mckinsey & company case study

McKinsey Case Interview & PEI - 6 Things You Need to Know

• Last Updated January, 2024

Rebecca Smith-Allen

Former McKinsey Engagement Manager

If you’re interested in a career in management consulting, McKinsey & Company is probably on your list of firms to apply to. It’s the oldest consulting firm, established in 1926 by James McKinsey, a University of Chicago professor and expert in management accounting.

Today, the firm employs 30 thousand professionals working in 130 cities around the world. McKinsey regularly ranks at the top of lists of strategy consulting firms and is hired by businesses, governments, and non-profit organizations to help solve their toughest problems.

It’s difficult to get a job offer from McKinsey.

Like its top management consulting competitors, Bain and BCG, McKinsey typically hires only 1% of candidates who apply. In particular, McKinsey case interviews are tough to crack…but not impossible.

If you’re interested in trying to beat the odds, this article will tell you what you need to know to succeed. We’ll tell you:

What’s different about McKinsey,

6 things candidates recruiting with McKinsey should know,

We’ll provide a mock McKinsey case interview video, and

Provide tips on acing your McKinsey interview.

Let’s get started!

What’s Different About McKinsey? 6 Things Candidates Should Know

1. consultants are hired for either the generalist track or a specialist track.

Generalists at McKinsey are consultants who could be staffed to help clients in any industry and dealing with any type of business problem. Specialists are consultants with a particular area of expertise.

Areas of specialization within McKinsey  include digital and advanced analytics, marketing and sales, business turn around, operations,  software development and design, and implementation.

2. Consultants Work On-Site At The Client 4 Days A Week.

Most consultants travel a lot and at McKinsey, this is definitely the case. Consider whether regular plane flights and hotel stays are right for you.

3. McKinsey Cases Are Interviewer-Led Rather Than Candidate-Led.

Candidates are still expected to identify key issues to be addressed to solve the business problem presented by their interviewer and outline a plan to explore these issues. After they do that, their McKinsey interviewer is likely to tell the candidate which issue they’d like to discuss first. Other management consulting firms, like Bain and BCG typically let candidates steer their case interview.

4. Interviewers Assess Fit As Part Of Every Interview With Personal Experience Interview (PEI) Questions.

While all strategy firms ask candidates Consulting Behavioral Interview Questions  to assess their fit with their firm, many have one interviewer focus entirely on fit while others focus entirely on a case study question. 

McKinsey interviewers split their interview time between the case and PEI in every interview.

5. McKinsey Looks For Personal Impact And Entrepreneurial Drive In Candidates.

This is in addition to the structured problem solving and leadership skills that McKinsey, as well as other top consulting firms, look for in candidates.

6. Mckinsey Recruiting Uses Solve - a Gamified Digital Assessment.

McKinsey’s Solve Game was launched to broaden the firm’s reach to find the best talent regardless of geography as well as provide deeper insight into candidates’ problem-solving skills.

Keep reading for a deeper dive into these topics.

Generalist versus Specialist Track Roles

When the management consulting industry was first founded, simply having an MBA and expertise in solving business problems was enough to set a consultant apart. Consultants hired by McKinsey could expect to be staffed on a case in any industry and solving any type of problem.

To help clients solve these types of business problems effectively, McKinsey hires people with years of experience in functional specialties. These include advanced analytics, marketing and sales, business turn around, operations, software development and design, and implementation.

Specialists work alongside generalists on projects to leverage their functional expertise across the work of the team. The specialist practices are growing faster than generalist roles and get fewer applications, so if you have the right kind of expertise and apply to the practice, you may have a better chance of landing an interview.

How McKinsey Interviews Differ from Bain and BC

There are two main ways that McKinsey’s interviews differ from those of other top management consulting firms. McKinsey uses interviewer-led case interviews while other firms use candidate-led case interviews.

In the “fit” portion of the interview, McKinsey uses the personal experience interview and each interviewer you meet with in all rounds will assess fit.

Interviewer-led Cases

At the start of any McKinsey case study, candidates need to go through 4 phases to solve the business problem the interviewer has given them in a structured manner: the opening, structure, analysis, and closing. 

In a candidate-led case interview, candidates will pick which part of the problem they want to dive into first and proceed with it. In McKinsey’s interviewer-led cases, the interviewer will pick the first part of the business problem they want the candidate to address.

Is the interviewer-led case interview easier or harder than the candidate-led one?

If you’ve structured the business problem well, breaking the problem down into the MECE  issues that require further analysis, it should not matter who picks which aspect of the problem to address first. What is helpful is knowing what to expect in your case interview so that you don’t start down one path just to be redirected by your McKinsey interviewer.  You don’t want anything to throw you in the middle of your case!

For more information on these 4 phases of answering a case interview question, see  Case Interview Prep .

Behavioral Interview Questions - The McKinsey PEI

As mentioned above, fit or personal experience interview (PEI) questions are part of every McKinsey interview. 

How else is the PEI different?

While other top management consulting firms focus on bringing the best creative problem-solving to their clients’ problems (BCG is notable here), McKinsey is interested in candidates’ personal impact and entrepreneurial spirit.

McKinsey interviewers look for these characteristics in answers to PEI questions. Because of this, it’s good to have some insight into why the firm thinks these characteristics are important.

Personal Impact

McKinsey says this about personal impact on its career website:

McKinsey does not want to create PowerPoint presentations with elegant solutions that sit on an executive’s shelf, not implemented.

Personal impact means that McKinsey consultants work shoulder-to-shoulder, on-site with client executives, developing solutions that don’t just solve a business problem in theory but also do it in practice. This can require facing resistance to change in the client’s organization head-on and persuading people to reassess long-held beliefs.

During the PEI, questions like the following will be asked to assess personal impact:

•   Tell me about a team you worked on when you needed to change someone’s mind on a topic that was important to them, or
•   Tell me about a time when you needed to rely on your communication skills to solve a difficult interpersonal situation.

This belief that personal impact is key to developing an implementable solution is what drives McKinsey consultants to spend 4 days a week on client site.

Entrepreneurial Drive

McKinsey says this about entrepreneurial drive on its career website:

McKinsey doesn’t hire consultants who can only implement solutions they’ve seen in previous businesses. They want people who are willing to try new things, take solutions to new industries or new types of problems.

The McKinsey problem solving approach treats each client problem as unique. Each solution should push thinking about best-practices.

In addition to personal impact and entrepreneurial drive, McKinsey also assesses leadership using the PEI. We won’t address this in detail because this is similar to other consulting firms, but you can find more about how McKinsey assesses leadership in our page on  McKinsey PEI Questions.

It also includes What McKinsey Is Looking For and provides a list of 11 Common PEI Questions.

Nail the case & fit interview with strategies from former MBB Interviewers that have helped 89.6% of our clients pass the case interview.

The McKinsey Interview Process - Traditional and Recent Changes

The traditional recruiting process.

For years, McKinsey focused on a group of core schools to find new analyst (undergraduate hires) and associate (MBA hires) candidates. 

While the firm now recruits from a broader set of schools as well as more diverse candidates, recruiting at these core schools still starts in much the same way. McKinsey consultants conduct on-campus presentations and coffee chats to talk to potential candidates about what it’s like to work in the management consulting industry and at McKinsey, in particular.

If the firm hosts an event at your campus, you should attend to make personal connections and to find out first-hand if a career at McKinsey is right for you. If there are no events at your school or if you’re already employed, check out the company’s career site for articles and videos that will tell you what it’s like to work at McKinsey and what it takes to get an offer.

Candidates submit their resumes (and optional cover letters) to the firm’s recruiting department via their school’s department of career services and on the firm website. Candidates who are invited to interview typically have their first round interviews on campus.

During first round interviews, candidates meet with 2 interviewers back-to-back. Candidates who pass first round interviews are invited to a McKinsey office for second round interviews.

In second round interviews, candidates meet with 3 interviewers. Unless a candidate’s interviewers are split in their decision, second round interviews are also final round interviews.

