One of my friends who is a first-year at Darden just hit me up asking for advice on things to look out for as he prepares for his McKinsey interviews next week. In response, I sent him this email and thought that some others might benefit from the advice, as well.

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Wow man, I remember what it was like to be in your shoes last year and McKinsey had me terrified. I’d come to Bschool to end up with them and I was shocked to make it to the second round…even if they ended up dissing me for the internship opportunity. Thank goodness for second chances

In terms of advice, here are some things to look out for when interviewing with McK or other consulting firms:

- The most important thing is to go in there with an air of confidence, but not to the point of seeming cocky. Companies like McKinsey want to see candidates that appear to be confident in their skills, but they don’t want those candidates to give the impression that they believe they’ve got the job as soon as they walk in the door.

- Be ready to do some quick data interpretations at some point in your cases. Thinking back, I believe that, in over half of my mcKinsey cases, the interviewer handed me a table at some point and simply asked “So what do you see here?” or “what does this table tell you?” Questions like this blew me out of the water last year because I was totally unprepared for them, but, this time around, I learned the art of stalling in those situations to give myself more time to think about it. Just be ready for those sorts of questions and don’t be caught off-guard.

- Make sure you have a good set of stories to tell for the “fit” portion of the interview. The interviewers will all get in a room after the interviews and go through the candidates one by one. Many candidates will have one or two good stories, but, after those, they’re pretty much tapped out. The McKinsey interviewers will likely specifically ask you to give them stories that you haven’t used in your other interviews that day because they want to get as many instances of how you work as possible. Some types of stories you should be thinking about are ones where you led an intiative or team toward a common goal, you failed despite your best efforts, you had to deal with a contentious situation in a team or leadership setting, you had to overcome some large obstacle to reach your goal, etc.

- Be on the lookout for subtle clues from your interviewer about where they want you to go. In interviews with most companies, the interviewer wants to see you do well (unless they are a total prick), so, unless you really don’t get along with him/her, you may end up getting some small hints about the direction you should take. For example, in a profitability problem, you may start off talking about the revenue side of the issue and the interviewer may stop you part way through and say “it’s great that you’re looking at the revenues, but what about the costs? what issues do you see there?” It may not be as blatant as that, but I think you get the idea of what I’m talking about. Just be willing to change directions if you feel like you’re being asked to do so.

- I know this one may sound basic, but use graph paper when you’re doing your cases and use two separate pieces of paper: one for your structured analysis and information gathering and one for your math. This will allow you to make your notes as clean and organized as possible. McKinsey always takes your notes from you after an interview and I have a feeling that they look at them during the reviews to see how well you structured your thoughts, so make it as easy as possible for them by making your notes as clean and readable as you can.

- Wherever possible, make use of tables, graphs, and charts when you’re giving your solutions to the problem. They don’t have to be professional looking by any means, but they go a long way toward showing that you know how to present information in a structured fashion, which is of utmost importance in Consulting.

- Here are some topic areas that you should ramp up on before your interviews:

1. Profitability (revenues, costs) 2. Industry attractiveness/Market issues (total size of the market in $, # of competitors – minimum efficient scale is useful here, whether the market is growing/shrinking/stagnant) 3. Mergers and Acquisitions (financials –> will it be profitable; produtc line synergies; market reaction to the merger/acquisition; culture/morale issues) 4. Product introduction (potential market for product, cost to introduce product, expected revenues/profits, competitor reaction, does the new product fit your company’s product line) 5. Marketing (pricing, placement/distribution channels, product, promotion) 6. Topics that show deeper business insights, such as unions, long-term contracts, costs (fixed vs. variable, direct vs. indirect), supply/demand issues (and their effects on pricing), culture/morale issues and their effects, and operations

- The most important thing to remember is to be as structured as possible with your thinking…you don’t necessarily have to crack the case, but you do have to show that you know how to break down a problem into pieces that you can attack one-by-one to get to a solution.

Hope this helps. If you have any other questions, feel free to hit me up when you get back to the US.

-Marquis