Question regarding Bain experienced hire interview (45 minutes) at US office

Question

Hi,

I have a second round interview coming up with Bain. I am an expereinced hire for a US office location and as part of the round 2 interviews, I have been told Round 2 will include a 45 minutes expereinced hire interview with a partner, along with standard case interviews.

Most people are not aware of the 45 minute expereinced hire interview at Bain. Thus, I am reaching out to the community if anyone is familar with these interviews and guide on how to prepare for them? I am trying to also understand what partners are expecting from experinecd hires with +3 years post MBA experience.

On a diferent note, a friend at Bain had suggested that when you go for your round 1 interview, you may want to set up some coffee chats with senior people at the office so you can network. I did not do that but I was wondering if anyone has any perspective on how to do that since these people are very senior and busy people - so how do you reach out to them for coffee at the office when you dont even know them? Will they not be offended? Is this common practice that some applicants leverage?

Linkedin question - Lastly, now that I have made it to round 2, is it okay to reach out to senior people at Bain on Linkedin (who are not in my network) to request for an information chat - since that will help me understand their perspective better in terms of what they are expecting from experienced hires.

Thanks for taking the time to read my message.

Answer 1

Hi Anonymous,

in general, the partner interview for experienced hire with your seniority has the same structure as the typical one (fit questions + case + your questions), however the partner may:

focus more on fit questions and your alignment with the company – the fit part may take the majority or even all the time of the interview
check more closely your communication (eg how you react to challenging questions, body language)
not have a “proper” structured case to present – examples may be pure market sizing questions or broad strategy questions such as “How would you increase private investments in your own country”.

In order to prepare I would concentrate on:

Review in detail your fit stories – they will matter more than in the first round.
Work on your communication (reaction under pressure, how to gain time when you do not have a structure ready, connection with the interviewer, etc). This is something you can test almost exclusively in p2p mocks with peers/experts.
Focus on “unusual” cases in the preparation. More market sizing practice could be useful to think out of the box if you get unusual questions.

In terms of the coffee chats, I don’t see major advantages in organizing them now since you already have the second round scheduled – networking is usually done to get a referral and land an invitation for interviews. Which would be your specific goal with the coffee chat?

Best,
Francesco