In each round of interviews, McKinsey interviewers walk candidates through a business problem and asks a series of  McKinsey PEI Questions , aimed at evaluating their potential fit with the organization. 

The Recruiting Process for Candidates at Non-core School and Experienced Hires

Candidates from non-core schools submit their resumes (and optional cover letters) directly to the recruiting department of the 3 offices they’d like to work in.

If they are invited to interview, candidates who live relatively close to a McKinsey office will be invited for in-person first round interviews. Others will be asked to do their first round McKinsey interviews via video conference.

Candidates already working in another industry or those working at another consulting firm submit their resumes (and optional cover letters) directly to the recruiting department of the three offices they’d like to work in. They will typically have a phone interview before the “first round” of in-person interviews.

In both cases, once candidates are passed to second round interviews the recruiting process is the same as for core school candidates.

Solve, The McKinsey Problem Solving Game

McKinsey is reaching out to more candidates outside of their traditional core schools to diversify its recruiting. As part of that, it’s launched  Solve , an online game  that assesses candidates’ problem-solving skills.  Solve is both more fun and gives candidates from non-core schools a better shot at getting a McKinsey interview than they’ve had in the past.

Example McKinsey Case Interview - Video

Below, we have 4 videos in which My Consulting Offer founder, Davis Nguyen, walks you  through each segment of a McKinsey case interview from beginning to end. 

Mock McKinsey Case Interview - Opening the Case

The key thing to do in the opening of a McKinsey case study is to repeat back the question so you’re sure you understand the problem you are solving. Then, ask questions to begin to get more information.

Mock McKinsey Case Interview - Structuring the Case

In the structure section of McKinsey Case Interviews, create a MECE list of important issues you will analyze to solve the client’s problem.

Mock McKinsey Case Interview - The Case Analysis

In the analysis section of a McKinsey case study, you’ll need to do analysis to evaluate the best option for your client. This may require interpreting data from charts or graphs provided by your interviewer or doing calculations based on numbers you’re given.

Mock McKinsey Case Interview - Concluding the Case

In the conclusion of McKinsey case interviews, you’ll need to pull your analysis together into a persuasive recommendation for the client. Restate the question you were asked to solve, lay out key findings from each section of your case structure, and show how your analysis points to the course of action the client should take.

Now that you’ve watched our sample McKinsey case interview, you should be ready to start practicing for your own interviews. 

Here are 5 tips on making the most of your preparation time:

5 Tips on Acing Your McKinsey Interview

• Practice casing with another person. Answering case interview questions does not come naturally and it is not enough to practice on your own since casing requires having a dialogue. Give yourself as much time to practice mock interviews as possible by starting early.
• Record yourself during mock interviews  using your computer or phone. Study these videos to see how you can improve your performance in each phase of the case interview. Aim to make your answers more fluent and conversational.
• Practice sample McKinsey interview-led case interviews. Use  McKinsey-specific case interview examples  below to make sure you’re not just familiar with cases, but with McKinsey cases. Make sure you are comfortable with being redirected at times. 
• Brainstorm several  stories to answer common personal experience interview questions. You can find a list of these common questions here .
• Find out more about the  McKinsey Solve Game  before you take it. 

After reading this article, you should have a good understanding of what McKinsey’s recruiting process looks like and how McKinsey case interviews are different from other management consulting firms. 

Still have questions?

If you have more questions about McKinsey case interviews, the PEI, or working at McKinsey, leave them in the comments below. One of My Consulting Offer’s case coaches will answer them.

People interested in this topic have also found the following pages helpful:

• Why McKinsey?
• McKinsey PEI Questions
• McKinsey Problem Solving Game
• Case Interview Examples

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3 Top Strategies to Master the Case Interview in Under a Week

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McKinsey recruiters reveal exactly how to nail the interview and case study to land a 6-figure job at the consulting firm

• The latest salaries report from Management Consulted, a consulting careers resource website, showed that McKinsey's hires with MBAs and PhDs make a base salary of $165,000.  
• The consulting firm is working to diversify their applicant pool and bring in more hires from non-Ivy League schools. 
• Business Insider spoke with two McKinsey recruitment directors on how to nail the interview and score a spot at the company. 
• Click here for more BI Prime stories.

Top management consulting firm McKinsey & Company offers some of the highest-paying salaries for recent grads. But it's hard to land a coveted six-figure role at the firm. 

According to the latest salaries report from Management Consulted , a careers resource website catered to job seekers in the consulting field, McKinsey's MBA and PhD hires make a base salary of $165,000 — and that's not including the $35,000 performance bonus for all employees, and the 50% MBA tuition reimbursement for returning interns. 

It's no surprise that management consultants are getting paid six figures from get-go. It's been that way for years. However, the report noted an emerging trend that serves as good news for those who might not have an Ivy League degree : Consulting firms are increasing recruitment from non-target schools — this means they're steering away from relying on Ivy League universities like Harvard for hires. In fact, these companies are holding up to 20% of their recruitment slots for those with non-target backgrounds, according to the report.

McKinsey, for example, hired about 8,000 people out of an applicant pool of 800,000 in 2018. Those employees were recruited from 325 different schools around the world, the company shared. 

Business Insider recently spoke with Kerry Casey , McKinsey's director of recruitment in the North American region and Caitlin Storhaug , McKinsey's global director of recruitment marketing and communications. 

The two experts shared insights on how to nail an interview with the company. 

When it comes to the case exercise: Don't wing it

Every McKinsey interview follows a standardized process that is broken down into two components. Prospective candidates are asked to complete a personal experience interview and a case study exercise.

" It doesn't matter if you're interviewing from San Francisco, New York City, or Shanghai — the interview process is standard," Storhaug said. "There aren't harder or easier countries for you to get in." 

Every business school graduate is probably familiar with case studies. Harvard Business School (HBS) developed the case method teaching practice , where students are required to read up to 500 cases during their two-year program. Other MBA schools also adopted this strategy to prepare students for tackling real-world businesses problems.

McKinsey's case interviews, in particular, take about 25 to 30 minutes, and it's an opportunity for candidates to showcase how they approach problem solving and think on their feet, Casey explained. When you're tackling a case exercise, focus on how you would go about solving the client problem and not what you think the recruiters want to see in your responses. 

The company provided a case exercise sample and encouraged applicants to practice so that they know the exact format and the type of answers the recruiters look for. 

When you're prepping for an interview with the firm, keep those samples in mind, Storhaug added. 

Emphasize on your soft skills

One of the most common mistakes that McKinsey's applicants make is that they focus too much on acing case exercises that they fail to really prepare for the personal interview, Casey explained in an email to Business Insider. 

"I encourage them to focus also on what are often referred to as soft skills — their aptitude for collaboration, team work, empathy, and leading others," she wrote. "In the long run, those are the qualities that make for success." 

Apart from those technical skills, a management consulting job requires collaborative and relationship-building skills. Ultimately, you can't get to the problem-solving component if you don't have a track record of working well with others. 

Additionally, Casey added that the personal experience interview doesn't have to be as formal as one might expect. In fact, she wrote that the best interviews are actually conversations rather than strictly planned questions.  

This second round is your opportunity to show your attributes beyond your résumé. What are some skills you're hoping to develop with this job? What are your own professional goals in five years? 

Casey recommends sharing your own career aspirations. That way, it shows that you know what you want.

Talk about your technical skills if you have them

Technical skills are in high demand, and it's beneficial to have employees who understand how tech can impact clients. 

"While not everyone is a tech-focused consultant, of course, we see tech and digital skills being more necessary as we grow and expand into new areas," Casey wrote. "We appreciate candidates who may have expanded their knowledge to include coding, programming and other tech aspects." 

Some other top tech skills that employers want are program languages like Python, C++, and JavaScript, Business Insider previously reported.

