Upcoming McKinsey interview + how to come up with PEI stories

Great question!

In terms of coming up with topics for your PEI stories, I suggest 3 sources:

1. Scan your CV. See what are the moments when you had the biggest impact within the last 2-3 years of your professional or academic life.

2. Think of the highlights of your life. The moments when you feel you were at your absolute best. 

3. Ask your friends and family for what they perceive to your highlights. You might be surprised to see they come up with different ones than what you had in mind for yourself. 

For anybody who is looking into the PEI topic, I recently released this end-to-end course covering PEI. More on it here:

• Video Course: Master the McKinsey PEI

Best,
Cristian

Hi,

This may be a "cheap" answer but just be prepared for anything! It could be a "quick" case that doesn't have a ton inside it. It could be a couple "framing" questions. It could also, as you mentioned, be a market sizing.

Just be prepared to go with the flow! If they seem to want to skim through the beginning of the case, or they don't care about thorough math, take their direction! As always, expect to 1) Be able to say why consulting/McKinsey and 2) Be tested on your ability to think logically, frame+present thoughts clearly, etc.)

In regards to the PEI...are there any major moments in your life? Did you ever work on a very hard project with many phases?

Hi Anonymous,

30 minutes is indeed unusual for a final round at McKinsey. As mentioned by Ian, I would prepare on all the areas; it could also be that the case timeline will be longer and you will go for the traditional 45 min with fit and case (I know cases where HR said the interview had no case – and the candidate got a case in it! Partners, in particular, don’t have major obligations to follow defined rules).

The structure of the final round is the same as the first one (fit + case+ your questions); however, there is far more emphasis on communication and fit.

Specifically, the main difference 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 my final at BCG I had one interview which was made by two market sizing questions and a brainteaser, without any business case. That's because at the final they know you can structure and crack a case (you passed 1 or 2 rounds 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 details your fit 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 test almost exclusively in p2p mocks with peers/experts.
• Prepare on cases as you did for the first round. More market sizing practice could be useful to think outside the box if you get unusual questions.

In terms of the PEI would be great if you could indicate the specific questions you find challenging to answer and your hypotheses on the possible stories, this will help to provide some tips in a more structured way.

Best,

Francesco

Hi there,

I'll address only the second part of your quesiton - for the first part there would be too much pure speculation involved from my side.

When it comes to the PEI, firstly you need a clear understanding of the 3 dimensions and the respective scoring criteria of McKinsey (so what the interviewers are looking for in your PEI examples). Based on this information you need to go back to your CV (assuming that you put everything relevant into your CV) and go through each section to see where you demonstrated abiliities relevant for the PEI. Generally speaking, your PEI examples can come from professional experience, internsips, extra-curricular activities, university settings or potentially also from private areas.

However, the specific context/example from which you take your PEI example is much less of a concern and hardly influences your PEI evaluation. It’s much, much more about your personal contribution to that specific situation (bonus: does that ring a bell with the “Anticipated consequence” of the PARADE framework?). So how did you (positively) influence this situation? What was your real-life value in that situation? Needless to say, all other factors being equal, I would also take the more impressive context/example, but that's not at the core of the evaluation!

You can find the full original blog post (and many others related to the PEI) here: https://pei.consulting-case-interviews.com/blog/right-mckinsey-pei-examples/

Hope that helps!

Robert

Hi,

It will be similar to the first round

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

Hello!

On top of the insights already shared in the post, next week will be pusblished in PrepLounge´s Shop material related.

In concrete, the "Integrated FIT guide for MBB". It provides an end-to-end preparation for all three MBB interviews, tackling each firms particularities and combining key concepts review and a hands-on methodology. Following the book, the candidate will prepare his/her stories by practicing with over 50 real questions and leveraging special frameworks and worksheets that guide step-by-step, developed by the author and her experience as a Master in Management professor and coach. Finally, as further guidance, the guide encompasses over 20 examples from real candidates.

Hope you find it useful!

Yes, it will have usual parts - FIT and CASE

Having a broad experience in preparing candidates specifically to the final round, I want to say the following:

•Final round is about 'depth' and not about 'breadth'. Initial round interviews are broad. Several fit questions, cases with multiple analysis etc. Because the intention is to test the candiate on as many aspects as the interviewer can. Final round is different. It is about testing the depth. Partners typically ask very few quetions but probe every answer to a great depth.

• Candidate needs thorough preparation to tackle 'why-how-translatability' probing questions by partners. Candidates need to be ready to justify their answer in a consulting compliant way. 

• Final round is 'unpredictbale'. Final round interviewers, Partners, are known to throw curve balls.  There have been interviews where Partners have just taken fit questions and business discussion, on the other hand there have been interviews where Partners have given detailed cases to the candidates. You never know what Partners can pull out of their hat.

Candidates need to be extra prepared. Especially, for question formats that they have not encountered in earlier rounds viz. Partner converting project from candidate's CV into a case, partner starting discusion on recent business event, advice seeking on business issue that the Partner says he is facing. Through all these variety of discussions, Partners try and test the candidature thoroughly.

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GB