Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

This is a mistake common to most case interview candidates. They start with the McKinsey approach. This is a very, very bad idea. McKinsey cases are those were the interviewer leads the case. If you are only trained to do cases in this format, you will never learn how to lead a case. This is no small matter. The prompts and guides provided by a McKinsey interviewer play a significant role in helping you through the case and you will struggle without them. It is best to first learn to do cases where you are pointing out the areas or importance, and once you have developed this skill, thereafter shifting to the interviewer-led format.

We try to get our clients to understand that they are always being assessed for fit. Yet, many only pay attention to image and communication during the formal FIT/PEI interviews and then relapse into very poor communication patterns for the rest of the case. Listeners must understand that they are always being assessed for their communication, leadership, speaking etc skills, and especially during a full case when they are under the most pressure. If you keep this information in mind, good communication behavior becomes second nature to you.

Finding practice material for corporate finance cases is practically impossible outside Firmsconsulting. We have prepared this podcast outlining a training strategy any listener could follow should they be preparing for McKinsey Corporate Finance interviews. MCF interviews to be tough since candidates must demonstrate above-average strategy skills and a very high domain knowledge of finance, especially the ability to understand underlying concepts and adjust them for the realities of the market. We find this to be the main challenge for clients - getting to understand why a equation exists as it does versus merely being able to replicate the analyses.

Communication and image in a case interview is governed by both what you say and how you say. It is true that how you say something tends to carry more weight. However, in some case, certain phrases should definitely be avoided because they cause much damage it is very hard to recover from them. We discuss them in this podcast.

Storytelling is a very powerful technique to ensure someone remembers you after an interview. In fact, even when we screen people at Firmsconsulting today, we use this technique I applied as a partner. The rule is simple: if I can remember your key messages from the interview the next day, I would make you an offer. That, of course, assumes you had passed all the other hurdles well enough. One way to be remembered is to be your answers around compelling stories using the New York Times rule of facts, facts and facts with a beginning and end.

Being a young business analyst or associate on the receiving end of blunt and harsh feedback from a partner is a very jarring experience. However, it is also somewhat of a compliment. I never understand this very, very important point until my mentor, a senior partner, pointed this out to me when the managing partner gave me a very time about an initiative I was running. In hindsight, this was one of the most profound lessons I had in my consulting career, and the managing partner became a huge ally when I was up for partnership.

In this podcast we have listed some of the most common and most significant networking mistakes made by candidates. Since many of these have been made by clients, we have had an opportunity to discuss the mistakes, their motivations, the fall out and their response. Therefore, we can provide a comprehensive discussion on the implications of these mistakes. In general, no matter how badly a McKinsey partner networking call may go, you have little to fear. There are over 2,000 McKinsey partners. if you mess up, you have about 1,999 partners to start again.

99% of clients misunderstand learning and practicing. At its essence, you cannot practice McKinsey cases until you learn McKinsey cases. Most candidates start of their case interview preparation by reaching out to colleagues and consultants to practice cases, not having gone through the learning steps. Without a good strategy of separating learning from practicing you will simply absorb what you hear in the practice sessions and none of that is designed to teach you how to do cases. You must separate the learning from the practicing.

Many candidates forget to sanity-check their calculations in a case. That is a bad idea. Without a sanity-check there is no way to meaningfully assess the accuracy of your answer. More important, how you perform the sanity check is the key. All sanity-checks must involve the reduction of the answer to a number that you can intuitively compare to your own experiences. Unless you do this, you can never defend your answer.

I have written this from the perspective of the partner, since I was the partner leading this engagement. Consulting engagements at McKinsey and BCG, especially, tend to be naturally analytic in nature. This particular engagement was extremely so since the underlying analytic technique we were trying to use had never ever been successfully applied to a real environment with so many "messy" data points and random events. This podcast will be especially useful to those with physics, math and computer science backgrounds who want to see how consulting firms apply very creative analyses while sticking to the strict guidelines on analytic rigor.

Despite all the hype about BCG, McKinsey et al, you will only have a great career after these firms if you are astonishingly strategic in your career choices and also get promoted. If you do not get promoted you will spend the rest of your life explaining why you were not managed out - not a pleasant discussion since you will rarely be believed. This podcast explains some of the decisions you will have to make and how to make them.

Too many candidates do their case interview preparation in August and September. While we certainly think 6 months is far to long to spend preparing, we believe candidates need to create a list of their development area and use this to decide their preparation time. No time candidates are the same and weaknesses should drive the preparation time in its totality. Choosing average based on what your friends are doing is generally a very, very bad idea.

PhD candidates face three unique circumstances. First, they have to overcome the lack of available timing or guidelines for internship interviews since most thesis advisers will be unlikely to reschedule experiments and summer plans to accommodate McKinsey internship requests. Two, PhD's have certain stereotypes which they personally believe and exhibit such as they are less analytic than MBAs. Third, PhD's need to address the weaknesses consulting firms think they have like an inability to prioritize. This podcast touches on the main issues.

One of the greatest myths is that entering a case competition will help you prepare for a consulting interview and will impress a consulting firm. Neither is true and this podcast explains why. We specifically encourage our clients to avoid case competitions if they can. If mandatory, we insist they put in the least possible effort.

This general podcast describes some of the common misconceptions applicants and even practicing McKinsey/BCG consultants have about their own firms. It will be useful to anyone who wants to understand some of the broad themes and misunderstandings about the profession.

This podcast examines the 5 "hard" elements McKinsey looks for in a resume. Yet, the main value of this podcast is in discussing the things McKinsey looks for but is very hard to quantify and describe; what is the best bullet to write, what is an achievement oriented bullet, should education go to the top or bottom, should GMAT scores be included etc. These subtle inclusions all contribute to your resume profile and in our experience, we have never seen a resume that did not have to be substantially re-written.

Networking calls/coffee chats are tricky. You should not be following the advice found for general recruitment. We insist our clients network with partners so most of the advice we provide is for networking with McKinsey and BCG partners. The reality is that partners are best equipped, and most influential, to assess a unique profile and make a judgement call on the spot. The danger is that if you do not impress the partner, you are very unlikely to go anywhere with further networking. The more atypical your profile, though, the greater the need to network with a partner, and the benefits far outweigh the risks.

This podcast unpacks the typical lifestyle of a consultant. It touches on some elements for associates and business analysts, though delves more on the issues and challenges addressed by partners at BCG and McKinsey. Nonetheless, it is a good idea to understand how consulting lifestyle trends change one progresses further and further up the organization. This at the very least will help you decide if you want to stay all the way to partnership. This podcast is largely based on my own experiences as a partner.

It is a ridiculous myth to assume the world is fair and females have an even playing field with males. Females, especially in emerging markets, face unique and trying obstacles during the case interview process. Firmsconsulting has always been fairly direct in telling the truth as we see it to ensure female clients have the correct expectations, understand the hurdles they will face, and are armed with the correct training to handle their interviewers. This podcast explores this topic further.

Image management is crucial. A significant part of our approach is around teaching clients to manage, control really, the image they portray. This involves a wide area like dressing, networking, emailing, speaking, hand movements, body language etc. This podcast touches on these elements of image while exploring several in depth. This is one of several detailed podcasts exploring different areas of image management.