All questions tagged Final Round - Consulting Q&A - PrepLounge.com

Hi,

Don't worry. The directors are usually busy and it's hard to get them on call at the same time to dicuss the candidates. Just keep the fingers crossed

Best!

Hi Emine, as long as you did not receive a rejection email/call, you still have the same chance of getting an offer. Specifically waiting time of a week is absolutely normal. Having said that, there is nothing wrong with writing a reminder email to the Recruiting Team as sometimes the process takes longer time than usual due to operational reasons. Good luck!

Hi,
usually, they are faster. I recommend calling HR. Do not worry about bothering them: they are there to help you.

Best,
Antonello

Hi,
questions about interviewer experience are always great, showing your curiosity in her motivation and expertise. If you have the chance to know before the name of the interviewer (you can ask it to HR the day before or discovering it in the waiting room), look at her LinkedIn profile to develope some tailored questions (e.g. about the MBA, the industry or practice specialization, etc.)

I also recommend you not to make questions about the firm that you can easily find online or through friends/other candidates (e.g. clients of the office, projects, typical workday, international opportunities, client exposure, your role, numbers of the office, ...).

Best,
Antonello

While things can get delayed sometimes, the delay does not give any direction on the outcome. So don't worry!

Hi Alex,

First of all, let me take this chance to wish you good luck with your final round!

Secondly, for a final round interview, the most important points to pay particular attention to is the following:

1. Structure
2. Selling for the future: Since you will be having case discussions with a Partner or a Managing Director, their primary focus is on selling future services to their clients, to keep the pipeline running. If you can show this skill by advising for further analysis at the end of your recommendation, they would love you already!

Best wishes,

Gammal

Hey anonymous,

No, it's definitely not normal for any location to take so long to communicate the final results (it may take 1-2 days; in some exceptional situations a bit longer, but definitely not 2+ weeks). And, yes, regardless of the outcome, they will always communicate it!

Thus, I would recommend you to send them a very polite follow up email asking if they have a date on when they will communicate it to you (do not ask directly why didn't they say anything yet or if you have got an offer or not).

PS: despite not being a normal situation... this happened to me too. I just got an interview 2 or 3 weeks after the final interview, and at the time the interviewer told me that he had completely forgotten to call to tell me that I passed. 10 years latter this gives a funny story to tell :D

Best

Bruno

Hi! Give them a call and ask. Don't make the world more complicated than it is. :)

Cheers, Sidi

I did a math mistake with McK in my 4th interview and was rejected ... I think the probability is more defined by your performance and also what you get for a final case (what they decided to test in the final round - for some candidates, more qualitive and creative elements, for other it can be more on calculations)

Every interaction is extremely important. Hence, I would take the case presentation as important as any other preparation.

Note, they have notes on you from previous interviews, hence they are looking at possibly weaknesses that you showcased and strengths. So if you feel you had certain weaknesses, you could work to address them here.

Hi,

1. Can only recommend practicing here. Hard to give specific feedback without knowing the details

2. This happens when you don't dig enough deep to find a root cause:

• You found a piece of numeric evidence, but did not manage to find an underlying root cause (e.g. the decline in sales was caused by the change in the mix of customers, but you did not dig deeper to understand what has led to the change in the mix)
• You found only one of the underlying problems (e.g. the objective was to cut costs by $4M and you found a way to cut $2M and jumped into conclusion. But there were actually two more drivers)
• You found a conclusion but did not make any calculations (e.g. you found that your competitors have an automated process and recommended to automate for us as well without doing any cost-benefit analysis)
• You found a root cause but it was not deep enough (e.g. you found that the transportation process through the job shop took longer because of the longer distance. But the real problem was the layout of the job shop and the curvy routing

3. Again - need to know the context

Best!

Hi Anonymous,

as mentioned by others, the main thing you can negotiate is your entry level in the firm (eg Senior Associate with 12 months to Consultant vs 6 months to Consultant). It would be very difficult to negotiate a different standard salary for a fixed seniority level, as this would create inequality in the firm. On the other hand, if you can negotiate a higher initial entry level, this should bring a higher salary or faster promotion track without creating imbalance in the company, thus would be feasible.