• Main content

• The 1%: Conquer Your Consulting Case Interview
• Consulting Career Secrets
• Cover Letter & Resume
• McKinsey Solve Game (Imbellus)
• BCG Online Case (+ Pymetrics, Spark Hire)
• Bain Aptitude Tests (SOVA, Pymetrics, HireVue)
• Kearney Recruitment Test
• BCG Cognitive Test Practice
• All-in-One Case Interview Preparation
• Industry Cheat Sheets
• Structuring & Brainstorming
• Data & Chart Interpretation
• Case Math Mastery
• McKinsey Interview Academy
• Brainteasers

Case Interview Examples (2024): A Collection from McKinsey and Others

Last Updated on January 11, 2024

Whenever you prepare for case interviews, you have to practice as realistically as possible and mimic the real case study interview at McKinsey , BCG , Bain , and others. One way to do this and make your preparation more effective is to practice real cases provided by the firms you apply to.

It will help you to understand what the differences are across firms, how they structure and approach their cases, what dimensions are important to them, and what solutions they consider to be strong.

Below is a steadily expanding selection of real case interview examples provided by different management consulting firms.

Before wasting your money on case interview collection books that use generic cases, use original cases first. Additionally, use professional case coaches, who interviewed for the top firms , to mimic the real interview experience and get real, actionable feedback to improve.

Please be aware that cases are just one part of a typical consulting interview. It is equally important to prepare for behavioral and fit interview questions .

McKinsey Case Interview Examples

• Loravia – Transforming a national education system
• SuperSoda – Electro-light product launch
• GlobaPharm – Pharma R&D
• Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation – Diconsa financial services offering
• Beautify – Customer approach
• Shops – DEI strategy
• Talbot Trucks – Electric truck development
• Conservation Forever – Nature conservation

We have written a detailed article on the McKinsey application process, the McKinsey interview timeline, the typical McKinsey case interview, and the McKinsey Personal Experience interview here . You can expect similar cases regardless of your position (e.g. in a McKinsey phone case interview or interviewing for a McKinsey internship as well as a full-time BA, Associate, or Engagement Manager role).

Boston Consulting Group (BCG) Case interview Examples

• Consumer Goods – Climate strategy
• Banking – Client satisfaction
• Consumer Goods – IT strategy
• Chateau Boomerang – Written case

Bain and Company case interview examples

• NextGen Tech
• FashionCo .

Ace the case interview with our dedicated preparation packages.

Deloitte Case Interview Examples

• Federal Agency – Engagement strategy
• Federal Benefits Provider – Strategic vision
• Apparel – Declining market share
• Federal Finance Agency – Architecture strategy
• MedX – Smart pill bottle
• Federal Healthy Agency – Finance strategy
• LeadAuto – Market expansion
• Federal Bureau – Talent management

Strategy& Case Interview Examples

• Strategy& tips and examples  (case examples included )

Accenture Case Interview Examples

• Accenture interview tips and examples (case examples included )

Kearney Case Interview Examples

• Promotional planning

Roland Berger Case Interview Examples

• Transit-oriented development Part 1
• Transit-oriented development Part 2
• 3D printed hip implants Part 1
• 3D printed hip implants Part 2

Oliver Wyman Case Interview Examples

• Wumbleworld – theme park
• Aqualine – boats

LEK Case Interview Examples

• Video case interview example (currently unavailable)
• Market sizing video example
• Brainteaser (scroll to the bottom of the page)

Simon Kucher Case Interview Examples

• Smart phone pricing

OC&C Case Interview Examples

• Imported whiskey in an emerging market – business strategy
• Leisure clubs – data interpretation

Capital One Case Interview Examples

• How to crack case interviews with Capital One (includes case examples)

Bridgespan Case Interview Examples

• Robinson Philanthropy – Strategy
• Reach for the Stars – Student success
• Home Nurses for New Families – Expansion strategy
• Venture Philanthropy – Charity

Consulting Clubs Case Interview Books

Contact us at [email protected] for a collection of consulting club case interview books (from Harvard, ESADE, LBS, Columbia, etc.).

How We Help You Ace Your Case Interviews

We have specialized in placing people from all walks of life with different backgrounds into top consulting firms both as generalist hires as well as specialized hires and experts. As former McKinsey consultants and interview experts, we help you by

• tailoring your resume and cover letter to meet consulting firms’ highest standards
• showing you how to pass the different online assessments and tests for McKinsey , BCG , and Bain
• showing you how to ace McKinsey interviews and the PEI with our video academy
• coaching you in our 1-on-1 sessions to become an excellent case solver and impress with your fit answers (90% success rate after 5 sessions)
• preparing your math to be bulletproof for every case interview
• helping you structure creative and complex case interviews
• teaching you how to interpret charts and exhibits like a consultant
• providing you with cheat sheets and overviews for 27 industries .

Reach out to us if you have any questions! We are happy to help and offer a tailored program to help you break into consulting.

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Florian spent 5 years with McKinsey as a senior consultant. He is an experienced consulting interviewer and problem-solving coach, having interviewed 100s of candidates in real and mock interviews. He started StrategyCase.com to make top-tier consulting firms more accessible for top talent, using tailored and up-to-date know-how about their recruiting. He ranks as the most successful consulting case and fit interview coach, generating more than 500 offers with MBB, tier-2 firms, Big 4 consulting divisions, in-house consultancies, and boutique firms through direct coaching of his clients over the last 3.5 years. His books “The 1%: Conquer Your Consulting Case Interview” and “Consulting Career Secrets” are available via Amazon.

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• Hacking the Case Interview

McKinsey case interviews are the most difficult part of the McKinsey interview process. If you have an upcoming McKinsey case interview and are feeling stressed, overwhelmed, or unsure what to do, we have you covered.

While McKinsey case interviews can seem complicated and challenging, they can be relatively straight forward with enough practice.

In this article, we’ll walk you through a McKinsey case interview step-by-step to give you an overview of what to expect and what you should be doing every step of the way.

We’ll cover in detail:

• McKinsey interview process
• What is a McKinsey case interview?
• Why does McKinsey use case interviews?
• What do McKinsey case interviews assess?
• What is the format of a McKinsey case interview?
• How do I solve a McKinsey case interview?
• What are examples of McKinsey case interviews?
• McKinsey phone case interview differences
• How to prepare for McKinsey case interviews?
• What are recommended resources for McKinsey case interviews?

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

McKinsey Interview Process

The timeline and dates in the McKinsey interview process may slightly differ depending on whether you are applying as an undergraduate student, MBA student, advanced degree student, or working professional.

However, the overall components in the process are roughly the same. The McKinsey interview process has five major steps:

1. Attend McKinsey networking events

McKinsey typically hosts several networking events before the McKinsey application is due.

Attending these events is not required. If you have a strong resume and background, you can still receive a McKinsey interview even if you did not attend any events.

If you attend a top-tier undergraduate or MBA school, these networking events are less important. McKinsey has relationships with these schools and consistently hires students from these schools every year for consulting internship and full-time opportunities. Your resume will get reviewed regardless of whether you attend a networking event or not.

If you do not attend a top-tier undergraduate or MBA school, these networking events will be much more important. Since your school is not a school that McKinsey targets, McKinsey recruiters spend much less time looking at applications from your school. Networking is crucial to giving your resume an opportunity to be reviewed.

Similarly, if you are applying to McKinsey as a working professional, networking events are much more important. Although McKinsey hires people from nontraditional backgrounds, you will need to do the work needed to get your name and resume in front of recruiters through networking or referrals.

2. Submit your McKinsey application

After all of the networking events are over, McKinsey will have a deadline for submitting your application, which typically consists of four components: McKinsey application questions, resume, cover letter, and referrals.

3. Pass your first round McKinsey interview

A few weeks after the application deadline, you will receive an invitation from McKinsey for the first of two rounds of interviews.

If you are applying as a student, interviews will take place on your school’s campus. If you are applying as a working professional, interviews will take place at the McKinsey office that you are applying for.

Your McKinsey first round interview consists of two separate 40- to 60-minute interviews. The majority of the time will be focused on case interviews, but you will also get a few other types of questions.

4. Pass your second or final round McKinsey interview

Your  McKinsey final round interview will typically consist of two to three separate 40- to 60-minute interviews. You’ll see the same four types of McKinsey interview questions that you saw in your first round interviews.

