My McKinsey interview
I finally had my McKinsey interview. It was an interesting experience, although at times genuinely painful. I mean, as we were introduced to the waiting room, and were able to check bios of our interviewers, it already started hum-hum: my 2 guys were engineers at heart, from the country's best institutions. I knew they would be particularly keen on playing numbers...
First interview. The guy seemed interesting in my CV, trying to understand the logic to McK. I did hint to my strong preference for OB over numbers, and in a way he was kind enough to come up with a simple case of profitability analysis, and in particular fixed costs solutions. Everything was about fine until we went down to numbers... Arghh. Simple calculation, excruciatingly painful delivery. Gosh, in what pains I would go through to report an interesting story in this blog... Of course I knew the game was over even before the moment when guy was supposed to give me his business card.
Second interview. The guy found the holes in my story. Like, "I don't understand why you would come to McK instead of doing blablabla". But that was not too bad.
Then, THE question. Not a case, just the question: You're in New York for 3 years, Subway authorities have announced a token price increase of 10%. What do you do?
I'll let you think over it overnight...
Again I was pretty alright in assumptions, and intuitions. But then we had to do the numbers. And that was tough. I tried NPV, schoolchildren maths... To no avail. He helped me out a little bit, and walked me through the solution. Again, one outcome was rushing to my face: no business card moment...
But, we ended up talking about his views about McK in that country. Really interesting. Basically, if he had the power to do one thing it would be to have McK at the heart of higher spheres of power. Presumably, McK in US, or Germany, is very influential partly because they have ties with Power. He explained to me how they were trying to reach the same thing in that country. Then I had a flash. Power, long-term strategy, network... No wonder all McKinsey guys from that Office came from the top 1 or 2 institutions (more than any other offices): to increase network externalities...
In conclusion: a cool experience that puts me bluntly in front of my weaknesses, which I already knew, but sometimes reminders are not bad...
It's funny how life can present yourself with Butterfly effects moments. After my 2 interviews, I went to the waiting room, and chatted with some people. One interviewee asked me about my cases, which I explained. I hinted at what I did, he understood that this was the solution.
He came to me afterwards bummed. If he were a barbarian, I'm sure he would have pursued me all over campus with his machette... Think about this Butterfly moment: he picked up "NPV" (which in my case was what I did, and wrongly), got the same Question, started head down and mistakenly on an NPV calculation. If he is not in second round, it could have been due to that very tiny misunderstanding... Frightening.
Anyway, the McKinsey experience is ticked, time to move on.
PS: Pics were taken when I went running. This is what sort of things you can bump into in the forest. I learnt afterwards that Fonty was the French capital of Horse riding... Isn't life cool?
Labels: Job search
posted by DomoDomo@INSEAD @ 1:39 PM
2 Comments:
Hey...been reading your post for awhile now, really a good picture of life at INSEAD. I cant wait to start! I'm in at Fonty for the Class of 2008. You can check out my blog - http://strawberrytints@blogspot.com... though you've already been down that road
Now, what's the answer to the token question?
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