McKinsey Case Interview: How to Pass the Case & PEI [2023] (2024)

• Last Updated January, 2024

If you’re interested in a career in management consulting, McKinsey & Company is probably on your list of firms to apply to. It’s the oldest consulting firm, established in 1926 by James McKinsey, a University of Chicago professor and expert in management accounting.

Today, the firm employs 30 thousand professionals working in 130 cities around the world. McKinsey regularly ranks at the top of lists of strategy consulting firms and is hired by businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations to help solve their toughest problems.

It’s difficult to get a job offer from McKinsey.

Like its top management consulting competitors, Bain and BCG, McKinsey typically hires only 1% of candidates who apply. In particular, McKinsey case interviews are tough to crack…but not impossible.

If you’re interested in trying to beat the odds, this article will tell you what you need to know to succeed. We’ll tell you:

• • What’s different about McKinsey,

  • 6 things candidates recruiting with McKinsey should know,

  • We’ll provide a mock McKinsey case interview video, and

  • Provide tips on acing your McKinsey interview.

Let’s get started!

Generalists at McKinsey are consultants who could be staffed to help clients in any industry and dealing with any type of business problem. Specialists are consultants with a particular area of expertise.

Areas of specialization within McKinseyinclude digital and advanced analytics, marketing and sales, business turn around, operations, software development and design, and implementation.

This allows them to work alongside client staff and create solutions that are not just elegant, but implementable at the organization. It also allows teams comprised of consultants from multiple offices to work together.

Most consultants travel a lot and at McKinsey, this is definitely the case. Consider whether regular plane flights and hotel stays are right for you.

While all strategy firms ask candidates Consulting Behavioral Interview Questionsto assess their fit with their firm, many have one interviewer focus entirely on fit while others focus entirely on a case study question.

McKinsey interviewers split their interview time between the case and PEI in every interview.

McKinsey’s Solve Game was launched to broaden the firm’s reach to find the best talent regardless of geography as well as provide deeper insight into candidates’ problem-solving skills.

Keep reading for a deeper dive into these topics.

When the management consulting industry was first founded, simply having an MBA and expertise in solving business problems was enough to set a consultant apart. Consultants hired by McKinsey could expect to be staffed on a case in any industry and solving any type of problem.

Ninety years later, great problem-solving skills are sometimes not enough to solve a client’s problem efficiently and cost-effectively. For some types of business problems, deep skill sets developed over time are essential.

To help clients solve these types of business problems effectively, McKinsey hires people with years of experience in functional specialties. These include advanced analytics, marketing and sales, business turn around, operations, software development and design, and implementation.

Specialists work alongside generalists on projects to leverage their functional expertise across the work of the team. The specialist practices are growing faster than generalist roles and get fewer applications, so if you have the right kind of expertise and apply to the practice, you may have a better chance of landing an interview.

At the start of any McKinsey case study, candidates need to go through 4 phases to solve the business problem the interviewer has given them in a structured manner: the opening, structure, analysis, and closing.

The opening and structuring phases are the same whether the case interview is led by the interviewer or the candidate. But in the analysis phase, the approach candidates need to take is different.

In a candidate-led case interview, candidates will pick which part of the problem they want to dive into first and proceed with it. In McKinsey’s interviewer-led cases, the interviewer will pick the first part of the business problem they want the candidate to address.

Is the interviewer-led case interview easier or harder than the candidate-led one?

If you’ve structured the business problem well, breaking the problem down into the MECEissues that require further analysis, it should not matter who picks which aspect of the problem to address first. What is helpful is knowing what to expect in your case interview so that you don’t start down one path just to be redirected by your McKinsey interviewer.You don’t want anything to throw you in the middle of your case!

For more information on these 4 phases of answering a case interview question, seeCase Interview Prep.

As mentioned above, fit or personal experience interview (PEI) questions are part of every McKinsey interview.

How else is the PEI different?

While other top management consulting firms focus on bringing the best creative problem-solving to their clients’ problems (BCG is notable here), McKinsey is interested in candidates’ personal impact and entrepreneurial spirit.

McKinsey interviewers look for these characteristics in answers to PEI questions. Because of this, it’s good to have some insight into why the firm thinks these characteristics are important.

McKinsey does not want to create PowerPoint presentations with elegant solutions that sit on an executive’s shelf, not implemented.

Personal impact means that McKinsey consultants work shoulder-to-shoulder, on-site with client executives, developing solutions that don’t just solve a business problem in theory but also do it in practice. This can require facing resistance to change in the client’s organization head-on and persuading people to reassess long-held beliefs.

