Question on McKinsey Interview:
I’ve been watching your videos/following your somewhat daily email postings on the McKinsey interview for a while now. I have a question regarding summer recruiting. I attend the University of Southern California. According to the McKinsey website and talking to my friends, McKinsey does not go through formal recruiting at my school.
Stanford, Pomona College, UC Berkeley, and other Western schools are on the list, however. Is there any way to get my resume and cover letter in front of a recruiter’s eyes, or am I basically out of luck ?
I understand that going through an alumni base may pull up some names from people who work at McKinsey, and maybe I can get in from there.
My Reply:
You are not out of luck, but will need to do a fair amount of work to network anyway you can to get to someone who works at Mckinsey, do an informational interview (you take them out for lunch / cup of coffee, say you are considering consulting, ask some intelligent questions) and hope they offer to hand your consulting resume into recruiting.
The hand delivered resume by someone inside McKinsey, particularly if they like you and especially if they gave you on an on-the-spot case and you did well, means a lot.
So use LinkedIn, family friends, alumni, etc.
This is much, much easier to do with full-time recruiting than with summer recruiting.
For more resources on getting a consulting case interview, review my free video series on Case Interview Secrets .