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

Hello there,

I would like to echo Antonello's and Daniel's earlier statements that the delay in feedback from the firm does not constitute a given rejection.

There can be several possibilities on why they are delaying the decision:

1. The partners are very busy and were unable to convene and reach an agreement among themselves. In the case of a clear 'NO' from both partners, there would no discussions and delays required.
2. The partners are excited about you as a future firm member and sees your potential in contributing to specific practices / industries / regions (very likely in case of experienced hires). Both partners may have differing thoughts with regards to these specifications and would need to have a detailed discussions on what allocations would work best for you as well as the firm.

As you can see, both potential scenario consistutes a positive scenario. At the second scenario, you can see that such delays can actually be resulted from a very positive result coming from a strong candidate.

Looking at the timeline you mentioned, it is also an indicator of a potential positive outcome, as it is much more efficient for the firm to outright inform rejected candidates rather than delaying the decisions for 3 whole weeks.

In summary, rest assured and keep close contact with the HR team.

I wish you would receive a positive news soon. Fingers crossed.

Kind regards,
Nathan

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

Hi,

You described all the positive things. How can we derive any negative signs from this description?:)

Just keep your fingers crossed and wait for the results. Thanks for sharing your experience!

Best

Hi,

The best way to prepare is the following:

1. Prepare for a regular case interview - it helps a lot. Basically, prep lounge website is about it
2. Practice making slides. Look for publically available MBB presentations for reference. Good books are "Pyramid Principle" and "How to make it with charts"
3. Practice reading cases fast and prioritizing the information. I found useful two sources:

• Written cases you'll be able to find in google or in case books. I've seen a couple in "Vault Guide to the Case Interview" and "Insead Business Admission Test"
• Harvard cases - either buy or try to find online. You can find a couple of MIT cases here for free: https://mitsloan.mit.edu/LearningEdge/Pages/Case-Studies.aspx Unfortunately free cases don't have the prep questions.

• I've uploaded some written case samples here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/zor4m49eyx5qxal/AABeUN6mtiGkWhEklRjszX2Oa?dl=0 (ask me for a password)

While preparing for the panel discussion you'll have to:

• Read quickly the info provided and prioritize it
• Make the relevant calculations
• Create the mini-slides on the flipchart

Make sure that your presentation has the following:

• Slide for Context, Objective, Summary of Recommendations
• Slide for each analysis / area of analysis
• Next steps or risks & mitigation

Good luck!

Hi,

Your question is unclear, could you pls clarify?

Thanks

Hi,

In addition to the insights provided by other experts here, I can also tell you that you can ask a question regarding the staffing model in the office (it's quite office-specific, thus it may not be possible to understand online). Staffing model would include the following:

• What are the typical industries and functional topics covered
• Whether you will have a say in being staffed in projects of your preference
• Whether the clients are typically in the same city, different city or country

Best,

Deniz

Hi,

It is absolutely normal. As you mentioned, they may wait for the pipeline to be confirmed. But as suggested by other experts here, you can contact HR to get an update.

Best,

Deniz

Dear Ankit,

I've gathered some info on OW and what I can say is they are much less structured when compared to McK and others.

For example:

1) Sometimes they don't even ask for structure;

2) I've heard from friends that went to final rounds who got a lot of "strange" estimation cases (PM me if you want to learn a few of them)

3) The style of case depends a lot more on the interviewer rather than the firm (in other words, depending on the interviewer you will get a more interviewer-led or candidate-led)

4) The cases tend to be shorter (this could depend from country to country) - the entire case is more 40-45 minute, with a good 7-10min FIT and at least 5-10min Q&A so the case usually is from 25-35 minutes (again, this can change from office to office)

Hope this helps

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

Hi,
it not necessarily blocks you from getting the offer. The only other thing you could have done is to take 30 seconds and make a summary of the case: it can help to think about aspects stated before but important only in the last stage of the case resolution.

Best,
Antonello

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 Tabitha,

I will give my input based on my experience giving final rounds at a tier 2 firm as well as my own experience moving to MBB.

