Why Mckinsey Interview Questions
How to answer the question "Why Mckinsey?"
As part of MBB, McKinsey is often regarded as one of the most prestigious consulting firms to work at. McKinsey is a consulting firm that focuses on advising and counseling companies worldwide, but it’s also known for its lucrative career opportunities.
Unlike other consulting firms, the type of consulting that McKinsey specializes in is called management consulting.
Management consulting is different from strategy or tech consulting in that it focuses more on direct interaction with executives to help clients solve problems.
McKinsey & Company is a global management consulting firm with a strong reputation for delivering strategic insights, data-driven recommendations, and practical solutions to its clients.
There are several reasons why someone might choose to work at McKinsey and various ways to get a job there, but the overall four steps include the following:
- Resume screening
- McKinsey problem-solving test
- First round of interviews
- Second round of interviews
That seems a little overwhelming, but we agree! But with all that being said, you might still be sold, and it’s understandable. What’s not to love about McKinsey? You get to experience social satisfaction, high pay, and challenging but impactful work. So how do you get there?
In this article, you’ll be provided with more details about the McKinsey recruitment process and expert and experienced advice on how to tackle the interviews. Make sure to research whatever you feel unsure about, but let this article be a guide on how you can begin to succeed.
Interview Tips
- Conduct research, align your abilities and interests, be detailed, stress professional aspirations, demonstrate passion, and retain honesty when asked this question.
- Highlight McKinsey's values such as prestige, challenging work, collaboration, professional development, and global presence when explaining your motivation.
- Understand the differences between McKinsey, Bain, and BCG in client focus, problem-solving approach, culture, and expertise to tailor your response.
- The process includes networking, events, resumes, tests, two interview rounds with case and behavioral questions. Use STAR for behavioral questions and highlight relevant skills.
“Why Mckinsey” Interview Question
This is the biggest, first, and foremost question you should ask yourself even before applying to McKinsey. That way, when it’s asked in interviews, you’ll have a clear answer to this question already.
When this question is asked, the interviewer is trying to understand your real motivations for applying to the company. Obvious answers that shouldn’t be mentioned include “high pay” or similar benefits; they’re trying to see how you’d fit their values.
Here are some tips to help you answer this question:
- Do your research: research the company thoroughly, including its values, culture, and recent projects. This will help you understand what the company stands for and how you might fit in, and reading this article is a great start already.
- Focus on your skills and interests: think about how your skills and interests align with the company's work. For example, if you are interested in problem-solving and have experience in data analysis, you could highlight how McKinsey's focus on data-driven solutions aligns with your interests.
- Be specific: avoid general statements and be as specific as possible. Instead of saying, "I want to work for McKinsey because it's a great company," explain what specifically appeals to you about the company and its culture.
- Highlight your career goals: explain how working at McKinsey will help you achieve your long-term career goals. For example, you could explain how the company's focus on personal and professional development aligns with your own goals for growth and advancement.
- Show enthusiasm: demonstrate your enthusiasm for the company and the opportunity to work there. This will help convey your passion and commitment to the role.
- Remember to be honest and genuine in your answer: the interviewer wants to understand your motivations, so it's essential to be truthful and avoid simply telling the interviewer what you think they want to hear.
Incorporating McKinsey’s Values In Your Answer
In your “Why McKinsey” interview question answer, you could incorporate some of the following company’s values into your own spinoff. Every candidate will have a different reason as to why McKinsey suits them, but it’s best to prepare with these in advance.
- Prestige: McKinsey is one of the most prestigious consulting firms in the world, with a long history of working with Fortune 500 companies, government agencies, and non-profit organizations. Being part of such a respected organization can bring a lot of pride and opportunities.
- Challenging and diverse work: McKinsey's projects span various industries, functions, and geographies, often involving complex strategic and operational issues. Working at McKinsey offers the opportunity to tackle unique and challenging problems, which can be intellectually stimulating.
- Collaborative and supportive environment: McKinsey emphasizes teamwork and collaboration among its staff, which can be an attractive feature for those who enjoy working in a supportive and constructive team setting.
- Professional development opportunities: McKinsey offers a range of professional development opportunities, including formal training, mentorship, and exposure to top business leaders. This can help individuals grow their skills and develop a deeper understanding of the business world.
- Global reach: McKinsey has a strong global presence, with over 130 offices in over 65 countries. This offers the opportunity to work on international projects and to learn about different cultures and business practices.
