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What previous applicants, now McKinsey consultants are saying about the PEI Prep "At the beginning the PEI was a black box for me and I could not quite imagine the precise requirements. It was unbelievable to see the dozens of aspects that need to be considered in mastering this part of the selection process.“ Jessica, London
"To be honest I am not sure I would have secured an offer without Robert's help and guidance. He definitely did an excellent job of guiding me through the whole preparation process, especially putting my full attention to the PEI after working on the cases. Without all this knowledge about it [the PEI] I would have blown it.“
"Amazing! I really had no idea how complex it [the PEI] is and how much preparation and insight is necessary to really master the PEI. Thanks for sharing your precious knowledge ‐ I really appreciate it and also need to say thanks for helping me out on this one as well!“ Tim, Beijing
Marc, Kiev
Great interviewer ‐ the feedback was insightful, precise, spot‐on and detailed. Now I know what I need to focus my preparation on. I definitely recommend him! Juliette, U.S.
Robert's direct and extensive feedback on my performance made me feel uncomfortable at some point in time, but at the end it all helped me to improve and succeed. Therefore I can clearly recommend his assistance in preparing for McK, thanks mate!
This was the 2nd session I had with Robert and I was once again very pleased. Very detailed and helpful feedback, and good points on where to improve. Joao, Brasil
Soeren, Germany
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Table of Contents
The Big Picture + BONUS McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview The PEI Dimensions The PEI Preparation Process PEI Sample Questions PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates PEI Tactical Issues to Consider PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Bonus: Must‐Read Books on Consulting
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Get 100 REAL McKinsey Interview Cases Today! 280+ pages of real McKinsey case interview questions incl. solutions for serious McKinsey case interview prep. With this ebook you will be well prepared for the McKinsey interviewer-led cases, thus being more confident and having less stress in your interviews as you won't get caught off-guard.
Download The McKinsey Case Book Now At http://ebook.mckcasebook.com/ 5
The Big Picture
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The Big Picture PEI is the most underestimated part of the recruiting process but matters more than you might think (1/5) The Personal Experience Interview (PEI) is the most underestimated part of the whole McKinsey interview process, due to the following reasons: •
You have no idea about McKinsey’s specific evaluation criteria and where to focus on in your examples. On the internet, there is hardly any detailed and actionable information available on this very part of your interview sessions. On the McKinsey website you just get a general idea about the topics to be discussed – but that’s virtually all, no hint on where to focus on and which criteria McKinsey uses in the background to evaluate your performance:
Source: mckinsey.com/careers/interviewing
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The Big Picture PEI is the most underestimated part of the recruiting process but matters more than you might think (2/5) •
You are expected to be prepared, anyway. As a future top‐management consultant, you are expected to prepare yourself to the best extent possible with all information which is available beforehand. Being lazy in your preparation efforts and not doing your homework upfront is definitely no excuse for bad interview performance – and no interviewer will feel sorry for you if you don’t perform on this part of the interview process and get kicked out.
•
The bar for passing the PEI is much higher than you would ever expect. Even though not much information is shared, McKinsey interviewers have extremely high standards concerning the PEI. Why? Because when looking at candidates, interviewers don’t look at them as everlasting data‐crunching machines, but as potential future engagement managers (project managers). Therefore, the “soft” skills are even more relevant than “hard” problem solving skills, and thus a very important aspect when taking on new hires, no matter for which entry level.
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The Big Picture PEI is the most underestimated part of the recruiting process but matters more than you might think (3/5) •
You think that preparing some general CV‐related questions and looking over past experiences and achievements is enough to prepare. This approach is maybe a kind of start for the PEI prep, but if that is all you are planning to prepare, then it’s better to save your time and energy and don’t even go any further in your interview process (and it does not matter at all if you are the top performer in the case study and/or Problem Solving Test!).
•
You severely underestimate how detailed the PEI will get and get caught by surprise once you are sitting in your real interview. Experience from my hundreds of PEI coaching sessions since 2009 shows that basically all candidates are astonished by how detailed the McKinsey PEI really gets. Most candidates finish preparing their stories on a level where it just starts to get interesting for the interviewer. And yes, it is true that interviewers sometimes ask about the precise words you were using in a specific situation. Since technically speaking the McKinsey PEI is a behavioral interview, the interviewer really wants to understand not only the situation in general, but especially your actions and decision‐making rationale in great detail – that’s what will be evaluated, as opposed to the general situation and context as such.
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The Big Picture PEI is the most underestimated part of the recruiting process but matters more than you might think (4/5) However, sometimes you might be lucky – but it’s kind of stupid to rely on luck when it comes to a possible jump‐start of your whole life‐long career after long years of heavy investment into your education: Let me share a personal story with you on this one. I recently had a coaching client located in Western Europe who asked me to focus in our preparation solely on the case study as she felt confident about the PEI and hence did not want to spend valuable coaching time on this part. She scored extremely high in the analytical case study part and there was not a single issue the interviewers could give her as a feedback for further improvement for the upcoming 2nd round interviews (which were scheduled on a different day than first round interviews, fortunately). At the same time, however, she was told that her performance on the PEI was definitely less than ideal and much worse than she would have been expected on the basis of her background and vast experience shown in her CV.
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The Big Picture PEI is the most underestimated part of the recruiting process but matters more than you might think (5/5) Fortunately enough, her PEI performance was at least borderline and thus temporarily acceptable for the interviewers, as they let her pass on to the 2nd round interviews. However, she had a clear warning sign attached that the only way to finally receive an offer was to really impress the interviewers on the PEI in the 2nd and final round of her interviews. The only reason why this candidate got a 2nd chance (and after heavy coaching on the PEI also an offer in Switzerland office, finally) was solely because she was one of the best candidates ever in Zurich office in terms of her analytical mindset and problem solving skills. Since I give you honest and balanced information on this topic: Yes, it is also possible to get to second (final) round interviews without perfect PEI performance in the first round as well. Would I want to rely on this kind of luck for my career? Definitely not, and neither should you.
To receive one of the very rare McKinsey offers, it is key to mastering the PEI by understanding the specifics of the McKinsey PEI clearly and preparing seriously for this part of the recruiting process. 11
The Big Picture McKinsey requires not only „hard“ analytical skills but also „soft“ interpersonal skills, putting a lot of weight on the PEI (1/2) •
Alongside doing a lot of data analytics especially in the more junior ranks of the consulting firms, there is still a high level of very intense relations with the client organization starting with day one as a consultant. After all, consulting is a people business, thus McKinsey is putting a lot of weight on recruiting the “right” candidates with appropriate soft skills as well.
•
Due to the importance and impact of McKinsey projects, there is an inherently high potential for conflicts within client organizations. More often than not, the context for working below the C‐level execs hierarchy is not that desirable and less than ideal – and as a future McKinsey consultant you are mainly left alone with all this as part of your everyday job: – – – – – –
Personal interests, hidden agendas and office politics of various people in the organization Crisis situation with a need of immediate high‐impact action General reluctance of client employees sharing information with the consultant Client employees‘ fear about your power in the organization and potential secret project goals High uncertainty of client employees about potentially negative changes for them personally – usually McKinsey is not hired and paid millions to leave everything as it is within the client organization Time pressure to achieve tangible results to move forward in the project
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The Big Picture McKinsey requires not only „hard“ analytical skills but also „soft“ interpersonal skills, putting a lot of weight on the PEI (2/2) •
While “hard”, analytical problem‐solving skills (which are mainly tested in the case study interview part) are still a crucial evaluation criterion in the McKinsey recruiting process, those skills can be trained and acquired comparatively easy.
•
On the contrary, “soft” interpersonal skills cannot be that easily trained and acquired from one day to the next, but require practical experience in addition to the conceptual/theoretical basis ‐ therefore McKinsey is looking even more closely for those soft skills than for hard analytical skills in the interview process.
•
However, for the PEI it is clearly not enough to having some experience in those “soft” interpersonal skills under your belt. For a successful PEI and consequently getting your desired McKinsey offer, you also need to communicate your skills in a very structured and precise way to get your points across within the very limited time for the PEI.
Due to massive challenges faced by interacting with the client organization, a lot of weight is put on the “soft“ skills side in the recruiting process. Getting your McKinsey offer is impossible with a low score on the PEI since having those “soft” skills is crucial to McKinsey. 13
The Big Picture From a high-level perspective, you just need to be client-ready and company-compatible to pass the PEI Actually, what does client‐ready mean? Apart from being confident about a candidate‘s analytical skills, the McKinsey partner bearing the overall responsibility for the client relationship and project outcome needs to be a 100% sure that he can send you on a business trip around the world to the client on your own, knowing that you will definitely deliver the desired results even within a hostile client organization, and do not screw up and put the client relationship at risk already in your first week of the project. And what the heck is company‐compatible? Looking on this matter from a company‐internal perspective, the often‐cited „airport test“ comes in: being stranded at a remote airport, could your interviewer imagine spending a good time with you nevertheless? Well, you also might end up spending a lot of days and most likely nights working together on tough problems...
When in doubt, the recruiter always goes for the candidate with excellent soft skills and good analytical skills, and not for the candidate with excellent analytical skills and good soft skills.
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The Big Picture Looking at the PEI in a simplified way, being successful boils down to mastering only few key aspects (1/2) •
Above all, the interviewer needs to have a good (gut) feeling after your PEI that whatever the specific situation is that you will be in at some point in time, you will be successful and doing fine (leading a team, convincing someone, achieving difficult goals). – – –
–
For this, your interviewer needs to understand in great detail your actions in a real example from your past, and even more importantly your decision‐making rationale in this situation Just by looking at your actions, it is not possible to fully backwards‐engineer your thoughts (“decision‐ making rationale”) But exactly that’s the key aspect to assess for the interviewer since only by understanding your (mental) approach towards a specific situation, your interviewer will be able to get a solid impression about your skills in any of the 3 PEI dimensions This will be finally leading to a positive (gut) feeling that you will be able to resolve any difficult situation in your future career as top management consultant as well, no matter about the specific situation at hand because you have the “right” approach in thinking about and resolving those situations
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The Big Picture Looking at the PEI in a simplified way, being successful boils down to mastering only few key aspects (2/2) •
However, you also need to communicate your examples and skills in the correct way during the PEI – just having them under your belt is by far not enough. –
– –
Thinking about the McKinsey recruiting process, it should be obvious that all candidates invited to on‐ site interviews will have the required background and thus examples and skills – otherwise they would not even have received an invitation to on‐site interviews. Hence, just having those examples and skills will not differentiate you in any way from other candidates – it is the way how you prepare your PEI in terms of structure and focus of your examples. Unfortunately no candidate gets this right in the beginning, posing a huge threat to your overall interview success and finally also leading to extremely high failure rates of otherwise very strong candidates, just because of the PEI – and it’s a pity that it is just about the communication of previous experiences, not about fundamentals like having good examples in the first place (which is like stumbling on the last few meters before the finish line of a marathon run).
After your PEI, the interviewer needs to be positive that you will be handling difficult situations in future well too – just having the right experiences under you belt is the minimum requirement and prerequisite to get invited to on‐site interviews, but won’t be enough to pass the PEI.
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The Big Picture The PEI is part of at least 3 interview sessions and is approx. 10-12 min. in duration, even though length can vary substantially (1/3) Typical McKinsey recruiting process overview •
1st round usually consists of 3‐4 sessions – 3 case study interviews with PEI + if applicable the Problem Solving Test (PST ‐ depending on candidate’s background) Each interview session has principally the same sequence, including the PEI part The sequence for the PST varies in the first round interviews (if applicable at all) 1‐5 min.
Case study
1st round
Personal Experience Interview
20‐35 min.
Interview session 1
Interview session 2
Interview session 3
2nd round
Warm‐up / ice breaking
10‐12 min.
Interview session 4
Interview session 5
Interview session 6
1‐5 min.
Candidates’ questions
Problem Solving Test (PST)
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The Big Picture The PEI is part of at least 3 interview sessions and is approx. 10-12 min. in duration, even though length can vary substantially (2/3) •
2nd round usually consists of 1‐3 or more interview sessions with more senior staff (usually partner/director level) ‐ depending on the first round interviews, an according number of interviews will be scheduled for the 2nd round Even though the interview process is standardized (for non‐experienced hires), the exact number of interviews in the second round depends on your first round performance Some of my coaching candidates received their offer directly after the three first‐ round interviews due to their stellar performance, having had only an administrative chat about the contract and details with a partner in the second round interviews Other candidates however needed to go through three additional 2nd round interviews with partners and directors, until they could finally convince McKinsey that they are an excellent hire for the company
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The Big Picture The PEI is part of at least 3 interview sessions and is approx. 10-12 min. in duration, even though length can vary substantially (3/3) In any case, everything can happen in the 2nd round interviews since partners and directors have no need to follow standardized recruiting procedures, but are doing exactly those things in their interviews that they think brings the most value for a candidate’s assessment (and they do have a good gut feeling for that) At the same time, 2nd round interviewers are receiving an in‐depth briefing about your 1st round interview performance, and will therefore focus on exactly those issues which were not 100% perfect in the 1st round interviews to really make sure that you possess the respective required skills As preparation for 2nd round interviews it therefore makes sense to focus on exactly those issues which did not go perfectly well and were borderline in the 1st round interviews – if you got some feedback from interviewers or got to understand yourself that your PEI was not perfect in 1st round interviews, you need to have better examples at hand for the 2nd round to get your desired McKinsey offer In any case you should have additional PEI stories prepared for 2nd round interviews – you may or may not need all of them, but if your PEI performance was only borderline and not close to perfect in the 1st round, you should expect a heavy focus on PEI in your 2nd round interviews. 19
The Big Picture Each interview session contains only one PEI, and each PEI contains only one dimension to focus on •
•
•
At least for first‐round interviews, you can expect your interview sessions to be standardized and thus each interview session will contain 1 PEI (and doing the math based on the number of interview sessions you will have on a given day, you know the absolute minimum number of examples you need to have prepared) Also in your second‐round interviews, you can be expect to have 1 PEI per interview session for planning purposes – however, this will strongly depend on your PEI performance of your previous interview sessions and might lead to an even stronger focus on PEI (by having more extended PEIs time‐wise, or having multiple PEIs within 1 interview session) Each PEI will focus solely on one specific dimension – –
•
In any given interview session, you will talk about either leadership or personal impact or entrepreneurial drive Your examples for the PEI are not expected to combine all three PEI assessment dimensions in one single example – actually not only that it is not expected, it would be even a surefire way to blow your McKinsey interviews trying to bring in multiple PEI assessment dimensions into one single example, since given the limited time you will most definitely not have enough time to go into the details and specifics of the situation that the interviewer would be interested in
Whereas in some McKinsey offices you don’t receive any information upfront concerning the sequence of your PEI dimensions, in other offices you receive a detailed schedule upfront which interviewer will ask you about which PEI dimension 20
The Big Picture Duration is not correlated to importance of interview components, especially considering the PEI When looking at the duration of each interview component in the McKinsey recruiting process, do not fall into the common trap to think that the PEI is not that important because it is relatively short compared to the other components like PST and case interview. Duration
Importance PST
• •
Case
PEI
Usually, PEI duration is only 10‐12 minutes of any given interview session However, length can very substantially based on the candidate’s background – especially candidates with lacking evidence of soft skills in their educational curriculum or extra‐curricular activities tend to have more extensive PEI’s up to 25 minutes (followed by a shorter case‐study) Even though short in time, the PEI’s importance for the overall interview performance evaluation is equal to the case study and even much more important than the Problem Solving Test – still lot’s of candidates don’t prepare accordingly and consequently fail in their interviews. 21
The Big Picture Recruiting process for experienced hires looks differently and is specific to the potential hire, but still including the PEI •
For partner‐level hires, McKinsey has usually 3+ rounds of interviews –
– – –
•
While some interviews are face‐to‐face, quite some other interviews will be via video conference since interviewers will be very specifically chosen for the potential hire and are thus often only available remotely due to travel logistics Round 1 is usually consisting of 4 interview sessions, focusing on motivation and specific areas of expertise of the candidate Round 2 is usually consisting of another 4 interview sessions, focusing more on case interviews + PEI as well Round 3+ is usually designed based on interview round 1 and 2, but will still contain a few more interview sessions – it’s not uncommon to have even more than 15 interviews
Even though the recruiting process for experienced hires is designed individually on a case‐by‐ case basis, the PEI is still a vital component for the overall assessment and is following the same basic principles as for any other candidate
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High-Impact – 1:1 – 100% RISK-FREE*
Have a 100% risk-free coaching* Save tons of time preparing your PEI Choose the right examples for your PEI Gain an edge over other candidates Significantly reduce the risk of failure Get a reality check of your own examples For More Information & Booking Please Visit http://pei-coaching.consulting-case-interviews.com/ * If your stories are close to perfect already and I cannot find any significant improvement for your McKinsey PEI, guess what – I will make a full refund directly at the end of your coaching session! Therefore it's 100% risk-free for you - you will end up paying for the coaching session only if I can add value for your McKinsey PEI prep.
