Interviewing with McKinsey: Case study interview

we have a case interview which takes up roughly about 25 to 30 minutes of every interview that we do and it really tests many different aspects of your problem-solving ability as we like to call it so I think having experiencing a few of those and doing a few of those cases before you come into the room actually holds you in good stead because you understand the structure and the rhythm of how that interview will take place and once you're in control of that you can actually focus on the question in front of you and you know what you're doing and you know where you need to get I actually didn't know what were a case interview was two weeks prior to my actual interview and you know the first thing you do is you go to the McKinsey website they have some examples you look at those you try and find someone who's either done the job or has done an interview before do some practice cases I personally found that that was enough I came across people who were also interviewing at the same time as me who were discussing look how many cases have you done to prepare with your case Consulting Club and people would say sort of 50-60 it to me just sounded a little bit too much I think that the interviewer is really looking for your intrinsics in terms of problem solving don't try to learn frameworks by heart the case studies they are so unique that they will I promise you never be the exact right framework for it it's more about being open and find your own approach to solve the project you really are solving problems that the consultant that is interviewing you has experienced through his or her own work with a client so it's a real problem that has been solved and so that makes it much more relatable when you're able to discuss a real-life situation even though it's confidential and no names are mentioned it becomes more relatable than trying to fit golf balls onto an airplane advice that I got when I was preparing for my interviews was to just come up with a list of all the possible business terms and concepts that could come up in a case interview and then when I was actually doing the case in the interview I could just pick from my big list and come up with my own framework McKinsey is not looking for the perfect answer in the case interview obviously it would take much more time and maybe even a whole McKinsey team to give the perfect answer to one of these case questions but in the interview we're looking for how you approach the situation and how you structure and communicate it I think one more tip that I would give candidates is listen listen to your interviewer because he will give you tips or leads to to go into the right direction during your case it's funny I think that sometimes when you're giving people cases they think we're trying to trick them and we're trying to give some case that has some weird twist there's never a twist it's never something that strange we're really doing our best to be as straightforward as we can again to just see what's going on in your mind and understand how you think and understand how you solve problems but I see a lot happening in the case interviews is people often sort of directly answer the question that is posed to them in the most obvious or most common way of thinking so if you say what are the drivers for like market growth that you can think of being able to contextualize that to the specific industry and the specific problem that this client is facing being able to weave in fats that have emerged from earlier on in the interview and then draw implications to what it actually means for the business and the answer that the head client is looking for in the way the case is laid out to you is what will make you distinct from all the other candidates ultimately when you're when you're going through this case interview with the other interviewer he's looking to have a conversation with you he's not looking for you to to give a monologue about what you think the answer is so make sure that in your preparation phase that you very much do it with with your peers the first thing is practicing in groups I think it really helps to be able to play the interviewer and the interviewee role because you'll find things that other people are doing that you might reflect on whom I wonder whether I do that as well and it gives you an opportunity to change those things as well as interviewing with some of your friends it's a bit more disarming you can make more mistakes and they can tell you more honest feedback about the way that you are answering the question so that's definitely a great way of preparing there's a couple of tips and tricks for the case interview so one would be to listen very carefully another one would be to take notes while the consultant is speaking what is also very helpful is to structure your thoughts prior to answering the questions so take some time and write down the structure of your answer on a sheet of paper and then try to guide the consultant through your answer dealing with numbers is a crucial component of our daily life because most problems can be quantified so during the interview you will have to show that you are familiar with dealing with numbers I think people freak out a lot about how much math we're going to ask you it's more about can you do some basic app analysis one thing to do to prepare for the quantitative part is practicing with someone next to you like doing the calculations yourself is one thing but then someone watching you it's a whole different story so what I always suggest to people is take your time very clearly write out for the interviewer all of your calculations you know you can do it take a deep breath and work through it if you find yourself in a tough situation just round things to a point that makes you comfortable and wait for the interviewer to tell you that no I want the exact answer if not just round and one it's important to just pause and to just what you just heard I think if you didn't catch anything we need to clarify ask those questions the interview is there to help you the answers will start to naturally come but just the EC so many candidates who will just go straight into answering the problem just you know there's no rush those first that first minute or two can really be your saving grace and you know for one it will let you just get over the nerves such as being in the case interview to start with you

Channel: McKinsey & Company

Views: 926,940

Rating: 4.8767958 out of 5

Keywords: business, leadership

Id: nGzYzq3Wsos

Length: 7min 31sec (451 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 25 2014