McKinsey & Company Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The case started on a very generic note and on the outset seemed like a standard profitability case. I started with some clarifying questions such as
: What does the company do? The company is into magazine publishing (2nd highest selling weekly magazine, in addition to
few other magazines.
: Who are the competitors? There are a few other competitors. 2 other large competitors, 1 larger and another smaller than our
company and the segment is dominated by these 3. There are a few other smaller players too.
: How long have they been facing the problem? Facing it for the past few years.
: How are the competitors doing? Doing fine. Have been more or less constant.
I started with structuring the problem in a standard profitability problem (profit = revenue – cost). He told me that the revenues have been fine and they have actually seen an increase in revenue over the past few years (he threw some numbers here such as % increase in revenue etc). Then I told him that I would focus on the costs. In order to handle the costs part, I created a value chain of the complete process from the time of collection of news and articles (reporting) editing printing distribution. Here he asked me to think if there could be something else also in the value chain. I realized that after distribution there should be something related to ‘returns’ also. He was expecting the same answer. Then I went through the various parts of the value chain to understand
the costs involved in each part and if something had changed or could be improved there, but there were no major issues. Since he had asked me specifically for the returns part, I asked him a little more about the returns policy and what happens if the vendor/retailer has overstocked the magazines. He told me that the company takes them back and the value is practically zero for those magazines. (Throughout the discussion he was giving me numbers on how much it costs per magazine at each part of the value chain).). At this point, I asked him if there had been an increase in the number of returns (overstocking at the retailer’s end and he gave me some data which indicated that was the case). I told him that at this point, we can evaluate the implications of
both under-stocking and overstocking at the vendor’s end and find if the company is supplying the optimal quantity. This was basically an application of the ‘newsvendor problem’ we studied in the basic operations course. Post this it was simple, I completed the calculations and he looked satisfied.

It’s very important to listen carefully during a case interview. Most interviewers will give away hints and will try to help you solve a case. Catching those hints and solving the case together with the interviewer is the key. Another thing that I think went right was the conversations before and after the case interview. I was done with the interview in 12-15 minutes. For the remaining time, I chatted with him about his experience interviewing at ISB and how he found it different from interviewing at the IIMs. And then we went on to talk about the different models that the schools operate on and how the education sector in India has evolved
etc etc. All of this helped me strike a note with the interviewer. Finally the fact that I could remember what the newsvendor problem was


Tips: Listening skills are very important. Go through the core term concepts. The ability to apply concepts studied in the various subjects to your case interviews give that ‘wow’ factor.


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: A majority of this interview was PI. He asked me a lot of questions about my work experience and about my company (Trilogy). He then asked me about what I thought was the best way to encourage innovation in a technology company. Although this was a PI, I tried to put a structure to my answer. I basically divided the reforms into a few buckets, like organizational changes (incentive structures), employee focus, customer focus etc. And then elaborated under each of the sub- headings. There were also other questions related to the biggest challenges at work etc.

This was a very small and simple case. He was primarily looking for ways to not just reduce cost but how to approach a radically different problem. I went through the standard set of cost reduction measures throughout the value chain but told him that this would only achieve only so much cost reduction. In order to create a one lakh car, they need to look at something from the scratch. It needs to be a fresh design (not just of the engine, but also design of how the various processes work today, including where the assembly happens, how distribution works etc).

Most of this interview was about my work experience (Software product development and technology consulting), and my views on the technology sector. It helped to have researched the various trends in the sector and having an opinion on the various things.

Nothing much, though it may have helped to go through the casebooks from earlier years in detail, because this case was very similar to something that was asked in one of the previous years, but I heard it for the first time in the interview.


Tips: : Be very thorough with your work experience related topics
: Do research on the trends etc in the relevant sector.
: Try and structure your responses even in a PI.


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This was again a small case, where interviewer did most of the talking. I started with telling him that there would be two key aspects to this project, the first being the financing (sources, procedures) and the second being the revenue generation, and both of these together need to contribute to a self financed metro project. I started with the revenue part first. I approached this through an asset monetization approach (basically analyze the various assets that the project would own and look at ways to monetize each of them). Here I talked about the train, the tracks, the land near the tracks and the stations etc and suggested ways to monetize these. The most important thing that came out was the land that is allocated to the metro project, and which is not used directly for
the project and can be developed as a commercial property to monetize the project. Once we reached this stage, interviewer talked at length about how this worked at the Mumbai metro project where he was involved and how they were able to collect many times more revenue than the amount needed for the project. Then I talked about the financing part. Here I basically started with the
pecking order and suggested ways to finance. I told him that given that government guarantees could be explored and this could lead to ways of reducing the cost of financing. This turned more into a conversation, where interviewer talked about the various kinds of securities that could be used and how the government often provides sops in the form of tax breaks etc.

Again, listening helped. He kept giving me hints and helped me progress through the case. Also, during the case prep sessions, we had touched upon the asset monetization strategy, which helped here.

Nothing really went wrong. It would have been nice to know about the various securities that interviewer mentioned could be used for financing such a project


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