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The Big Picture – BONUS A side note to the warm-up/ice-breaking phase and candidates’ own questions in the interview – even though not part of the PEI Since I get regularly asked in my one‐on‐one PEI coaching sessions the following two questions, I will also answer them in this resource, even though they are not part of the PEI as such: 1. Which general CV‐/background‐related questions McKinsey interviewers are asking at the very beginning of the interview, before the PEI even begins? 2. Which questions are candidates supposed to ask the interviewers at the end of the interview session? For sure the answers to those two questions are less critical for your evaluation than the PEI and case study. However, at the same time they are still contributing to a go/no‐go decision regarding your potential McKinsey offer – therefore diligent preparation should be a matter of course as well.
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The Big Picture – BONUS 1
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The Big Picture – BONUS 1 Common CV-/background-related questions of McKinsey interviewers (1/4) 1. Which general CV‐/background‐related questions McKinsey interviewers are asking at the very beginning of the interview, before the PEI even begins? •
Obviously, there is not a standard list of questions McKinsey interviewers follow mechanically to assess the general “fit” of a candidate. At the end of the day it is each single interviewer’s own decision what to ask and where to go into more details to evaluate a candidate’s fit.
•
Usually, McKinsey interviewers are well prepared when it comes to candidates’ application documents – you can expect your interviewers having read them, and thus usually not asking very generic questions like “tell me about your CV”.
•
However, the exception proves the rule – every now and then interviewers were too busy to really go through your documents in detail beforehand. In this case, general questions like “Which are the top 3‐5 issues of your CV that you want me to know about” to get a rough idea quickly of a candidate’s background without having read the documents.
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The Big Picture – BONUS 1 Common CV-/background-related questions of McKinsey interviewers (2/4) Having said that, here is a starting point of frequently asked questions which you should have prepared before having your interviews: •
“Which are the top 3‐5 issues of your CV that you want me to know about?” – –
•
Often asked in case that the interviewer did not read your documents upfront and wants to have a jump‐start understanding your background Also asked to see if a candidate can give a clearly structured, synthesized summary of the most important topics relevant for your future consulting role Therefore you should have prepared a well‐structured, McKinsey issue‐tree‐like overview of the main points you want to get across – which are those that qualify you best as a future McKinsey consultant
“Which information should I know about you, that is not covered by your CV?” –
–
Now things start getting a bit more tricky – while you are expected to have any relevant information included in your application documents anyway, this questions rather tries to get some additional insight into the candidate’s character and person Since very few candidates prepare a question like this one, interviewers often get interesting insights Therefore be prepared to talk about some more “personal” insights into you as a person, which are not obvious from your application documents (and still relevant for consulting)
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The Big Picture – BONUS 1 Common CV-/background-related questions of McKinsey interviewers (3/4) •
“Please walk me through your CV” – –
–
Again, it’s possible that the interviewer did not prepare and read your documents upfront Compared to a question like “Which are the top 3‐5 issues of your CV that you want me to know about?” this is not about giving the interviewer a synthesized overview of the most important points, but rather walking him through your CV step by step When doing so, interviewers want to understand more about your long‐term strategic career planning and thinking, and better understand why you decided to have your CV developed like this Therefore you should be able to communicate your key insights and learnings from each step in your CV (and how those skills are beneficial for a future top management consultant), and at the same time presenting a solid rationale to the interviewer how all parts of your CV fit together – finally, the interviewer should have the impression that all steps of your CV were diligently planned to build up your knowledge and experience, so that the only logical next step could be going into top management consulting
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The Big Picture – BONUS 1 Common CV-/background-related questions of McKinsey interviewers (4/4) •
“Why consulting, and why McKinsey?” – –
•
Interviewers want to see a solid and realistic rationale of why candidates really want to go into top management consulting, neatly structured at the same time There is no right or wrong answer to this question – most importantly, it needs to be authentic and insightful concerning your motivation and fit to consulting in general and McKinsey in particular Therefore you should think about your real motivation why you want to work like crazy for slightly‐ above‐average money per hour – for sure it needs to be a compelling example for the interviewer to believe, to be sure that you won’t drop out after a few months because of lacking/wrong motivation to sustain this kind of lifestyle
“Where do you see major differences between McKinsey and other consulting firms?” – –
With this question interviewers want to see if candidates have a somewhat solid understanding of the management consulting industry, and how the major players fit into the landscape In reality it is much less about specific numbers and figures (clear bonus if you have some data at hand about market size, number of employees, number of offices … it’s just so McKinsey‐style..) than giving the interviewer to understand that you actually did your homework and have an overview about the industry and latest developments – and have a clear understanding why exactly McKinsey fits into your career plan Therefore you should do some research to learn about the main players in the market and recent developments, mainly to demonstrate that you are really interested in this industry and that you do know in which context you are going to work (hopefully) 29
The Big Picture – BONUS 2
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The Big Picture – BONUS 2 Sample questions to ask for candidates at the end of the interview session (1/5) 2. Which questions candidates are supposed to ask the interviewers at the end of the interview session? •
Even though the main part of your interview session (general CV‐related questions, PEI, case study) is over at this point in time, you are not yet finished with this interview session – because now it’s time to ask your questions to the interviewer
•
Depending on the progress of the overall interview, you will usually have 1‐5 minutes left for your own questions – use this time wisely to get additional insights for yourself, and not asking shallow pro‐forma questions just to ask at least something
•
The two biggest mistakes you can make on this part in your interviews: – –
Asking questions for which you could have found an answer somewhere else, not taking advantage of the valuable face time with a McKinsey consultant Not asking any questions – it’s highly unlikely that a candidate has that much insight into the consulting industry in general or into McKinsey in particular, that there is not a single question left that might be worth asking a McKinsey consultant
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The Big Picture – BONUS 2 Sample questions to ask for candidates at the end of the interview session (2/5) •
Since also this part is considered in your overall assessment, diligent preparation is once again a matter of course and expected from your interviewers
•
Some of the sample questions outlined are (slightly) critical questions – and this is perfectly ok in your interviews. There is no need at all to ask shallow, bootlicking questions – each interviewer will immediately spot that, and this will reflect badly on you due to a lack of critical and insightful thinking. Opposed to that, candidates asking critical questions demonstrate that they have given it a lot of thought, which will impress your interviewer much more and stick to his mind!
Having said that, on the following pages you will find a few questions worth thinking about, giving you some inspiration of what might be meaningful questions for you to ask.
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The Big Picture – BONUS 2 Sample questions to ask for candidates at the end of the interview session (3/5) Questions concerning McKinsey and the consulting industry • “Which differences do you see between the positioning of McKinsey, BCG and Bain in the consulting industry? How does this reflect the purchasing criteria of potential clients and how does it contribute to selling projects to new clients?” • “What do you think for which type of projects and why a client would choose McKinsey over BCG and Bain, and vice‐versa?” • “In which functional and industry areas McKinsey has the largest market share? And in which areas it’s either BCG or Bain, and why?” • “What do you think about the rising trend to further support the client with the real implementation of your recommendations? Since the lack of implementation was a major point of criticism for a very long time already, why did it take so long for McKinsey to adapt to this market requirement?” • “What is the real‐life impact for consulting projects, that more often than not ex‐McKinsey consultants are sitting on the client‐side?”
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The Big Picture – BONUS 2 Sample questions to ask for candidates at the end of the interview session (4/5) Questions concerning McKinsey careers • “What is the average tenure for McKinsey consultants per hierarchy level and which implications do you see from that for a long‐term career within McKinsey?” • “According to your personal insights and career, how did the role of top management consultants change over time and which skills tend to get more important nowadays?” • “When thinking about industry and functional specialization over time – how much can a consultant really take influence on that, and how much it just develops according to the projects you are doing early on in your McKinsey tenure and the people you are working with, according to your experience and opinion?” • “What are the key factors differentiating excellent, top‐performing McKinsey consultants from – let’s say – average consultants within McKinsey?” • “How exactly do the formal and informal feedback processes work for client projects – is there a regular feedback loop apart from daily work?” • “Under which circumstances is it possible to permanently change the McKinsey office?”
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The Big Picture – BONUS 2 Sample questions to ask for candidates at the end of the interview session (5/5) Questions concerning McKinsey interviewers and their opinion • “Which ones were your personal reasons to go into management consulting in general, and for which reasons did you join McKinsey as opposed to other consulting firms?” • “Where do you personally see the strengths and weaknesses of McKinsey compared to other players in the market, and how does this affect consultants in their projects?” • “Assuming you could change 3 things within McKinsey to make consultants’ life easier in their daily work – what would it be?” • “What are the top three things you would change in the whole firm, for which you think they are not yet ideal within McKinsey?” • “What turned out differently in retrospect, as opposed to what you did expect before joining McKinsey – both in a positive and negative way?” • “Thinking back – which work weeks were the toughest ones in your McKinsey career, why and is there anything you are doing nowadays to avoid those extreme circumstances?” • “Which projects were the worst ones in your career, and what did you and McKinsey learn from them to improve for future?”
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McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview
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McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview The single components of the interview process focus on different aspects of a candidate Dimension
Case Study
Problem Solving Test (PST)
Personal Experience Interview (PEI)
Problem Solving
Leadership
Personal Impact
Entrepreneurial Drive
Whereas the PST focuses only on problem solving skills, the case study will help gaining a broader perspective on the candidates‘ skill set. However, the PEI has its focus more on the soft skills side and does not contain “Problem Solving” as assessment dimension. 37
McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview Each dimension has same importance for the overall assessment, whereas „Problem Solving“ is not part of the PEI dimensions (1/4) Dimension
What McKinsey says...
Leadership
Leading people and effective teamwork are key to success both within McKinsey and with our clients. You should have outstanding leadership skills in order to drive positive change in complex organizations. On top of the skills mentioned in the previous sections, we look for the following: Ability to work in teams and play a leading role in them (directly or indirectly): being able to encourage, listen to and empathize with others and respond appropriately. Role modeling: being prepared to take personal risks; undertaking things with others; encouraging colleagues to perform well.
Source: mckinsey.cz/join‐us/is‐mck‐right‐for‐me/what‐we‐look‐for
38
McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview Each dimension has same importance for the overall assessment, whereas „Problem Solving“ is not part of the PEI dimensions (2/4) Dimension
Personal Impact
What McKinsey says...
We work with a wide range of people in their day to day jobs. Apart from having a specific set of skills, you should be able to use them in sensitive situations. Specifically, we look for the following skills and characteristics: Strong communication skills: having a clear and open way of communicating; getting straight to the point. Integrity: being genuine and trustworthy, and receptive to other people's ideas. An independent outlook: maturity, assertiveness, but not arrogance. Personal achievements: setting high goals for yourself; wanting to do great things. Ability to influence: being able to build a working relationship with clients within a short time; able to make a good impression, also at top management level.
Source: mckinsey.cz/join‐us/is‐mck‐right‐for‐me/what‐we‐look‐for
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McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview Each dimension has same importance for the overall assessment, whereas „Problem Solving“ is not part of the PEI dimensions (3/4) Dimension
Entrepreneurial Drive
What McKinsey says...
We understand drive as the art of exercising one's clout – in other words, being able to effect genuine change. We constantly strive to deliver distinctive client service. To achieve this while handling multiple stakeholders and often tight deadlines, you should have: Good judgement and sound reason: being able to make a decent estimate about the feasibility and practicality of situations. Ability to cope with pressure: being untroubled by stressful situations such as an interview, deadline or presentation. Resourcefulness: being prepared to push aside ready‐made solutions; managing to overcome obstacles. Focus on the end product and action: believing in making things work. Energy: having enough perseverance to get things done; preparedness to work hard and invest more than average in your own future
Source: mckinsey.cz/join‐us/is‐mck‐right‐for‐me/what‐we‐look‐for
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McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview Each dimension has same importance for the overall assessment, whereas „Problem Solving“ is not part of the PEI dimensions (4/4) Dimension
Problem Solving (not part of PEI)
What McKinsey says...
To us, the ability to solve problems means creative intelligence, i.e. the ability to extract essential information from an obscure jumble of data to subsequently form logical conclusions. It is not only a matter of IQ; creativity is just as important for developing genuinely new insights into complex problems. The following skills and characteristics are important to us: Clear, logical reasoning: lending structure to complex issues; setting priorities. A naturally curious and inquisitive mind: having the desire to understand the essence of things. The ability to synthesize: being able to form conclusions from various facts; always looking for the answer to the question, 'so what?‘. Creativity in devising new lines of approach.
Source: mckinsey.cz/join‐us/is‐ mck‐right‐for‐me/what‐we‐ look‐for
Commercial insight: having a good feel for commercial concepts and practical solutions. A way with numbers: having an intuitive feel for the application of figures.
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McKinsey Candidate Assessment Dimensions Overview “Entrepreneurial Drive” vs. “Drive and Achievement” dimension naming •
• •
In some preparation material you might come across a “Drive and Achievement” dimension for the McKinsey PEI – it is nowadays named “Entrepreneurial Drive” (same content, just different label for it) The renaming took place mainly to put more focus on creating values (e.g. via products, services, processes, technologies) in candidates’ examples for the PEI At the same time, lot’s of candidates were mislead by the naming “Drive and Achievement” in terms of putting way too much focus on the achievement as the outcome as such, rather than putting the focus on the process and “journey” how they actually did achieve something great – –
The specific achievement as such is not of real importance to the interviewer, since just looking at the final outcome does not provide any insight into the candidate’s specific skills What the interviewer is really concerned about is your approach to achieve a specific goal, which often includes • • • • • • •
Good judgement of the feasibility of the venture at all Breaking down huge issues into small manageable components Having a structured approach towards overcoming challenging obstacles Managing progress of several work streams at the same time Getting the buy‐in from multiple stakeholders Achieving great results with tight resources (lack of human resource capacity, tight deadlines, etc.) Showing strong dedication and high stamina working towards the goal
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The PEI Dimensions
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The PEI Dimensions What McKinsey is looking for in potential hires has a clear connect to the McKinsey way of working How McKinsey is working
What McKinsey is looking for
•
McKinsey delivers the greatest amount of expertise available around the world by assembling powerful teams
•
Leadership: Ability to lead effective teams as well as building strong relationships with clients and colleagues
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McKinsey helps its clients with difficult tasks mainly on a strategic level within high‐impact projects
•
Personal Impact: Influence and persuade other people in tense business situations, thus also influencing the overall outcome
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McKinsey consultants work intensely with the client management to solve problems and achieve exceptional outcomes
•
Entrepreneurial Drive: Set and achieve challenging goals by working hard with a high level of energy along the project
As the PEI dimensions have a clear connect with McKinsey‘s way of working, scoring high on those dimensions will let your interviewers assume that you will be also successful working at McKinsey.