Of course, just like the other two firms that are part of the Big Three, McKinsey offers the benefits of a lucrative career and great pay. But what about its culture? How would you fit better into McKinsey than the other two firms?
McKinsey’s Uniqueness
McKinsey, Bain, and BCG are all top-tier management consulting firms, and while they share many similarities, each firm has its unique strengths and characteristics. These may be some significant differentiations that could make or break your “Why McKinsey” question response.
Here are a few key differences between McKinsey, Bain, and BCG:
- Client focus: McKinsey is known for its expertise in strategy consulting and for working with large, complex organizations. Bain is often associated with private equity firms and their portfolio companies, and BCG has a strong focus on helping clients with innovation and digital transformation.
- Approach to problem-solving: McKinsey is known for its rigorous, fact-based approach to problem-solving. Bain, on the other hand, emphasizes customer-centricity and driving impact, and BCG is known for its focus on innovation and creative problem-solving.
- Culture and working style: McKinsey is known for its collaborative and team-based approach to work, while Bain emphasizes a more personal and entrepreneurial working style. BCG places a strong emphasis on intellectual curiosity and creativity.
- Areas of expertise: while all three firms have broad areas of expertise, there are some areas where each firm is particularly strong.
For example, McKinsey has a strong reputation in strategy, organization, and operations consulting. Bain is known for its expertise in private equity, customer experience, and results delivery, and BCG has a strong focus on innovation, digital transformation, and sustainability.
Note
McKinsey’s approach is more centered around its large, public clients; its fact-driven, logic-based approach; and its collaborative, community-centered approach to solving problems.
If you’ve been looking for a company like this, you’re in luck! McKinsey has many facets to it, and joining as a consultant will be as much fun as it is beneficial. It all depends on personal fit!
McKinsey Recruitment: Pre-Interview
McKinsey starts their recruitment process even before they first look at your resume. And what applies to pre-resume screening at McKinsey applies to other companies, too!
So what are some of the things that top firms will look for in a potential candidate before evaluating them based on a resume?
- Networking/Referrals: If a candidate already has a referral from someone else who already works at the firm, they’re more likely to get boosted in a screener’s eyes.
- Attendance at info sessions/previously hosted events: If a candidate has been at previous events hosted by the company, they’re more likely to stand out.
Do these steps apply only to consulting companies? Absolutely not! You’ll find quickly that throughout your career, networking and building genuine relationships with people will go a long way in helping you stand out to recruiters at different firms.
Resume
After you’ve finished the previous steps, it’s time to submit an actual resume. McKinsey highlights that it looks for specific traits in candidates, including:
- Personal Impact
- Entrepreneurial Drive
- Inclusive Leadership
- Problem-Solving
So, demonstrating that you have these skills is crucial to a resume. Using keywords to show how these skills appear in your day-to-day work will show recruiters that you’re committed not only to the work you do but also to the job you’re about to take.
As for what you should actually include on a resume – it definitely gets confusing sometimes, but having a grasp of the key things that are traditionally on a resume will go a long way.
There are four C’s that you should be following for any resume in general, but that McKinsey specifically suggests: being concise, consistent, clear, and clean. That means that everything you put on your resume should be double-checked for length, formatting, and spelling errors.
McKinsey also suggests highlighting leadership and part-time experience on the resume you submit. Did you help lead a team through a small project? Make sure to put that down on your resume! Same thing with your time commitments, even if it was a part-time job at a local store.
Lastly, make sure that you don’t overfill your resume with extravagant, arrogant information. Any recruiter just wants to see how your authentic self can line up with what they want from you.
Problem-Solving Test
After you pass the resume screening, the next step in McKinsey’s process is the problem-solving test.
According to McKinsey’s coaching guide itself, the problem-solving test is not meant to test your memorization – it’s just meant to see how you think.
The test is composed of 26 questions to be finished in an hour, but McKinsey itself says it doesn’t expect you to finish all of them. You should just focus on finishing the ones you can as accurately as possible.
If you’ve ever taken the SAT or ACT in high school, think of this test as similar. Though it’s, of course, very different, it still considers your logic and abilities to absorb, solve, and manage time.
The skills that McKinsey focuses on, more than the math that’s shown at the surface, are data interpretation and critical numerical reasoning. The test itself is taken on a computer and is timed, but practicing your mental math and data interpretation would be the most helpful.
