McKinsey & Company Consultant Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: HR Interview
Experience: I was asked very few PI questions in this round. Some questions around what my company exactly was, my role etc. In the first interview, I was asked a lot of PI questions which actually make me comfortable. Dearth of PI in this interview did not go well and I guess it reflected in my case as well.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Recommended Approach - I could not think of any set framework and hence decided to list parameters on which I would take the decision. I listed a few parameters – Eg: Customer satisfaction, execution ease, profitability etc. I made a table which looked something like this
Parameters Online Brick and Mortar
Parameter 1 Yes No
Parameter 2 No Yes
Parameter 3 Yes No

One of these parameters was profitability and in the middle of the case, I realized that all the other parameters impacted profitability ie the parameters were not exactly independent of each other.
I discusses the same with Renny and he subtly asked me to move away from this approach.

He then asked me to dive deep into the customer satisfaction issue. I told him that customer satisfaction would depend on the type of customers the bank serves. The discussion now primarily revolved around the segmentation criteria – Income level/age/literacy etc.

We debated on each and finally Renny told me that he was running out of time and he ended the interview.
Tips: It was the second interview of the first round and I was fairly confident since my first interview went very well. Think I got a bit casual and somehow I was not able to build any connect with Renny. The interview did not go particularly well and I thought my chances were almost over. But luckily I was called for the second round primarily because of my first interview.

Skills: Problem Solving Abilties, Number Crunching, 1)communication, Personality
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: He recognized me from our interaction at the McKinsey dinner. So, he didn’t really introduce himself. He further asked me about my background and then the work experience at ITC. He went in depth to discuss about the projects I had worked on and practically left no stone unturned.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case narration - The client is a Projects based company that takes up contracts to layout power lines in India. They have been facing profitability issues.
Recommended Approach -Take out the famous profitability framework from your armor and begin to dissect the problem. I went into revenues and costs.
List down all the costs for e.g., Fixed and Variable (e.g. Raw Materials, Labouretc.) and check whether any item has higher costs than that of the competitor or the client’s initial costing for the project. You would find that the costing for each item would be still the same. (
At this point I was given a hint - what is the most crucial thing in a project? You have worked on many of them).
I immediately realized that this was about the timelines. Ask, are they overshooting the timelines defined in their costing? – Yes, the client was overshooting their project timelines leading to higher fixed costs incurred per project. Then, you dive into revenues and first understand the process of taking up each order and how the payments are made. I recommend making a whole cycle (or diagram) of the process. It helps you visualize better. You will realize that government projects are given through a lowest bid tendering process. One potential problem that you immediately state is that probably the client is not adopting a sound bidding strategy thereby bidding too low in order to get a project. Second thing that you will realize is that the payments may be getting delayed. This will lead to a higher working capital.


Tips: I couldn’t reach the point that payments maybe getting delayed. I was given a hint that “the working capital is increasing? Why do you think that could be?”. I just couldn’t write the formula for the working capital. Finally, after a while, I caught the hint and realized that the payments were getting delayed. Overall, I could feel that the interview went well except for the minor blip in the end. Things that worked for me: 1. Always keep smiling and be confident. PI is 50% of the whole game. If you do that well, you are well placed. Be very confident, open and genuine in the PI. Let the interviewer see through who you really are as a person. 2. Never lose your cool. If you’re stuck, just say that I think I have hit a dead end, let me start from the top and see what I could’ve missed. The interviewer is out there to help! 3. Make a good conversation. I spoke to Shirish about the restaurants he has invested in.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case Narration- I was just reading through the newspaper today, and I found this article. It says that India needs nearly 500 million skills by 2022. What do you think about this?

Recommended Approach
Task at hand is to estimate the number of unemployed people in the country by 2022. So, first estimate the current unemployed number of people in India. And then also add a growth percentage to it to say, how many people will get added every year.

Split the population first by age above 18 and then into urban and rural. Then split further into income groups followed by gender. Then, put an estimated percentage of unemployment for each category. This way you will find the current number of unemployed population. Then add a growth percentage of population of nearly 1.5% and add it for years from 2015 to 2022. The number came to $480 million for me and thus justified the $500 M in the newspaper statement.. So, the interviewer stopped me there.
Tips: After the case, the interviewer asked me about my previous interview and which case had I got. He told me that the previous interviewer had asked him to test me on the numbers. Thus, the bizzare case. Things that worked: 1. While we were discussing the case given to me in the first interview, I started to discuss on how does McKinsey fair in government projects and tenders. We had a good discussion that made a positive impact. 2. I didn’t panic after listening to the case. It was an arbitrary case, but I knew that in such cases, the interviewer will be more than willing to help you break down the case. So, I just continued having a conversation about the statement in the newspaper till the time I could understand exactly what the interviewer wanted me to do in the case.