You can definitely try to negotiate your entry level in the firm. The degree of negotiation depends obviously on how valuable you can be for the company (usually the more senior, the more valuable). In any case, you should be aware that with a higher level, expectations on your performance will also be higher.

Best,

Francesco

Hi,

- It's exactly the same, but you'll have three interviews instead of one (usual procedure) and the interviewer would be an Associate Partner / Partner / Senior Partner instead of an Engagement Manager / Associate Partner. The difficulty is the same

- Calm down because even if the interviewer is more senior, it doesn't mean the interview is going to be harder. It could also happen that an interviewer plays the "bad guy" part, but, again, it's only a stress test

Finger crossed and good luck!

For the fit questions part, you may want to be ready for answering the following questions:

Serhat

Cheers

1. Tell me about yourself
2. Why MBA at that point of career?
3. Why Your school?
4. Why consulting
5. Why Our Company?
6. What would you be doing as a consultant?
7. What is the most important consulting skill?
8. When did you demonstrate it?
9. When was the time when you demonstrated team skills or team work?
10. What was the most important thing you learnt in your earlier job? What skills did you gain in your earlier job which would prepare you for consulting?
11. When did you have to work with data? How are your data analysis skills?
12. Why should we hire you?
13. Have demonstrated all 4 skills that you look for (use examples above)
14. What is the most important thing I should know about you that I cannot learn from your resume?
15. How would a friend or professor / colleague who knows you well describe you?
16. What serves as your biggest motivation? What are the key metrics for measuring success?
17. When did you receive constructive feedback?
18. What are your weaknesses?
19. Which boss / mentor has had a clear influence on you? What do you admire about your previous boss?
20. Follow-up: Constructive feedback –
21. How do you work in a pressure situation / short on time / short on resources
22. What has been your biggest achievement?
23. Link this answer to leadership / problem solving
24. Tell me about a leadership experience
25. Tell me about a time when you had to analyse data
26. Tell me about a time when you had to analyse financial information
27. Tell me about a time when you had to face a challenge
28. Tell me about a time you have failed
29. What are your short term and long term goals?
30. Tell me about a time when you set a goal for yourself and what steps you take to achieve the goal?
31. Describe a situation when you were unable to reach a goal?
32. Tell me about a time when you overcame failure?
33. Have you ever had to change your priorities to meet another person’s expectations?
34. Tell me about the time you had to compromise
35. Tell me about a time when you didn’t meet a deadline
36. Tell me about a time when you had to multi task
37. Tell me about a time when you had to adjust to a project schedule because you did not have enough resources
38. Describe a situation in which you used different communication styles to influence stakeholders with differing perspectives 
39. Tell me about a time when you had to be assertive to get your point across
40. Difficult situation that required careful communication (Crisis Management)
41. Describe most rewarding customer experience
42. Tell me about a time when you had to accept an unreasonable request from a client
43. Dealt with a customer that tested your patience
44. Tell me about a time you took a difficult decision and had to explain it to others / Tell me about a time you took an unpopular decision
45. Tell me about a time you took a quick decision
46. Tell me about a time when you identified a problem and then solved it
47. Tell me about a time when you built a rapport with client / colleague
48. Tell me about a time you resolved a conflict in a team
49. Have you led a team where different members of the team do not work well together? How did you deal with this situation
50. Describe a time you gave constructive criticism to someone
51. Tell me how did you determine priorities / Handling multiple deadlines at the same time? How did you handle the situation
52. How did you deal with ethical dilemmas?
53. Team experience that you found rewarding / Tell me about you had to work in a team to accomplish your goal
54. Team experience that you found disappointing
55. Describe a situation when you were a member of a team (not leader) of a team and conflict arose. What did you do?
56. Team member not pulling his weight. What did you do?
57. What is important in a job environment?
58. Why do you think you can put up with long hours?
59. Tell me about your college experience
60. What else do you do at school apart from studies?
61. How do you manage stress in your life?
62. Favorite Class and grade you got in it
63. What do you read?
64. Fun fact
65. What do you hate the most?
66. Favorite website?
67. Tell me full names of people who interviewed you before
68. Do you have any questions?

Hi,

Congrats on making it to the final round at McK! Quite an achievement already. With regard to your questions, please find here some elements to put you on your way:

- What really changes now compared with the first round? Is it the intensity/complexity of the cases, is it more invoved PEI, etc.?

