These success stories come from readers who secured offers with McKinsey as an experienced hire. I hope that you can learn from their stories if you are in a similar situation.

Success Story:

Thanks for your emails.  While I enjoyed receiving your insights, I will no longer need them as I have begun my new life as a consultant with McKinsey!

I’d like to take a moment and say that you have a wonderful system here that positively impacted me in three main ways:

  • Your freely available content is wonderful. I like that you balance avoiding “hard and fast” rules, but also provide very MECE  As an industry hire, I had very few resources to get direct, comprehensive guidance from those with case interview experience – your stuff was essentially my platform to get started – and that it’s available for free, is a gift.  You’re quite the patron!
  • LOMS was my “Stage 2” – and actually was my first real introduction to what a case actually feels like.  In the car, at work, at the gym… LOMS was my way to get better when away from my desk at home.  Worth every penny.
  • The emails you send were the cherry on top.  I liked reading success stories, extra tips, “style” pointers and the like.  While I ultimately had to practice and develop my own rhythm and frameworks, these were a welcome complement to my sessions.

My Comments

I thought I’d comment on this F1Y’s third point about coming up with your own rhythm, style, and frameworks.

I find it interesting that quite a number of the F1Ys I mentor learn everything I teach, and then ultimately go beyond it by developing their own approach to case interviews. This approach is in a similar spirit as what I teach, but not a carbon copy. This is not surprising to me for several reasons.

First, there are MANY ways to be right in life, business, and case interviews. I teach one approach. But rather than just teach the approach, I have tried to explain WHY certain elements were important. By doing so, my hope was CIB would be able to understand the principles behind what I teach (which do not vary much from one successful F1Y to another), rather than the specific method (which can vary from successful individual to another).

Success Story:

I have had this vision for many months… writing to you about my success story just after my donation to kidpower.org.

I received an offer from McKinsey / European office.

I would like to thank you for the great work you are doing – it does make a difference and changes lives!

Would like to return the favor and help others with sharing my experience:

Little bit about myself: experienced hire with many years spent in the industry, a successful track record but no Masters / MBA and a low GPA relative to MBB standards:

  • Network, network, network
    Although I spent enormous time on my cover letter and CV I am sure that it would never be looked at or automatically filtered out (low GPA!) if I just made an online application.
  • Practice, practice, practice
    Start with the basics (your videos and LOMS is great for that!)
    Then nothing beats live practice – not just for CASE but also for FIT interviews.
    And consume whatever you can get your hands on… there are plethora of mba casebooks I discovered very late in the process. Excellent source for broadening the perspectives!
  • Persevere, persevere, persevere
    Easier said than done but it is so true… The process took roughly 3-4 months of intense preparation. I had to balance my job and family (have small kids) – and make a lot of sacrifices.

I had many rejections on the way. In no particular order: some firms didn’t even respond to my application, some didn’t call for an interview, some I got rejected in the 1st round and some I got rejected in the final.

The key however is: I really knew deep inside that this is THE right fit for me – and that self conviction carried me through these set backs and came across eventually to get an offer from THE company I wanted most to work for.

My Reply:

Thank you for taking the time to share your story and strategies for others. I appreciate your donation to KidPower.org.

Congratulations on the McKinsey offer!! I’m glad my materials were helpful, but your hard work and perseverance paid off.

Success Story:

I am an experienced professional (in a specific industry) who decided to switch to management consulting and first applied about 40 days ago. I had applied only to McKinsey and received my offer yesterday after six interviews.

I had interviewed for an [Asia Region] office but am living [Other Region] hence every interview was VC (video conference case interview) based. These were the first case interviews I had ever faced. After a slightly nervous start, I got better and better and finally made it.

Your materials along with Marc Cosentino’s book were very useful in preparing (I had no one to practice cases with) – thanks for putting up such a profusion of invaluable material for free.

My case interview preparation methods were slightly unconventional (my circumstances were a bit different) so I would not recommend them to anyone.

Since I had no one to practice with, I did the following

  • Read a case (without looking at the solution)
  • Formulate the case interview framework
  • For each aspect in any framework write down what datachart would be needed to get more data
  • Look at the published solution
  • If I did not get the framework right, I improved on the framework and gradually turned it into a superframework.

I read around 3 cases a day but dissected them minutely. By the end I had covered around 90 cases. Am joining in a month or so !!

Would like to subscribe to your “Survival Newsletter”, if you could send me the link.

My Comments:

Congratulations on passing the McKinsey case interview and securing a job offer. Also here’s the link to my newsletter on how to thrive as a new consultant (note: I generally try to aim HIGHER than just surviving ?

Once again, congratulations and welcome to the McKinsey extended family.