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case narration - McKinsey is faced with a live situation. After the split of Andhra Pradesh, the state is looking to set up a new capital city. The Government wants to know how much land should they acquire from farmers to set the city up. How would you approach the problem?

Suggested considering five broad areas
1. Business
2. Government offices
3. Social enterprises like schools hospitals
4. Residential
5. Public utilities

Consider land required for these. Was asked how you would determine. Mentioned that we could look at comparative cities around which you would like to model the city. We could also consider the population that could migrate and plan space accordingly. What metrics would you consider while determining the population? Population density per sq. km Are there any other metrics you could consider Maybe GDP per capita of the city Then Sasi went into some detail of other things to consider like smart city aspects and the case ended.
Tips: Recommended Approach - No framework could be applied. Think logically.

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case narration -A real estate developer is setting up a township in the middle of the desert. A PE has also invested in it. Currently they are deciding whom to contract with to set up the water supply system, i.e. whether to use a private company or to use a public company. What are the factors to be considered? The initial part involved determining the cost structure and the total costs involved with the help of the total costs and the number of connections and average usage per household. One the numbers were out of the way, I was required to determine the profit considering the pricing of the nearest township. Then considering the two pricing methods mentioned below determine the variable price per unit in each given the fixed connection price. The key was determining which was better and the answer the interviewer was looking for was primarily variability. The fixed price ensured some amount of predictability whereas only variable led to greater standard deviation.



Tips: Consider the motive and then follow the direction that the interviewer leads. In this case I found that the interviewer was ok leading I just had to pick up the hints.

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Typical PI about what all have I done in my life so far. Why do I want to be in consulting? What am I looking forward to in Mckinsey? Who all are there in my family? It was a very informal chit chat.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: A short case- More of a concept.Shirish asked me if I knew anything about cost curves. I told him about a downward sloping average fixed cost curve, U-shaped average cost curve and marginal cost curve cutting the average cost at its minimum. Then he asked me about average cost curve of a mining firm. I talked about the nature of heavy upfront investment required. Then he said lets draw the cost curve of mining industry as a whole. I was a bit confused at this point as I thought he is talking about average cost. But he was basically hinting at the marginal cost curve and supply curve of the industry. So it would be an upward sloping curve representing the supply. Then he asked me if I faced a downward sloping demand curve and my firm wanted to expand, then where would I like to operate on this supply curve? I talked about the equilibrium being where demand meets the supply, and as supply shows marginal cost, so I would like to operate towards the left of equilibrium, where my MCTips: This short discussion gave a great insight and I was very happy. Sirish congratulated me and told me that we are making you an offer and you would get to learn a lot more interesting things while you are at Mckinsey. I had interviews scheduled with four companies for day 1. I finished all my round one interviews by 12:30/1pm and then I could calmly wait for my results and stay where odds were in my favor. I think staying calm and just being yourself helps the most. :)

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Peeyush(interviewer) gave a 2 min introduction about him and then jumped directly to the case without wasting time.
Case 1. I started the case by mentioning 3 approaches by which I could estimate the number of aircrafts:
1. Supply side- in terms of capacity of the airport
2. Supply side- in terms of the number of carriers and their flights on domestic and international routes
3. Demand side- Demand for flight seats and then using the average capacity utilization and average fleet aircraft size. Peeyush asked me to go ahead with the first approach. I asked him a few questions about the number of runways Delhi airport has, the average operational hours in a day, the time it takes for a flight to land/ take off and the time gap between two take offs or landings. At this point Peeyush seemed impressed and told me that you have cracked this case. Let’s moved ahead to some other case.

Case 2. Productivity= Policies sold per annum/ person So I began the discussion by staking that this metric could be worse off for two reasons, firstly if my agents are incapable of selling policies and there is some issue with respect to their efforts or secondly, if I am employing excessive employees in my organization. I wanted to go ahead with the first one.
I first talked about how the process works when an agent approaches a client to sell the policy. I drew a funnel and explained that leads keep dropping out of the process and only a few buy the policy finally and to know why our agents are unable to sell policies, we need to look at each step in this chain.
Peeyush seemed satisfied with this approach and asked me to go ahead with it. I listed down the following process:
1. Identifying the leads
Here I talked about identification of right set of people whom our agents should target based on the nature of our
product and income class and needs of the clients
2. Our agents approaching the leads and informing them about the product. I listed a number of factors play an important
role at this step:
a) Skills of our agents Skills could be in terms of the educational qualifications of our agents, their knowledge about the
product, communication skills, and marketing skills. Peeyush hinted that it was a key problem. I suggested that this
problem could be resolved by making our hiring policies more robust, providing proper training to our incoming
employees and allocating agents to areas based on their background and demographics of people residing there.
b) Brand of our firm- This was another issue, though Peeyush didn’t want me to elaborate on that.
c) Competitor’s products
d) Terms and conditions of our product
3. Follow up by agents
4. Processing of the policy by our back office
5. After-sale follow up (impact on referrals and brand

Case was mostly done when I identified the agent side and brand issue, however Peeyush was just patiently listening to me and waiting for me to finish. He seemed satisfied with both the cases and their outcomes. I asked him about what career option could have given him the same degree of satisfaction as consulting and Mckinsey. Here he mainly talked about how much he liked consulting and what other options he had faced and evaluated over the course of his life.

