I have heard of McKinsey offices that have three rounds of interviews like your situation but I have not heard of a mysterious interviewer in second round that you are not told about. Some offices include an informal meeting with Professional Development to discuss and answer any questions you have around your learning and development or a coffee chat with a consultant or recruiter. Since you have a final third round with a partner, whom if anyone would be asking about your motivations and addressing concerns from previous rounds and so I would surprised if that happened before.

Good luck!

Sorry about the rejection. You should always ask for feedback, with the understanding that it often will not be very useful. Sometimes, like in my case the first time I applied, the feedback even seemed geared towards another applicant (I was told I needed to do more extra-curricular / non-profit work, when this was exactly what set me apart from most of my classmates). Only sometimes will the feedback be useful, actionable and relevant.

Why is that? Well, ask yourself: the interviewer already took a pass on you, and has many other things to work on. What is his incentive to really spend time to help you? That's right, slim to nil.

Beyond this, also remember there are very few openings each year, and many more qualified candidates. This means MBB (and most consultancies really) will often have to reject outstanding people, some who may even have done everything right in the interviews. We all know that Harvard and Stanford reject outstanding candidates (acceptance becomes nearly random at some point), yet selectivity at MBB is much higher still.

Keep your chin up, McK rejecting your application doesn't say anything about you. Even better, he suggested you reapply next year - not everyone gets this feedback. Keep practicing (remain sharp), hopefully next year you'll have a better outcome.

Hello!

Sorry to hear about that. It happens, and when it does to you, it´s very frustrating.

Upside: when they tell you they would keep in touch they do, and you skip steps in future interviews. Also, I know many people who went thorugh this and ended up hired in MBB -coz it means you were very close, almost there-.

Don´t give up!

What about the other consulting firms? Are you in their pipelines? Would be great to interview asap not to loose momentum.

Cheers,

Clara

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,

One of my friends had the following experience in McKinsey India a few months ago (copy pasting from the email she sent me):

Round 1 - Case Interview:

The client is a thermal power plant located in India, and is concerned with about coal procurement expenses. The client has no other plants or business interests. Explore this issue and suggest some methods to resolve any issues that you encounter.

Round 2 - Case Interview & Fit questions:

A well-known local retail bank in the Middle East is losing market share in a growing market. Its technology and service levels are as good as any of its foreign competitors. The CEO wants to know why this is happening and what else they can do.

Fit questions:

1. Tell us something about yourself.

2. Why consulting? You have work experience in logistics and supply chain - why not continue more in that direction?

3. Why McKinsey?

Round 3 - Case Interview (????)

How should India ensure that it wins the field hockey world cup in 2018?

(This was the toughest one for me and I was really confused, but managed to say something. Not sure how it went, but the first two rounds were good and so I got the offer!)

What do you think? How would you approach these cases? I am particularly curious about the third case. @Experts - your opinions are welcome!

Sorry for going anonymous, but I just want to ensure that my friend's identity is not compromised. :)

Hi Anonymous,

I agree with Vlad, the points you mentioned are quite standard and you may expect in the majority of the interviews. Additional points where you could be challenged are:

1. Graph interpretation – providing a graph and giving you very limited time to identify main insides
2. Math – asking random questions such as “What is 67% of 67”
3. Ask to brainstorm and continue to ask “What else” until you get nervous
4. Pressure interview – interviewer acts hostile and continue to complain about what you presented saying it doesn’t make sense
5. Pressure interview – interviewer keeps silent all the time and gives you very limited feedback on how you are performing

Best,

Francesco

Hi Sergei,

as for the resources you mentioned, the structures in Case in Point and Victor Cheng are not good enough nowadays.

As for Victor Cheng, if you start with a structure that is product, company, competitors and customers, you simply won't impress your interviewer. As for Case in Point, you have too many structures, not always MECE. They could have been good 5-10 years ago, but nowadays the level in a consulting interview has raised (partially because such books have become mainstream thus all candidates have access to them). As a consequence, you would have to refine them further to have a good performance in a case.

If you want to improve on the structuring part, I would recommend you either:

1) Invest time in doing good cases (ideally a minimum of 30, knowing that quality is more important than quantity) to develop/refine your own structures or

2) Book a coach/ ask help to current interviewers that can support you specifically to work on structuring and avoid generic ones

Hope this helps,
Francesco

Hi,

MBB generally use written tests for entry-level candidates. I have personally gone through the McK recruiting process for a Senior Engagement Manager position (at a European office) very recently and I was not asked to take any test but I started straight with the case interviews. From my understanding, that is the general rule for experienced hires but exceptions might exist depending on geographies or your background (in my case I had previous consulting experience).

You could also confirm that by contacting the recruiting team of your target location.

I hope this helps,

Jacopo