The McKinsey recruiting process is rigorous. McKinsey receives over 1 million applications per year and 99% of the applicants fail the McKinsey recruiting process.
The McKinsey recruiting process in the US, differs from the McKinsey interview process in the UK and the McKinsey interview process in India as it may do in other region as well. Nevertheless all job applicants in all regions and offices have to to go through the McKinsey interviews. Some McKinsey Offices handles tens of thousands of candidates every year. McKinsey recruiters go through multiple steps during the recruiting process.
Most candidates get rejected by McKinsey during the screening of their the CV by the McKinsey HR department. Other candidates fail the McKinsey Imbellus test. The McKinsey Imbellus test is a minigame test which candidates take online, so it is often called the McKinsey online assessment. In the McKinsey online assessment your problem solving skills will be tested. It is a gamified test which looks like a computer game but should not be taken dead serious.
The candidates that pass the McKinsey Imbellus test move on to the McKinsey first round interviews. Being invited to McKinsey first round interviews brings you one step closer to getting hired by McKinsey and scoring your job in strategy consulting. McKinsey interviews are usually interviewer led whereas BCG interviews and Bain interviews are candidate led. Gabriel Goldbrain will explain the difference in the video. Most candidates fail the first round interviews of McKinsey and lose their chances of having a career in the number one management consultant firm. The same applies to BCG first round interviews and Bain second round interviews. A big proportion of candidates fail these interviews too.
Those applicants that manage to survive the first round interviews move on to the McKinsey second round interview. Half of the applicants that reach the McKinsey second round interviews end up successful: they mastered the McKinsey recruiting process and will soon work at McKinsey. Candidates that failed often also engage in the BCG recruiting process and the Bain recruiting process in parallel.
Video Transcript:
Goldbrain expects that McKinsey receives more than 1 million applications in the year 2023. Goldbrain also expects that 99% of the applicants will fail. Are you good enough to master the process? Are you the 1%? Are you part of the 1%? After this video you will have a better idea. And one thing you should know before the video starts. Don't apply to McKinsey if you're not ready for the process!
Let's get started with the McKinsey screening process! So how does the McKinsey recruiting and screening process of candidates work? First of all you see a huge amount of applications is coming in. So how do they handle these more than 1 million applications which they will receive? They first dispatch it to the Regional Offices to which the candidates apply. Each candidate has to give an idea of the offices, of his preferred offices, and so these offices usually divide who will take care of these applications. And then every office per year handles about 5 to 10,000 maybe some bigger offices handle 20,000 applications.
And the first thing they do Step One is they do a CV screening. What are they looking for in a CV? Usually? They want to see that you have excellent grades. So usually we're talking about the best 10-20% of the candidates, grade wise. which means you should have a GPA of 3.5 or higher. That's usually what they expect if you have a very interesting CV they may compromise a bit on that. But usually that's kind of the ballpark range you should be in round about.
Then what does McKinsey like as well? They like to see that you took responsibility. That you have been member of a scholarship. They like entrepreneurial activities. They like to see that you're a leader. That you can change things. That you take responsibility. That's the first step how they pick their candidates. They want to see internships. They want to see interesting companies you worked for. Maybe you had interesting jobs which are related in some way to entrepreneurial thinking or to positions where you had some responsibility in a young age. That's a screening process.
This screening process usually 20% of the candidates pass it, 80% fail this first process. So after the first step of the 1 million CVS that McKinsey receives, only about 200,000 are left. And these are not the idiots these are good guys. So you have a very hard competition already.
After the first screening step, then the second screening step of McKinsey is the so-called Imbellus Test. Company Imbellus developed online assessment, which is called "Solved". And this solve assessment is kind of a few mini games where you have to master certain situations. One thing, one component, of is, of it is that you have to build an ecosystem, which has to work in the end. And also you have to play some kind of video game where you defend like a Plant against some Invaders. If you're more interested in the details, subscribe to our Channel! Goldbrain will make a dedicated series on the solve online assessment because if you have never seen it, you may fail it. Even if you're a good guy. Be prepared!
60% of the candidates fail the online assessment game so that only 80,000 candidates are left for the third screening round which is the first round interviews.
So when you made it to the first round interviews, you made pretty good progress. But that's where really the challenge starts. Because now you can expect a very homogeneous, very smart set of candidates competing for the most attractive jobs in the Consulting industry. So what kind of candidates are you competing with? There are a lot of well prepared candidates in these first round interviews to which you will be directly compared. There are guys from Business Schools. They studied business. And if you don't have a business degree they probably are more familiar with businesses and problems related to businesses and Frameworks. They could apply Dimensions. They could, can think. Then you have rich kids which had good education. Which got trained particulary for these cases. Then you have students who had internships with these consulting firms. So they already have been through this process and have a big advantage because they know how these interviews go. They know what matters on the job. And that's basically your competition. And if you didn't do anything, your chances are way lower the chances of those guys which are obviously equally smart like you. But yeah they're trained for it.
And so you should get training as well! that said, if you're interested, go to our website www.gabrielgoldbrain.com to get the Goldbrain success training. We only take the ones with the highest potential. We take disadvantaged candidates; not from Business Schools, not having made internships. If they have what it takes to be successful. And the good thing is: you only pay for the training if you succeed, If you have a signed offer from McKinsey on the table and you accept it. If you fail Goldbrain takes the bill So but...
Let's now continue with round one interviews. 75% of candidates fail the first interview round.
And those who are left progress to the second round of interviews. And there about 50% fail.
So that overall about 10,000, or 1% = 10,000 candidates of 1 million, or 1% of the applicants finally get and sign an offer with McKinsey. And we're talking about a good year. So usually when McKinsey has a growth of 5 to 10%, then we're talking about 10,000 candidate. In years like the corona years, they hired way less people. In years where there is economic problems, where recessions are around you have high inflation, they may hire less. So it will only be 5,000 persons they hire, or 0.5%. So in these times it's very tough to get in. And the key learning you should take from that, is don't send your application if you're not prepared.
And before I forget I want to show you the slide which I prepared on the McKinsey screening process where you see how the number of candidates get reduced step by step and the estimated failure rates or success rates for each step. You will find that PowerPoint slide on our website as always. There are two videos that I want to recommend to you. The first video is about the McKinsey recruiting process and its timeline and the second video is about the building blocks of McKinsey interviews so that you know what will be expected from you during each of these individual blocks. Don't forget to subscribe our Channel because we will always come up with interesting new material which helps you to succeed in your application process with McKinsey and other consulting firms.
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