McKinsey interviews typically consist of two rounds; the first round interview and the second round interview. Understanding the difference between the First round interview and second round interview of the McKinsey recruiting process is crucial for your success.
A typical McKinsey interview consists of a CV discussion, McKinsey personal fit questions and a case interview. Gabriel Goldbrain will explain how the McKinsey CV review works and which common McKinsey CV questions arise, so you will be prepared for the McKinsey CV personal fit part. Goldbrain highlights common consulting interview mistakes to avoid, ensuring you don't fail your McKinsey interview.
During an interview, a short CV discussion is often included. With CV questions, you will be assessed my McKinsey for personal fit. In more experienced roles not only the McKinsey personal fit but also the McKinsey personal experience will play an important role. Demonstrate to McKinsey which personal experiences you made and how this will benefit the firm. Be prepared for BCG personal fit questions and Bain personal fit questions as well as these are pretty much the same like McKinsey personal fit questions!
the McKinsey case interview structure is designed to assess your problem-solving skills, analytical thinking and your ability to work in a team. Goldbrain will give you McKinsey interview tips that will help your application to any regional office of McKinsey whether it be McKinsey Europe, McKinsey US or McKinsey India. Gabriel Goldbrain will share useful McKinsey Interview tips to give you an edge in your McKinsey interview preparations. Learning from these strategy consulting interview mistakes is key to your success.
As mentioned earlier the McKinsey interview consists of the first round vs second round interviews. Gabriel Goldbrain will discuss the differences between the McKinsey First round interview vs McKinsey Second round interview. Understanding the nuances of each round is essential in your McKinsey interview preparation.
Video transcript:
90% of those invited to McKinsey interviews fail. Are these interviews really that hard? Are they that difficult?
Watch my video and you'll find out! I'm Gabriel Goldbrain and I developed the Goldbrain success training. With this training you optimize your chances of becoming a top management strategy consultant. Earn six figure salaries, $100,000 straight out of college with a bachelor's degree. To find out more about my SUCCESS training go to www.gabrielgoldbrain.com.
In today's video, we want to analyze a typical McKinsey first and second round interview structure and its building blocks. And then I will discuss with you what are the critical parts? Why do people fail? And what gives them the the biggest challenges in these interviews? First I give you the big picture of interviewing at McKinsey. There are two interview rounds which usually take place at different dates. In very rare cases you can have them back to back. But in most cases you will have separate interviewing days with about one to two weeks break between those two interview rounds.
The first round interviews and the second round interviews, they don't differ that much. The difference is more in the focus of the conversation and in the people, the interviewers. So when you're are applying for associate or analyst roles, so the more Junior roles it will be. In the first round you will have senior Associates, you will have Associates interviewing yourself, sometimes you have engagement managers. But it's rare to see Senior more senior staff interviewing in these rounds. In the second round interviews you have higher levels from higher level rankings. In the second round, you will have interviewers which are higher up in the Pyramid of McKinsey. So it's not seldom that you have partners, that you have senior engagement managers, that you have associate partners. And they tend to focus less on the Nitty Gritty details of the case study. Rather than your approach to problem solving. How you communicate? How you structure things? And just like how you present yourself and act in front of them and like in situations where you have stress?
The first interview round is usually has a failure rate of 75%. And the second round failure rate is a little bit lower but still 50% of the candidates left fail that round. So what are the reasons for that? We will look into it later. So how do first and second round interviews look like?
First of all your first round interviews are usually on the same day. And your second round interviews are typically on another day. And you have a break of about a week or two weeks between those if you master the first round. A typical first round interview can be broken up in about 10 minutes introduction, CV personal experience, then about 30 minutes business case and about 5 minutes wrap up and remaining questions. This focus shifts a little bit when you come to the more senior interviewers in the second round. So there it may be just reversed. So you will have maybe 30 minutes of introduction of personal experience, CV related questions where they want to know "What did you do?". "What was your impact?", "Where did you demonstrate leadership skills?", "How are your sales capabilities?", and so on. And then the case study in the more senior interviewers, they want to see more "How you approach things?". See more "How you communicate?". They won't go into too much detail, into the nitty-gritties. And so that is the key differences between these interviews.