• McKinsey case interview
• McKinsey Personal Experience Interview (PEI)
• “Why McKinsey?” question
• “Why Consulting?” question

There are three important distinctions between your first round McKinsey interview and your final round McKinsey interview.

One, your interviewers will likely be more senior people at McKinsey. This means that the case interviews you receive may be a bit less structured and more qualitative in nature. The case interview may feel more like a discussion where you and the interviewer are discussing your opinions and ideas on a business problem.

Two, there will be more of an emphasis on assessing your fit with the firm. The first round interview is primarily used as a screener to determine whether or not you can solve case interviews effectively and whether or not you have the potential to be a great consultant.

Final round interviews will also continue to assess this, but interviewers will also be determining whether or not you would be a great fit with the office. Are you coachable and easy to work with? Are you collaborative? These are a few of the qualities that interviewers want to see.

Three, your interviewers may read the notes that your interviewers wrote during your McKinsey first round interview. If there was a particular area of the case interview that you struggled with, interviewers may want to test you again on it to make sure that it is not a significant weakness.

5. Receive your McKinsey Offer

After finishing your final round interview, all you have left to do is to wait for your McKinsey offer. McKinsey typically calls candidates to tell them that they are being extended a job offer before emailing them.

Some candidates receive a phone call with good news on the same day of their final round interview. Most candidates receive their call within a few days.

If you have not heard back from McKinsey after a few days, that does not necessarily mean that you did not receive a McKinsey offer. Sometimes, you may be on the borderline of receiving an offer and McKinsey would like to finish interviewing other people before deciding whether or not to give you an offer.

Be patient on waiting for McKinsey to get back to you. If you have not heard back in a week, you can send a follow-up email with the recruiter to ask if there are any updates.

When you finally get your call and offer letter, all that is left to do is sign to secure your job at McKinsey!

What is a McKinsey Case Interview?

A McKinsey case interview , also known as a “case” for short, is a 30 to 45-minute exercise in which you and the interviewer work together to develop a recommendation or answer to a business problem.

These business problems can be anything that real companies face:

• How can Uber increase its profitability?
• What can Netflix do to increase customer retention?
• How should Tesla price its new electric vehicle?
• Where should Disney open another Disneyland theme park?

McKinsey case interviews simulate what the consulting job will be like by placing you in a hypothetical business situation. Cases simulate real business problems that consulting firms solve for their clients. Many McKinsey case interviews are based on actual projects that interviewers have worked on.

While McKinsey consulting projects typically last between 3 to 9 months, McKinsey case interviews condense solving the business problem into just 30 to 45 minutes.

McKinsey case interviews can cover any industry, including retail, consumer packaged goods, financial services, energy, education, healthcare, government, and technology.

They can also cover a wide range of business situations, including entering a new market, launching a new product, acquiring a company, improving profitability, and growing revenues.

Although McKinsey case interviews cover a wide range of industries and business situations, no technical or specialized knowledge is needed.

Why Does McKinsey Use Case Interviews?

McKinsey uses case interviews because they are the best way for McKinsey to predict which candidates will make the best consultants. McKinsey case interviews do not predict this perfectly, but they come quite close. Assessing candidates based only on their McKinsey resume is not sufficient. 

Since McKinsey case interviews simulate the consulting job by placing you in a hypothetical business situation, McKinsey interviewers use case interviews to see how you would perform as a hypothetical consultant.

Many of the skills and qualities needed to successfully complete a case interview are the same skills and qualities needed to successfully finish a McKinsey consulting case project.

Case interviews also give you a sense of whether you would like the consulting job at McKinsey.

If you find case interviews interesting and exciting, you’ll likely enjoy consulting and working at McKinsey. If you find case interviews dull and boring, consulting may not be the best profession for you.

What Do McKinsey Case Interviews Assess?

McKinsey case interviews assess five different qualities or characteristics.

All of these five qualities can be assessed in just a 30 to 45-minute McKinsey case interview. This is what makes case interviews so effective in assessing consulting candidates.

1. Logical, structured thinking

Consultants need to be organized and methodical in order to work efficiently.

• Can you structure complex problems in a clear, simple way?
• Can you take tremendous amounts of information and data and identify the most important points?
• Can you use logic and reason to make appropriate conclusions?

2. Analytical problem solving

Consultants work with a tremendous amount of data and information in order to develop recommendations to complex problems.

• Can you read and interpret data well?
• Can you perform math computations smoothly and accurately?
• Can you conduct the right analyses to draw the right conclusions?

3. Business acumen

A strong business instinct helps consultants make the right decisions and develop the right recommendations.

• Do you have a basic understanding of fundamental business concepts?
• Do your conclusions and recommendations make sense from a business perspective?

4. Communication skills

Consultants need strong communication skills to collaborate with teammates and clients effectively.

• Can you communicate in a clear, concise way?
• Are you articulate in what you are saying?

5. Personality and cultural fit

Consultants spend a lot of time working closely in small teams. Having a personality and attitude that fits with the team makes the whole team work better together.

• Are you coachable and easy to work with?
• Are you pleasant to be around?

What is the Format of a McKinsey Case Interview?

Although there is a wide range of different cases you could be asked to solve, all McKinsey case interviews follow the same progression.

• Understanding the case background : the interviewer will provide you information on who the company or client is, what their business problem is, and any other relevant context needed for the case
• Asking clarifying questions : you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions to confirm your understanding of the case
• Structuring a framework : you’ll create and present a framework to the interviewer that organizes your thoughts and identifies the different areas or key questions you’d like to further investigate
• Starting the case : the interviewer will ask either a quantitative or qualitative question for you to answer
• Solving quantitative problems : the interviewer may ask you to perform math calculations, such as calculating profit, breakeven , or analyzing charts and graphs 
• Answering qualitative questions : the interviewer may ask business judgment questions to assess your business acumen and intuition
• Delivering a recommendation : the interviewer will ask you for your final overall recommendation for the case.

It is worth noting that while most consulting firms opt for a candidate-led interview approach, where the interviewee takes the lead in navigating a case, McKinsey stands out with its interviewer-led format .

In McKinsey's interviewer-led approach, the interviewer plays a more active role in guiding the conversation. 

Rather than the candidate taking charge of the case, the interviewer presents the business problem and directs the discussion. 

This approach aligns with McKinsey's emphasis on teamwork, collaboration, and adaptability, skills crucial in the world of consulting. By simulating the client-consultant interaction, this approach helps assess how candidates handle challenges in real-time discussions.

How Do I Solve a McKinsey Case Interview?

Below, we’ll walk through the seven steps of a McKinsey case interview that was presented in the previous section to show you how you should solve a McKinsey case interview.

1. Understanding the case background

The case interview will begin with the interviewer giving you the case background information. Let’s say that the interviewer reads you the following: 

Interviewer : Our client, Coca-Cola, is a large manufacturer and retailer of non-alcoholic beverages, such as sodas, juices, sports drinks, and teas. They have annual revenues of roughly $30 billion and an operating margin of roughly 30%. Coca-Cola is looking to grow and is considering entering the beer market in the United States. Should they enter?

As the interviewer reads this, take notes. It is important to understand what the objective of the case is and keep track of information.

One strategy for taking notes effectively is to turn your paper landscape and draw a vertical line to divide your paper into two sections. The first section should be roughly two-thirds of the page while the second section will be one-third of the page.

Take notes in the second section of your page.

After the interviewer finishes giving the case background information, confirm that you understand the situation and objective. Provide a concise synthesis like the following:

You : To make sure I understand correctly, our client, Coca-Cola, is a large manufacturer and retailer of non-alcoholic beverages. They are looking to grow and our objective is to determine whether or not they should enter the U.S. beer market.

Interviewer : That sounds right.

Make sure your synthesis is concise. You do not want to regurgitate verbatim everything that the interviewer has said. Only mention the most important pieces of information.

You should also make sure you verify the objective of the case. Answering or solving the wrong case objective is the quickest way to fail a case interview.

