All questions tagged McKinsey PEI - Consulting Q&A - PrepLounge.com

Hi there,

the structure of the rounds is the same (fit + case+ your questions); however there is more emphasis on communication and fit.

Specifically, the main differences you will find in a final round with partners is that at that stage they:

1. spend more time on fit questions and your alignment with the company
2. check more closely your communication (eg how you react to challenging questions)
3. may not have a “proper” structured case to present – during one of my MBB finals I had one interview which was made by two market sizing questions and a brainteaser, without any business case. That's because during the final they know you can structure and crack a case (you passed few interviews already) and are more interested in your logic, personality and fit with the company

So in order to prepare I would concentrate on:

• Review in detail your PEI stories – they will matter more than in the first round. In some finals I had almost exclusively behavioral questions
• Work on your communication (reaction under pressure, how to gain time when you do not have a structure ready, connect with the interviewer, etc). This is something you can do almost exclusively in interviews with peers.
• Prepare cases as you did for the first round. More market sizing practice may be useful to think outside the box if you get unusual questions.

In case you need help with unusual cases please feel free to PM me, I do a specific session on them (eg How would you estimate the effect of the Coronavirus on the economy in China)?

Best,

Francesco

Hi,

1. When the consultants ask you to provide an example of leading others or working in teams, most probably they are looking for a leadership story

For those of you applying for junior positions, leadership does not necessarily mean being a supervisor. Organizing various stakeholders, being in charge of a study project, leading your team in a competition - all these examples will make a good story. Leadership is about finding an opportunity and managing people to achieve it

2. When the interviewers ask you to provide an example of resolving a team- or personal conflict, Changing someone's mind, Developing and implementing a solution or overcoming difficulties - it means they want to hear a personal impact story.

Personal impact is a story of influencing people and persuading them to follow your solution.

3. When you have to provide an example of Overcoming challenges, Achieving a personal goal, Failing something, Creating new approaches or doing something innovative - these are the stories about your achievement and entrepreneurial drive

What can be a good achievement? First of all, the achievement should be important for you personally. It should prove that you set ambitious goals and achieve them, very often over and above than planned with innovative solutions

Best

Hi,

It may seem for you that these 2 types of cases are different, however, the interviewer-led type is just a simplified version of the interviewee-led case. My advice is to always prepare in interviewee-led format so that you could solve both easily.

What to expect:

• Engagement managers (1st round interviews if you think of phone interview as round 0) generally use Mck casebooks and most commonly make interviewer-led interviews. In this case they ask you a) To make a structure (issue tree) b) to drill down in some branch of your structure and calculate something. Or they may even ask to analyze smth unrelated to the structure c) question on creativity (e,g, list 10 ways to increase revenues). However, you should be ready for both type of interviews at this point
• Partners and directors have their own favorite cases and mainly want you to lead. The key difference:

1. You ask clarifying questions in the beginning and make a structure
2. You lead the case through the structure you've prepared a) asking questions and trying to identify the root cause of the problem in the branch of your structure b) making a transition to the next branch c) proactively calculating the data and making data-driven conclusion from the data they give you d) Making a conclusion when they ask you to finish a case

Best,

Hi there!

Based on your short description of the context, both examples are fine. However, the real question is: in which of those contexts did you encounter interpersonally challenging situations in a team setting, to explain your detailed "Actions" and "Decision-making rationale" (according to the PARADE framework) in those situation. The context as such is actually secondary.

Additional comment: As a rule of thumb, the more current your example is, the better - all other factory being equal, chose the more recent example.

(Why? Firstly, as an interviewer, I am interested in your current skillset and abilities. Therefore, I am not really so much interested in your actions and decision-making rationale several years ago as opposed to several weeks or months ago. And hopefully, you developed yourself further over the last couple of years, so that your actions and decision-making rationale were different today, given the possibility that you would be in the same situation again.)

Hope that helps!

Robert

Hi!

It is very important "how" you tell the story. Even the best story will not work if you're presentation is not to the point. Being able to communicate effectively is key for a consultant and that is also what they want to see.

I think you can use the story (if you can't think of anything else). You should tweak it a bit and highlight the key points a bit more.

Key things to remember:

> Structure your story (1) Situation (What is the context) (2) Complication (What was the conflict?) (3) Solution (How did you resolve the conflict?) In your story 2 and 3 is not clear enough.

> Be specific but keep it simple. It is a fine line between being too generic and adding too many unnecessary details. Your mention lots of details in your stories that are not always helpful for proving your point.

