McKinsey Interview vs. Bain Interview vs. BCG Interview

5-10 minutes fit, remainder case. bain tends to be unstructured, fewer slides/hard data checkpoints and much more free-form. bcg interviewers generally have data slides, although it's 50/50 between up-front prep vs. mid-interview "ok, we actually have prepared some numbers on that".

culture at bcg is very analytical, very numbers-driven, so if you can work a little bit of that into your case (eg talk about hypotheses, make sure your math is spot on) that'll be a positive. Bain is, well, it's a little frattier and skews towards presentation over substance, so make sure that you have a lot of energy and come across confidently.

preparation? it's always the same. know your resume, know what you want to talk about, and practice your cases. if you've made it to finals at mck i'm sure you'll be fine at bain and bcg.

source - finals at all three back in the day

great insight there - how would you compare the two to mck in terms of structure/math/analytics, etc., just trying to get a ballpark although your right, preparation wont change much

I've been through all 3 and can say from experience that McKinsey is the most structured, Bain is the most free-thought, and that BCG is probably in between. Of course this varies according to interviewer, so I wouldn't necessarily say that this is definitely how it works all the time.

Bain does emphasize people who would want to work there over BCG/McK. Of course BCG/McK do as well, but to a lesser extent. The interviews for Bain were much more conversational.

BCG was straight through all business, less time for chit chat. In my experience the BCG interviewers also prepare slides and data tables in advance, more so than Bain for sure.

By the way, I've written about the cultural differences across firms below - which gives some insight on what you can expect personality wise from your interviewers.

I thought both Bain + BCG fit questions were a lot more conversational + less annoying than McKinsey's ("And then what did you say?" "And then what did you say?").

I agree with ringtailedlemur - especially in the behavioral part, McKinsey probes A LOT for specific details and they actually do say "And then what did you do? what was the next step? would you have done things differently? etc...."

McKinsey also loved to grill me during the case on coming up with lots of different answers to questions. For example, they would ask, "What are some reasons that a company would lose market share?", and I would say "New entrants to the market, competitor moves such as increased marketing, pricing changes, increased distribution channels, etc.", and they would press me for more. I was told later on that for these types of questions, you're evaluated based on the sheer quantity of things you come up with.

i've been through these as well and i think it matters much more with the particular interviewer. i expected bcg final rounds to be more structured with data and got three of the most free-form cases i'd ever seen. bain to me was much more structured. in my opinion its hard to prepare for a specific "kind" of case based on the firm.

Really depends on the interviewer, but generally:

McK: 1) very structured fit portion where you have to tell vivid stories about your past leadership experiences 2) cases also tend to be more structured with pre-prepared data sheets; focuses on structuring, brainstorming, and interpreting given data

Bain: 1) very free-form fit portion; conversational 2) easiest cases out of the three (easier setting, easier math, pretty much easier everything); really shouldn't make any mistakes

BCG: 1) pretty free-form fit portion 2) structured cases; quantitative; I would say, same difficulty level as McK