2. Asking clarifying questions

Next in the case interview, you’ll have the opportunity to ask questions before you begin thinking about how to solve the case.

At this point, only ask questions that are critical for you to fully understand the case background and objective. You’ll be able to ask more questions later.

You might ask a few questions like the following:

You : Is Coca-Cola looking to specifically grow revenues or profits?

Interviewer : Coca-Cola wants to grow profits.

You : Is there a particular financial goal or metric Coca-Cola is trying to reach within a certain time frame?

Interviewer : They are looking to grow annual profits by $2 billion within 5 years.

You : Great. Those are all the immediate questions I have for now.

3. Structuring a framework

After you understand the case background and objective of the case interview, lay out a framework of what areas you want to look into in order to answer or solve the case.

A case interview framework is simply a tool that helps you structure and break down complex problems into simpler, smaller components. Think of a framework as brainstorming different ideas and organizing them into different categories.

When creating a framework, it is completely acceptable to ask the interviewer for a few minutes of silence to write out a framework.

You : Would you mind if I take a few minutes to structure my thoughts and develop a framework to tackle this case?

Interviewer : Of course, go ahead.

For this case example, what do you need to know in order to help Coca-Cola decide whether or not they should enter the beer market?

You might brainstorm the following questions:

• Does Coca-Cola know how to produce beer?
• Would people buy beer made by Coca-Cola?
• Where would Coca Cola sell its beer?
• How much would it cost to enter the beer market?
• Will Coca-Cola be profitable from doing this?
• How can Coca-Cola outcompete competitors?
• What is the market size of the beer market?

This is not a very structured way of tackling the case, so organize these ideas into a framework that has 3 – 4 broad areas, also called “buckets”, that you want to investigate.

An easy way to develop these buckets is to ask yourself, what 3 – 4 things must be true for you to 100% recommend that Coca-Cola should enter the beer market.

In an ideal world. These four things would need to be true:

• The beer market is an attractive market with high profit margins
• Competitors are weak and Coca-Cola will be able to capture significant market share
• Coca-Cola has the capabilities to produce an outstanding beer product
• Coca-Cola will be extremely profitable

You can rephrase these points to be the broad categories in your framework.

Next, let’s add a few bullets under each category to give more detail on exactly what information we need to know to decide whether Coca-Cola should enter the beer market.

This entire process of brainstorming ideas and developing a structured framework should only take a few minutes.

For a complete guide on how to create tailored and unique frameworks for each case, check out our article on case interview frameworks .

Now that you have your framework, turn your paper to face the interviewer and walk them through it.

You : To decide whether or not Coca-Cola should enter the market, I want to look into four main areas.

One, I want to look into the beer market attractiveness. Is this an attractive market to enter? I’d want to look into areas such as the market size, growth rate, and profit margins.

Two, I want to look into the beer competitive landscape. Is this market competitive, and will Coca-Cola be able to capture meaningful market share? I want to look into questions such as the number of competitors, how much market share each competitor has, and whether competitors have any competitive advantages.

Three, I want to look into Coca-Cola’s capabilities. Do they have the capabilities to succeed in the beer market? I want to look into things such as whether they have the expertise to produce beer, whether they have the distribution channels to sell beer, and whether there are any existing synergies they can leverage.

Four, I want to look into expected profitability. Will Coca-Cola be profitable from entering the beer market? I want to look into areas such as expected revenues, expected costs, and how long it would take to break even.

The interviewer might ask a few questions on your framework, but will otherwise indicate whether they agree or disagree with your approach.

4. Starting the case

McKinsey case interviews are interviewer-led. So, the interviewer will propose which area of your framework they would like to dive deeper into. They might say something like the following:

Interviewer : Your framework makes sense to me. Why don’t we start by estimating the size of the U.S. beer market.

5. Solving quantitative problems

Expect to perform calculations and analyze charts and graphs during your case interview.

Market sizing questions are one type of quantitative question you may get asked. Let’s say the interviewer asks you:

Interviewer : What is the market size of beer in the U.S.?

Most candidates jump right into the math, stating the U.S. population and then performing various calculations. Doing math without laying out a structure often leads to making unnecessary calculations or reaching a dead-end.

Laying out an upfront approach helps avoid these mistakes and demonstrates that you are a logical, structured thinker.

For this market sizing problem, you could structure your approach in the following way:

• Start with the U.S. population
• Estimate the percentage that are legally allowed to drink alcohol
• Estimate the percentage that drink beer
• Estimate the frequency in which people drink beer
• Estimate the average price per can or bottle of beer

Multiplying these steps together gives you the answer. By laying out an approach up front, the interviewer can easily understand how you are thinking about the problem. With the right structure, the rest of the problem is simple arithmetic.

Sometimes the interviewer will give you numbers to use for these calculations. Other times, you’ll be expected to make assumptions or estimates.

When performing your calculations, make sure to do them on a separate sheet of paper. Calculations often get messy and you want to keep your original paper clean and organized.

A sample answer to this question could look like this:

You : To estimate the market size of beer in the U.S., I’m going to start with the U.S. population. Then, I’ll estimate the percentage that are eligible to drink alcohol. I’ll then estimate the percentage of the remaining population that drinks beer.

If we take this and multiply it by the frequency in which people drink beer and the average price per can or bottle of beer, we will find an estimate for the market size. 

Does this approach make sense to you?

Interviewer : Makes sense to me.

You : Great. I’ll assume the U.S. population is 320M people. Assuming the average life expectancy is 80 years old and an even distribution of ages, roughly 75% of the population can legally drink alcohol.

This gives us 240M people. Of these, let’s assume 75% of people drink beer. That gives us 180M beer drinkers.

Let’s say on average, a person drinks five beers a week, or roughly 250 beers per year, assuming roughly 50 weeks per year.

This gives us 180M * 250 = 45B cans or bottles of beer.

Assuming the average can or bottle of beer costs $2, this gives a market size of $90B.

You should not only answer the question, but tie the answer to the case objective.

In other words, how does knowing the U.S. market size of beer help you decide whether or not Coca-Cola should enter the market?

You could say something like the following:

You : Given that Coca-Cola has annual revenues of $30B, a $90B beer market represents a massive opportunity. The market size makes the beer market look attractive, but I’d like to understand if beer margins are typically high and determine how much market share Coca-Cola could realistically capture.

6. Answering qualitative questions

In addition to asking quantitative questions during the case interview, the interviewer will also ask qualitative questions.

One type of qualitative question you could get asked are brainstorming questions. For example, the interviewer might ask:

Interviewer : What are the barriers to entry in the beer market?

Most candidates answer by listing ideas that immediately come to mind:

• Brewing equipment
• Beer production expertise
• Distribution channels

This is a highly unstructured way of answering the question. Make sure to use a simple structure to organize your thoughts.

A simple structure, such as thinking about barriers to entry as either economic barriers or non-economic barriers, helps facilitate brainstorming and demonstrates logic and structure.

With this structure, you might come up with the following answer:

You : I’m thinking of barriers to entry as economic barriers and non-economic barriers. Economic barriers include things such as equipment, raw material, and other capital. Non-economic barriers include: beer brewing expertise, brand name, and distribution channels.

Looking at these barriers, I think it will take Coca-Cola a lot of work to overcome these barriers. While Coca-Cola does have a brand name and distribution channels, they lack beer brewing expertise and would have to buy a lot of expensive equipment and machinery. These barriers make entering the beer market difficult.

7. Delivering a recommendation

You’ve done a ton of work so far in the case interview and now it is time to put everything together into a recommendation.

Throughout the interview, you should have been making notes of key takeaways after each question you answer.

Take a look at the key takeaways you’ve accumulated so far and decide whether you want to recommend entering the beer market or not entering the beer market:

• The U.S. beer market size is $90B compared to Coca-Cola’s annual revenue of $30B
• The beer market profit margins are 10% compared to Coca-Cola’s average margin of 30%
• The beer market is highly concentrated across all categories
• Barriers to entry are moderate
• There are some synergies with existing production

There is no right or wrong recommendation, as long as you support your recommendation with reasons and evidence.