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples - Overview
Core elements of your example
Leadership
Personal Impact
Entrepreneurial Drive
• Leading a team (formal or – even better – informal leadership role) • Challenging situations in terms of interpersonal conflicts (not difficult content‐related goals of team) • Affecting whole team • Bilaterally between two team members or between you and another team member • Working together with this team over a certain period of time
• Convincing one specific other person (not multiple persons at once, no team included in this dimension) about a topic, so that he finally changes his opinion • Strong underlying conflicting interest – both parties have a strong interest in the outcome of the situation • Example is going on over at least several days, better weeks for showing a strategic masterplan on how you convinced this person
• Achieving a goal which is clearly outside your regular role and responsibilities • You wanted to achieve something by yourself (and no one else imposed this task on you) and can explain a strong motivation behind • Several big obstacles which you needed to overcome
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Leadership (1/3) •
Leading a team (formal, or even better informal leadership role) – –
–
–
– –
Ideally, you don’t even have a formal leadership role (e.g. business unit director, department head, project lead), but initially you are acting in a group of equals In this scenario you can even better demonstrate how you spot opportunities (something could be going way better, if there just was effective leadership…) and act upon those opportunities to have a positive real‐life impact on the overall situation At the same time you can also show that the team first of all accepted you taking on the leadership role, which obviously is less of an issue if you are in a hierarchically superior leadership position anyway – to earn this trust of the team is also another additional challenge making your example stronger, especially showing that the team also follows your guidance and leadership without having the supporting hierarchical power of a formal leader Additionally, by proactively taking on this leadership role you demonstrate that you are ready to take over additional responsibility and risk – if you had failed in this situation, it most likely would have had a negative impact on you/your career When choosing an example in which you were not the official leader anyway, just be careful to communicate wisely that you did not take on the leadership role behind the official leader’s back However, if your example is very strong otherwise and you were in an official, hierarchical leadership role, it is for sure no show‐stopper for this example – obviously, there just should not be a leadership vacuum in a situation which was triggered by you in the first place
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples - Leadership (2/3) •
Challenging situations in terms of interpersonal conflicts (not difficult content‐related goals of team) –
–
– – – –
Some of those interpersonal conflicts should affect the whole team – for each leadership example you should have at least one situation in which you needed to deal with a team‐wide conflict (as opposed to solely bilateral conflicts between different team members) Such a situation could be e.g. a project crisis meeting when the whole team is coming together, sitting in a project team room when the tension is mounting due to a stressful high‐pressure project situation, and in which the team’s leader needs to handle this difficult situation In addition to that team‐wide challenging situation, your example should also contain bilateral conflicts between two team members or between you and another team member In those bilateral situations you can demonstrate well that you have a good intuition and sensitivity concerning atmospheric changes in interpersonal relations and act accordingly upon them Altogether, your example should have 3‐5 challenging situations about which you can talk in great detail upon request by the interviewer In any case, the interviewer will not be interested in the content‐related achievement of the team goal as such in the leadership dimension – this might just be a final wrap‐up of your example’s outcome at the very end of the PEI, but your focus for going deep needs to be on interpersonally challenging situations
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples - Leadership (3/3) •
Working together with this team over a certain period of time – –
Your example needs a context in which you were working together with a team over a longer period of time – and not only having a loose working relationship with discrete touch points over time More often than not this is simply necessary to be even able to show some of the required leadership skills for which you need a context with a relatively constant team setting, which you can observe over time and recognize changes • • • • •
Building effective teams and getting buy‐in for achieving a specific goal together Developing a commonly shared vision within the team Having people agree on a common idea and also implementing it Motivating the team in difficult situations, which are often triggered by uncontrollable external events having a strong negative impact on team morale Recognizing changing interpersonal dynamics between different team members or also within the whole team
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Personal Impact (1/4) • Convincing one specific other person (not multiple persons at once, no team included in this dimension) about a topic, so that he finally changes his opinion – Your example should be focused on convincing one specific other person, and not multiple persons at the same time (e.g. “In this situation, I needed to convince all customer stakeholders in the project”) or organizational bodies (e.g. “In this situation, I needed to convince the board of directors of this approach”) – As soon as a third party gets involved, it’s immediately immensely more difficult to communicate your example in a structured and clear way in the very limited amount of time within the PEI • As long as only two persons are involved, it’s easy to follow the situation and know who is you and who is the other person you are trying to convince, and it’s also quite easy to follow what are your interests as opposed to the other person’s interests and concerns • As soon as a third person gets involved, it’s already a triangular relationship and it’s much more difficult to follow the situation since now the interviewer needs to clearly understand what are your interests as opposed to the interests of other person A and other person B, how your interests are conflicting with those of other person A, how your interests are conflicting with other person B, how interests of other person A and other person B are going along with each other or how they are conflicting • On top of that the overall storyline will be (most likely) much more scattered since it’s not only what is happening between you and the other person, but also what happens between other person A and B over time – and all those interactions are usually not happening in a linear way which makes it even more difficult to communicate the whole situation in a structured and straight‐forward way
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Personal Impact (2/4) • Strong underlying conflicting interest – Both parties need to have a strong interest in the outcome of the situation – without this, it will never become a strong Personal Impact example – For example, it will be quite easy to convince me to go to a Japanese sushi restaurant instead of an Italian restaurant for lunch, since I basically like the cuisine of both nations – as long as there is no underlying conflicting interest, it will be always easy to convince someone about something (this might be a stupid example never to be used for the PEI anyway, but you get the point) – As a general hint, as soon as financials are involved, the underlying conflicting interest is quite clear and easy to grasp for any interviewer – e.g. if you need resources from another business unit or department for a special project mainly benefiting your business unit, department or even yourself, it will be quite obvious to any interviewer that convincing the other business unit’s or department’s head won’t be an easy job (needless to say, it always depends on the specifics of the organization and people involved in the concrete organization – but for sure it’s easy to understand for an interviewer that there potentially is a clear conflict of interest between the two parties)
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Personal Impact (3/4) • Example is going on at least over several days, even better for weeks – The interviewer is interested in understanding your approach to convince someone from a more strategic, and not only operational/tactical perspective, having candidates clearly laying out a strategic masterplan on how the other person could be convinced – Obviously you can never guarantee anyway that you will finally convince the other person – but at least you can have a strategic approach towards this goal to do your homework upfront and maximize your chances, so that the odds are clearly on your side in a final “showdown” meeting in which the decision is made – A bad example for this dimension would be a situation in which you just have a meeting to discuss a conflicting topic, have a thorough discussion and finally convince the other person with some arguments at hand – because it doesn’t show how you strategically approach a situation when you need to convince someone – A good example is usually going on over (at least) several days if not weeks, during which you can show your more strategic thinking about convincing someone – for example, your actions in the situation might include: • Talking to other people first (not the person directly you are planning to convince) to get additional feedback for your idea, so that you can further refine it before approaching the targeted person • Talking to other people who are closer to/have a longer working relationship with the targeted person to convince, in order to learn more about the target person’s general opinion and potential concerns regarding your position • Having an informal meeting with the target person “by chance” at the coffee machine to test the waters about your idea and getting a better feeling for the target person’s opinion and potential concerns 51
The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Personal Impact (4/4) • Doing best‐practice research on the internet or conducting a benchmarking study, supporting your approach/idea with real‐life examples for additional credibility or demonstrating feasibility • Receiving additional validation for your approach from an external expert (like a consultant, university professor or another widely accepted domain expert) or internal authority (like a high‐ranking senior executive) • Getting your peers from within the organization on board first, gaining additional validation/credibility, before finally approaching the target person • Very deliberately choosing the exact way of communicating the idea, based on your target person’s preferred communication style • Changing perspectives and really trying to put yourself into other person’s shoes in order to see the issue from his or her perspective, and thus being able to prepare upfront for potential concerns/opposing interests and different scenarios • Preparing well for a final “showdown” meeting with the target person, for which you have done your homework upfront with loads of supporting arguments at hand, maximizing the chances that you can finally convince the target person
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Entrepreneurial Drive (1/4) •
Achieving a goal which is clearly outside your regular role and responsibilities –
–
–
McKinsey wants to see candidates being able to work hard and invest a lot of time and energy into achieving your goals – and since it should be your goals, already by definition this will usually be outside your regular role and responsibilities (unless you have a perfect match between your current role/responsibilities and your goals – but then it’s interesting to understand why you would like to change this by signing a McKinsey contract) Ideally, your example should have some entrepreneurial touch – it doesn’t necessarily need to be an example about founding a non‐profit organization or even starting a start‐up company, but it should show a situation in which you create something (like a product, service, technology, process, …), either inside our outside your existing work It’s no issue at all if your example comes from your current work environment – but it definitely needs to be clearly separated from your regular role and responsibilities and communicated appropriately, so that’s really crystal‐clear for the interviewer that this was completely outside your regular work
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Entrepreneurial Drive (2/4) •
You wanted to achieve something by yourself (and no one else imposed this task on you) and can explain a strong motivation behind –
–
Since it’s about achieving a goal of yourself, it should be a situation in which you wanted to achieve something proactively from your side which you can be proud of achieving it, and not a situation in which someone else imposed a task on you This also needs to be reflected in a strong motivation behind your venture – ideally you can use the typical McKinsey hierarchy for laying out your motivation in 3 different layers (and only in this sequence with client‐focus first, and your personal benefits last): • • •
–
Clients – what is the benefit of your venture for “clients” (like end‐customers of a company, beneficiaries of a non‐ profit organization or internal departments of your organization) Company – what is the benefit of your venture for the organization (like the company you are working for, the non‐ profit organization you are supporting) Consultant – what’s in it for yourself in terms of your very personal motivation (it can potentially be also slightly selfish like strong visibility throughout the whole organization if this project is successful, but for sure this should not be the only or primary motivation without any benefit for “clients” or “company”)
Whenever possible, you should also try to specify your goal exactly and quantify it (e.g. like “my goal was increasing new member growth by 100%, resulting in a total membership base of 2.000 students within 1 year” instead of “my goal was to improve new member acquisition and having a larger base of members”)
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Entrepreneurial Drive (3/4) •
Several big obstacles which you needed to overcome –
–
–
First of all, adopting something like a high‐level project management mindset, you should get a quick and rough idea about the general feasibility of your venture – obviously the interviewer could not see a successful future McKinsey project manager (“engagement manager”) in you if you are jumping into the middle of a venture and start working on it, only to recognize a few days later that it’s completely unrealistic to achieve your goal within the specified parameters Ideally, you have 3‐5 major obstacles which you needed to overcome in this situation to be successful – while the obstacle as such is needed as general context information, the interviewer will be mainly interested in how you overcame those obstacles (your “actions”) and what your thinking was (your “decision‐making rationale”) In general it’s useful to have 2 kind of obstacles • •
–
Foreseeable obstacles, which you might have been able to anticipate early on and therefore had enough time to prepare some risk‐mitigating strategies and think about potential ways to overcome those obstacles upfront Unforeseeable obstacles, which are often more difficult to overcome since you don’t have time to prepare upfront and they might catch you on the wrong foot
When overcoming obstacles, you should have a very clear rationale about the possible ways to overcome it, and how you were deliberately choosing one of those ways (so first thinking broadly, before weighing the pros and cons of each option and making an informed decision)
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The PEI Dimensions Each dimension has various necessary core elements to consider when developing your examples – Entrepreneurial Drive (4/4) •
Additional note: Talking about time pressure –
–
–
–
Since it’s a very common issue I encounter in my PEI coaching sessions, I would like to add an additional note concerning talking about time pressure when achieving your goals – without questioning how hard your situation and goal was to achieve considering the time pressure of that very situation, still I recommend not putting too much emphasis on this aspect A lack of time and resources will be a constant throughout all your future consulting projects, be it with McKinsey or any other MBB firm – especially in times when you have ex‐McKinsey, ex‐BCG or ex‐Bain consultants negotiating a consulting project with you from the client’s side, since those folks know exactly in which parts of a project proposal some slack is built in as additional buffer and you can be pretty sure that they will be tough negotiators, leaving the project plan with the bare minimum resources needed For this, time pressure will be something you will encounter each and every day as future top management consultant, like your interviewer is already doing so today – as a consequence, you should not make a big deal out of something which is part of your interviewer’s daily life and which he needs to handle anyway all the time without consciously thinking about it Therefore, of course feel free to mention time pressure as one aspect making it even more difficult to achieve your goal in the entrepreneurial drive dimension, but rather mention it as a side‐note as opposed to presenting it as one of the key challenges you needed to overcome
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The PEI Dimensions Even though the dimensions seem to be easy to distinguish in the first place, lots of candidates mix them up (1/2) •
What is usually easy to differentiate from the other two dimensions is „Entrepreneurial Drive“. Here the focus is clearly on your individual aspirations and how you were successful in achieving your goals, and naturally the focus is on „I“ in the narrative. Most candidates however fail to draw a clear line between the dimensions „Leadership“ and „Personal Impact“.
•
Personal Impact is often part of a Leadership situation – –
– –
Within your leadership example you should look for a situation in which you had to deal with the whole team in a challenging situation However, naturally also various bilateral situations with your team mates will occur in a team context – apart from challenging situations concerning the whole team together, also targeted interventions are often required by you on a bilateral level Therefore, you are working on influencing one or more team members bilaterally – which is already going into the direction of a Personal Impact situation within the Leadership example Please note that this Personal Impact section of your Leadership example will usually by far not become as detailed as in your actual Personal Impact example – most likely it will be just one of many components of the overall Leadership example
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The PEI Dimensions Even though the dimensions seem to be easy to distinguish in the first place, lots of candidates mix them up (2/2) •
But not the other way around – Leadership is basically never part of a Personal Impact example – –
•
In your Personal Impact example, you really need to focus on how you strategically influenced and finally convinced (ideally) one other person Within such a narrative, dealing with a conflict concerning a whole team just does not fit
Hint: In both situations, the focus of your narrative is on your person only, and not on the team in the Leadership example or any other persons involved in your Personal Impact example – –
It is crucial to keep in mind throughout your PEI that the focus is solely on your person Since only you as a person will be hired, and not the whole team of your leadership example or any other persons involved, you need to make sure to clearly separate your contribution to the situations from any other persons involved as this is what the interviewer will evaluate
A clear understanding of each dimension is critical for developing your stories, so that you come to speak about the right aspects of each dimension, at least together with the guidance and probing questions of your interviewer
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The PEI Dimensions Your examples can come from different contexts (1/5)
The following contexts are suited for your Personal Experience Interview stories: •
Professional experience – if available, professional experience usually has a wide variety of examples for all PEI dimensions in a business setting which might already be quite similar to the settings encountered as a future McKinsey consultant. Therefore those examples are the most convincing ones for the interviewer.
•
Internships – commonly used by candidates with no prior full or part time work experience. More often than not, examples from internships have a limited scope or significance in terms of impact of the situation, but this is nothing to worry about. The interviewer is hardly interested in the situation itself; what really matters is your individual contribution in the context chosen. Furthermore it is also clear to any interviewer that candidates without prior full or part time work experience of course have a more limited set of examples to choose from.
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The PEI Dimensions Your examples can come from different contexts (2/5)
•
Extra‐curricular activities (e.g. leading a university business club, running a start‐up next to university, raising funds for a non‐profit organization) – as for candidates without prior full or part time work experience the possibility of showing leadership traits in an internship setting is limited, extra‐curricular activities often provide excellent examples for the PEI. Especially when those activities are within a non‐profit / pro‐bono environment, leading and influencing people (who are working voluntarily) is especially challenging and thus providing good examples for the PEI.
