblished in PrepLounge´s Shop material related.

In concrete, the "Integrated FIT guide for MBB". 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.

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

Dear A,

Good questions. But you're right. Sounds quite similar that may bewilder. 

Below you can find some examples of the questions that would help you to differ the dimensions of PEI:

Leadership

• Tell me about a time you led others.
• Tell me about a time when you were on a team that had a conflict that was keeping it from achieving its objective.
• How do you motivate people?

Personal Impact

• Tell me about a time you had to convince someone to change their mind on something important to them.
• Tell me about a difficult situation where you had to rely on your communication skills.
• What do you want to be remembered for and how are you achieving it?

Entrepreneurial Drive

• Did you ever have a goal that you weren’t able to achieve? What did you do?
• Tell me about a time that you dealt with a tough problem.
• Tell me about a failure.

Best,

André

Dear Konstantin,

PEI part will take 15 min in total and you will be asked question about your experience and also according to this 3 dimensions. Below you can find some examples of the questions that would help you to differ the dimensions of PEI:

Leadership

• Tell me about a time you led others.
• Tell me about a time when you were on a team that had a conflict that was keeping it from achieving its objective.
• How do you motivate people?

Personal Impact

• Tell me about a time you had to convince someone to change their mind on something important to them.
• Tell me about a difficult situation where you had to rely on your communication skills.
• What do you want to be remembered for and how are you achieving it?

Entrepreneurial Drive

• Did you ever have a goal that you weren’t able to achieve? What did you do?
• Tell me about a time that you dealt with a tough problem.
• Tell me about a failure.

Best,

André

Dear A!

Below you can find some examples of the questions that would help you to differ the dimensions of PEI:

Leadership

• Tell me about a time you led others.

• Tell me about a time when you were on a team that had a conflict that was keeping it from achieving its objective.

• How do you motivate people?

Personal Impact

• Tell me about a time you had to convince someone to change their mind on something important to them.

• Tell me about a difficult situation where you had to rely on your communication skills.

• What do you want to be remembered for and how are you achieving it?

Entrepreneurial Drive

• Did you ever have a goal that you weren’t able to achieve? What did you do?

• Tell me about a time that you dealt with a tough problem.

• Tell me about a failure.

Best, André

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