So tell me a little bit about when you
are thinking about the fit portion of the interview for McKinsey - the
personal experience - are there certain things that a candidate can say or
demonstrate that end up being huge red flags that might completely tank his or
her ability to move on? Yeah, yeah so you know the interviewer is looking for
skills that are gonna make the person successful in the role. And so there are
some things that people can say that will make them seem, you know, not
empathetic, antisocial, not able to collaborate, and you'd be surprised at
what people will say in these situations. What's like...give us some examples. You know, someone talking about not getting along with their boss and just kind of
criticizing that that person and, you know, you're never gonna win in an
interview by talking about how you and your prior boss didn't get along. So it's
probably best just to steer clear of that subject entirely. But that sort of
thing or kind of cases where you'll... McKinsey interviewers will often ask
questions about cases where you had to convince someone to do something they
didn't want to do, and sometimes the candidates will go in the direction of
talking about, you know, okay I got in this fight with this guy and the way I
won was like my ideas turned out to be better. Or, you know, I went to his boss
and was like you know this guy's not working well together. There are things
that you can do that demonstrate that in the McKinsey context you would burn more bridges than you Forge and that's not a skill that will make you very
successful in the job. So I think um best to be...I mean honestly be honest...but
hopefully those sorts of things don't come out of the process. Yeah. So it
sounds like so a few things that I heard that, one, it's like extreme like a lot
of negativity - it's hard to win with that. You felt like you had a better idea the
other person really did have a bad idea. Like just coming out and saying that
doesn't demonstrate a lot. Exactly. Yep, yep. And then I think the other thing you mentioned that's interesting and makes
sense is - you know - the ability to forge bridges and build bridges because you
need to...the client needs to want to work with you, and they need to want to, presumably, implement a solution down the line. And then I imagine, you know, McKinsey ultimately probably would like to work with that client and those clients again.
Exactly. Yeah. And you're constantly in this situation where you're challenging
people's thinking and you have to find a way to do it without pissing everyone
off. And so if you demonstrate in the interview that you're the kind of person
who um kind of creates a ruckus within organizations that you've worked - in even
if your ideas might be great. Yep. It's gonna be challenging. Yeah. That
makes sense. you