Regardless of what stance you take, make sure you have a firm recommendation. You do not want to be flimsy and switch back and forth between recommending entering the market and not entering the market.

Secondly, make sure your recommendation is clear and concise. Use the following structure:

• Clearly state what your recommendation is
• Follow that with the 2 - 3 reasons that support your recommendation
• State what potential next steps would be to further validate your recommendation

The conclusion of the case might look like the following:

Interviewer : Let’s say that you bump into the CEO of Coca-Cola in the elevator. He asks you what your preliminary recommendation is. What do you say?

You : I recommend that Coca-Cola should not enter the U.S. beer market for the following three reasons.

One, although the market size is fairly large at $90B, the margins for beer are just 10%, significantly less than Coca-Cola’s overall operating margin of 30%.

Two, the beer market is very competitive. In all beer segments, market share is concentrated among a few players, which implies high barriers to entry. Coca-Cola lacks beer brewing expertise to produce a great product that existing incumbents have.

Three, there are not that many production synergies that Coca-Cola can leverage with its existing products. Coca-Cola would need to buy new equipment, source new raw materials, and provide new training to employees, which will be time-consuming and costly.

For next steps, I want to look into Coca-Cola’s annual expected profits if they were to enter the U.S. beer market. I hypothesize that they will be unable to achieve an increase in annual profits of $2B within five years, but I’d like to confirm this through further analysis.

What are Examples of McKinsey Case Interviews?

The best place to find examples of McKinsey case interviews is on their official website. There, they have provided four case interview examples that you can practice along with:

• Diconsa case interview practice :   Non-profit case focused on deciding whether to leverage a chain of convenience stores to deliver basic financial services to inhabitants of rural Mexico. Great practice case for the non-profit sector.
• GlobaPharm case interview practice :  Acquisition case focused on deciding whether a large pharmaceutical company should acquire a smaller startup. This case has very difficult math calculations that you can practice.
• Electro-light case interview practice :  New product launch case focused on deciding whether a beverage company should launch a new sports drink. Outstanding case to practice interpreting various charts and graphs.
• National Education case interview practice : Non-profit case focused on helping an Eastern European country’s Department of Education improve their school system. Another great practice case for the non-profit sector.
• Beautify case interview practice : Evaluate whether a beauty products company should be training in-store beauty consultants in the use of virtual channels to connect with customers
• Talbot trucks case interview practice : Determine whether to invest in the production and sale of electric trucks
• Shops corporation case interview practice : Improve internal diversity, equity, and inclusion for a retail company
• Conservation forever case interview practice : Prioritize large-scale biodiversity protection projects for a conservation NGO

We have videos that walk through the first two McKinsey case examples.

For more McKinsey case interview examples and practice cases, check out our article on 23 MBA consulting casebooks with 700+ free practice cases .

Many of the casebooks that MBA consulting clubs put together compile previous cases given by consulting firms, including McKinsey.

McKinsey Phone Case Interview Differences

The McKinsey phone interview consists primarily of a slightly shorter, 30-minute case interview. 

The major differences between a McKinsey phone interview and in-person interview are that the phone interview is shorter, has an easier case interview with less depth, does not have complicated exhibits, and lacks qualitative discussion.

  1. Shorter interview length

The case interview in a McKinsey phone interview is roughly 30 minutes, shorter than the typical 40- to 60-minute McKinsey case interview.

2. Easier case interview with less depth

The case interview in a McKinsey phone interview will be a more straight-forward business problem, such as:

• Why is profitability declining?
• Should we enter this new market?
• Should we acquire this company?

It is unlikely that you’ll get an unusual or atypical business situation.

Additionally, because the McKinsey phone interview is only 30 minutes, the case will be covered in less depth. There will either be fewer questions asked during the case or the questions asked will be very surface-level, not requiring deeper dives.

3. Does not have complicated exhibits

Given that the McKinsey phone interview is only 30 minutes, there will likely not be time for the interviewer to hand you several different exhibits with complicated charts and graphs. You’ll likely be given a simpler quantitative problem to solve.

4. Lacks qualitative discussion

In a typical case interview, the interviewer will ask a few qualitative questions to start a discussion to assess your business acumen.

Given that the McKinsey phone interview is only 30 minutes, there will likely only be enough time for you to solve the main quantitative problem and perhaps briefly answer one qualitative question.

Therefore, you’ll be less tested on business knowledge and principles during the McKinsey phone interview.

How to Prepare for McKinsey Case Interviews

There are seven steps to preparing for McKinsey case interviews.

1. Understand what a case interview is

The first step in preparing for McKinsey case interviews is to understand exactly what case interviews are.

When you are familiar with what case interviews are, it is important to know what a great McKinsey case interview performance looks like.

Knowing what a great McKinsey case interview performance looks like will facilitate how quickly you learn case interview strategies in the next step.

Before continuing onto the next step, you should be familiar with:

• The overall objective of a case interview
• The structure and flow of a case interview
• The types of questions you could get asked
• What a great case interview performance looks like

2. Learn the right strategies

Now that you have sufficient background knowledge, the next step in preparing for McKinsey case interviews is to learn the right strategies to build good case interview habits.

It is much more effective to learn the right case strategies the first time than to learn poor strategies and try to correct them later.

The quickest, most efficient way to learn these strategies is to go through our Comprehensive Case Interview Course .

If you prefer reading case interview prep books instead, the three I recommend are:

• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook
• Case Interview Secrets

Hacking the Case Interview provides strategies on exactly what to do and what to say in every step of the case interview. It is a concise and straight to the point guide. I recommend this book as the first book to read for beginners.

Case Interview Secrets teaches core concepts such as the issue tree , drill-down analysis, and a hypothesis driven approach. It illustrates these concepts through stories and anecdotes. If you have read Hacking the Case Interview, I recommend also reading this book to get perspectives from a second author. Check out our full review of Case Interview Secrets .

Case in Point provides a ton of specific and complex frameworks. However, you likely won’t be using many of these in an actual case interview because many of them are overly complex and specific. If you have time, it may be useful to skim through this book. Check out our full review of Case in Point .

At the bare minimum, read either the first or second book. If you have the time, read the first two books so that you can get strategies from two different authors.

Make sure to spend sufficient time learning the right strategies before starting to practice cases. It is ineffective to practice cases if you have no idea what strategies to practice and refine.

Before moving onto the next step, you should at least have strategies for the following parts of a case interview:

• Developing unique and tailored frameworks
• Solving quantitative problems
• Answering qualitative questions
• Delivering a recommendation

3. Practice 3-5 cases by yourself

Once you have learned the right strategies, the next step in McKinsey case interview prep is to practice.

When practicing case interviews, it is usually better to practice with a case interview partner than to practice by yourself . Casing with a partner better simulates the real case interview experience.

However, when you are just starting to practice, I recommend doing the first 3 – 5 cases by yourself.

There are three reasons for this:

• You can get the hang of the case interview structure and format much more quickly working by yourself rather than having to wait to schedule a time with a partner
• There are many aspects of case interviews that you can practice without a partner, such as structuring a framework and solving quantitative problems. You can get much more practice working through these parts by yourself
• You may have difficulty finding a case interview partner if you are a complete beginner. Without having done any cases, you likely won’t know how to properly give a case or provide good feedback

4. Practice 5-10 cases with a partner

The next step in preparing for McKinsey case interviews is to case with a partner.

Casing with a partner is the best way to simulate a real case interview. There are many aspects of case interviews that you won’t be able to improve on unless you practice live with a partner.

When practicing cases with a partner, ensure you are spending enough time after cases to deliver feedback.

For a case that takes around 30 – 40 minutes, spend at least 15 – 20 minutes for feedback. Much of your learning and improvement will come from these feedback sessions.

Do not move onto the next step until you have done at least 5 – 10 cases and are beginning to feel comfortable with case interviews.