To advance to the interview part of McKinsey, you’re required to pass the test with at least a 70% success rate. That means that out of 26 questions, at least 19 should be correct.
Two Rounds of Interviews
Now that you made it to the first round of interviews – congrats! You are now at the step where you’ll be talking to McKinsey consultants and partners face-to-face during multiple interviews.
There are two rounds to land an offer. The first round has two 45-minute one-on-one interviews. So, 90 minutes total, and it’s during this round that questions such as “Why Mckinsey” is asked.
Each interview has what’s known as a case. A case is a hypothetical business situation that typically has a problem-solution structure. A candidate will be presented with a problem and will then be asked how they would solve it.
Case interviews by themselves are not easy. They require preparation beforehand, and McKinsey (and other consulting firms) want to see that you’re structured in your problem-solving approach.
Case Interviews
Now that you know what a case interview is, you may be wondering why McKinsey has them. Why do all of the MBB firms, for that matter, have them? And most importantly, how can you actually tackle them?
LinkedIn explains that case interviews are used primarily to test how efficiently a candidate is able to problem-solve and think creatively. They’re real-world examples of different cases a company may have been involved with!
Take a case about profitability, for example. In your case interview, you might be asked how to bolster a client’s profitability in the case that they may have faced declining revenues and/or increasing costs for a certain amount of time.
How would you tackle that? In short, you would identify the key root causes of the company’s decline in revenue and/or increase in costs, and then you would try to solve them. You’d walk your interviewer through the case step-by-step, explaining your thought process for each solution.
Note
There are tons and tons of guides out there as to how to ace your case interview. Wall Street Oasis even has its own! Experienced consultants and partners at your dream companies have published extensive guides on the topic, so Google is always to the rescue.
What about behavioral questions?
Behavioral questions should be expected out of pretty much every job interview. They don’t test you on skills as much as they do on your personality. But even then, it’s essential to tackle them strategically, especially since top firms want to see your best traits.
Behavioral questions are a type of interview question that consulting firms use to assess a candidate's past experiences and behaviors in order to predict how they will perform in a consulting role.
These questions ask candidates to provide specific examples from their past experiences and describe the actions they took in response to different situations.
They typically begin with phrases such as "Tell me about a time when..." or "Can you give me an example of..." and focus on specific skills or competencies that consulting firms are looking for in their candidates, such as problem-solving, leadership, communication, teamwork, and client management.
McKinsey’s Personal Experience Interview (PEI)
While other firms may just call them behavioral questions, McKinsey specifically asks candidates what are known as “Personal Experience Interview” questions, or PEI questions. They come at the start of case interviews, and each covers a single topic.
You’ll be asked about a particular soft skill, but you won’t have to answer multiple of these questions, unlike you would in other firms. McKinsey just wants to see how you can demonstrate strength in the specific skill they ask you about.
McKinsey’s Personal Experience Interview (PEI)
Consulting is a great career choice for those who want to explore different types of industries and gain a great number of diverse skills. In your behavioral question, you could address fundamental aspects of consulting, tailoring them to your personality:
- Professional and personal development: mentorship, exit, and collaboration opportunities
- Exposure to diverse industries and clients: a wide variety of projects to work on
- Challenging and rewarding work: complex business issues that can be solved with a creative mindset
- Compensation: the payment from the job itself
Of course, this question is meant to see if you’re meant for a career in consulting, but it never hurts to include more about how you fit in with the firm. If you want to give personal experiences of how you’ve discovered consulting is right for you, shoot for it! This is where you do it.
While this is a widely asked question, oftentimes, many interview candidates struggle with finding a “correct” answer to it. But to be real? There is no ONE specific answer that you need to say.
Interviewees just want to learn more about your general background and how that can fit in with your future role at the company. The more they can hear about your experience and skills, the more likely they’ll feel comfortable hiring you.
A common way to answer this question is to talk about what you’re currently doing, what got you there, and what you’re looking to do next. In other words, think of your present, past, and future professionally.
Were there any significant stories or developments in your life that have shaped you into becoming who you are now? Those would be key to include in your interview answer, as they provide insight into the vulnerable, authentic, and real you.
Great examples of what you could talk about include past jobs or internships and the takeaways you had from them, personal stories about how you were raised/unexpected events that changed your career direction, or simply describing what you’re passionate about and why.
