All questions tagged first round interview - Consulting Q&A - PrepLounge.com

Hi,

In my experience, Partner referrals hold most weight when they're in the same country, unless you're applying to a certain Practice and the Partner is a part of the same practice.

Best bet is to get to a point with the Boston recruiter when you've almost secured an interview, and then say you want to transfer. Worst case, they check and say HK might not be taking more candidates and you still have the Boston interview in hand.

Thanks,

Nirmit

Interviewers often have no incentive to give feedback beyond a soft request from their office recruiting team and the fuzzy idea that they'd like feedback if in their shoes. Life gets in the way, they are busy... and often will just let time pass then rationalize that "it's too late now"

I would follow up

Hi Anonymous,

I agree with Vlad, your subjective impression is not sufficient to be able to provide an answer whether you will pass or not. Candidates sometimes think they did badly, overweighting some mistakes and pass. And sometimes think they did great and don’t pass, since they have not noticed some mistakes.

An interviewer may ask “Anything else” when they want you to derive additional creative points for a question. This usually happens when you are not particularly structured, or at least you have not presented all the macro areas the interviewer expected.

Hope this helps,
Francesco

Hi,

I was in your position 2 months ago.

In 1 month, i went from getting 30% on untimed tests, to passing the PST!

This is what i did:

• Igotanoffer practice tests
• Mconsulting practice tests
• Official McKinsey tests
• Practice speed maths - learn shortcuts like rule of 72, become a gun at the times tables, long division, estimation, growth rates, change %
• Use youtube- Cant remember who exactly but there is this Russian guy who has great tips and logic around the PST.
• I learnt to speed read - i went from 350 words per minute to 650. Youll also learn what info to read and what not to bother with by doing enough tests.
• I went through McKinsey presentations and learnt about the type of charts often used, learn how to read them quickly as this will save you minutes in the test working out what the hell they are even representing!

You will identify trends with answers, question types and the flow with time. Its frustrating and hard work, but worth it to pass! Youll also learn about time traps and which questions to estimate, leave and compute.

Start off doing the tests untimed, and re do tests over and over again.

Then slowly introduce time constraints and work to doing them in just 1 hour.

All the best.

Cheers,