95: Stressful Interview Situations
This podcast examines the typical tell-tale signs candidates show when placed under stress in a case interview and offers suggestions on how to manage these situations. The key to managing this problem is not to reduce the stress, which may be impossible to do, but to change the way you show your stress. We also provide anecdotes on how our own clients manage, or struggle to manage, stress in their practice cases and interviews.
26 Sep 201216min
94: Consulting Rejections Are Not Equal All The Time
Being rejected from McKinsey and BCG is humbling, painful and possibly expensive exercise. The key is to carefully review your feedback since not all rejections are equal. Two people getting the same feedback must interpret them in vastly different ways: an MIT math PhD and Brown Arts undergrad both failing the PST (it has happened) need to take very different next steps from this outcome. Therefore, your unique profile must determine how you will interpret feedback. This podcast explores feedback and its meaning in much greater detail.
20 Sep 20127min
93: Taking Resume Feedback
Taking resume feedback is one of the most fundamental steps as you begin your application process and case interview preparation. If done badly, no matter how well you practice for cases, you will not get the interview. Feedback refers to two parts. First, is the philosophy around how you collect the feedback. Second, is the physical steps you take as you are collecting the feedback. Both are equally important.
14 Sep 201215min
92: How to Network with a Senior Partner
Networking with a partner is counter-intuitive. It is much easier to network with a McKinsey / BCG partner for at least four reasons. First, partners always return emails. Second, partners are generally willing to take a call just to explore your profile. Third, partners are less hung up on things like degrees etc. since they look deeper at a profile. Fourth, partners are accessible with easy to find details. That said, the trick to networking with partners is to treat them as a peer. As soon as you place them on a pedestal, you will kill your networking chances.
8 Sep 201213min
91: Networking with More Junior Consultants
We use the terms junior consultants to loosely refer to anyone at the engagement manager level and below: senior associates, associates, consultants and analysts. Our history of working with 279 clients indicates that the best results occur when networking directly with partners. There is no dispute on this point given the difference in our client base between those who networked with partners and those who did not. In this podcast we explain why it is better to network with partners and the inadvertent reasons why junior consultants will be less helpful.
2 Sep 201211min
90: Never Start Training with McKinsey Cases
This is a mistake common to most case interview candidates. They start with the McKinsey approach. This is a very, very bad idea. McKinsey cases are those were the interviewer leads the case. If you are only trained to do cases in this format, you will never learn how to lead a case. This is no small matter. The prompts and guides provided by a McKinsey interviewer play a significant role in helping you through the case and you will struggle without them. It is best to first learn to do cases where you are pointing out the areas or importance, and once you have developed this skill, thereafter shifting to the interviewer-led format.
27 Aug 201214min
89: Communication does not mean FIT/PEI
We try to get our clients to understand that they are always being assessed for fit. Yet, many only pay attention to image and communication during the formal FIT/PEI interviews and then relapse into very poor communication patterns for the rest of the case. Listeners must understand that they are always being assessed for their communication, leadership, speaking etc skills, and especially during a full case when they are under the most pressure. If you keep this information in mind, good communication behavior becomes second nature to you.
21 Aug 201211min
88: McKinsey Corporate Finance
Finding practice material for corporate finance cases is practically impossible outside Firmsconsulting. We have prepared this podcast outlining a training strategy any listener could follow should they be preparing for McKinsey Corporate Finance interviews. MCF interviews to be tough since candidates must demonstrate above-average strategy skills and a very high domain knowledge of finance, especially the ability to understand underlying concepts and adjust them for the realities of the market. We find this to be the main challenge for clients - getting to understand why a equation exists as it does versus merely being able to replicate the analyses.
15 Aug 201216min