•
University settings (e.g. university projects) – especially for candidates with limited work experience, university settings often are the only situations (together with extra‐curricular activities) with leadership aspects involved. Also for personal impact, a university setting can be of interest. However, for the Entrepreneurial Drive dimension, you just need to be very aware of the fact that the achievement should really be outstanding, and not something which is expected of top students anyway (like achieving top grades or writing a particular paper within a very short period of time – this is what the interviewer expects from a McKinsey candidate anyway, so those aspects are definitely not worth highlighting, so rather mention them as a minor side aspect, but in any case don’t build a whole Entrepreneurial Drive example based on that). 60
The PEI Dimensions Your examples can come from different contexts (3/5)
•
Private settings ‐ principally accepted by McKinsey, but not recommended because each PEI example should have some conflict or difficulties to overcome involved. In private settings however, the relationship aspects between the persons involved are usually very strong, thus maintaining the positive relationship has a higher priority than tackling a less important conflict. As a consequence, candidates using private settings often fail to show their abilities in a conflicting situation, as there is hardly any real strong conflict in the context chosen which has a higher priority than keeping a good personal relationship. Having said this as a general rule of thumb, each example needs to be evaluated individually, so if you nevertheless feel you have a very strong example in a private setting, just be aware of the potential limits outlined above.
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The PEI Dimensions Your examples can come from different contexts (4/5)
So finally, which dimension should come best from which context? •
As any good lawyer would answer: it depends – on your specific situation. In general, the examples and contexts you choose should have occurred recently (ideally less than 1 year ago). – –
•
If you have 2 years of work experience alongside some extra‐curricular activities, then these two contexts would definitely be the ones to choose your examples from. If you are applying directly from university without prior part or full time work experience, then your examples should come from the university setting, any extra‐curricular activities (if available) or recent internships.
As a rule of thumb, you will find an overview of the fit between a specific PEI dimension and the context your example comes from. Needless to say, each candidate has an individual and specific background, therefore also having a different set of examples to choose from. So each example needs to be considered individually and evaluated carefully whether or not it fits for a specific PEI dimension, giving you the possibility to show and discuss your abilities on these concrete situations with the interviewer. In any case, the more similar the challenges from your example/context are to those of a consulting project, the easier it is for the interviewer to relate to it. 62
The PEI Dimensions Your examples can come from different contexts (5/5)
Dimension
Professional Experience
Internships
Extra‐ curricular Activities
University Setting
Private Setting
Leadership
Personal Impact
Entrepreneurial Drive
If several examples from the recent past are available within different contexts, it’s advisable to prepare your examples in different contexts to be flexible during your PEI. As a rule of thumb, the more the challenges of your example/context equals to those of a consulting project, the better.
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The PEI Preparation Process
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The PEI Preparation Process To ideally prepare for the PEI, the following six-step-process should be followed Clear understanding • Developing a clear understanding of each dimension as a solid basis • Distinguishing each dimension from the other ones of each dimension
Identifying suitable situations Structuring each suitable situation Develop each example in detail Practice and receive feedback Rework and refine your stories
• Critically looking over your CV and any other past experiences • Identifying potential examples for each dimension • Developing a structure for each potential example • Focusing on very specific situations of each example • Thinking about each example in detail, going deep • Keeping in mind the specifics the interviewer is interested in • Practicing and rehearsing each potential example with yourself • Practicing and rehearsing in interactive situations (mock interviews) • Incorporating the feedback from mock interviews • Refining and increasing the focus of each example
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The PEI Preparation Process 1 – Gaining a clear understanding of each dimension (1/2)
•
The basis of any excellent PEI example is clearly understanding the interviewer’s perspective on each dimension. If you cannot clearly differentiate between each dimension, it is impossible from the outset to develop strong PEI examples. As a consequence, the interviewer never really gets to discuss those issues he is specifically interested in of a particular dimension, leading to bad evaluation of your PEI.
•
Even if the context is the correct one for a specific dimension (e.g. leadership), it is still hard for most candidates to get the example right, since it is just so easy to mix up especially the Leadership and Personal Impact dimension. Let me give you a recent example of one of my coaching clients: –
–
–
The outline was a conflict in a yet small, but rapidly growing start‐up company which he founded some time ago. At this point in time, there were approximately 35 employees, and a new strategic initiative was to be decided on, which was kind of a pet project (with actual value attached to it, though) of the coaching client, at this time still serving as the CEO of the company. The conflicting situation occurred in one of the management meetings (5 participants incl. my coaching client) in which 4 participants were basically in favor of the strategic initiative, but one of the participants was strongly opposed the decision due to related personal issues for this one person. In this very meeting, the decision was made to follow the strategic initiative as 4 persons were in favor. However, one candidate still was strictly opposed. To resolve the situation comprehensively, the CEO felt to have a separate meeting with the opposing colleague to better understand his concerns, which were not very rational and also not very clear at this point in time.
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The PEI Preparation Process 1 – Gaining a clear understanding of each dimension (2/2)
So, the question is: • Should this rather be developed as a Leadership example as the CEO pushed through the strategic initiative in the management team meeting? • Or is it more a Personal Impact example, as the CEO did the follow‐up meeting with the opposing participant? The main issue here is to understand what the really difficult situation was to focus on in the PEI, and in conjunction what the implication would have been if the CEO did not act in this situation. Having those 2 issues in mind, let’s look at the previously outlined situation again: • The management meeting. If there were already 4 people supporting the decision, there actually was no big conflict in the meeting involved (maybe before the meeting, but we don‘t know). So, it is hard for the interviewer to learn about leadership skills of the candidate in a meeting, where most people already were of the same opinion. • The follow‐up meeting. Actually I did not go into details of this meeting yet, but chances are pretty good it was not a really easy conversation. Based on this assumption, I would clearly recommend going for the Personal Impact dimension here, showing exactly how you convinced and integrated the other person to follow the new strategic initiative. Yes, there is some sort of leadership involved too, but that is not the primary topic of this example. 68
The PEI Preparation Process 2 – Identifying suitable situations (1/5)
•
After having developed a clear understanding of each dimension, the next step is identifying (recent) situations in your life where you could demonstrate the skills which are important to McKinsey.
•
What proved to be very useful for most candidates is reviewing their CV and collecting ideas for the PEI in a structured way, to not overlooking potential examples you might not think about in the first place. – – –
For this, you can use the simple matrix structure illustrated on the following page to note down any potential PEI example As in a brainstorming session, focus on quantity first and note down all possible PEI examples – you can evaluate them in a second step, but first let’s find and note them down In any case, approaching this step in a structured way will lead to coming up with more potential PEI examples to choose from in a next step, thus also increasing the quality of the final outcome
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The PEI Preparation Process 2 – Identifying suitable situations (2/5)
Professional Experience
Internships
Extra‐ curricular Activities
University Setting
Private Setting
Leadership
Personal Impact
Entrepreneurial Drive
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The PEI Preparation Process 2 – Identifying suitable situations (3/5)
Additional issues to consider for identifying suitable situations •
Please bear in mind that the McKinsey Interviewers have probably heard hundreds, if not thousands of examples during their time as a recruiter. So the goal is not only to find specific situations fitting to the PEI dimensions, but also to identifying those situations which really make you stand out from the crowd. However, having said that, at the end of the day it is always about your personal contribution to a situation, i.e. what is the value which you created as a person in this situation. You will be primarily evaluated based on your contribution and not on how remarkable your PEI example was in general. Of course, leading a high‐impact team in a crisis situation with 100m USD at stake is more impressing than leading a university project group, and the interviewer will remember you better than other examples he heard throughout the day and will be more likely to give you a positive voting for further progression in the McKinsey application process. What really matters is how exactly you behaved in the specific situation and contributed, but make sure to push yourself for identifying the most impressive stories to which an interviewer can easily relate to, as opposed to merely finding “any” suitable situation for your PEI dimensions. 71
The PEI Preparation Process 2 – Identifying suitable situations (4/5)
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Quite some candidates are worried at the outset of our PEI coaching sessions that they do not have any suitable examples at all – however, when walking through their experiences of the last 1‐2 years, it always turns out that there are good examples to talk about for the PEI. To be realistic, not all of those stories are exactly awesome and unique, but still do the job. The more you can make yourself stand out from the crowd, the better of course – but whenever in doubt, I would rather choose an example in which you can perfectly show your contribution and skills in a not‐so‐extremely‐exciting context, as opposed to choosing a very appealing context (like the before mentioned 100m USD crisis situation) in which you could only make a minor contribution. And just in case it is relevant: whatever the specific context is about – by including some dramaturgy to make the example lively and colorful, also not‐so‐extremely‐exciting contexts can make an appealing PEI altogether.
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Note especially for experienced hires: Most likely your PEI will focus on recent situations in your current job – for this reason it is especially important to mentally walk through all projects/activities you mentioned in your application documents to be prepared to talk about those situations in the context of the PEI. In particular, your interviewer might spot some potential Leadership, Personal Impact or Entrepreneurial Drive situation based on information stated in your application documents. Whereas usually you are free to choose the situation you would like to talk about in your PEI, in this instance the interviewer might “force” you to talk about a specific situation. In case you can choose your situation freely, keep in mind that the closer your situation is related to a potential situation in a consulting project, the easier it is for the interviewer to see you as a successful consultant.
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The PEI Preparation Process 3 – Structuring each suitable situation (1/27)
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Each situation you are preparing for the PEI needs to be well structured. It is not only about telling an example – you also need to get the main topics across in a short period of time, which is roughly 10‐12 minutes out of the total interview time which is allocated to the PEI.
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Just to be very clear on that: the McKinsey PEI is an interview format of its own and should not be compared to a general CV‐related interview of another company. While you might be successful in a general CV‐related interview making up your answers on the fly and not going too much into the details of your examples, the McKinsey PEI is just the opposite of that with a need of diligent preparation and very structured approach to get your points across and give the interviewer the correct impression of your skills.
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Therefore your example needs to be structured in a way so that you do not spend too much time explaining the basic situation (which is talking about the “problem”, “anticipated consequence”, “role” and “end‐result”, according to the PARADE framework explained below), but having enough time to focus on those parts of your example with which you can really convince your interviewer. Namely those parts of the example which show your mental thought process and the resulting behavior (mostly the “action” and “decision‐making rationale”, according to the PARADE framework). 74
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For structuring your example, there are specifically two popular frameworks: – –
Firstly, the basic STAR framework (Situation/Task > Action > Result) Secondly, the PARADE framework which was developed by ex‐McKinsey consultant Victor Cheng1).
Basically the PARADE framework is quite similar to the STAR framework, just modified and enhanced with those aspects which are truly relevant for the PEI. Therefore I recommend rather using the more tailored PARADE framework instead of the more general STAR framework; at the same time I don’t see a need to re‐invent the wheel by coming up with an additional structure as the PARADE framework already fits very well. So let‘s have an overview as well as a closer look at the PARADE framework on the next couple of pages. •
Starting with the basics, PARADE is an acronym for – – – – – –
Problem Anticipated consequence Role Action Decision‐making rationale End‐result
1) caseinterview.com/parade‐method
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Before thinking about all those areas one by one, let’s firstly understand their relative weight time‐wise. For this, you can differentiate the whole PARADE framework into 2 main buckets plus adding a headline, an intermediate structure and a closing to it: – – – – –
Headline (~15‐30 seconds) Bucket 1 (~1‐2 minutes): Problem, anticipated consequence, role Intermediate structure (~30 seconds) Bucket 2 (~8‐10 minutes): Action, decision‐making rationale Closing (~30 seconds): End‐result
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As you can see by the time allocated to the single areas of the PARADE framework, the focus is clearly on your actions and decision‐making rationale, where the interviewer will go deep and might ask lots of probing questions.
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When you start preparing your PEI examples, 10‐12 minutes for talking about some experiences within one situation might seem rather long, and maybe you are even wondering how it will be possible to talk about a situation for so long time during your interviews. However, as you will see going more into the details of the PARADE framework, this 10‐12 minutes will be passing very quickly, especially when you are running through your interviewer step‐by‐step and explaining your decision‐making rationale for all those actions. 76
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Therefore, no reason at all to worry that you will not be able to talk this long in your PEI – at the end most candidates rather end up having the opposite problem of having too much to tell (especially considering that the one or the other minute of your interview time will be needed solely to clarify a situation for the interviewer’s understanding). Now let’s have a look at the main buckets of the PARADE framework: •
Headline The headline is actually not included in the original PARADE framework, but makes definitely sense to prepare and include as an opener of your PEI example which gives the interviewer a mental picture of your situation quickly. To some extent it is also the interviewer’s responsibility to ensure that you present your skills in the best way (yes, you were reading correctly – to some extent also the interviewer is responsible for your PEI success and will try to help you through the PEI to make sure you are hitting upon the right topics at least). For this it’s always good from the interviewer’s perspective to immediately see that a candidate is heading into the right direction, otherwise he would need to intervene quickly to still give you a decent chance to succeed in your PEI. Having a candidate heading into the right direction himself straight from the beginning will make the interviewer much more relaxed since no direct intervention is needed, and will already form a positive impression about you. 77
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Bucket 1 (Problem, anticipated consequence, role) Technically speaking, the PEI is a behavioral interview like “You were in this situation x – what did you actually do to handle this situation?” (as opposed to a situational interview like “Let’s imagine you are in situation x – what would you do to handle this situation?”). Since a behavioral interview is based on real experiences and reflection on those situations, obviously a context of your PEI example is needed, which is reflected in the problem, anticipated consequence and role part, together making up bucket 1. However, it is not anything more than just providing the context of your PEI example, therefore it is usually only 1‐2 minutes, depending on the complexity of your context and thus how much time it takes to explain it. Even though it might seem in the PARADE framework that problem, anticipated consequence and role are distinct parts in a sequential order, they usually come together when giving the interviewer an overview of the context (therefore also bucket 1). Just feel free to mix the order of those 3 components as it fits best into a natural flow of information.
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Intermediate structure With the headline as a start as well as with bucket 1 including the problem, anticipated consequence and role, your interviewer has now a solid overview of the general situation you would like to talk about. With this, you have set the stage for diving deep into the core areas of the PEI, namely the action and decision‐making rationale in bucket 2. However, before you dive deep into all the single and iterative actions and decision‐making rationales of bucket 2, I recommend giving the interviewer additional guidance and structure about what is still to come. As highlighted before, the focus of the PEI is on difficult situations (for all 3 dimensions) and how you managed to overcome them. And exactly those are the key topics you should put into a simple bullet point overview list as your intermediate structure (resembling a pyramid structure – first giving an overview on the top level, before going deep into those issues in bucket 2).
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As an example, it can be a simple overview like this (I will re‐use this example for constructing a headline soon, so keep it in mind): “Within this situation, I faced the following 3 main challenges. Firstly, I built a team from scratch based on goodwill, without having any financial incentives to offer for this challenging project. Secondly, I actively managed and improve my team’s motivation, which dropped in the middle of the project due to a huge setback which was out of our control. Thirdly, in addition to all that, I settled an interpersonal conflict between two team members which were both vital to the successful ending of this project.” That also means instead of talking through the whole general PEI situation from start to end, your focus is on the 3 core challenges in bucket 2. In other words, from the whole timeline of the general situation, you need to focus on those time periods which are relevant for your main challenges (walking the interviewer through them one after the other). Sometimes the sequence of your main challenges is naturally given by the timeline of the events and difficult to change, even if you would like to prioritize them differently. However, if you have the chance to freely choose the sequence of your challenges, then always communicate those with the strongest challenge first. 80
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But why inserting this intermediate structure at all into the overall framework? It clearly makes sense from the following 2 reasons: •
Firstly, it is a structured approach to communicating your PEI example – and we all know which consulting firm is the most pickiest one in respect to being structured (small hint: it’s the same consulting firm which coined the term “MECE”).
