Monitor Group First Round Interview For Summer Internships

I went through this interview and made it through. Here's my take.

The interview takes about 60-75 minutes:

They sit you down in a room with a laminated and bound book (approx 14 pages of information). They give you a crappy, 8-digit, four-function calculator (the kind you used in fifth grade) and a pen and paper.

For the first 15 minutes you are supposed to read the booklet and answer 3-4 questions. The booklet presents a business case and a then about 10-12 hypothetical source documents: spreadsheets, charts, figures, surveys, memos, maps, etc. You have to use the source documents to answer the questions. The questions are not easy, and often require you to pool together information from multiple documents. Example: "Forecast profits for the next 3 years".

After 15 minutes, the interviewer returns to the room and says "walk me through your answer to number 1". By this point, you probably have JUST finished reading the source documents and maybe managed to scribble down about half of a solution to number 1. They expect this. They want to observe you while you're under pressure and thinking on your feet. They also look to see how well you organize the data you use for your solution. For example, if they ask you to forecast profits, you're going to want to draw out a spreadsheet on your notepad.

You will keep walking through the case questions for about 30 minutes or until it is obvious that you grasp the material.

Minutes ~45-60+ are used for a fit interview. They ask a few typical questions like "why consulting" and "why monitor and not BCG" but then they move onto much deeper questions. My interviewer asked me: "Imagine it's your first day at work, what are you most worried about?" She also asked "Explain to me a big call Decision you had to make lately and how you approached it." They told me that they are more interested than most in how you manage things that are deeply personal.

My advice: - Bring post-it flags to bookmark the case book - Practice drawing some spreadsheets BY HAND - Get used to using a crappy calculator and spend 20 minutes practicing your mental math (e.g. divide a billion by one-hundred thousand and so on). - Explain the details of your thought process. Example: "This question is about forecasting profits. Profits are just revenues minus costs. Documents 4, 6, and 8 each contain different information about revenues and costs. Document 9 also included revenue information, but we will ignore it because the client will not pursue the strategy that would make the data relevant. Now, since not all of our revenues are constant, I've built a spreadsheet to show when they take place. Some of the revenues, for example ____ are recurring, some are one-time, and some are growing. Let's build them into the spreadsheet. Similarly, some of the costs are fixed and some are variable.... and on and on and on.....

Good luck. Hope this helps.

I also did the Monitor interview, it's not always so quantitative. Mine was a marketing case, essentially channel allocation based on quantitative data.

However there were definitely quite a few "right" answers, it was all about if you could defend your conclusions articulately. Definitely speak clearly, articulately etc. as that is also important, along with your actual work. Remember consulting is also about presentation...

thanks!

if you get passed this first round what is their final round like?

Much larger, written case in a group of 3-5 interviewees, followed by another fit interview and feedback.

Case book is approx twice the size of the first round. Each person has to formulate a 15ish minute presentation answering 3-4 individually assigned questions. Monitor has a question bank for each case and they select each interviewee's questions to target their individual weaknesses (as observed during the first round interview). Questions range from purely quantitative to strategic to creative/subjective. Here's the gameplan:

PART 1: GROUP CASE 15 minutes - Get introduced to the rules, shuffle papers around, turn on their cheap calculator 30 minutes - Read the case booklet 30 minutes - Prepare solutions and notes for an oral presentation 45-75 minutes - Interviewees take turns standing up in front of a conference room (~15-30 minutes each) and presenting their (75% complete) solutions. The presenter is expected to have already have a decent solution but to involve the rest of the group to optimize and check the solution. You have access to a whiteboard but a strict time limit is enforced (I've heard that the time limit varies by year).

The interview is typically overseen by two consultants who take notes on the whole thing but say next to nothing.

PART 2: FEEDBACK 30-45 minutes - Receive detailed feedback on your case performance. They also use the time to perform another fit interview. Your ability to take the feedback (sharp criticism included) is apparently one of the most important tests of the day, so don't let your guard down.

Justanotherbanker's account is accurate.

I'm sorry, but I didn't get where is justanotherbanker's account. I searched the entire WSO site but couldn't find a post. Can anyone help me out?

Generally, Monitor's first round interview is made up of 2 parts - first, you will receive a packet of slides / exhibits, where you will receive ~20 minutes to go through them and pick out slides to develop a presentation / argument. Next, you will present to the interviewer, at which time they will ask you questions and test your assumptions regarding your selected presentation.

The challenge with this type of interview is that you will not have enough time to really go through all of the slides you are given to review, so you will have to prioritize very quickly.

Presentation style interviews (ATK and some BCG offices do a written case for 2nd rounds) are somewhat different from standard case interviews, from a structure perspective.

Hope that helps

That is helpful; it is clear that Monitor focuses on written cases with handouts. And prioritizing on what data-points would be needed to answer the questions is key; to avoid losing time by getting lost in all the data that is given. Thank you.