Question on IT case interviews

Hello Anonymous,

Thanks for reaching out. There are no typical IT/Digital cases online. However I would suggest the following steps:
1. Nurture your mind with publications and Intellectual Capital: from Platinion, Technology Advantage and Mckinsey digital. You should cover subjects such as: agile at scale, artificial intelligence, IT cost reduction levers
2. Get your orders of magnitude in hand: these are around typical FTE cost for IT, IT structure in percentage (split between build and run for example), levers for cost reudction
3. Prepare the typical cases: as for the standard process, in IT you will have standard cases of profitability, entering a new market, cost reduction, operations,.. so prepare cases related to that
Best of luck for your interviews and do not hesitate to get in touch if you have any questions,
Norah

I've never even heard of BCG Platinion. But I guess you can get ideas for traditional IT cases by looking at publications or articles posted by MBB / Accenture.

Hi,

I have not seen any digital cases online but I have some, so feel free to reach me for prep. 

There will be a mix of regular and IT cases. For the regular cases on preplounge will be most helpful. For the IT cases, I recommend reading the articles of the consulting companies about these topics on their websites (Hundreds of them if you google by key words "agile", "Digital", at McKinsey, BCG or Accenture)

But here is a list of potential topics you need to know. It is a full list and looks scary but they test a lot of these concepts depending on the particular role:

• Cloud (cloud vs own servers pro and cons, uptime % SLAs, load balancing, etc)
• Security (encryption basics, password change policy, cloud security and encryption on your computer)
• Agile and development (Agile principles)
• M&A and IT (Will it be one system or two systems? Is it "Adopt and go" approach or we take the best of both systems and create a new one? Integrate now, innovate later? Or Innovate now, when you have time?)
• IT strategy and Digital transformation (Similar to M&A)
• IoT (Mainly the use of IoT in operations - Process steps completion, measuring temperature, maintenance measurements, other measurements, predictive algorithms, etc)

Good luck!

Hi!

One thing about McK Digital which surprises many candidates is the fact that the case studies discussed during interviews do not differ from the generalist case studies. In fact, there are many cases where applicants run through the entire process without discussing ANY case which has a digital context!

The reason for that is quite simple: once you are invited to interview for McK Digital, your topic expertise is estimated as good enough. What the Firm is looking for is rather the right intrinsic skillset in terms of

• Structured thinking
• Problem solving
• Communication
• Ability to influence others
• Ability to lead others and oneself

These are exactly the same qualities that are needed for the generalist track! Hence, the process and content of the interviews is practically identical between Ditial and Generalist.

Cheers, Sidi

Hello,

Let me start with a clarification : BCG Platinion is much more technical than McKinsey Digital. Assignements done by BCG Platinion are rather implementations or IT diagnostics. If you want to do IT or Digital Strategy, you should apply to the BCG Technology Advantage practice.

Regading you question : usually when interviewing for McKinsey Digital or BCG Technology Advantage, you can get 50/50 between generalist cases and IT cases. Platinion may have a higher ratio of IT cases during interviews.

IT cases are very often around IT costs reduction. So, you should have in mind some key ratios / order of magnitude (such as internal and external FTE costs, split between project and run costs, split betweern software and hardware costs).

You may find get cases on Agile or Digital POC as well.

Hope this helps !