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Secondly, you give more control into the interviewer’s hands. This might sound threatening in the first place, but actually it’s just the other way round. Only if the interviewer has an overview about the main challenges which you are planning to discuss in great detail, he can steer the interview towards those situations which he is mainly interested in and allocate the majority of PEI time to exactly this situation. Of course this might lead to jumping around in your prepared overall storyline, but it’s definitely worth adhering to the interviewer’s preferences and giving him the option to choose those topics in which he is mainly interested in.
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Moreover, it’s possible that you even won’t have the possibility to talk through all main challenges of your PEI example, but having a more intense discussion with more time needed for one main challenge. Finally, without giving your interviewer an overview and possibility to prioritize in the first place, you could be ending up talking about a challenge in which the interviewer would have been least interested in, and at the same time running out of time to talk about other challenges the interviewer would have been more interested in. In any case, after you presented your main challenges of your PEI situation in this intermediate structure, 2 things can happen. •
Firstly, your interviewer immediately guides you to one of the mentioned main challenges. He could do so by saying something like “That sounds interesting – can you please tell me more about how you could motivate your team again in the middle of the project?”, and by this immediately jumping to the second main challenge of your intermediate structure.
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Since you now jump over the first challenge (how you built the team from scratch), you might need to add additional context information for the interviewer’s understanding, which he would have had otherwise based on the discussion of your first main challenge (apart from that there is no additional preparation or change of your storyline needed). •
Secondly, the interviewer remains silent and just acknowledges your overview, without giving you any further hint about his preferences concerning the sequence of your main challenges. In this case, you can always try to include the interviewer more actively into the discussion, by simply asking him a question like “Do you have any preference with which challenge to start with? If not, I would run them through exactly in this sequence”.
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Bucket 2 (Action and decision‐making rationale) It’s obvious that the PARADE framework provides a clear, logical flow through an example and thus serves as a good foundation – however, you are required to set the right priorities time‐ wise within this framework yourself, and not expecting the interviewer doing this for you. A very common mistake of many candidates is to spend way too much time on the basic outline of the example in bucket 1 (problem, anticipated consequence and role), and on the other hand putting way too little focus on what the interviewer is really interested in, namely bucket 2 (action and decision‐making rationale) – since you are evaluated based on your individual contribution and your behavior within a context, and not based on the context as such. When walking the interviewer through your PEI example, the action and decision‐making rationale component will be iterative, which means you will run through this sequence of action and decision‐making rationale many times. Basically it is similar to the way when talking about any situation to your friends in which you describe all the single actions you did one after another, just much more explicitly explaining the decision‐making rationale.
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Closing (End‐result) The end‐result, i.e. the final outcome of your PEI example, is the last part of the PARADE framework. The end‐result is nothing more than a wrap‐up of the whole situation to also explain the interviewer the final outcome (hopefully it will be a good one , thanks to your contribution to this situation). As already highlighted before – you are not evaluated based on the context of your PEI example, but on your individual contribution and your behavior within a context. For this reason, there is no need to allocate a lot of PEI time to this area – usually ~30 seconds is enough to close your PEI example by explaining your interviewer the end‐result.
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So, now after having an overview of the main buckets of the PARADE framework, let‘s look at each individual part of it in the next step (including the headline). •
Headline You can think of the headline as executive summary of your whole PEI example. The goal of the headline is to give your interviewer already a mental picture and rough idea of your PEI example in about 15‐30 seconds. Even though the headline naturally comes first in your example, you will probably prepare it last – similar to an executive summary of a business plan. Only once you went through all the nitty‐gritty details of your PEI example, you will be able to formulate a clear and concise headline which gives the interviewer already a strong hunch on where your example will be heading. The headline usually contains already around 3 key challenges of the situation as well as the end‐result. One example for such a headline could be (after your interviewer asking you some question to trigger the PEI part of your interview) “I can think of a situation in which I built a team from scratch, handling a dump in motivation and resolved an interpersonal conflict between team members to achieve even more than the 10m USD in savings for the company”. 86
The PEI Preparation Process 3 – Structuring each suitable situation (14/27)
This example contains 3 key challenges (in this case for the Leadership dimension) to make the interviewer feel comfortable that you are heading into the right direction for this PEI dimension. In addition, also the end result “achieve even more than …” is already included to make the situation even more appealing to the interviewer by showing your impact in a tangible, quantitative way. Moreover, having headlines for your PEI examples proves to be useful whenever in doubt which example might resonate more with your interviewer. For those instances you can simply start the PEI by offering the interviewer those situations fitting from your perspective and let him choose, based on the headlines you have prepared to give your interviewer the choice between various options in a time‐efficient manner. What is more, sometimes interviewers don’t ask a highly generic PEI starting question (even though a generic PEI starting question is usually the case, at least with non‐experienced hires) but already put a certain spin into it. In reality, the spin of the interviewer’s opening question often has hardly any influence on the example as such, but is much more a matter of framing and communication. Also in this instance it’s helpful to have headlines prepared as a high‐level summary of your stories, since they can be comparably easily adjusted to fit the interviewer’s more targeted question on the fly. 87
The PEI Preparation Process 3 – Structuring each suitable situation (15/27)
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Problem This part contains the basic outline of your situation, ensuring that the interviewer gains enough information about the situation so that he can evaluate your behavior and contribution to it (which is to follow mainly in the action and decision‐making rationale part). The key challenge lies mostly in making this problem statement as short as possible and as long as necessary at the same time, to make sure the interviewer has a good understanding of it. The main aspect is to clearly communicate the problem (i.e. the difficult situation you aim to achieve) which you needed to tackle in this very situation. As a future McKinsey consultant you will be surrounded by tough problems all the time, and demonstrating a solid approach how exactly you resolved the issue in your PEI example later on will definitely make your interviewer feel confident that you will be also able to solve difficult problems in the same manner in future, too. As a prerequisite so that the interviewer can evaluate your actions and decision‐ making rationale at a later stage of your PEI, he first needs to have a clear picture of the fundamental problem at hand – and exactly for this reason the “Problem” part of the PARADE framework needs to be communicated well. In other words: if the interviewer does not really get the big picture of the situation at hand correctly, he might not be able to fully understand your actions and decision‐making rationale, having a negative impact on your evaluation. 88
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Anticipated consequence The anticipated consequence shows your personal impact on a situation (your “real‐life” impact) by depicting what would have happened in case that you were not part of this situation or did not act in an appropriate way. In other words, this is to show the gap between the real end result and the otherwise anticipated consequence. Obviously, the greater the gap between those two, the bigger your impact and thus the more powerful your example will be. Whenever possible you should add some data or numbers to your anticipated consequence – as opposed to some vague statements. This will help your interviewer to immediately get an accurate and clear picture of your personal contribution to this situation and show precisely how important your role was. Even if you might not have exact figures available or might not want to share them due to confidentiality, you can at least use some ballpark numbers to quantify your contribution. In addition to giving the interviewer a clearer picture of the situation, it is also just more consulting‐like to quantify everything which is possible to quantify, and finally also sounds more like a real situation if a candidate can naturally add some numbers to it (as opposed to a non‐ real situation which was mainly made up when preparing for the PEI).
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Role To get a good grasp on what your contribution actually was in the specific situation, your interviewer needs to clearly understand your role in this situation. Therefore you should primarily talk about your specific role in the situation (using „I“), and not about what you achieved together with your team (and therefore not using „we“). Since lot’s of candidates have too little focus on the specific role (and tend to talk too much about the team’s role within a situation) it’s worth highlighting once more: the interviewer is interested only in you and your role within the situation – simply because McKinsey is thinking of hiring you specifically, and not the whole team who might have achieved an outstanding result together. Only when your role within your PEI example is perfectly clear, the interviewer can evaluate your specific contribution to the situation and how you handled it.
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Let’s think of a simple example to illustrate this point – imagine you are asked a Personal Impact question. As you already know, the core focus is to illustrate on how you convinced someone – and of course your role makes a huge difference in your example and in the evaluation of your PEI situation. Just think of one example in which you are the doorman of the company and try to convince the CEO about something – and then the other way round, when you are the CEO and try to convince the doorman. Needless to say, convincing the doorman as CEO in the second example will usually be much, much, much easier than the other way round. In general terms speaking, clearly describing your role in your PEI situation gives the interviewer an immediate imagination of the hierarchical structure and your position within it, leading to a better ability to evaluate your actions and decision‐making rationale.
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Action Here you need to describe in great detail what exactly you did in this situation. Again, the focus is specifically on you, and not on your team. As this will be the basis for the interview part which matters most (which will be the next part, namely the decision‐making rationale), your action needs to be closely interlinked with what you will tell the interviewer about your rationale. Expressed with some slight exaggeration we could even say that for each and every action step you take, there should be a clear decision‐making rationale attached to it. When I mentioned before that you need to describe your actions “in great detail”, then that’s no exaggeration – basically all candidates are surprised (better after a PEI coaching session with me than after their real McKinsey interviews) by how detailed the McKinsey PEI really gets. Most candidates finish preparing their stories on a level where it just starts to get interesting for the interviewer. Before talking about what that really means for your PEI prep, let’s first make sure to understand why McKinsey goes into such a high level of detail.
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Firstly, McKinsey has chosen the PEI in general and those 3 dimensions specifically very deliberately, because they think that those 3 dimensions are a strong predictor of success in top management consulting (in addition to the analytical problem‐solving skills to be demonstrated in the case interview part). As the three dimensions are so important for McKinsey, they naturally want to assess those dimensions as detailed as possible, therefore going into a high level of detail to understand every aspect of your example. Secondly, the PEI is a behavioral interview and asks candidates to describe specific behaviors and achievements in the past (e.g. “Tell me about a time when…?”). The only way for the interviewer to really understand your concrete behaviors and achievements, as well as to correctly assess them, is to probe deeply in order to understand not only what you did, but also why exactly (a.k.a. questioning your decision‐making rationale). In other words: without going into such a high level of detail, your interviewers won't be able to correctly assess all the aspects they want. Thirdly, it is easy to fake an example completely if you just need to talk about it on a high‐level. As the direction of the PEI is quite clear and as it's therefore possible to prepare your stories very well in advance, looking at very specific situations and your behavior in great detail also serves as protection against pre‐fabricated stories which never happened this way in reality. 93
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As we now understand McKinsey's rationale for going into such a high level of detail, let's look next at what this means for your PEI prep. When looking at the overall situation of your example, this is just the context in which your specific behavior and action takes place. You will spend by far the largest part of the interview going through a couple of very specific sections (based on the core challenges of your intermediate structure) within your overall situation, explaining every single action and the according decision‐making rationale in detail. The level of detail required at the McKinsey PEI is extremely high. You need to make sure in your prep that you can explain every single step in a specific situation, and even more importantly, your decision‐making rationale why you deliberately chose to behave exactly this way in the respective situation. Especially considering the Leadership and Personal Impact dimension, it is often the small details which matter in critical situations and which can lead to a major difference in the end result.
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As a consequence, it's possible that your interviewer asks you about the specific words you were using at a certain point in time, as this might have been really important. You shouldn't expect that your McKinsey interviewer will ask about specific words often during the PEI, but it can and usually will happen at very critical stages in your example, when the specific words chosen really could have had a big impact on the outcome of the situation. Typical follow‐up questions of interviewers to go into more details are: – – – – – – – – – –
“How did you prepare for this situation?” “What were your expectations beforehand?” “What were you afraid of?” “What did you think was the worst thing that could happen?” “What exactly did you think at this point in time?” “What did you think that the other people involved were thinking?” “Which words did you use in this situation to get your message across, and why?” “What would you do differently today, and why?” “What was your plan to go on?” “What were the expectations after this situation?”
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Decision‐making rationale As already highlighted, this is the part in which the interviewer will take the most interest in, and will most likely be the part on which you will spend the most time on during your PEI in conjunction with the respective action. Why is this part so critical to the interviewer? It is therefore so critical because what the interviewer really wants to see in the PEI is that you derive your solution in a logical, data‐ driven, repeatable manner, also taking into account qualitative information and interpersonal aspects. Only this habit makes a client‐friendly consultant (i.e. a consultant which comes to his solution in an understandable, logical, data‐driven manner supported by facts, thus making the solution defendable). To anticipate how you will handle a situation within a consulting project in future, your interviewer needs to understand your thought process and decision making rationale in a very detailed way. As it is true for the case interview, also in your PEI and mostly within the decision‐making rationale, you always need to be structured (“ABS – Always Be Structured”). At least for the major actions in your example, you need to demonstrate a logical and structured approach of your decision‐making rationale.
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You can do so by following the basic idea of the McKinsey issue true. • Firstly, think broadly and lay out all the options which you actually had in this very situation (for now it does not matter too much, which of those options are more or less likely, if they are at least somewhat realistic). • Secondly, once you have established an overview of the options you have, evaluating the advantages and disadvantages of them and finally taking a very deliberate decision which option to choose and how to proceed in your PEI situation. Please note that the interviewer will be able to evaluate your specific choice only to a very limited extent. Since a real‐life situation is complex with so many different aspects involved, only a simplified picture of reality can be communicated during your PEI. Therefore it’s even more important to focus on your decision‐making rationale and depicting the process on how you derived at this conclusion (taking into consideration qualitative and quantitative data, if available), since this is something your interviewer can evaluate based on your logical and structured approach (opposed to evaluating if your choice from all the options actually was the best one).
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Whenever in doubt, the interviewer will ask about your decision‐making rationale to understand what was going on in your mind. However, ideally your interviewer does not even need to ask about it, because you already laid out your mental thought process when walking him through your example.
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End‐result The end‐result if often just a 30 seconds wrap‐up of your whole example, to give the interviewer the big picture at the end again. Even though your actions and decision‐making rationale are by far more important than the actual end‐result, of course the more impressive it will be, the more it will stick in the interviewer’s mind (all other factors being equal) when making the final decision which candidates he will pass on to the next interview round. However, don’t be surprised if you don’t even come to the point to wrap up your PEI example with the end‐result. Sometimes – mainly due to time constraints – interviewers are much more interested in your actions and decision‐making rationale so that they will focus the discussion on those areas, and might just cut off your PEI at this point in time and immediately progress to the case interview. If this happens, don’t consider it as either a good or bad sign and don’t speculate about it during your interview, since it’s really neutral – rather concentrate on your part of the interview and perform in the best way possible, leaving the evaluation to the interviewer and don’t get distracted yourself.
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In case that you can finish your PEI as planned with the final end‐result as a wrap‐up, don’t relax yet – the PEI is not yet over. Still, the interviewer might want to ask some additional follow‐up questions at the very end of the PEI. Two quite common questions for which you should prepare yourself are: – –
What are your 3 key learnings from this situation? In hindsight, what are the top 3 issues you would do differently, assuming you were in the same situation once again?
Again, it’s very hard or even close to impossible for the interviewer to evaluate if the issues you are mentioning are really the core issues. For this reason it is again more important to show your ability to reflect, and to have 3 issues at all you can come up with at the end of your PEI, as well as to give the interviewer a clear and logical reply.
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After thinking about all those issues highlighted in the preparation process so far, you need to connect all those aspects into a single, coherent example which is easy to follow and understand for the interviewer.
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Not only what you communicate during the PEI matters, but also how you do this. Remember, one aspect of being a client‐friendly consultant is also how you communicate with your clients and how you get your message across.
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Obviously, you were part of this situation and therefore you know and see the situation in great detail in front of your mind’s eye. Therefore you are always at risk to get bogged down in lots of details of your PEI example, just because it’s nice and easy to talk about them.