> Not longer than 2min. It is important to be to the point and bring across your key messages in 2min or less. So practice your presentation.

Good luck! I am sure if you go over it again and practice, you will have an excellent story to tell :-)

Best, E

Hi Anonymous,

this question is very similar to “Why should I hire you”. I would structure the answer as follows:

• Step 1: Be ready for an immediate reply. You cannot show you have to think for this question. If you don’t know immediately why they should hire you / what you can bring, you cannot expect they will consider you positively. This not only means you should prepare in advance, but also that you should break the ice immediately. Something like the following would work “That’s a great question. I think you should hire me/have me in the program for a couple of reasons, related to [MENTION THREE SKILLS]”
• Step 2: Start presenting the first skill. “A first element I believe I can bring is the ability not only to work in a team, but also to bring a team to reach its goal”
• Step 3: Provide a clear example of the skill. “As you can see from my CV, I have played in competitive football in the last years; more specifically [EXAMPLE SHOWING LEADERSHIP]. “
• Step 4: Remark why that could be useful for the company. “I know consultants work constantly in teams and the team performance is what matters to achieve the final result. If you hire me/have me in the program, I believe I can contribute in the team to that, as I showed in my past sport experience”
• Step 5: Repeat Step 2-4 for other two skills

As examples of good skills, everything related to leadership, drive, impact would work well for McKinsey. At the link below you can find an explanation of the meaning and differences for each of them:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/mckinsey-pei-difference-drive-and-personal-impact-918#a1780

Best,
Francesco

Hi Anonymous,

this question mainly aims to understand if you have experiences that show the skills needed to be a good consultant.

A good answer would emphasize:

• Three parts of your CV that you consider most relevant. This may involve working experience, education and extracurricular activities, or more focus on one of these areas, according to your profile. The order is up to you, but ideally you should use recent experiences (eg not something you did 10 years ago).
• The specific description of what you have done
• How such experiences helped you to develop skills that are useful in consulting. This is the selling part you mentioned. Ending the story which such takeaway will let the interviewer perceive you have indeed the characteristics of a good consultant.

You may then conclude saying that such path naturally brought you to be interested in consulting.

In terms of skills to emphasize, potential useful ones include:

• Analytical skills
• Communication skills
• Sales skills
• Ability to interact with C-Levels
• Teamwork skills
• Ability to achieve results under strict deadlines and constraints

The key in all the examples is to be extremely specific. One of the most common mistakes candidates do is to think that they can give a general idea to the interviewer of what they did and that this would be enough. This is rarely the case. To really understand you, the interviewer needs to understand and visualize the experiences you had and he/she cannot do this without specific examples.

Best,

Francesco

I am pretty sure they won't be asking you this question. What they could ask, on the other hand, is "why do you want to switch to McKinsey now from your current firm?" For this, you can formulate any reasonable answer around your reasons for switching - e.g. work with greater variety of clients, higher impact projects, training, etc.

I would also say that for McKinsey specifically, the "FIT" part of the interview is very structured as part of the Personal Experience Interview (PEI). Therefore, you are less likely to get these types of "behavioural" questions than at BCG/Bain, and likely will just get one PEI Question (details of PEI have been discussed at length in previous Q&As).

Hi,

In the final round, I would expect a bit more structured and demanding approach to the fit part. The partners in the last round are more experienced and they will challenge every single detail of your story. So make sure that you have a couple of backup stories. Thus:

1) Make sure that you've prepared everything: A story about yourself, motivational questions and the main FIT stories. Also, don't forget about your questions to the interviewer - you'd rather have an interesting conversation and score some point instead of a simple Q&A session

2) Then go through each story and think of the additional questions the interviewer may ask. It’s important since additional questions will take up to 50% of the interview. Try to remember the main details and facts and make sure that you know how to explain the key concepts quickly. Test your stories with your friends, ideally consultants, and ask for their feedback. There can be multiple groups of additional questions:

• The interviewer may be interested in details about the context
• He may want to check whether this was your effort or more sort of a team effort.
• “Have you faced any difficulties while implementing your solution?”- Typically an interviewer would like you to tell him how you’ve overcome those difficulties.
• Your interviewer will check how real your story is. You should be ready to provide even more granular actions, key milestones and a breakdown of potential effects.

3) Now work on 3-6 backup stories. During your interviews, you can then use these stories or adapt these stories to the additional questions your interviewer asks you.

