The Personal Experience Questions at the McKinsey Case Interview!

let's talk a little bit about the the personal experience questions and how did these go what did you do and what were the questions which questions did you get and they're on the website from okay i'm not i'm not giving away any trade secrets here there are three it's inclusive leadership entrepreneurial mindset and personal impact and in the first round i mean it just depends on who you get but you get two of the three i got personal impact and and inclusive leadership and this is so funny i mean the whole the whole game here is so they publish their question on the website word for word word for word for word yeah they want to make this easy and there is a way of preparing this and then people struggle so badly with it so the the real underlying question is can you say the right thing at the right time yeah yeah i mean and again they had lots of different styles some some interviews wanted to know like the the type of tea we were drinking you know in the room when i was having a difficult conversation i mean obviously not to that level but you know they really went deep and they really wanted to understand how you were feeling in the moment and really wanted to understand your role and others kind of let me tell my story and then maybe probed one or two things if they weren't sure on and how did you tell your stories just situation complication this is the action i took this was the impact and this was the lessons learned cool and what did how did they react when you i mean some people say i can't give such a scripted answer yeah so i went every time why don't i test the headline with you first to see if it's applicable for the question and then i'd be like so they had like a tweet the headline is you know i had a situation where a client rejected my whole work stream that i was trying to do that sounds like it's going to fit for the personal impact and the time you had a challenging client or someone who disagreed like cool then i'd be like the situation wait wait okay let's go a little deeper you so you gave like the headline and you probed whether this is an answer they're looking for awesome this is amazing every time okay and then it also like tell me tell me verbatim like i would ask like tell me about the time we had a challenging client situation sure so maybe i test the headline with you just to make sure it's applicable and then i can go through the context and the action i took so the headline was effectively i was leading a work stream working with mckinsey and i piloted it in one region of the uk took it to another region and the leadership team in the other room what was it what was the you said all this you said can i test the headline with you yeah oh awesome that's a cool script can i test the headline tested the headline you really said okay can i test my headline with you it's a situation where we had a project with mckinsey and the client refused to they were like okay yes yeah ah very interesting word for what good okay that's awesome because i wanted to make yeah i knew it i in the back of my mind i think i knew it fitted because of three questions and you have your but it i think it puts onus on them to be like present in the moment as well and thinking like oh this guy's or girl is is an active participant in this conversation um then the other thing i do i'd give the context and then i'd say again i had another script to say you know um that was the maybe if i just pause there for a second do you have any questions on the context and situation before i take you through my actions and said that every time and then if they had questions or i hadn't said you know one time i didn't explain something very well and like i don't really get it you know i could tell they didn't really get it so i paused and they were like what can you give me a bit more and then i gave him a bit more and we were moving together through it awesome but that's very very interesting i mean it shows how positive how much does this give and take most people perceive this as could they ask a question and then you have to give them the perfect answer but no it's it's a give-and-take yeah and and and some of them may i had like one associate who was awesome who interviewed me and he was just really helpful and they're like that can be so helpful and he i kind of pinched the idea from him because he was like test the headline with me to make sure it works because i don't want you to run off and it's the wrong thing and then i just tried that with the partners and it was it was really effective okay so how did the bragging about yourself work in the in when you tell your stories when you talked about the impact you had um yeah i i mean you you it should feel uncomfortable in terms of but it didn't at the time because i'd worked on it and i knew that was what they they were after right so like initially at them an example of what feels an uncomfortable level of bragging about yourself um you know one i said my entrepreneurial mindset i basically helped you know i took some action to help two companies stay as members for the organization and i just kind of claimed you know probably ten factors involved and mine was one tenth of that and i just said you know if i hadn't done it i don't think they would have stayed as part of the organization and and just really owned the role i had and played it's not yeah and played that up really can you say the right thing at the right time yeah yeah good okay and i think you know it's a culturally as an australian it's really you know we've discussed this like it's we have that tall poppy syndrome and it's not natural to be like you know i did this and i had that impact and now they want to be you know and now we've got great client relationship and they keep coming back and emailing me and you know that that wasn't that was hard for me to kind of get across and the whole time i was also thinking like my stories aren't good enough um you know this has to be an incredible story and my stories weren't you know amazing i didn't you know save someone's life or you know anything yeah significant impact you didn't free south africa without violence from yeah yeah but that's the thing that's that's exactly what i'm teaching your stories are good enough you just need to learn to tell a story and not forget the elements the i was this important what i did what did i actually do what was the impact of this just learn to tell a nice story and then yeah absolutely and i think the lessons learned is also really good as well because there's a couple times i didn't get that out naturally and they're like is there anything else you want to add and that's when i went oh there was three lessons i learned from this a b and c and i think in some perhaps where i didn't nail it getting that lessons learned across kind of re-emphasized the key points that they were looking for and and that was the key points from the questions on the website around you know what you should show in each of these things so i tried to really tailor my learnings to what i thought they were looking for in each question yeah yeah exactly that taught me how to be a value of entrepreneurship this taught me that entrepreneurship means that i sometimes have to go up against resistance yeah whatever the learning is like yeah yeah um and then some i didn't talk about my lessons learned because they were happy with the story and we moved on so [Music]

Channel: Moritz Gruber

Views: 232

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Consulting, Motivation, Job

Id: 0lGubh2z-fo

Length: 8min 38sec (518 seconds)

Published: Fri Jul 09 2021