The cases tend to change a little bit in the sense that they become a little less structured. Principals and partners interviewing for the last round have often more experience in interviewing that EMs / managers during the first round, so they stick a little bit less to a scripted case. The cases can also become a little more conversational. I don’t think this changes the preparation all that much, but you have to get comfortable to receive cases that are a little less conventional. I got one case in the last round at McKinsey that was “Where do you expect health care in Europe to be 10 to 20 years from now”. So it become more a conversation than a case. Now this might not apply to you, but the message is be a little bit more expecting of the unexpected. (ps. This doesn’t require practical knowledge of an industry or special preparation… They still evaluate your thinking process / answer structure / … more than the actual content). Actually, the case and fit blend a bit more together into one hybrid.

- Will the notes from my previous performances be shared with my interviewers for final round?

Often you receive a call of one of the first round interviewers with a summary of the feedback that came out of the first round interviews. If this doesn’t come through, don’t hesitate to contact HR or of the interviewers with a polite email requested feedback for preparing your decisive round. It also shows investment in the process and a willingness to improve!

- In other words, will they try to test me on the specific feedback points that I received to see if I'm showing improvement on those points?

The answer is – as often in consulting – “ it depends”. If there was a particular soft spot(s) during the first round interview and you receive explicit feedback on it (e.g. weak maths, structure, etc.) there might be some more focus on this. If they look for confirmation on a point of doubt, they will pay attention. Alternatively, if the interviews were generally strong, and there were no obvious weaknesses, the interviews will be a bit more balanced and nothing in particular will be tested.

- Any other tips to keep in mind, outside of PEI and Cases?

What I think is important to keep in mind is that – in the last round – the interviewers already know that you’re likely a strong case performer and generally a clever person (otherwise you wouldn’t have gotten through the earlier stages of the recruitment process). So this point of view is yours to lose, in the sense that the default is that they expect strong case performance already. However, to get all the way to a final offer, it becomes more about the assessment of fit within the culture of the company, being generally a professional with client-facing skills, etc. So my advice would be to act like a consultant already, like a professional who is at a problem-solving session with another professional (the interviewer). Don’t approach it like a student-professor exam-situation, where there is always the imbalance between how’s the grown-up and who’s the youngster (figure of speech). So act like you would in that job, with some confidence (watch out: don’t become arrogant!! Big red flag) and a certain gravitas. The more your interview looks like a nice and balanced conversation between two colleagues, the better the odds are to take it all the way!

Good luck!

Wouter*

P4S Expert

Hey there,

Well done on McK final round! I think your plan sounds reasonable - you certainly don't want to burn out by over doing it for 5 weeks.

Some ideas:

• Practice maths a couple times a week - keeping sharp on your mental / quick written arithmetic is important so you shouldn't under estimate this - division, multiplication, percentages, etc. I would also suggest that you review your long divisions - though cases with long division are rare, you don't want to get stuck on a case because you forgot how to long divide!
• Read through cases online - There are hundreds of case books out there. You definitely shouldn't be actually solving all these cases, but reading a couple of cases a day will help you increase your knowledge of cases and types of problems/questions that might be asked.
• Consider scheduling 1-2 sessions with a PrepLounge Expert: I don't just say this because I'm a PrepLounge expert myself - you can choose any expert on the site with a good recommendation rate. No matter how many cases you have done, if you haven't had someone who really knows what they're talking about help you, you will keep making the same mistakes. Additionally, experts can provide a lot of expert tips for how to "shine" in an interview and stand out from the competition. Therefore, with this level of time on your hands, I believe it is a worthy investment to make.
• Last but not least, the day before your interview, don't look at cases anymore - instead try relax, make sure you eat well, and get plenty of sleep!

Good luck with your interviews and your prep!

Alessandro

Hi mate,

I've recently accepted an offer for McKinsey Sydney so I can give you a more recent assessment of the differences.

I'll breakdown my assessment into the Case interview and the PEI section.

The case interview differred in pace and content. Pace wise they moved quicker, didn't waste time on you rambling and will interrupt you more often. Be prepared of this, the key quote was "if it felt like I was moving quickly, it's because I felt you were doing well, so don't feel flustered as I interrupt and keep moving through the questions." The conversations are fast paced and you should feel ready to quickly outline your hypothesis and start spitballing with your Partner.

