I just had very roller-coaster interview experience with McKinsey and wanted to know if anyone of you would be able to help me understand where I messed up.
Pre-interview case prep with McKinsey buddy: While case prepping with my McKinsey buddy, the feedback was quite positive overall. He even went on to say, "I really feel like you're ready, and if it was upto me I'd offer you a job right now." He pointed out minor comments on the way I presented my structure and I worked very hard to incorporate these comments.
1st Round (3 interviews)
I was told that my fit stories were polished but I was overselling myself and I should be comfortable admiting that I failed and it shows that I can preserve in failure.
Second aspect of feedback was that I made a few math errors and to be more structured in my equations when I was doing mental math.
Action: I took the time to do nearly 100 math problems and structuring, I also worked on making my fit stories more realistic and accepting of my flaws.
2nd Round (2 interviews)
The two rounds went well, but I was told that they wanted me to go through a 3rd interview with another partner. One of the partners called me to give me feedback and said that she was impressed and convinced with my performance, and said that I have worked on my feedback and that I should simply keep going on the way I was performing.
3rd Round with another partner
The case was rather conversational, we talked about the case, he asked me lots of qualitative questions that I felt I answered well. He pushed my thinking in a few areas and I felt like I did my best to answer in a structured way to his questions. At the end of the interview he says he enjoyed talking to me and that he'd like to get coffee sometime, he also said that he found my fit story entertaining. All in all, I left feeling confident.
Result: I got a missed call within an hour from the interview, which from having read online usually means postive news. The partner calls back 45 minutes later to say the following things:
1) It was a very hard decision because we can see you easily go to one of our competitors but we're not making you an offer.
2) Your case performance has been a consistent issue throughout your interviews.
3) Your case performance with me was quite weak and you. missed some obvious levers.
4) I can't give you more feedback because that's the way it is. This was in response to me asking very politely for areas where he felt I messed up in the case with him.
5) Let me know when you are back in town, I'd love to grab coffee.
I was just deeply disappointed, if my case performance was a consistent issue why then did the partner say to contine the way I was doing? Shouldn't I have been rejected much earlier? The 3 people I know in the office are shocked because they said the buzz from HR was that I was doing well... if anyone can help me make sense of this situation I'd be very appreciative.
Certainly sounds like a weird situation, but it's impossible to know what your interviewers were actually thinking or if there were any external variables at play out of your control. For example, it's possible they only had one experienced spot open and someone either outperformed you or had a better background, so they simply said what they did to give you a reason for being cut. If you don't mind me asking, where are you working? How many years out of school are you? How did you go about getting the interview in the first place?
That being said, the only way to get any concrete feedback at this point would be to have one of your buddies approach the partners and ask about you (would not recommend this approach), or to go to coffee with your last interviewer and subtly ask him about future prospects at McKinsey/what you could do to prepare yourself better in the future (the preferable approach).
From reading your post, it appears as if you did quite well in the process and were strongly being considered after your 2nd round, but you weren't a definitive yes. So they had the 3rd and final partner be the decider and he went with a no, but still wants to keep in touch. Could be because he genuinely liked you, maybe he feels bad about being the bearer of bad news, or because he wanted you at the company and something external went wrong for you. Either way, only way to find out is to go to coffee or try and schedule another phone call. Best of luck either way.
I'm sorry to hear this. I used to work at McKinsey (non-partner) and gave a ton of interviews. A couple of comments.
1) The partner should not have said "I can't give you more feedback because that's they way it is." McKinsey does strive to give feedback.
2) It does sound like you got helpful (critical) feedback after your first set of interviews, and that you tried to improve but ultimately didn't improve enough.
3) It is quite clear from what the final round partner told you that--at least in his/her opinion--you did a poor job on the case. To be perfectly honest, that is hard to overcome. While the PEI ("fit") part is indeed important, if one does badly on the case (esp. with partners), the firm is just reluctant to give out offers.
I do not think that you "should have been rejected much earlier". It sounds like you made it through two rounds because you got through a high bar twice, you just didn't clear the highest bar at the end.
Once again, sorry for the disappointing news.
Get coffee with the Partner that rejected you. That is really the only way to keep that line of communication open and apply again next year.
Yeah, agreed.
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