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Instead, focus on those aspects which are really relevant – put yourself into your interviewer’s position and try to develop your example on a “need‐to‐know” basis. Push yourself to concentrate on the core issues (main difficulties and how you overcome them) and cut away all unnecessary side‐aspects, at the same time making sure that your interviewer (who was obviously not part of your real‐life situation) has enough information at hand to look at your example in the same way. 101
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What proved to be useful for most candidates during the PEI preparation process is sketching out the main storyline in a bullet point format on the first level, and then going more into the details by adding a second and potentially (where appropriate, usually in the actions and decision‐making rationale part) a third level of bullet points. On the one hand, using bullet point lists is much more time efficient in the first place, compared to writing some running text – especially because it’s expected that you will revise your first drafts a few times. On the other hand, the bullet point list also serves well as a rough guideline to remember all your prepared PEI examples clearly, particularly helpful also on the day before your interviews to refresh your memories in an efficient way by going through your PEI examples in bullet point format. At the same time, the bullet point format also ensures that you won’t learn some running text paragraphs by heart over time during numerous rehearsals, which will keep your example fresh and authentic over time.
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The PEI Preparation Process 5 – Practice and receive feedback
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Once you fully developed your example, it is time for a reality check. It is of vital importance in the preparation process not only to develop your example in your mind, but also to really deliver it to another person.
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Doing this for the first time, most candidates feel a bit awkward due to various reasons: –
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Most candidates are not really used to putting themselves into the spotlight of the example. Most of the times it is socially required to talk „we“ instead of „I“ to bring in the team aspect; however, in the PEI this is not required and not expected from you. The focus is clearly on what you personally contributed and achieved in a specific situation. A lot of people also feel uncomfortable talking about their own achievements. The PEI is certainly the wrong time to be humble – be proud of your achievements and tell the interviewer about them. Actually saying a lot of things out loud sounds completely different (and sometimes probably quite unnatural) than just thinking about them in your mind. Speaking out loud helps you to get your message across in an authentic manner. When preparing an example in detail in a written manner upfront, the sentences often get a complex structure which is hard to follow for any listener, including your interviewer. Therefore make sure you keep the sentence structure simple enough so that a listener can follow you easily. An interactive communication situation is completely different than being on your own – looking into the eyes of someone else is just different than looking at your notes to get the example right.
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The PEI Preparation Process 6 – Rework and refine your stories (1/2)
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Based upon the feedback you received from the previous step in the preparation process, rework and refine your stories – don’t be shy to completely re‐design your PEI example if you recognize it’s not as strong as you thought in the first place, even though it might be a lot of additional effort and hard mental work (if you just laid out your PEI example in a bullet‐point format as opposed to a running‐text format, it is also easier to change/adapt your example!). It’s a natural process and even most candidates need to start over with a PEI example at least once during the preparation process, until the PEI example is polished for the final delivery during your interviews.
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If somehow possible by any means, try to get your hand on experienced interviewers who know the PEI format well – since you are “inside the box”, you will otherwise miss out a lot of things you are doing wrong. As the PEI is a very specific interview format, it is impossible to give you any helpful feedback if you do not know the details and specifics of this format. Of course, just having another person you can talk to and present the example is helpful as well. But if you really want to have a helpful outside feedback bringing you to the next level, try to find other well‐prepared candidates knowing this interview format, or even better get some expert advice from professional interviewers.
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The PEI Preparation Process 6 – Rework and refine your stories (2/2)
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One word of caution: the more intensive you prepare for the PEI, the more „constructed“ and less natural PEI examples often get. So please be aware of this issue and don‘t learn your script by heart, be it consciously or even subconsciously over many weeks or even months of interview prep. Better prepare your stories in a bullet point format and try to talk freely about your example in the interview. An experienced interviewer will certainly notice if something is coming from a pre‐defined script, which will definitely not be in your favor. And the more rehearsed a PEI example gets over time, the less responsive candidates are to address the interviewer’s questions during the PEI, and instead mostly follow their pre‐defined scripts without really listening and answering the interviewer.
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PEI Sample Questions
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PEI Sample Questions Even though there are a lot of different ways a question can be asked, the underlying issues remain the same (1/3) •
The good news is definitely that most of the time, it will be quite clear which dimension the interviewer is looking for. And most of the time, the question will be quite straight forward. However, sometimes the interviewer will make the one or the other twist to make it a bit more difficult for you to answer.
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A fair assumption for you to make is that each interviewer will ask for a different dimension. Sometimes (this is handled differently from one McKinsey office to another) you will even get your exact schedule and sequence of your PEI dimensions in your information package from McKinsey well before your interview day, sometimes you won’t get any information about the sequence of your PEI dimensions at all before your interviews.
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On the following slides you can find different questions for each dimension from various sources including the McKinsey recruiting website. Please notice that even though the questions are different, the underlying issues still remain the same. More often than not, the only thing you need to adapt for your examples is how you frame the start (the „problem“), so that it also fits to the concrete question the interviewer is asking.
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PEI Sample Questions Even though there are a lot of different ways a question can be asked, the underlying issues remain the same (2/3) •
In case that it’s not fully clear to you which PEI dimension your interviewer has in mind when asking you a particular question – don’t have a rough guess wasting precious interview time, risking that you need to start over with a different example. Instead, think about the doing the obvious – since your interview is not a one‐way street, just ask the interviewer about the dimension. However, don’t phrase your question in a blunt way by simply asking something like “Which dimension exactly are you looking for?”, but rephrase your assumption/best guess in a way like “Did I understand correctly that you want me to talk about a situation in which I was leading a team through difficult situations along a project?” (referring to the Leadership dimension). The difference between those two questions from the interviewer’s perspective is huge. While the first way of asking the question shows a lack of reflection and willingness to put in some effort yourself to think about the interviewer’s question, the second way makes it both easy for your interviewer to confirm/adapt your assumption as well as showing your willingness to do thinking on your end before reaching out to other resources. And most definitely, no interviewer wants to have a high‐maintenance person on his team, needing to hold someone’s hand for every small step.
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PEI Sample Questions Even though there are a lot of different ways a question can be asked, the underlying issues remain the same (3/3) •
Note especially for experienced hires: The more experienced hires are, the more specific PEI questions usually get. If you already have quite some experience under your belt, chances are that a few bullet points from your CV will catch your interviewer’s eye, assuming that there might have been an interesting situation fitting to a particular PEI dimension. Just in case that the interviewer’s assumption was completely wrong and some information of your CV might look like an interesting PEI example but in reality was not, of course feel free to let the interviewer know about it, instead of force‐fitting a situation into a particular PEI dimension. Ideally, at the same time you can already suggest a similar PEI example to your interviewer to make it easier for him to accept an alternative to his original request (and ideally it’s an example you already prepared in advance).
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PEI Sample Questions Leadership (1/3)
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„Can you think of a situation where you led a team through a difficult situation / conflict / crisis when you still needed to achieve an important goal together?“
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„Please tell me about a situation in which you needed to influence several team members in a difficult situation.“
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„Was there any situation in which you had to lead and navigate a team through a difficult situation?“
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„Please describe a situation where your actions had a positive impact on team dynamics.“
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„Which leadership roles did you have so far? And can you remember a difficult situation in this context?“
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„Which experiences have you had working in teams? Using a specific example, what role did you play on the team? How did you select that role? What were the most/least satisfying aspects of working on that team? What is the most difficult thing for you in working with a team?” 111
PEI Sample Questions Leadership (2/3)
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„Describe a situation in which you recognized a problem or opportunity and organized people or actions in response. Did you choose to pursue this situation on your own or did someone else ask or suggest that you pursue it? What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?”
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„Have you ever had an idea or a goal to achieve something that required action by other individuals beyond yourself? How did you get the idea or come to set the goal? How did you find or mobilize the required resources to make the idea or goal become real? How did you deal with any unforeseen events along the way?“
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„Your resume indicates that you ............ What prompted you to do this? What interpersonal obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them? What satisfied you most/least about the experience? Did you have to make any sacrifices along the way? What lessons have you learned? Knowing what you do now, would you do it again?”
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“Which experiences did you gain so far in situations with a deeply divided team / with a demotivated team?”
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PEI Sample Questions Leadership (3/3)
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“Please give me an example of your teamwork in which you faced a difficult team‐related issue.”
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“Which leadership experience did you gain outside your professional role? Which difficulties did you face?”
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“How do you typically deal with a conflict in a team setting, in which you are not the team leader? Please give me a concrete example of your past.”
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PEI Sample Questions Personal Impact (1/2)
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„Please tell me about a situation when you needed to change someone's mind.”
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„Can you remember a specific situation when you managed upwards?” (Please note the subtle difference here – influencing people higher in the hierarchy than yourself needs even more sophistication how to actually do this)
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„Tell me about a time you had to make a recommendation without having all the facts.”
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„Describe your relationship with a colleague/professor/boss in a significant academic/work experience, in which you needed to convince this person about your idea. In what ways were you effective? Which conflicts or difficulties did you experience? What did you find most challenging?“
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„Describe a delicate situation in which your personal sensitivity made a difference in influencing another person.“
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PEI Sample Questions Personal Impact (2/2)
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“What is your typical approach of convincing someone? Can you demonstrate it based on a real example from the past?”
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„Can you think of a situation in which you had a very strong opinion and at the outset no one seemed to agree with your opinion? How did you change the opinion of one specific person involved in this situation?”
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PEI Sample Questions Entrepreneurial Drive (1/2)
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„Please tell me about a time when you achieved a difficult goal.”
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„Can you remember a time when you (nearly) failed at accomplishing a task.”
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„Can you think of a situation with a significant personal achievement?”
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„Describe a situation in which you were aspiring to reach a goal. What obstacles confronted you along the way? What did you do to overcome them?“
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„Describe a situation that demanded sustained, unusually hard work, where others might have thought you couldn’t succeed. Was the experience stressful? If so, how did you handle the obstacles?“
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PEI Sample Questions Entrepreneurial Drive (2/2)
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„What aspirations do you have for yourself over the next 5 years — professionally and personally?“ (Please note that opposed to the other questions, this question has a different time context. It is looking forward into the future as opposed to looking backwards at a specific example from you.)
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“What is your most important achievement in your life so far? How exactly did you achieve this?”
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“What was your goal when you started at university / at work / at this club and how did you go about reaching it?”
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“Did you have a goal which you did not fully achieve in the past? How did you try to achieve it, and what went wrong?”
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“How do you typically plan for achieving a goal? Please give me a concrete example!”
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates The specific context matters much less than you think – what is much more important is your specific role and how you behaved •
On the following slides I summarized some of the PEI stories from successful candidates who were going through my coaching sessions. Here I just want to say thanks to all those candidates who 1) allowed me to anonymously use their personal PEI stories and 2) who came back to me after the interviews to let me know if they were successful with these stories and got the offer they were aiming at – I highly appreciate their efforts!
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Please note: I am just summarizing the general context of some PEI stories I recently heard, in order to give you a rough idea about what stories other candidates were using in the PEI. However, please be aware that this is just the context in which the candidates acted. In the PEI itself the interviewer will most likely focus on one or two specific situations within this overall context and will go into the details to evaluate your skills and behavior. Therefore, the specific context matters much less than your actual behavior within this context!
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Customer satisfaction in professional service firms“ (1/3) •
As a member of the faculty research staff in a well‐known Ivy League university, the candidate was part of a working group on the topic of customer satisfaction in the professional services industry. The working group consisted of 2 faculty staff members and 4 high‐level executives of professional service firms who agreed to join the working group and contribute to the project. The combined results of academic research and practical inputs from the executives was planned to be presented at a conference hosted by the faculty 8 months ahead. After the working group had its kick‐off meeting, there were monthly telephone conferences scheduled as well as quarterly in‐person meetings.
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However, already at the first quarterly in‐person meeting it became clear to the candidate that there was hardly any more commitment from the executives to share details of their customer satisfaction (and quality management) programs from their own companies. The message from the executives mainly was that due to their strategic and operational duties, they did not have time to look in the circulated materials in advance and hence were not able to comment on these topics. Altogether, there were just some general remarks on the customer service topic, and no specifics or details which would have been worthwhile to cross‐check with academic research.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Customer satisfaction in professional service firms“ (2/3) •
As a consequence, the lack of involvement and input from the practical perspective posed a considerable threat to this research initiative and the quality of the conference, which was then only 5 months ahead.
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The candidate took the initiative and instead on relying mainly on the theoretical findings in the research process, he put himself in the leadership role and discussed this issue with the head of the faculty and basically got the consent from the faculty head to do whatever it takes to improve this situation (with the constraint that if the budget or reputation of the faculty would be concerned, there must be explicit approval from the faculty head first).
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What the candidate did was making individual telephone calls to find out what the real reason of the lacking commitment was, as he felt that there was a hostile climate between the executives during the in‐person meeting. During the phone calls he learned that actually the executives were somehow afraid of talking about their own customer satisfaction programs because they seemed nearly ridiculous compared to the depth and rigor of the academic findings.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Customer satisfaction in professional service firms“ (3/3) •
So basically they felt a bit ashamed about the simplicity and relative non‐existence of customer service programs, that is why they did not want to talk about them when other executives were in the room as they assumed that the other companies would probably be much more professional in this area. The candidate resolved this issue by ensuring that he will talk to each executive in a one‐to‐one phone call first in detail, summarizing the findings and then circulating the anonymous results within the working group. Finally everyone saw that compared to the theory, each company had a lot of improvement potential on how to handle their customer satisfaction programs. After recognizing that all companies were on a similar level, the executives started to share the details of their programs more openly and felt to become a real part of this working group.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Re-aligning the local consulting club“ (1/2)
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After studying at a private European university for two years already, the candidate got interested in the local university consulting club. After joining the club as part of the club management team, he found out that most people leading the club were in those positions for a longer period of time already, and were not as active and concerned about the club as they probably should have been.
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As a consequence, the membership numbers were decreasing constantly, as there was no drive in the organization. Furthermore, the consulting club was at risk of losing the university funding for which each university club can apply, because of the shrinking interest of students in the club.
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The candidate took the initiative and raised this issue in one of the internal club management meetings, only a couple of months after he joined the organization. He was perfectly aware of the risk that bringing up this issue as a relatively new member was difficult in order to not alienate the older students managing the consulting club. Nevertheless he took the risk and raised the issue in a socially acceptable way to make clear to everyone that the organization needs to change in order to ensure further funding of the university and increasing the membership numbers again (which was also part of the funding criteria). 123
PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Re-aligning the local consulting club“ (2/2)
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Taking into consideration the emotional resistance against change of the established club management team, the candidate managed to react to the underlying emotional issues and to instill a new, shared vision of how the consulting club could operate, even though this would mean for some students of the management team to either change their commitment and involvement into the club, or to step down from their positions.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „White paper initiative at a US tech company“ (1/2)
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The candidate was working for nearly two years at one of the major US tech companies at a subsidiary in Central Europe. Even though that the topic of „big data“ was only a small part of his every‐day operational responsibilities within the company, he was personally interested in the issue and also motivated by the increasing popularity of the „big data“ topic in the industry as well as the general public. Furthermore he felt that looking into this topic could also be of interest to the company, even though that there was no business initiative into this direction at that point in time.
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Before actually starting the white paper, the candidate needed of course approval from his superior in order to assemble a small team contributing to the white paper, as well as receiving a small budget for travel costs etc. So he put together a short PowerPoint presentation with his initial thoughts and how this white paper could be beneficial to the company as well. The candidate actually managed to get the approval of his superior, but it was made clear that the candidate was expected to commit only 10% of his and his potential team‘s working time on this project, meaning that the majority of work was to be done in the spare time. Considering the candidate‘s travel schedule, this was not easy to accept in the first place, but he was not given any choice if he really wanted to do this white paper, why he finally accepted this limiting factor. 125
PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „White paper initiative at a US tech company“ (2/2)
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As he had already established a solid network within the company, finding some colleagues interested in this initiative was not really difficult for the candidate. Also when bringing up the issue that most work will probably need to be done outside the regular working schedule, there were still three colleagues left who did not really bother about this sacrifice.