During the PEI, questions like the following will be asked to assess personal impact:

• Tell me about a team you worked on when you needed to change someone’s mind on a topic that was important to them, or
• Tell me about a time when you needed to rely on your communication skills to solve a difficult interpersonal situation.

This belief that personal impact is key to developing an implementable solution is what drives McKinsey consultants to spend 4 days a week on client site.

McKinsey doesn’t hire consultants who can only implement solutions they’ve seen in previous businesses. They want people who are willing to try new things, take solutions to new industries or new types of problems.

The McKinsey problem solving approach treats each client problem as unique. Each solution should push thinking about best-practices.

In addition to personal impact and entrepreneurial drive, McKinsey also assesses leadership using the PEI. We won’t address this in detail because this is similar to other consulting firms, but you can find more about how McKinsey assesses leadership in our page onMcKinsey PEI Questions.

It also includes What McKinsey Is Looking For and provides a list of 11 Common PEI Questions.

For years, McKinsey focused on a group of core schools to find new analyst (undergraduate hires) and associate (MBA hires) candidates.

While the firm now recruits from a broader set of schools as well as more diverse candidates, recruiting at these core schools still starts in much the same way. McKinsey consultants conduct on-campus presentations and coffee chats to talk to potential candidates about what it’s like to work in the management consulting industry and at McKinsey, in particular.

If the firm hosts an event at your campus, you should attend to make personal connections and to find out first-hand if a career at McKinsey is right for you. If there are no events at your school or if you’re already employed, check out the company’s career site for articles and videos that will tell you what it’s like to work at McKinsey and what it takes to get an offer.

Candidates submit their resumes (and optional cover letters) to the firm’s recruiting department via their school’s department of career services and on the firm website. Candidates who are invited to interview typically have their first round interviews on campus.

During first round interviews, candidates meet with 2 interviewers back-to-back. Candidates who pass first round interviews are invited to a McKinsey office for second round interviews.

In second round interviews, candidates meet with 3 interviewers. Unless a candidate’s interviewers are split in their decision, second round interviews are also final round interviews.

In each round of interviews, McKinsey interviewers walk candidates through a business problem and asks a series ofMcKinsey PEI Questions, aimed at evaluating their potential fit with the organization.

Candidates from non-core schools submit their resumes (and optional cover letters) directly to the recruiting department of the 3 offices they’d like to work in.

If they are invited to interview, candidates who live relatively close to a McKinsey office will be invited for in-person first round interviews. Others will be asked to do their first round McKinsey interviews via video conference.

Candidates already working in another industry or those working at another consulting firm submit their resumes (and optional cover letters) directly to the recruiting department of the three offices they’d like to work in. They will typically have a phone interview before the “first round” of in-person interviews.

In both cases, once candidates are passed to second round interviews the recruiting process is the same as for core school candidates.

McKinsey is reaching out to more candidates outside of their traditional core schools to diversify its recruiting. As part of that, it’s launchedSolve, an online gamethat assesses candidates’ problem-solving skills.Solve is both more fun and gives candidates from non-core schools a better shot at getting a McKinsey interview than they’ve had in the past.

Now that you’ve watched our sample McKinsey case interview, you should be ready to start practicing for your own interviews.

Here are 5 tips on making the most of your preparation time:

• Practice casing with another person. Answering case interview questions does not come naturally and it is not enough to practice on your own since casing requires having a dialogue. Give yourself as much time to practice mock interviews as possible by starting early.
• Record yourself during mock interviewsusing your computer or phone. Study these videos to see how you can improve your performance in each phase of the case interview. Aim to make your answers more fluent and conversational.
• Practice sample McKinsey interview-led case interviews. UseMcKinsey-specific case interview examplesbelow to make sure you’re not just familiar with cases, but with McKinsey cases. Make sure you are comfortable with being redirected at times.
• Brainstorm several stories to answer common personal experience interview questions. You can find a list of these common questions here.
• Find out more about theMcKinsey Solve Gamebefore you take it.

If you have more questions about McKinsey case interviews, the PEI, or working at McKinsey, leave them in the comments below. One of My Consulting Offer’s case coaches will answer them.

People interested in this topic have also found the following pages helpful:

• Why McKinsey?
  
• McKinsey PEI Questions
• McKinsey Problem Solving Game
• Case Interview Examples

Thanks for turning to My Consulting Offer for advice on case study interview prep.

My Consulting Offer has helped almost 89.6% of the people we’ve worked with get a job in management consulting.

We want you to be successful in your consulting case interviews too.