You may be interested, why you need to prepare several stories for each question? At the end of the day, it's not that easy to come up with all of these stories. I've answered here: Repeating Fit Interview Stories

As for the cases - Partners and Directors have their own favorite cases and may even want you to lead the case. The key difference:

1. You ask clarifying questions in the beginning and make a structure
2. You lead the case through the structure you've prepared a) asking questions and trying to identify the root-cause of the problem in the branch of your structure b) making a transition to the next branch c) proactively calculating the data and making data-driven conclusion from the data they give you d) Making a conclusion when they ask you to finish a case

It may seem to you that these 2 types of cases are different, however, the interviewer-led type is just a simplified version of the interviewee-led case. My advice is to always prepare in the interviewee-led format so that you could solve both easily.

Best

Hi Anonymous,

in general if you are unable to answer a PEI question – even mentioning you did not have such experience - you will lose points in the fit part. That’s based on the expectation that an appropriate candidate will have:

• Sufficient leadership experiences
• Sufficient impact experience
• Sufficient drive experience

The questions in the PEI part are normally broad enough so that every good candidate should be able to derive a story. Eg if the ask you about an entrepreneurial drive experience, you don’t need to provide evidence of founding your own company – organizing an event in your university, managing a college club or leading some relevant extracurricular activities could be enough. In an equivalent way, every candidate is expected to develop a good story for working in groups and having to lead the group through challenges.

Hope this helps,

Francesco

Hi Anonymous,

I agree with Robert, taking such a long time before any fit questions is not recommended. That’s because there will be expectations that you have prepared for the questions in advance. Having said that, it is definitely better to take some time rather than give an immediate weak answer, although you may not get full score if you wait for 60 seconds.

Best,

Francesco

Hi Anonymous,

theoretically the sport team example could be fine, however it is critical that you show the critical elements for a STARR or PARADE structure and in particular:

• A clear negative consequence if you would have failed
• Specific actions you took related to a leadership position
• Significant results

To decide between different examples, I would consider the following:

• Which shows the strongest skills in managing people
• Which shows the biggest possible results as a leader
• Which is more unique and memorable

Hope this helps,
Francesco

There are several great questions questions in this post. Let’s start with establishing what interviewers are given before the interview, what overlaps exists between interviews and what interviewers discuss after the interviews are completed.

Before the interview, interviewers:

• Receive your resume and any notes from the resume screeners
• Receive any feedback from recruiters from on/off campus interactions (e.g., firm presentations, case preparation sessions)
• Choose a case from the active case library that unique from the other interviewers they are paired with for the day to avoid “case overlap”
• Are rarely assigned a “fit interview” question, but rather choose their own. They may, however, be assigned a “fit interview area” (e.g., leadership, drive/achieving, etc..) to probe

Overlaps that may exist

• Background walk through
• Why consulting
• Why MBB
• Fit question

After the interview, interviewers:

• Make the “case for” and make the “case against” (different interviewers do each)
• Discuss each portion of the candidate’s interview. So, stories told multiple times will get a reaction like, “Yeah, she told me that story too. It was interesting but…”
• Come to a consensus agreement whether to extend an offer to the candidate.

So, to answer your specific questions:

“Also, are the interviews coordinated amongst the interviewers such that after all interviews they circle back with each other to get a complete picture of fit that covers all the dimensions of fit?”
Yes, there is an in-person meeting with all interviewers to discuss the candidate and compare interviewer notes.

Alternatively, will I ever get two interviewers asking about a leadership example?
Yes, it’s definitely possible.

If yes, is it advisable to repeat the story or do I need another story?
Do NOT repeat the same exact story. If you have a way of telling the same story with an entirely different spin, then that’s fine. But, it needs to have a 180-degree spin on it.

NOTE: The degree of discussion and comparision after the interviewers is probably 5x more during final rounds versus first rounds.

The golden rule when you talk about yourself is to be sincere and follow your gut. You would not be at that stage if you were not a smart person with the right CV, so don’t be afraid to pick “the wrong” story. There is not “right” or “wrong”. Talk about something that made you feel proud because you really think you changed the course of the events that mattered to YOU at that point in time, Nobody will ask you why you did not change the course of human history... When I asked these types of questions during recruiting what I wanted to understand was the real character, the intensity of the feelings, the passion, regardless of how truly impactful the story was.

I hope it helps...