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: He was very friendly and tried to make me comfortable. He asked if I wanted windows to be open or if I was feeling too hot or cold. He asked if I wanted to have tea/coffee. I told him that I was completely comfortable. He first took 2 minutes to first introduce himself and then he asked me if I was nervous. He was happy hear that I was not. It was followed by a 5 min PI, which mainly involved description of my overall profile.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Sameer first asked me how I would evaluate the customer experience in a bank
. I talked about a few factors like- time, user experience judged by feedbacks, complaints & grievances, and ambience. I largely divided the entire banking setup contributing to the customer experience into 3 parts: -People: Number of people present to cater to the customers and the kind of soft skills they possess. Are they trained? Knowledge pool? -Processes: Processes can be seen from two points- first as the overall technology driving the bank in terms of the front end user interface and the back end processes used by the staff (which translates into speed of processing the transactions), and secondly as the overall organization structure itself in terms of the hierarchy of employees and the degree of decentralization of decision making power (as to the levels of approvals required for opening an account etc.)
-Infrastructure/ Ambience: Overall arrangement of the branch, availability of proper air conditioning, location of branches, accessibility, availability of drinking water etc.
Then Sameer said, let’s concentrate on the time it takes for an average customer to process a transaction in a branch. Let’s take any simple transaction like cash withdrawal/ deposit.
I asked him how much does it take for a customer on an average to process a transaction, from the time he enters the bank till the time he leaves. Sameer told me that it takes ~45 min of which 2/3 minutes are needed for the actual transaction and balance time is spent in queue. Here I talked about 5 reasons which could be responsible for this queue: -Number of customer coming in: he said we have ~750 customers who visit the bank -Variability in their arrival: peak hours, morning hours mainly when customers arrive -Capacity (in terms of counters): we have 5-6 counters, each handling dedicated functions -Utilization of capacity: varies based on time of the day and type of transaction -Variability in process: quite automated, not much variability.How can we reduce the average time? -Reduce the need for customers to come to bank: Induce online transactions, mobile banking/ ATMs -Try to shift customers from peak hours to non-peak hours
(Not Possible)
-Capacity: Cross train the counters to deal with all kind of transactions
Sameer then told me that the bank had ATM just outside the branch, but people still used to come in to withdraw the cash. So maybe we can reduce the customers by pushing ATM usage.
I then asked for a few numbers: 750 customers -85% visited for doing transactions -55% of whom were for withdrawing money -65% of those transactions were of amount <10000 -35% of users already had Debit cards & by promoting ATMs we can perhaps increase this to 50% So net we can reduce the number of people coming in by ~110 (i.e. 15%) He seemed quite happy with this number. Then he asked me if I had any questions for him. Sameer told me in his intro that he was an engineer and is working with the finance practice. So I asked him about his journey from being an engineer to a finance specialist. He very happily shared his experience.
Tips: Sameer was very helpful and steered the interview whenever I got stuck. Do’s: If you are stuck think from the first principle, you’ll always find a way out

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: 10-15 min PI and 20 min case is the usual interview

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Confirmed that sales quantity was down and said that I would take factors that affect the purchasing decision for trucks and compare with TML. Came up with factors as brand, actual features and convenience, total cost of ownership; Was asked to look at TCO and figured that lesser TCO was being seen by drivers but not by actual customers who were fleet owners and hence TML trucks were preferred
(Because better mileage gains went to the driver while the service cost for fleet owners was the same, but without the known Tata brand)
Tips: What was good – the PI conversation, Confidence in the case especially as he asked me to use whatever industry insight I had as a result of work ex. What could be better – I was very surprised and taken aback when asked to do the case (Because I thought I had 2 good partner interviews and was given indications that I might get the offer so was not in the frame of mind to solve a case) Do not assume good or bad outcomes from your performance and take it an interview at a time.

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Interview was relaxed and just a PI discussion which was good. Was given the indication that I would surely make the final round and was in good shape


Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: 10-15 min PI and 20 min case is the usual interview.Broke it into people or process problem; Broke people into capability and willingness and said that capability could be improved through training; (Incentives were ok) For process suggested easier documentation etc. Also came up with improving branding which was what he wanted.

Important part was identifying sources of revenue as sales and advertising After data was provided for both, it was a simple BEV calculation.
Tips: What was good: PI, structure in both cases What could be better: Speed of calculation as I was double checking to avoid any minor mistake

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)