First of all it's important to take official feedbacks with a grain of salt.

(1) For legal and marketing reasons firms are very careful regarding the feedback they provide. I've been part of final round discussions with partners were we discussed interviewee's attire, the fact they have spouses or not, age, ... for obvious reasons we won't say that we didnt hire someone because you wore the wrong sweater.

(2) Depending on the season/office/position you apply the demand for new hires will be different and that will impact the threshold for giving an offer. A common myth is to think MBB will always hire regardless of their needs. I've discuss with a MBB partner that putted very blunt "at this period in the year we have reach our target quota, anyone can still apply but they will only be hired if they are a superstart, otherwise waiting until January is better."

Now, this is not to say that you should disregard your feedback. You have mention a specific point that you could focus on.

If I was in your shoes I would do the following:

1) Status quo. What other firms are you currently in process, what firms could you potential still apply and what is the timeline to do so

2) Honest assessment. Get an unbiased opinion on where you currently stand today. This means, PEI, case, Q&A, ...you only know how much work do you need to do if you know where you stand

3) Develop a "work plan" for the remaining of your time taking into account the feedback you received

Happy to discuss this on a call if you would like

There are so many variables that go into this, that it is hard to predict.

However, I firmly believe that if you cracked the rest of the case and you nailed it at the personal part, meaning the partner loved you and feels totally comfortable in putting you infront of a client tomorrow, she/he might have even forgot about your mistake after the interview.

We are humans, we all make mistakes, partners make mistakes too, all the time. What really matters is acknowleding that mistake, and taking the necessary actions to limit its negative effects on you, your firm and clients. If you were able to portray that you can do some of those after your interview, which if I understand correctly you did by acknowledging your mistake and taking the necessary steps, it might have even looked more positive on you.

Good luck with the wait, it is usually the most painful part.

Cheers

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!

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!

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)

1. He's looking for the exact same things that a case is setup to test - he just wants to do it in a quicker/different way. You want to stay structured, clearly articulate your thinking, and drive to a clear answer.

2. Sounds positive, but you never know. Just focus on everything else in your life and don't think about it too much.

Hi Emad,

Without knowing anything else, I assume that the objective would be to allow shoppers to continue their purchases, i.e. minimize revenue loss due to the malfunction of the barcode scanners.

Hence, a meaningful follow-up question would be: “How indispensable are barcode scanners to make the billing? Is it possible to enter barcodes manually instead of scanning”?

Then a structure could look as follows:

1. Customers pay now
   1. Manual input of barcode (through number pad)
      • Thoughts: This would take longer than scanning, but could be a viable option. If we want to make sure not to lose revenues (customers leaving due to long queues), we might think about opening more counters, so we would need to activate “emergency cashiers” who would be available immediately. This of course would create more costs – which is irrelevant if your objective is to minimize revenue loss.
   2. Manual input of barcode not possible
      1. Purchase shall happen in this store
         • Repair bar code scanners
         • Rent new bar code scanners
         • Buy new bar code scanners
         • Work with accounting books, i.e. everything has to be written down manually
      2. Purchases can be outsourced to other stores
         • Establish a transport service to the next Carrefour store
2. Customers pay later
   • Let cashiers write down what customers purchased, their address etc., validate using customers’ identity cards, let customers sign (“written contract”) and make them pay later

Note how MECE that structure is. The objective of the exercise is that you have a structured thought process for which it helps to set up a MECE structure. This does not claim to be exhaustive but is a first starting point. Try to enrich it with further of your own ideas.

To get the most out of the exercise, I suggest you present your own thoughts first next time.

Hope this helps :)

Best regards

Hi,

I interviewed in the Strategy& New York Office 2 years ago, and at that time they stuck with the classic 2, 45 minute interviews starting with the behavioural interview and ending with a case. It is likely the same, though I cannot confirm - I recommend you reach out to HR or double-check any communications they have sent you.

That being said, are you applying generalist or in a specific knowledge area? I ask, because my "cases" were not classic cases given that I was interviewing for their Technology practice.

Keep this in mind depending on the role you're interviewing for!

Best,

Ian