5. Practice with a former or current consultant

At this point, I highly recommend asking former or current consultants to give you a practice case. This will significantly help you prepare for case interviews.

Doing a mock case with a former or current consultant is highly advantageous because they know exactly how to run cases and give feedback. You’ll receive incredibly helpful feedback that your previous case partners likely missed.

If you feel that you are plateauing with your case partner, that is a sign you should do a mock case interview with a former or current consultant.

You can find former or current consultants among:

• People you met during the consulting recruiting process
• Your broader LinkedIn network

I would not ask a consultant that is involved with the consulting recruiting process for a case too prematurely. Although these practice cases are not evaluative, some firms will actually make note of how well you perform during the practice case.

At this point, you will have accumulated a long list of improvement areas from all of the different people you have cased with.

6. Work on your improvement areas

In this step of preparing for McKinsey case interviews, you will work on strengthening and fine-tuning your improvement areas. Examples of common improvement areas include:

• Creating a more complete and mutually exclusive framework
• Performing math calculations quicker or more smoothly
• Providing more structure to your qualitative answers
• Leading the case more proactively
• Delivering a more succinct recommendation

Try to focus on improving one thing at a time. This is much more effective than trying to improve everything at once.

For some areas, such as math, it will be better to work independently. For other areas, such as learning to proactively lead the case, it will be better to work with a case partner.

If you are looking for more cases, look at the resources listed in step four. If you are looking for specific drills or practice problems for a particular part of a case interview, check out The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook .

Do not move onto the next step until you have finished working on all of your improvement areas.

7. Stay sharp

If you have progressed this far, congratulations! You have almost finished preparing for McKinsey case interviews.

Once you feel that you have no more improvement areas to work on, the key is to not burn yourself out by doing too many unnecessary cases.

While each case that you do makes you slightly better, there is a point when doing too many cases can create case fatigue right before your interview. Case fatigue can negatively impact your interview performance.

On the other hand, you also don’t want to go weeks without having done a case. You may end up forgetting strategies or become rusty and slow.

Once you have achieved case mastery, I recommend doing no more than 2 cases per week in the weeks leading up to your interview. This ensures that you remain sharp for case interviews, but don’t have case fatigue.

What are Recommended Resources for McKinsey Case Interviews?

To prepare for McKinsey case interviews, you can use a variety of different case interview prep books, online courses, and coaching. We'll cover each of these different categories of resources in more detail.

McKinsey Case Interview Prep Books

Case interview prep books are great resources to use because they are fairly inexpensive, only costing $20 to $30. They contain a tremendous amount of information that you can read, digest, and re-read at your own pace.

Based on our comprehensive review of the 12 popular case interview prep books , we ranked nearly all of the case prep books in the market.

The three case interview prep books we recommend using are:

• Hacking the Case Interview : In this book, learn exactly what to do and what to say in every step of the case interview. This is the perfect book for beginners that are looking to learn the basics of case interviews quickly.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook : In this book, hone your case interview skills through 65+ problems tailored towards each type of question asked in case interviews and 15 full-length practice cases. This book is great for intermediates looking to get quality practice.
• Case Interview Secrets : This book provides great explanations of essential case interview concepts and fundamentals. The stories and anecdotes that the author provides are entertaining and help paint a clear picture of what to expect in a case interview, what interviewers are looking for, and how to solve a case interview.

McKinsey Case Interview Courses

Case interview courses are more expensive to use than case interview prep books, but offer more efficient and effective learning. You’ll learn much more quickly from watching someone teach you the material, provide examples, and then walk through practice problems than from reading a book by yourself.

Courses typically cost anywhere between $200 to $400.

If you are looking for a single resource to learn the best McKinsey case interview strategies in the most efficient way possible, enroll in our comprehensive case interview course .

Through 70+ concise video lessons and 20 full-length practice cases based on real interviews from top-tier consulting firms, you’ll learn step-by-step how to crush your McKinsey case interview.

We’ve had students pass their McKinsey first round interview with just a week of preparation, but know that your success depends on the amount of effort you put in and your starting capabilities.

McKinsey Case Interview Coaching

With case interview coaching, you’ll pay anywhere between $100 to $300 for a 40- to 60-minute mock case interview session with a case coach. Typically, case coaches are former consultants or interviewers that have worked at top-tier consulting firms.

Although very expensive, case interview coaching can provide you with high quality feedback that can significantly improve your case interview performance. By working with a case coach, you will be practicing high quality cases with an expert. You’ll get detailed feedback that ordinary case interview partners are not able to provide.

Know that you do not need to purchase case interview coaching to receive a consulting job offer. The vast majority of candidates that receive offers from top firms did not purchase case interview coaching. By purchasing case interview coaching, you are essentially purchasing convenience and learning efficiency.

Case interview coaching is best for those that have already learned as much as they can about case interviews on their own and feel that they have reached a plateau in their learning. For case interview beginners and intermediates, it may be a better use of their money to first purchase a case interview course or case interview prep book before purchasing expensive coaching sessions.

If you do decide to eventually use a case interview coach, consider using our case coaching service .

There is a wide range of quality among coaches, so ensure that you are working with someone that is invested in your development and success. If possible, ask for reviews from previous candidates that your coach has worked with.

Summary of the Best McKinsey Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to land a McKinsey consulting offer:

For help landing consulting interviews

• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple consulting interviews

For help passing case interviews

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with a former Bain interviewer.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.

For help passing consulting behavioral & fit interviews

• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer.

Land Multiple Consulting Offers

Complete, step-by-step case interview course. 30,000+ happy customers.

McKinsey Case Interview Prep (process, questions, tips)

McKinsey interviews are among the hardest job interviews in the world. The questions are difficult, specific to McKinsey, and the interviewer can sometimes seem intimidating.

But the good news is that with the right preparation it can actually become relatively straightforward to succeed at a McKinsey interview. We have put together the ultimate guide to help you maximise your chances of success.

Here's an overview of what we'll cover:

• Interview process and timeline
• Case structure and example questions
• Behavioural interview questions (PEI)
• Preparation tips
• Specialist roles

Click here to practise 1-on-1 with McKinsey ex-interviewers

1. interview process and timeline  ↑, 1.1 one in ten interview candidates get a job offer  ↑.

First, you need to understand the different stages of your interview process with McKinsey and your chances at each step. In most countries, McKinsey uses four filters to select candidates:

• Resume and cover letter screening
• McKinsey  Problem Solving Game
• First round of interviews
• Second round of interviews

First, recruiters will look at your resume and assess if your experience matches the open position. This is the most competitive step in the process—we’ve found that 90% of candidates don’t make it past this stage.

You can use  this free consulting resume guide  and this  free consulting cover letter guide  to help tailor your application to the position you’re targeting. 

And if you’re looking for expert feedback, you can also get input from our  team of  ex-MBB recruiters , who will  cover what achievements to focus on (or ignore), how to fine tune your bullet points, and more.

After that, you must complete a difficult interview process. In a  recent interview , Dominic Barton, McKinsey’s ex-Global Managing Director, revealed that about 1% of the 200,000 candidates applying to the firm every year receive a job offer.

Assuming a 33% success rate at the four steps of the recruiting process described above, we estimate that McKinsey interviews about 21,000 candidates every year and that they extend a job offer to about 2,200 of them. If you have been invited to a first round interview with McKinsey, you therefore have a 10% chance of getting an offer.

• Filter 1 / Resume and cover letter: 200,000 candidates
• Filter 2 / McKinsey digital assessment: ~65,000 candidates
• Filter 3 / First round of interviews: ~21,000 candidates
• Filter 4 / Second round of interviews: ~6,800 candidates
• Job offers: 2,200 candidates

The good news is that the first and second round interviews are really manageable when you know how to prepare. Your interviews will usually last between 45 and 60 minutes and consist of two parts: 

• Case Interview – for 75% of the interview time
• Personal Experience Interview (PEI) – for 25% of the interview time

We will cover both types of interview questions in detail below, but let's first briefly discuss the interview timeline you can expect at McKinsey.