This is another one of those seemingly easy questions that can get a lot of people tripped up! You don’t have to tell them something super personal about yourself, but you just need to make sure that you’re highlighting skills in leadership and entrepreneurial spirit.
McKinsey wants to see that you are someone who takes initiative and even brings people together. So just like other firms, they’ll keep asking you questions in which they want to see your stories and solutions that you’ve implemented.
In terms of accomplishment, talking about what you did might not be as important as talking about how you got there. If you’re able to take your interviewer through the steps of something, you’re essentially acting as a consultant!
Why? Because part of being a successful consultant comes with structuring everything you can. Adding structure to all of your answers, even the story-based ones, will allow you to show your demonstrated skills and powerful communication abilities.
One of the other things that McKinsey is doing when they ask you these questions is assessing how well you are able to communicate for extended amounts of time. The McKinsey behavioral questions are often a lot longer than you’ll normally find.
This question is probably one of the most important ones that you’ll be given. You will have to tell your interviewer a story about something difficult that happened to you, but illustrating how you overcame it is the more important part.
For this question, they definitely want to see that you overcame whatever hard situation you were faced with. McKinsey is looking for strong problem-solvers, after all!
You should specifically describe the problem you were faced with as well as your response to it. If it was a problem with a deadline, for example, make sure that you’ve made that clear. But make it even clearer how you sought to get over it.
If you’d like more information on how to actually “crack” the case interview for consulting interviews, check out the WSO Consulting Interview Course for yourself to explore more resources and uncover new secrets!
Applying what you know
So now that you’ve gotten an idea of the kind of questions McKinsey may ask you, let’s dive straight into how you can start answering some of them. Here, we’ll include sample answers to the questions you may get asked during your interview.
Applying What You Know
This is your standard “why McKinsey question” that you’re almost guaranteed to have to answer. This will be asked during the interviews for all your firms to really gauge your interest in the company, but you want to be structured in your approach.
Sample Answer:
“I chose McKinsey because of what I feel it provides for me professionally and personally in three different ways. First, I believe that working with a team of like-minded people will be like no other.
Coming from a background in X, I believe that working in a business-oriented direction with members of a team will allow me to gain a new perspective in approaching business and personal problems. Second, I value McKinsey’s X, which will enable me to Y because of Z….”
Again, another standard question that you’re almost guaranteed to be asked in your interviews. In this question, you should be focused on the entire industry answer rather than tying into a specific company.
Sample Answer:
“This is an amazing question that I’ve thought about quite a lot myself, and there are 2 main reasons why I’ve decided on the consulting career path to be the right fit for me. First, because it aligns with my values, and second, because of its numerous opportunities for development.
I’ve always been someone that has valued hard work over anything else, before settling down and committing. In college, I’ve always prioritized X before doing Y with my friends, and that’s becoming second nature. With consulting experience, I’d be able to apply X to Y…”
Answering Behaviorals
A common method to behavioral questions that you’ll find with a quick Google search is the STAR method.
The STAR method will take you through:
- Situation
- Task
- Action
- Result
And it’s exactly what it sounds like! The STAR method is a way for you to walk your interviewers through your thinking, but it also provides a structure for you to follow.
If you set the situation up, tell the interviewer the task you had to do, then describe what steps you took to get there before sharing the outcome, you’ve successfully followed the STAR method.
Since the McKinsey behavioral question will be a long one, it’s important that you know what skills you have to highlight. Don’t highlight skills that are irrelevant to the job you’re about to take. Instead, tell a story about a strategic or leadership-related skill you’ve honed.
All in all, you should be able to provide a cohesive story if you successfully follow these four steps. McKinsey is looking for excellent communicators, articulate thinkers, and passionate problem-solvers.
Conclusion
McKinsey is one of the most sought-after firms globally, making it highly desirable and even more competitive. So, by just preparing in advance for the types of interview questions you may be asked, you’re setting yourself up for success.
Remember that everyone goes at their own pace during recruitment processes, but that it’s super important to start case-prepping and honing your story early on in your job search journey. The other big takeaway is just how much the pre-interview stuff matters.
If you find yourself landing a McKinsey interview, don’t be afraid to go online and look for more interview resources! There are thousands of casebooks, articles, and videos out there meant to help prep you for your consulting interviews.
Tune in to WSO’s reader base to get a better understanding of how to prepare!
or Want to Sign up with your social account?