83: Difference between Learning and Practicing
99% of clients misunderstand learning and practicing. At its essence, you cannot practice McKinsey cases until you learn McKinsey cases. Most candidates start of their case interview preparation by reaching out to colleagues and consultants to practice cases, not having gone through the learning steps. Without a good strategy of separating learning from practicing you will simply absorb what you hear in the practice sessions and none of that is designed to teach you how to do cases. You must separate the learning from the practicing.
16 Jul 201210min
82: Sanity Checking Estimations in Cases
Many candidates forget to sanity-check their calculations in a case. That is a bad idea. Without a sanity-check there is no way to meaningfully assess the accuracy of your answer. More important, how you perform the sanity check is the key. All sanity-checks must involve the reduction of the answer to a number that you can intuitively compare to your own experiences. Unless you do this, you can never defend your answer.
10 Jul 20125min
81: Follow a Quant-Heavy Engagement
I have written this from the perspective of the partner, since I was the partner leading this engagement. Consulting engagements at McKinsey and BCG, especially, tend to be naturally analytic in nature. This particular engagement was extremely so since the underlying analytic technique we were trying to use had never ever been successfully applied to a real environment with so many "messy" data points and random events. This podcast will be especially useful to those with physics, math and computer science backgrounds who want to see how consulting firms apply very creative analyses while sticking to the strict guidelines on analytic rigor.
4 Jul 201257min
80: Consulting Career
Despite all the hype about BCG, McKinsey et al, you will only have a great career after these firms if you are astonishingly strategic in your career choices and also get promoted. If you do not get promoted you will spend the rest of your life explaining why you were not managed out - not a pleasant discussion since you will rarely be believed. This podcast explains some of the decisions you will have to make and how to make them.
28 Jun 201223min
78: How to Prepare for September
Too many candidates do their case interview preparation in August and September. While we certainly think 6 months is far to long to spend preparing, we believe candidates need to create a list of their development area and use this to decide their preparation time. No time candidates are the same and weaknesses should drive the preparation time in its totality. Choosing average based on what your friends are doing is generally a very, very bad idea.
22 Jun 201218min
77: How PhD Candidates Should Prepare
PhD candidates face three unique circumstances. First, they have to overcome the lack of available timing or guidelines for internship interviews since most thesis advisers will be unlikely to reschedule experiments and summer plans to accommodate McKinsey internship requests. Two, PhD's have certain stereotypes which they personally believe and exhibit such as they are less analytic than MBAs. Third, PhD's need to address the weaknesses consulting firms think they have like an inability to prioritize. This podcast touches on the main issues.
16 Jun 201219min
76: Case Competitions Do Not Help
One of the greatest myths is that entering a case competition will help you prepare for a consulting interview and will impress a consulting firm. Neither is true and this podcast explains why. We specifically encourage our clients to avoid case competitions if they can. If mandatory, we insist they put in the least possible effort.
10 Jun 201220min
75: Myths about Management Consulting
This general podcast describes some of the common misconceptions applicants and even practicing McKinsey/BCG consultants have about their own firms. It will be useful to anyone who wants to understand some of the broad themes and misunderstandings about the profession.
4 Jun 201213min