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In the beginning, the white paper seemed to go ahead very quickly, but as week by week passed by, the initial motivation and the willingness to spend so much time outside the regular working hours decreased significantly. As the candidate was the person who gained senior management approval for this initiative, he had a strong motivation to also deliver solid results at the end of this project. So naturally, he clearly stepped into the position of also becoming the explicit leader of this small working group (the colleagues were in a similar hierarchical rank as the candidate) and again pushed the team forward.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Organizational change in a small company“ (1/2)
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The candidate was a co‐founder of a rapidly growing, small‐sized company in Europe. Having acquired an investor with deep pockets, the small company had 1.5 years from the start to develop their product. Fortunately enough, they were well ahead of their schedule and launched their service to the public shortly after 1 year of development time. As everyone was so eager to see the first signed contracts coming in, the sales hit record levels within a couple of weeks and the sales force was growing proportionally.
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However, there were no real sales controlling tools available as no one ever spend a second of thought on this issue. Furthermore, there were no defined sales processes and when and how to pass on a client from the external sales to the indoor customer service. As a co‐founder of the company it was terrible to see for the candidate that the sales manager (also having the same share of the company as the candidate) just had the signed contracts on his mind, and never bothered about the internal processes to ensure the best available service to the customer. Also, addressing this issue in several management meetings did not bring any change to the situation.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Organizational change in a small company“ (2/2)
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Finally, the candidate took the initiative on his own and started to research and evaluate workflow tools which also allow for sales controlling. After having invited different companies to present their products, there was one clear favorite who seemed to have exactly the product the company was looking for. Having this, the candidate put this issue on the next management meeting‘s agenda where it was discussed and triggered surprisingly little resistance from the sales director. In the meeting, they also agreed to a clear timeline to implement the workflow tool.
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However, during implementation and testing phase strong resistance came up from the sales team. Their biggest concern was being fully transparent how they spent their time and what their sales costs were. This was the time when the candidate needed to show his leadership skills in order to successfully influence the whole sales team including the sales director that the new software is implemented to make the processes work better, thus minimizing coordination efforts in the first place, and only in the second place to have a controlling function. It was made clear that the controlling is seen as a way to identify those sales methods that work best so that these best practices could be shared in the whole sales team to further improve their results and simply help them.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Aligning the start-up founders team“ (1/2)
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The candidate was a co‐founder of a software start‐up company in Russia, focusing on business intelligence solutions. At this stage of the start‐up company, they did all sort of programming on which they could get their hands on, as they just needed the money to keep their operations going and secure a basic income for the founders. However, the candidate saw the clear risk of doing every kind of programming customers were asking for, even if they had little experience in this area. As a consequence, the employees often needed to spend some extra time to get the new things done, and they could never specialize in something as they got all sort of different programming tasks.
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As a consequence, the candidate raised this issue among his partners in the company and started to discuss the strategic implications of what they were doing (the other founders were pure tech guys with no interest in the business itself – they were primarily driven by doing intellectually stimulating programming). This actually turned out as a major separation between the candidate (who was basically focusing on the business side) and the other founders (who were focusing purely on the programming side).
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Leadership: „Aligning the start-up founders team“ (2/2)
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Now, the candidate not only had an issue with the strategic, future perspective of the company, but also within the founding team, as there was no understanding whatsoever why the company should remain focused on specific technologies and software products they are offering (which mean using a standardized core part of the software), as opposed to developing the „perfect“ highly individual solution for each client, even if it meant a lot of additional effort within the company which was not paid for by the customers.
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Here, the candidate needed to make full use of his leadership skills to re‐unite the founding team in the first step, addressing primarily emotional issues, as well as starting a series of strategy development workshops to define the future path of the company to make the most out of it in the long run.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Organizational politics during internship“ (1/2)
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Being part of a high‐potential initiative of a publicly quoted company in Germany, the candidate was sent to the Asian subsidiary during an internship. In the Asian region, a major restructuring initiative took place, in order to refocus the company on its core business activities. As a consequence, some companies were to be sold to an outside investor.
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The concrete task of the candidate was to initially collect data on one specific company (and better understand their specific production processes) which was to be sold in the next step. The headquarters only had a 49% stake in this company, so they could not fully control it. The candidate‘s main counterparts were the controller as well as the managing director of the local company. To both of them it was completely clear that their company would be sold, therefore the atmosphere was quite hostile. Therefore, there was a lot of politics involved in every single step of the process – the local employees made it as hard as possible for the candidate to get any specific information.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Organizational politics during internship“ (2/2)
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Here, the real challenge was to convince the managing director as well as the controller that they would hurt themselves in the long run if they would not be willing to cooperate. The main aspect in convincing the managing director was the overall outlook for the company. If they can manage to make a compelling example for a potential investor, it would increase the odds that there will be a strategic investor, who is more likely to be interested in the long‐term growth of the company than a purely financial investor would be.
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Obviously, this would be a challenge which is probably too big for an intern – therefore I need to mention here that every step was in close interaction with the candidate‘s superior during the internship.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Dealing with a challenging customer“ (1/2)
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As part of the sales team of an IT implementation company, the candidate was taking over a customer from another colleague who decided to leave the company for private reasons. In the first place this seemed to be favorable to the candidate, as the customer was clearly an „A“ customer, contributing roughly 5% of total sales per year. At this point in time, however, the candidate did not have the slightest idea of how troublesome the customer would be.
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In this case, the troublesome customer already had a major IT system implemented by the company the candidate was working for. From then on, there were lots of minor and also major changes to the IT system, triggering a lot of sales. However, the changes requested by the customer were always coming in with high priority, even though most of the changes were not time critical at all. This caused a lot of worries with the internal developers, who often had to work extra hours just to finish some new developments until the deadline which was requested by the client. What is even more, usually it took several weeks after finishing the development until there was a feedback from the customer if this development fully fits the customer requirements, or if any additional changes need to be made. As the deadlines were quite close every single time, the programmers usually did not have enough time to test every single case diligently with the new piece of software – so there always was a high risk of implementing some bugs as well. 133
PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Dealing with a challenging customer“ (2/2)
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From week to week, this customer caused more and more troubles internally, because it was getting harder and harder for the company to accordingly plan its tasks and resources, if there were a lot of short‐term changes coming in from the troublesome client.
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Finally, the candidate responsible for the customer relation needed to deal with this issue and asked for a meeting with the client. Preparing diligently for the meeting, the candidate could successfully explain to the customer in a socially intelligent way which troubles the customer would be causing. Once the customer came to understand (which was not easy), they agreed on several measures to improve the situation for both sides (the advantage for the customer was that with more realistic deadlines, there was a higher level of quality in programming, therefore the customer received better software for the same price).
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Doctoral thesis in the US“
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The candidate (from Europe) had an affinity to the US and was spending some time on the east coast during an internship. Even though it was nearly impossible to write the doctoral thesis at one of the most reputable universities in the US without having ever studied there, he put a lot of effort into his plan and actually managed that on the one hand side the US university agreed to make this possible, and on the other hand he also convinced his home university in France that they would accept his doctoral thesis written in the US.
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The main issue the candidate was talking about in the PEI was how he actually convinced the US university to support his doctoral thesis. Even though this was a longer sequence of activities, the candidate focused on the critical final meeting with the faculty head who would potentially support his thesis.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Difficult colleagues at university faculty“
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The candidate was part of the university research staff and participated in a long‐term working group focusing on a tighter integration of scientific research and the practical perspective. This working group existed for more than two years already, when a new member joined the faculty and was invited by the faculty head to join the working group as well.
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It became quite clear after the first few working sessions that the new colleague was not contributing a lot to the initiative and was frequently missing the agreed deadlines. As the candidate was the (informal) mentor of the new colleague, he felt it was his personal responsibility to fix this situation and decided to schedule a separate face‐to‐face meeting with the new colleague to raise this issue.
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The candidate then described in detail how he set up the meeting and how he could actually change the new colleague‘s mind in order to fully participate in the working group.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Dealing with a hospital patient“ (1/2)
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The candidate with a medical science background needed to treat a difficult patient during his practical experience. The patient was visiting the hospital regularly due to his illness, which required a long term treatment. So the patient was already well known and the candidate aware of this issue when he needed to treat the patient for the first time.
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Unfortunately, everything his colleagues (who already knew the patient) said came true and the candidate needed to discuss each minor step in the medical treatment in the most detailed way possible (even though the medical treatment was identical every time), before the patient agreed to performing this step. As this patient took a lot of time for the treatment, and thus blocking important equipment in the hospital for a much longer time than it would have been necessary, the patient also caused problems in the service quality of the hospital because a lot of appointments needed to be re‐scheduled and waiting times for this particular treatment increased for the following patients.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Personal Impact: „Dealing with a hospital patient“ (2/2)
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The candidate took the challenge and really took the time to sit down and talk with the patient to find out why he was behaving the way he did. Finally, the candidate found out more about the personal background of the patient. He also better understood the (irrational) motivation of the patient and was thus able to connect to the patient and to find arguments to convince the patient.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Achievement: „Organizing a conference without budget“ (1/2)
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The candidate was part of an Eastern European university‘s staff when she was working on her doctoral thesis. During this period, she also had to contribute to the research of the university department which was principally fine with her.
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However, she felt that the university did some excellent research which would definitely be of interest to a lot of companies, but at this point in time there was virtually no forum for sharing the research results with the general public and practitioners. Therefore she suggested organizing a yearly conference especially for the key target group who would be interested in the research.
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After outlining the potential positive effect for both the public awareness of the research results, as well as the possibility to tighten the relationship of the university department with local businesses for future funding of new research initiatives, the candidate finally got the approval from the department‘s head to plan a conference (at least for one time as a pilot project). However, as the department was mainly responsible itself for funding its own activities, the financial situation was always tense, so the candidate had hardly any budget at hand to work with.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Achievement: „Organizing a conference without budget“ (2/2)
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Basically, the candidate then managed in an entrepreneurial way to organize a conference for approx. 150 participants with a budget of less than 2k €. Given this tight budget, there were lots of challenges to overcome, including seemingly „little“ issues like setting up a website for registration of participants etc. As the whole organization was also done alongside the candidate‘s „normal“ research duties and working on her doctoral thesis, having to find a creative way to organize everything you need for a conference with such a small budget takes quite some time and is definitely not easy to handle at once.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Achievement: „Developing a top-selling iPhone app “
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Even though the candidate did not have any clue about programming skills, he felt that there was a huge demand for a specific iPhone app (which was also published as an Android app later) and clearly saw a business opportunity in a market niche. After spending a lot of time on desk research and also reaching out to the potential customers, his gut feeling was strengthened and he made a decision to actually pursue this one‐of‐a‐kind opportunity.
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In order to actually make this app happen, the candidate needed to build a team including a programmer and a marketer, as the candidate himself neither had a technical nor a marketing/business background (he contributed the whole content of the app as he was an expert on this one).
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From the beginning on the whole team understood the market potential of this app and set clear goals of what they had to achieve with this app in order to continue working on it (as a sort of reality check if the market demand was real). So basically the whole team was working alongside their day jobs for several months to build the app and prepare the market launch. Fortunately enough, the work paid off and market demand was even stronger from day 1 on as the team expected.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Achievement: „Founding an Asian cuisine restaurant“
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The candidate was living in a semi‐rural environment in Austria and was a big fan of Asian cuisine himself. However, where he was living there were some Asian restaurants, but none of them really offered the quality of food he was looking for.
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Therefore, he investigated this issue in terms of market demand and financial possibility, as he saw a business opportunity in opening a high‐quality Asian cuisine restaurant in the region described above. He actually needed to invest a big chunk of his savings and take out a loan for investment, so it really was a tough decision for him on whether or not it was worth undertaking this venture.
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He finally came to the conclusion that even though it seemed very attractive in the first place, it would have been very difficult to make this successful without having any inside knowledge about how to manage a restaurant. So actually the hardest part for the candidate was to build a strong core team pursuing this idea, which he actually did successfully. He focused on describing this part in great detail as his personal achievement, as for the candidate building the core team was the hardest and also most important part of the whole founding process.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Achievement: „Leading the university business club to new health“
•
During his studies in the US the candidate joined the university’s business club as a member. He soon found out that while the public perception of the club was not bad at all, his colleagues managing the university’s business club were not very motivated to do more than absolutely necessary to maintain the status quo.
•
After observing this for a while, the candidate got active and approached the business club’s management with a lot of ideas on what could be done in addition, in order to make the club’s offering even more interesting for its members. The first reaction of the club’s management was very open‐minded and they communicated to take all those potential improvements into consideration at their next management meeting.
•
However, as nothing happened at all, the candidate again approached the club’s management and even volunteered to help out to realize at least some of his ideas. At this point, the club’s management welcomed his initiative and invited him to work on a concept to realize his ideas, what the candidate actually did.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Achievement: „Leading the university business club to new health“
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Finally, the club’s management agreed to implement his plan. This of course involved a lot of work especially by the candidate as he was mainly responsible to realize all this. Fortunately enough, he was able to attract a lot of famous speakers for the club’s events, which were one of his proposed activities.
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After a period of only six months, the university’s business club could actually double its membership numbers, therefore not only raising an even stronger positive public perception (which was important for receiving funding from local companies), but also raising membership revenues for the club.
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PEI Sample Stories From Successful Candidates Achievement: „Establishing an online politics platform“
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The candidate, pursuing his studies in politics in Central Europe, was eager to establish an online platform for the general public, on which everyone can vote for specific topics which are collected on the platform and then communicated to politicians to raise awareness.
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Apart from actually creating the online platform itself, the candidate needed to convince politicians to take the platform and its representatives seriously, as well as creating public awareness for the platform so that people would actually vote for those topics which they really felt were important and the politicians should be working on as well.
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During the PEI, the candidate focused mainly on building a strong connection to all political parties in his country, so that they finally agreed to seriously work on any topic that the general public would be voting for on the platform. During his efforts, there were numerous setbacks and difficulties to overcome, which the candidate also described in detail.
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider Take your time before you actually start off with your PEI example
As it is true most of the times, it is not only about what you do, but also how you do it. The same is true for the PEI – there are some tactical issues which are worthwhile considering during your preparation process. Think for a second or two, before you actually start answering the interviewer‘s question. • Even though you are (hopefully) well prepared to answer any PEI question immediately, just pause for a second or two before you actually start answering the question. •
Answering immediately might leave the impression to the interviewer that you just deliver a well prepared speech. Obviously, the better you prepare for the PEI, the harder it gets for the interviewer to really judge your skills and behavior in specific situations, since your PEI example is well rehearsed and potentially slightly altered from what has really happened in reality. For sure any interviewer expects a serious candidate to be well prepared – but in this specific instance it is just counterproductive to show it openly to your interviewer by immediately starting your answer without taking any pause to reflect on the question asked.
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider Make sure to really answer the question asked by your interviewer
Answer the very question you were asked to answer by the interviewer. • Whenever I work very intensely with candidates devoting several coaching sessions solely to the PEI, I recognize the phenomenon that the more a candidate prepares, the less he is focused on the questions I am asking him to answer (both at the outset and during the whole PEI). •
So the more you prepare and the better your stories are developed, you need to make sure to listen closely to the interviewer‘s question. It is tempting to immediately start with your example when you hear the trigger for a specific PEI dimension, without really listening exactly at how the interview asked the questions, on which you would probably need to adapt the framing of your example.