Content wise as you would know there is a large packet of case information available to the interviewers. My two Partner interviews barely touched the case information, in fact the Senior Partner just started talking in a very conversational manner, his exact words to begin the case. "Oh that's interesting, hey since you're interested in the services sector I've got this interesting problem that I hope you can help me with..." It was very fluid, the whole case lasted 15 minutes because it wasn't a structured Q1 Q2 structure.

I think the 2 key take aways from my interview experiences are that while real case practices are the gold standard, having the mental ‘muscle memory’ from talking out loud and being able to critically assess problems was also critical in my success. Furthermore being able to treat the interview as a friendly conversation helps in being more comfortable with the pacing.

Finally, the Personal Experience Interview were different in two ways, weighting and content. Firstly the PEI had more weighting than I expected during my interview rounds, especially the partner interviews. My preparation during first round for PEI was fairly light, writing down a few ‘head line stories’ on a notebook and hoping to be able to discuss the details as the interviewer asked. In reality the PEI section was literally 50% of your 60 minutes, going up to 60-70% in your partner interviews.

The feedback from my round 1 interviewers was that I should brush up on my stories to be more structured and detailed.

Secondly in the partner interviews they structured the questions differently, my final Senior Partner interview went like this:

"Talk about your leadership capabilities, but I want you to imagine you are on the front page of the newspaper, I want to see your 5 word Headline, and three dot points that are 10 words or less that described what you did."

They would ask questions such as “why did you choose to talk to X in this location?”, “what reactions were you looking for when you said that?” Unless you had really thought about your stories, these details would be hard to remember on the spot.

The key take away for the PEI section is that it is definitely a 1:1+ ratio for Case interviews to PEI, and your preparation should reflect this.

Good luck with your prep.

Cheers,

Lucas

Hi David,

I replied below to your questions:

1. You will be evaluated in terms of the final. Interviewers may refer to the partners of the first round for specific questions, but if you perform well in the final you will receive an offer, independently by the possible mistakes in the first round
2. The final will be similar to the first round in your case. Potentially there may be more focus on your fit and communication at this second stage
3. It is difficult to assess your math performance without more details but in general would be important that you exercise on a not-too-complicated approach. Straightforward (and correct) math can be a plus versus excessively complicated math
4. Here is a link to some tips for the conclusion: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/at-the-end-of-the-case-interview-what-should-we-do-as-a-closing-conclusion-how-would-you-structure-a-synthesis-3832
5. I would suggest to look for experience candidates or experts for a final review of your prep, in particular if you feel you have reached a cap in your prep

Hope this helps,

Francesco

HI Anonymous,

Usually McKinsey aims for the 'real' people involved in the interviews, but sometimes due to admin reasons it's also HR calling. So no 100% certainty here.

If it's not HR, at least you can try to push for some more insights and feedback (irrelevant from the outcome) - McKinsey is usually rather scarce in that, but at least it's worth trying to squeeze out at least a bit of feedback!

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

Robert

Hello there,

Congratulations for getting through to the final round!

As experienced hires, typicaly there are 5 aspects that the partners would focus on during the interviews:

1. Details of your professional experiences, e.g. types of projects you were involved, what is your role and specific tasks you were working on, your client / stakeholder interactions, deilverables, and impact / results
2. Leadership experiences, whether in project settings or office initiatives
3. Alignment of your industrial and functional expertise with the current need within the firm
4. Culture fit, e.g. communication style, logical flow & structure, mobility, working norms
5. Correlation between your mid and long-term career objectives with the firm's growth trajectory

One of the key to excel interviews in consulting firms is consistency. Hence, it is always better to have smaller deviation in your performances across different interview sessions. For example, performing well enough in both interviews would be preferable compared to having a distinctive result at one but completely bombed the others. Of course, in the case of having a combination of average + excellent as well as excelling both interviews are an even better case, but it is not an absolute requirement.

Just be yourself and present yourself as a real person, describe your experiences as detailed as possible during the sessions and let the flow take over.

On the level / role, it is perfectly acceptable to inquire this if the topic is not brought upon by the partners themselves beforehand. This can be asked in the Q&A session.

Hope it helps and all the best for your incoming interviews!

Kind regards,

Nathan