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Campus Placements: Job interviews
Posted: February 19th, 2014, 12:57 pm
by MBACrystalBall
If you have had experience with MBA placements interview(s), can you please share your story here?
Your brethren will appreciate your knowledge sharing effort.
Please share the following details:
- Name of the school
- Name of the company (please post a separate debrief for each company)
- A little about your pre-MBA profile (work-ex, industry, anything else)
- Interview questions
- Your overall impressions about the interview (easy, tough, stress interview etc)
- Final result (admitted/rejected)
- Tips and advice for other MBA students.
Re: Campus Placements: Job interviews
Posted: March 21st, 2014, 4:35 am
by amukherjee14
Interview with McKinsey & Co. for a position in New Jersey office for Operations practice.
- Columbia Business School
- McKinsey & Co. - Operations Practice
- 4 year of Energy consulting specializing in operations engineering and project management.
- First Round (2 cases), Second Round (3 cases), no PST for Columbia. The McKinsey interviews are identical at all levels. It is about 15-20 minutes of a personal story (not why consulting and why McKinsey) but more in the range of my "tell me a story when you found it difficult and how did you solve it?" The interview will probe you through out, so do not cheat by making a fake story. The rest 20-25 minutes is a the case, which includes an in-depth Framework and 2-3 questions in the case, with 1 definitely being a math question. For my 1st round I got a non-profit case (these are hard to deal with) and a consumer retail case. In my 2nd round I got a food case, a hospitality case and a health case case. Partners are very nice and try to make you feel at ease while evaluating you at the same time.
- The interview was tough because it required me to have an open mind, talk about different options to solve the case and required me to have talk while thinking at the back of my head.
- Admitted
- Keep an open mind, framework is very import for McK and so is "what else?" question. Go into the case as if you it is your personal business or you are a consulting and not with typical business school answers. For example if I ask what are the cost items in a restaurant do not say rent, labor, raw materials. That is the answer of an accountant. Answer like a consultant. It should be real estate, waiter's salary, chef salary, cutlery, expensive alcohol in the bar, jazz music player etc. You get the point.