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McKinsey & Company interview questions

104 questions researched across 4 McKinsey & Company seats in Generalist Consulting, Implementation. Below are 12 of them.

Seats we researched

  • Business AnalystGeneralist Consulting · graduate · 30 min
  • AssociateGeneralist Consulting · experienced · 45 min
  • Summer Business AnalystGeneralist Consulting · intern · 40 min
  • Implementation InternImplementation · intern · 30 min

12 McKinsey & Company interview questions

  1. Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a colleague at work. How did you handle it?

  2. What is your initial hypothesis and what evidence would disprove it?

  3. New case. You're advising the CEO of a magazine company who is deciding whether to sell the business or carry on. How would you structure the problem?

  4. State an initial hypothesis for the retention problem.

  5. Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a colleague. How did you handle it?

  6. Why did you choose that approach over the other options you had?

  7. How were you feeling at that point — and how do you think the other person experienced it?

  8. Looking back, what would you do differently?

  9. Tell me about a time you set an ambitious goal and had to overcome significant obstacles to reach it.

  10. Tell me about a time you had to adapt to a major change or an ambiguous situation.

  11. Give me an example of working with people from very different backgrounds to achieve a result.

  12. Let's do a new case. A team is looking at Diconsa, a government-backed network of small stores across rural Mexico. What should the team investigate to decide whether the network could and should be used to offer basic financial services to the rural population?

What a strong answer does

The questions above fall into 2 kinds. What a strong answer does differs by kind, not by question.

Behavioral8 of 12 above
Lead with the claim and context; isolate your personal action and decision; explain the trade-off; quantify the result; finish with what you learned and changed.
Case4 of 12 above
Clarify the objective; build a mutually exclusive structure; prioritize the highest-value branch; analyze with evidence; synthesize a recommendation, risks, and next step.

92 more McKinsey & Company questions

The rest of the bank — 104 in total — is asked by the interviewer during practice, so you meet them the way you would on the day rather than reading them first.

Practise McKinsey & Company questions

How these questions were researched

Every question carries a provenance grade. Some were reported by candidates who sat the round, some come from the firm’s own published guidance or a source that trains for it, and the rest are written to match how this firm asks. Each seat is studied on its own — the round it actually runs, the order it runs it in, and what it is listening for. A McKinsey & Company round is not a generic behavioural screen, and practising one as the other is how people walk in unprepared.

Falas is not affiliated with or endorsed by any employer named. Simulations are independent practice based on publicly described recruiting formats.