I applied through an employee referral. The process took 8 weeks. I interviewed at McKinsey & Company (Hanoi) in Aug 2011
Interview
Recruiting process at McKinsey is long and hard. I had to take the a test called Problem Solving Test (PST) where over 90% of applicants failed. And on top of it is 5 rounds of interview with 5 senior consultants (Engagement Managers, Partners, Directors..).
In interviews, behavioral questions are very lightly touched. Most attention was on the case interviews. My 5 different interviewers have 5 different cases but a quite similar style. All of them gave me the "Interview-drive" type of case. I guess you can read more on this type of case interview at www.mconsultingprep.com/case-interview
5 interviewers each independently evaluate my performance on a scale which looks something like: Strong hire, Consider, No hire. If you get any "No hire" from any one of the five, you are out. If you get more than 50% "Consider", you are also out.
The nice thing about this all is that once you get in, you will all be hanging around with smart people :).
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
To me, consulting case interviews are very predictable. If you study hard enough, there will be no surprise. Resources can very well be found online. No book or "special" training needed.
However, if I have to pick one most difficult question this would be one from my final round:
" We will have a case on your favorite industry. So what is it?"
I interviewed at McKinsey & Company (New York, NY)
Interview
A standardized test followed by 2 first round, 3 final round. Case-style interview. All interviews were done onsite in the local office. People were perfectly nice and recruiters coordinated everything. Overall, it was a good experience.
It is a difficult process, it is often not very clear what the exclusion factors are in the case interview. Behaviour interviews are as described on the website. Recommend being very familiar with their style of case interviews
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about a time you had to face and outgrow a challenge.
I interviewed at McKinsey & Company (Abu Dhabi, Abu Dhabi)
Interview
Application/Interview process: Applied online for a Business Analyst role through Glassdoor. Was invited to complete the McKinsey Solve online case assessment (a gamified problem-solving test, roughly 80 minutes). Completed it and received a rejection email about two weeks later, before any live interview stage. I requested them to share my test score and got a reply 2 days after that i scored a 10th decile and 537 points, despite this they didn't consider me for the HR interview round. This made me really confused and they refused to share any further information with me.
The real reason why they rejected me is still unknown.
McKinsey & Company interviews FAQs
Business Analyst applicants have rated the interview process at McKinsey & Company with 3.9 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 69% positive. To compare, the company-average is 64.4% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Business Analyst roles take an average of 45 days to get hired, when considering 992 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at McKinsey & Company overall takes an average of 40 days.
Common stages of the interview process at McKinsey & Company as a Business Analyst according to 992 Glassdoor interviews include:
One on one interview: 34%
Skills test: 17%
Phone interview: 10%
IQ intelligence test: 9%
Personality test: 9%
Presentation: 7%
Background check: 6%
Other: 3%
Drug test: 2%
Group panel interview: 1%
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