•
The same is true for any follow‐up questions during your PEI. The better your PEI example is prepared and rehearsed, the more difficult it gets to adapt it spontaneously in order to follow your interviewer’s questions or directions. So please make sure to really answer your interviewer’s follow up questions precisely, instead of just delivering some other rehearsed parts of your PEI example which don’t exactly fulfill your interviewer’s request.
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider Follow your interviewer’s guidance to talk about those issues he is really interested in Do not worry if the interviewer interrupts you in quite a direct way. • It is not necessarily a bad sign if an interviewer interrupts you abruptly while presenting your example. Basically the interviewer just wants to get you to talk about those issues he is particularly interested in. So look at this as a way of helping you and follow his guidance. In this case, try to better understand your interviewer’s concerns and underlying thought process by listening closely to the questions he is asking, and also try proactively go more into this direction. •
Whenever in doubt what the interviewer is looking for with his follow‐up questions, please feel free to rephrase his question into your own words and play it back to him for his confirmation or additional explanation.
•
Needless to say, the better you are prepared the less the interviewer will need to guide you. But, contrary to the case interview where you are basically required to drive the case (even though especially at McKinsey the interviewer will lead you more directly), lot’s of follow‐up questions from your interviewer are not bad for your evaluation as long as you get to talk about those issues which the interviewer is interested in.
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider As an absolute minimum, you should prepare two stories for each dimension (1/4) As a minimum, you should prepare at least two, but better three or even more concrete situations for each PEI dimension. • Sometimes, this is a tactical move from the interviewer to let you start with one example, and in case he gets the impression that it is a well prepared script, he will simply ask you to describe a different situation, hoping that you did prepare just one situation so diligently that right now you really need to talk freely, so that the interviewer can evaluate your skills and behavior easier than when confronted with a well prepared script. •
In general it is better to use different situations also for the different dimensions. The interviewers will sit down together after the first round and discuss their impressions from each candidate. In case there is any slightest doubt whether or not he should be passed on to the second round, they will also discuss some more detailed aspects about which they are not 100% sure. In case that this is the PEI, each interviewer will probably briefly summarize your PEI and give his personal impression. If now everyone of those 3 interviewers come up with the same or very similar example from you, it just sounds odd and will trigger additional doubts if this is the right candidate, if there was just one single basic situation which was used for all dimensions (questioning whether this candidate has the required experience McKinsey would like to see if there was obviously just one single situation that the candidate could talk about). 150
PEI Tactical Issues to Consider As an absolute minimum, you should prepare two stories for each dimension (2/4) •
Sometimes the interviewer browses through your CV and sees something of interest to him where he assumes that there must have been a certain PEI dimension involved. So it can happen that the interviewer asks you directly about a specific dimension in the context of your CV. If you now have just prepared one particular example, this might not be the right one in this situation...
•
In addition, also the issue of first versus second round interviews comes in. What typically happens in the second round of the interviews is that they will try to better understand those aspects where you could not fully convince the interviewers in the first round. So the interviewers in the second round will bring up this aspect again – and in case that this was a specific PEI dimension, it is not very clever to tell the same example a second time if it was not convincing in the first place.
•
Finally, there is also a trivial reason for this. It happens from time to time that an interviewer just mixes up his interview schedule and asks you about a different dimension than it was previously planned. In this case you will most likely end up in the situation that you are asked about the same dimension twice – and again you should have a different example available.
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider As an absolute minimum, you should prepare two stories for each dimension (3/4) Additional note: • There is no 100% clear statement from McKinsey in respect to using the same example several times across different interviews. •
Before the redesign of their website, McKinsey has published the following paragraph at http://www.mckinsey.com/careers/faqs/experienced_professionals concerning this topic:
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider As an absolute minimum, you should prepare two stories for each dimension (4/4) •
The paragraph before is left over to some interpretation. While McKinsey does not explicitly say to not repeat the same experience across multiple interviews, McKinsey clearly wants to get a good sense of you, your unique style and your skills. And, as mentioned explicitly, the more examples you provide, the better.
•
For this reason it seems rather clear that it’s advisable to prepare and share multiple examples across interviews, and not the same one. Just in case that you really, really, really cannot find a second strong example for a particular PEI dimension, re‐use the same example – but the additional insight and thus value of this PEI will be close to zero for McKinsey, at the same time clearly showing your lack of experience in a certain area.
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider Prepare to show your self-reflection to the interviewer (1/2)
•
McKinsey has a particular strong feedback culture, helping you to improve quickly based on real situations. In some (few) cases you will like the feedback because it’s addressing positive issues, but more often it will be difficult to listen to and accept it, since it is addressing not‐so‐positive aspects of you.
•
You are definitely required to improve very quickly upon feedback. You are allowed to make some (small) mistakes, but only once – so you need to take feedback very seriously and ensure you really learn your lessons out of it. However, just having been part of a situation and listening to some feedback passively is not enough to improve and transfer the learning of one situation to another. For this reason, a more active approach is needed, which involves strong self‐perception and self‐reflection.
•
Since this is a vital component of continuous improvement within McKinsey, your interviewers also might want to get a sense of this aspect within the PEI. Therefore you should always be able to answer the following types of questions, showing you did your homework in the past by reflecting on your experiences:
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PEI Tactical Issues to Consider Prepare to show your self-reflection to the interviewer (2/2)
– –
“Given the possibility you were in the same situation today – what would you do differently and why?” “Which are the top 3 learnings for you to take away from this experience?”
•
When answering those questions, you should be able to answer them on the spot, without needing to take additional time to think about an answer. If you cannot answer the question immediately, it shows to the interviewer that you did collect some interesting experiences, but did not reflect on it in order to maximize the learnings out of it.
•
Assuming that you chose successful examples for your PEI anyway, sometimes it might be difficult to come up with 3 learnings or 3 issues you would do differently today in order to address the questions above. Obviously your answer needs to show some real insight and self‐ reflection – but your answer does not need to address global issues of your PEI example. It’s perfectly ok and sufficient if you address smaller, detailed issues as learnings or issues you would do differently today within your PEI examples – the most important thing is to show self‐ reflection, the specific learnings/issues to do differently today as such matter less than how you answer the question.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Using “stories” instead of “examples” or “situations” in your PEI wording •
A lot of candidates are referring to their PEI examples as “story”. In most instances your interviewers will not care whether you use “stories”, “examples” or “situations” in your PEI wording.
•
However, some interviewers seem to be slightly allergic towards the use of “stories” because it sounds more like a fairy‐tale story which you made up for your PEI, which is obviously not what the interviewer is looking for, as he wants to get some real insights into your experience, behavior and skills in certain situations of your past.
•
Since there is no upside and only a potential downside of using “story” in your PEI, just replace this word consistently with “examples”, “situations” or any other similar words fitting for you.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Not being specific enough in your example
•
As opposed to other, more general interview formats of other consulting companies or any other industry, the McKinsey PEI is focused on very specific situations. Following the PARADE framework mentioned earlier, it is perfectly ok to start with an overview about the problem, anticipated consequence and your role, but from then on the example needs to become very focused and detailed.
•
On a general, overview level it is hardly possible for the interviewer to understand your concrete action and decision‐making rationale, and thus the very specific contribution you personally made. Only when going into the details of your action it is possible for the interviewer to understand your rationale and make a judgment whether or not your thought process and action is valid and transferable to other situations, which is of vital importance obviously.
•
Just to give you an idea on how specific the PEI can get, the interviewer might ask something like „what exactly did you want to say in this situation, and which concrete words did you use?“. Especially when talking about the leadership and personal impact dimension, every single word and how you said it can matter and make a big difference.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Choosing an example from some years ago already
For two specific reasons it is definitely not recommended to choose an example which took place a few years ago already: 1. As the PEI will get very specific , it is just very hard to remember the exact details of a situation, not to mention the concrete wording you might have used. Even if you remember, the interviewer will most likely doubt the authenticity of your explanations. Honestly, I also could not remember the specifics of a situation three years ago – therefore it is hard to believe for me that any candidate will do so. 2. The interviewer will ask himself (and maybe the candidate as well) whether there is not a more recent situation available. On the one hand this means that you might be asked to choose a different example anyway (therefore it makes no sense to prepare and choose an “old” example at the first place). On the other hand, the interviewer will doubt your past experience, if the most recent example you can give him about leadership, personal impact or achievement is several years ago already.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Referring more to „we“ instead of „I“
•
The PEI is not a team interview, but an individual interview with you – and only you. Bringing in the team as a general context of the example is fine of course, but what the interviewer is really interested in, is you. He wants to clearly understand your thought‐process, your decision‐ making rationale, your action and behavior.
•
Therefore, you need to talk about yourself, and choosing „I“ instead of „we“. The interviewer just does not care a lot about the experience and the achievements of the team surrounding you, so there is no value in going into the details of the team as opposed to going into the details of your contribution to the situation.
•
In case you will not talk about yourself anyway, the interviewer will most likely guide you to tell him about you – your role, your thought process, your action and your results. But knowing this in advance should help you to fine‐tune your example and do not waste any time with issues the interviewer is not interested in.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Not putting enough structure into your example
•
The PARADE framework is easy to remember, focuses on the important issues in the PEI and is also easy to follow – so you should make good use of this. When going into the details of all what happened in a situation, it is just so easy to get lost and become unstructured. So put enough weight on being structured throughout the whole PEI, because it is much easier to follow and to understand by your interviewer, which will give you additional credit.
•
The general context of the situation should be as brief as possible, and only as long as necessary. However, you need to really think about every sentence – does it contribute to the interviewer‘s understanding of the example, or is it just a „nice to know“ detail which is of little value anyway? You need to make sure that the interviewer knows everything he needs to know to judge your example to the best extent possible, but not a bit more than that.
•
In addition, do not forget to leave some emotion within your example. The shorter and more structured the example gets, the more reduced it is to the pure facts and figures. Therefore candidates run at risk having a good example at hand, but compress it too much into a rigid structure, cutting out any emotion which would show the interviewer of how interesting, exciting and challenging the situation was at this point in time.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Showing a lack of self-reflection
•
The key issue for the interviewer is to understand whether your success in one situation can be repeated in another situation. Therefore it is critical for the interviewer to understand the concrete thought process (a.k.a. „decision‐making rationale“).
•
For this reason it is important to show a deep self‐reflection for each step you took. You need to be able to explain every single decision in the whole thought‐process – which options you had, which you chose and why you acted this way as opposed to another way.
•
An elegant way to show a minor weakness in your examples (to make it more authentic and not too polished and perfect) is to refer to an earlier situation where you made a small misjudgment, learned from it due to your self‐reflection, and were now able to do everything right in your example because of your insights from the previous situation.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Talking too much about the situation instead of your abilities
•
The interviewer is actually much less interested in the general situation of your PEI example than you might think. He is much more interested to gain a good understanding about your abilities. Therefore, the PEI context is just the situation which occurred and in which you were able to fully demonstrate your abilities.
•
Naturally, most candidates tend to talk too much about the situation in which they showed their abilities, but too little about the abilities themselves. Often, the cause for this tendency is that it is just much more common in everyday life to describe a situation than focusing on specific abilities you showed in this very situation – so we are just more used to this kind of narrative.
•
For the PEI however, this is dangerous for two reasons. – –
Firstly, you have very limited time available to get your points across and convince the interviewer about your abilities. Secondly, there is a high risk that even though you have all the abilities, you are just overlooked in the selection process because you failed to get your message across in your interview, despite having all the prerequisites of a successful top management consultant.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Not preparing enough to talk about „soft“ factors
•
Most candidates underestimate the importance of the „soft“ factors in the consulting business. At first glance, consulting seems to be extremely analytical and quantitative (and actually it is not wrong either), but what is often overlooked is that also in the more junior ranks you will have an intense working relation with clients. The more you rise in the hierarchy, the more the soft skills matter in managing client relationships.
•
For evaluation of your soft skills, the PEI is McKinsey’s main instrument. Even though you might be prepared well to speak about your typical soft skills in general, you should also prepare to answer concrete questions like „how did you feel in this situation“, „what did you expect the other person to feel at this very moment“ or „how did you deal with your emotions“. As questions like these are in sharp contrast to the highly analytical case interview setting, it is even harder for some candidates to switch from this analytical case part to the „touchy‐feely“ part in the PEI.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Having practiced your examples too much and sounding recited
•
Practice, practice, practice and then start all over again is the right way to prepare for the PEI. Considering this, the interview itself is quite a weird situation. The interviewer has asked his questions probably a few hundred times already, and the candidate has thought about these questions most likely for several weeks. And both try to make a spontaneous impression when presenting the question and giving the answer.
•
What you should try to avoid is learning your example by heart and sounding recited, even though you need to practice really a lot to bring your message across in an efficient way.
•
Besides sounding recited, a lot of candidates bring themselves into troubles also due to a different aspect coming with practicing a lot. According to my observations, the more a candidate prepares the PEI, the more likely he tends to ignore questions from the interviewer or does not really answer them in a profound way. So rather than letting oneself guide by the interviewer‘s questions, some candidates are then so focused on talking about all the points which they prepared beforehand, leading to the situation that they have a lot of interesting things to tell, but fail to address those issues the interviewer is asking for.
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PEI Common Mistakes to Avoid Faking examples which never happened this way
•
In any job interview situation, both parties will try to present themselves as attractive as possible. However, most interviewers have seen hundreds, if not thousands of applicants, asking the same questions over and over again. You can be pretty sure that this experience will allow an interviewer to judge quite fast whether or not this is a real example. Actually I do not expect you to fully fake an example, but even if you significantly brush up certain aspects, your interviewer will more often than not recognize it and judge you accordingly.
•
Therefore you should resist to make your stories looking too good to be true. Nobody is expecting you to do everything perfectly right in an ambiguous situation. Of course you should not do everything wrong either, and it is most definitely the wrong time to be humble, but what really matters to the interviewer is your thought‐process and self‐reflection. So it is much better to impress the interviewer with these aspects as opposed to overly perfect stories.
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BONUS 2: Must-Read Books on Consulting 168
Bonus: Must-Read Books on Consulting Recommended books for future management consultants (1/2)
Over time, I found a lot of candidates asking me for a recommendation of “must‐read” books on consulting, so I started to compile a list of books which I can definitely recommend reading which I am happy to share with you as a bonus to this guide. •
Ethan Rasiel: The McKinsey Way: Using the Techniques of the World's Top Strategic Consultants to Help You and Your Business
•
David Maister: Managing the Professional Service Firm
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David Maister: The Trusted Advisor
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David Maister: Strategy and the Fat Smoker: Doing What's Obvious But Not Easy
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David Maister: True Professionalism: The Courage to Care about Your People, Your Clients, and Your Career
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Bonus: Must-Read Books on Consulting Recommended books for future management consultants (2/2)
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David Maister: First Among Equals: How to Manage a Group of Professionals
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David Maister: Practice What You Preach: What Managers Must Do to Create a High Achievement Culture
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Carl Stern: The Boston Consulting Group on Strategy
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Robert M. Grant: Contemporary Strategy Analysis
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Gene Zelazny: Say It With Charts: The Executives's Guide to Visual Communication
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Barbara Minto: The Pyramid Principle
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Ohene Aku Kwapong: MBA Concepts and Frameworks ‐ Tools for Working Professionals
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PS: Other consulting prep material you might be interested in Case Interview Frameworks – http://www.case-interview-frameworks.com The #1 Guide for Structuring Your Consulting Case Interview How to structure your Consulting Case Interview: Strikingly 9 out of 10 candidates say their single largest issue in solving case interviews is getting the structure right! Going slightly into more details of this little survey, candidates mostly refer to both the initial, overall structure at the beginning of the case, as well as structuring individual parts at later stages of the case interview...
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