Now let's talk about what causes the main problems. In the first round, I think the personal experience and CV related questions. I have seldomly seen applicants fail here. But as you have a very strong field of competitors, it can make a difference if you don't sell yourself well, if you don't demonstrate and show your leadership. Don't talk about it! Show what you have done! Show where you succeeded! And that's what they want to see, based on your CV.
Where most people fail, that is the business case interview. And it's often times it's very simple, very basic things, which you can get out of the way with not much of practicing and exercising. It can be things like you mix up millions and billions. A stupid mistake! Things that you cannot calculate. A certain percentage of a figure. Things like you cannot convert inches to centimeter or some common knowledge things that you don't know. Simple statistical figures like population figures for the top 10 or top 20 most important countries of the world. You should have that knowledge! You should also know have a rough idea about different salary levels. Maybe also different cultural things like work ethics, typical cultural problems in certain countries. These are things that may influence business decisions and the interviewer they want to see "How much you observe your environment?", "How much aware you are of your surroundings?". And sometimes they will ask you to make estimates. Sometimes you need to make bold estimates. But you may, they want to see your reasoning for it. And these things, if you don't practice them, you have a very high probability of failing against candidates who Master the simplest things.
McKinsey's cases differ from other firms like Boston Consulting Group or Bain in a way that they are interviewer-lead which means they often times try to make it as simple as possible for you to focus on the key analytical aspects of the problem. So they don't expect too much background knowledge. They expect you to ask the right questions and then draw your conclusions with a given facts. But usually they tend to be more clear more precise then you will find it in tier 2 or other management consulting firms.
So before we come to the main reasons why people fail the second round interviews at McKinsey, please let me know what was your biggest failure in Consulting interviews? Write it down below in the comments! When did you mess up? What did you do wrong? What your most ridiculous mistake which immediately got you killed in the interview process? Let the others know! Let's discuss the most stupid things you can do down in the comments! I think the community will appreciate that.
So why do people fail second round interviews? The answer is easy. Think about who are the interviewers? It's engagement managers, associate partners, partners, and sometimes even senior partners. And they usually center their life around the client. And they deal with very big clients they only have one handful or two handful of clients which they serve. And for them the worst that can happen is that the person they are hiring will harm the client relationship.
The questions which run through the mind of these persons are: "Will the guy make a good job in front of the client?", "Will the client's team like him?", "Will he be successful?" and "Will he manage to develop within McKinsey from an analytical role to a project manager role and later on to a partner who sells to the most prestigious Fortune 500 firms his projects?". These are the questions which ultimately the partners need to answer. Do they see this potential in the person? And that involves not only analytical skills, for sure you must be smart, but also communication skills. They want to see good communication skills, good habits, good traits. And this is the part where many analytically very strong guys don't make it into McKinsey or similar management consulting firms because they lack these traits in their personality which matter.
The good news is that you can work on your deficits. If you have enough time, 4 weeks at least, I would say 6 weeks 8 weeks better, a whole quarter to prepare for the interviews to work on your communication skills, train cases, train interview situations, try to optimize how you present your CV? how you react to questions, to critical questions in your CV? All of that can be trained. And guess who does it? We the Goldbrain SUCCESS training. And the good thing about the Goldbrain success training is without success there is no money for Goldbrain. So it's completely free! But we want you to succeed, because we want you to pay.
So I summarized today's video in a slide which you can download like always from our website www.gabrielgoldbrain.com. Here are today's recommendations for complimentary videos. The first video is about the pitfalls of the McKinsey interview process and the second video is about the McKinsey hiring funnel. Make a self assessment if you're good enough to make it and don't forget to like my video.
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