Hi Anonymous,

the PEI at McKinsey is structured around three key dimensions, leadership, impact and drive. I have provided a description for them below:

1) Leadership is about leading a whole team in a challenging situation and showing team management skills. Questions include:

1. Give me three examples of a time that you lead a group. 

2. What are some key lessons you have learned about motivating people? 


Here you want to emphasize how you overcome a difficult situation leading a team.

2) Personal Impact is mainly based on persuading someone about doing/not doing something. Questions include:

1. Tell me about a time that you persuaded your boss to go along with an idea you had.
2. Tell me about a difficult situation where you had to rely on your communication skills. 


Here you want to emphasize your influence on someone else, usually in disagreement with you.

3) Entrepreneurial Drive is about implementing something overcoming major difficulties. Examples include:

1. What was a situation where you set a major goal and been able to achieve it?
2. What has been your major accomplishment so far?

Here you want to emphasize the achievement you reached and the process that led you there.

Besides the previous dimensions, common questions also include:

• Tell me about yourself
• Why consulting
• Why McKinsey
• Why should we hire you

Best,

Francesco

Hi!

It should have all the things that you've mentions:

1. 1 sentence summary what's the story is about
2. 2-3 sentences of context
3. What was exactly the problem
4. HOW you solved it - 3-5 actions that you've taken
5. IMPACT - should be ideally measurable and impressive

Best

Hi,
yes, I recommend to practice to both types of fit questions, by crafting impactful stories that cover the 3 main dimensions which McK use to value your performance: personal impact, leadership, and entrepreneurial drive.

Best,
Antonello

Hi!

There are two cucial aspects you need to get right:

1. Really understanding, what each dimension means and why McKinsey scrutinizes it

2. Properly structuring the story to ensure that you address what McKinsey is really testing for

On point number 1, you need a former McKinsey interviewer to explain this to you. Not a consultant! An actual interviewer! Unfortunately the dimensions are almost impossible to properly explain if you have not been trained by the firm on what you need to test for. They are not self-explanatory (for example, "Leadership" has nothing to do with formally telling other people what to do or not to do; Personal Impact" has nothing to do with impact, and "Entrepreneurial Drive" has nothing to do with founding a company/organization).

On point number 2, the STAR framework is oftentimes mentioned. But I would definitely NOT recommend it, because it leaves out the most important aspect that McKinsey is looking for: the analysis and identification of the root causes of the existing problem. The STAR framework directly jumps from "Task" to "Action", wich is extremely problematioc. You need to explain the problem/challenge, why it was relevant, how you found out the root causes of the issue/challenge, and how you then addressed these root causes. A very natural part of this is also to describe such things like early failures in addressing the issue, which then helped you to understand the REAL reasons for the existing issue. It is very important that you concretely explain how you reached your understanding of these reasons and how you then consciously adapted your approach.

Cheers, Sidi

Hi,

The length is related to your story and additional questions your interviewer may ask.

The story about yourself should be 13-15 sentences.

For the PEI story I recommend the following:

• In Situation, you should briefly provide the context, usually in 1 or 2 sentences
• Task usually includes 2 or 3 sentences describing the problem and your objective.
• Then you provide a list of specific actions you took to achieve the goal. It should take 1 or 2 sentences per action (Usually 3-4 actions). Note that the interviewer can stop you any minute and ask for more details.
• The results part should have 1 or 2 sentences describing the outcomes. This part is finalizing your story - make sure it can impress the interviewer and stay in the memory.

It is important that the Interviewers will drill down into your story to understand the dynamics, your reactions and decisions and most of all the rationale behind them. They will follow up with other questions as you tell your story to make sure they understand it in enough detail. I recommend preparing for these additional questions in advance.

At the end of the interview, you will also have an opportunity to ask your questions to the interviewer. This should include 3-4 questions. Most of the candidates disregard this part in preparation, while it is a great chance to demonstrate the intellectual capacity and build some relationship with the interviewer.

The main objective is to have a good conversation and highlight your intellectual capacity and curiosity. Thus:

It is ok to ask:

• Questions that cause positive emotions and highlight consulting pros (e.g. Mck people)
• Questions on the topics you are excited about (e.g. data science)
• Non-business questions (e.g. team retreats)

It's not ok to ask:

• Questions that can cause negative emotions (e.g. work hours)
• Information you should learn before the interview (e.g. typical career path)
• Questions that may show that you are unfamiliar with consulting work (Like are you specialized in strategy or operations?)

Be prepared and good luck!

Best,

Vlad