1.2 McKinsey interview timeline ↑

When preparing for your McKinsey case interview, it can be difficult to know when to expect each stage of the interview process. To help illustrate a typical timeline, we've created the below overview of McKinsey's recruitment schedule.  As a rule of thumb you can expect the whole process to take 5 to 8 weeks.

Please note: this is meant to give you a general overview, and may not reflect your specific interview timeline. Actual interview timelines depend on a number of factors (e.g. Experience hire vs. University hire). The below is based on the expected recruitment timelines at the University of Chicago (an MBB target school). You can find the original document from the University of Chicago here . 

Now that you have a clear picture of what to expect in terms of recruiting process and timeline, let's turn our attention to the skills that McKinsey will be testing you on during case interviews.

1.3 Skills tested by McKinsey case interviews ↑

McKinsey uses case interviews to test three types of skills that are used by consultants in their daily work:

• Problem structuring and maths skills
• Creativity and business sense skills
• Communication skills

1.3.1 Problem structuring and maths skills

First, McKinsey already started testing your maths and logic skills with its  Problem Solving Guide . This skill will continue being tested during case interviews and you will be expected to perform mental maths both quickly and accurately .

In addition, your interviewer will ask you to solve the problem in a structured way. In simple terms, that means you will be expected to solve questions with a clear step-by-step approach, that is easy for your interviewer to understand.

1.3.2 Creativity and business sense skills

Second, McKinsey case interviews are designed to evaluate your business sense and creativity. That means your interviewer will assess your ability to come up with a range of ideas that make business sense to solve the client issue at hand. For instance, you could be asked to find innovative ideas for a restaurant to grow sales, or to decrease costs.

An important nuance is that interviewers will not assess your business knowledge per se. In other words, you are not expected to have any knowledge of the industry your case will be about.

For instance, you could get a case about re-insurance and not know anything about the re-insurance industry. This is perfectly normal. In these situations, your interviewer will expect you to ask questions about the industry and will help you understand its specificities.

The only expectation is that you know basic business concepts such as revenues, fixed and variable costs, etc. We have summarised the finance concepts you need to know for consulting interviews here .

1.3.3 Communication skills

Finally, your interviewer will also test your soft skills. This includes how you communicate your ideas and interact with others. As a consultant working with clients, good soft skills will be critical to your success.

So you'll want to show your interviewers that you can communicate well. You should try to communicate your ideas in a clearly structured way, and to speak confidently and professionally. This will have a big impact on the impression you make.

Take a look at the following excerpt from one of our McKinsey live case interview videos to find out what a good, consistent approach to answering case interview questions sounds like.

As you prepare for your interview, if you'd like to learn more about the type of work and the career path at McKinsey, check out our in-depth blog post about McKinsey Careers .

2. Case structure and examples  ↑

2.1 mckinsey case study structure  ↑.

During your McKinsey interviews, you will be presented with a case study about a company facing an issue. For instance, your case could focus on an industrial facility facing a profit challenge, or a company that needs help to make a strategic decision on a new product. Cases are usually a simplified version of real projects your interviewer worked on in the past.

Your interviewer will tell you about the situation the company is facing and will ask you questions about the situation. She may also provide you with documents such as graphs and tables with figures about the company. You will be allowed to use scrap paper to structure your thoughts and perform calculations. However, you will not be allowed to use a calculator.

Most McKinsey case interviews use the following structure:

• Framework question
• Quantitative question
• Creativity question
• Recommendation

First, your interviewer will introduce you to the company’s situation and business problem. Then, the interviewer will ask you to identify the areas you would look at to solve the problem -  this is the framework question . You will then be asked to solve one or more quantitative questions, and afterward you will be expected to outline some initial conclusions. 

In addition, at some point during your interview, you will be asked a creativity question. These are usually open-ended questions such as “what other areas should the company explore to increase its online sales?”.

Finally, at the end of the case, your interviewer will ask you to make an overall recommendation for the company based on the analysis you have just carried out.

Although the format and order of questions may vary from one case to the next, you will almost invariably come across these types of questions during your McKinsey interviews and should therefore prepare for them. To find out more about the format of case interviews, check out our  Free McKinsey Case Prep .

An additional exercise we would recommend doing is to take a look at the different case interviews available on McKinsey's website . As you go through each case, you should try to map each question to the 5 types of questions we have listed above.

2.2 Differences between McKinsey and other cases ↑

All consulting firms use case interviews during their recruiting process. But McKinsey interviews are different in two regards.

First, McKinsey interviewers tend to control the pace of the interview much more than other interviewers. They will have a list of questions about the case they want to go through with you, and will take you from one question to the next. If they feel you spend too much time on one question, they might interrupt you and ask the next question.

Some people call this “interviewer-led” case interviews. At other firms such as Bain or BCG, interviewers give you more control over the pace of the interview. Some people call this “interviewee-led”, or "candidate-led" case interviews. The skills tested in both types of cases are the same, but you should expect slightly different behaviours from your interviewers.

Second, there is a lot of competition to get into McKinsey, and your interviewer will probably challenge the quality and logic of your answers more than at other firms. That being said, interviewers are instructed to always be well intentioned and will not try to “trip you up” or misguide you.

2.3 Differences between 1st and 2nd round interviews ↑

Another important thing to understand is the number of case interviews you will have and how they will differ. Typically, you will have two rounds of interviews. The number of interviews by round may vary but it is usually between 2 and 4. In total, you will therefore have between 4 and 8 interviews before getting a McKinsey job offer.

First and second round interviews are similar in format and difficulty. However, your first round interviewers will usually be more junior than your second round interviewers.

Associates (2+ years of experience) or Engagement Managers (4+ years of experience) usually lead first round interviews, while the second round is led by Partners (10+ years of experience). If you'd like to learn more about the different levels in the consulting hierarchy, check out our post on the consulting career path .

In theory, McKinsey takes into account your performance at both first and second round interviews when making final offer decisions. However, in practice, your performance during the second round carries more weight.

This is simply because Partners will have a stronger voice when the recruiting group discusses your application. It is therefore particularly important that you do well at your second round interviews.

2.4 McKinsey phone case interviews ↑

One aspect of the process that's quite specific to McKinsey is that 1st round interviews are sometimes conducted over the phone, or a video-conferencing software.

There are a few additional things you need to consider, when preparing for a phone case interview. Specifically, you should:

• Expect phone interviews earlier in the interview process
• Do everything you can to avoid a bad connection
• Pay special attention to your communication

We go into greater depth on the 3 points above, in our  article about phone case interviews.  Now let's go through a few interview question examples you can use in your preparation.

2.5 McKinsey interview questions examples ↑

One of the best things you can do to prepare for your McKinsey case interviews, is to practice with realistic case questions. McKinsey has made several example cases available, which are modeled after real-world consulting scenarios.

Important note: feel free to open the below practice cases for reference, but open them in a new tab. You'll want to keep this page open, because the sections below will help you be more strategic with your preparation, including your practice with sample cases.

You can find the available cases from McKinsey below:

• Electro-Light
• Transforming a national education system

In addition, we've put together the ultimate list of free practice cases , with materials from the world's leading consulting firms. The article includes practice case books from university consulting clubs, like Harvard, MIT, London Business School, and more.

Next, we'll turn our attention to behavioural interview questions.

3. Behavioural interview questions (PEI)  ↑

The PEI part of your interview will last about ten minutes. It is fairly different from a typical “CV interview” mainly because your interviewer will only assess you on a single topic. Interviewers at other firms tend to cover a large range of topics during a “CV interview” but that is not the case at McKinsey.

The good news is that the topics on which you will be assessed are very predictable. They are made relatively clear on McKinsey’s career website : personal impact, leadership abilities, entrepreneurial drive and problem solving skills.

For instance you could be asked: “Tell me about a time when you led a group of people through a difficult situation” or “Tell me about a time when you had to solve an extremely difficult problem”. 

Our recommended approach to prepare for these questions is to craft a story for each of the four skills McKinsey will test you on. You can then use and adapt these stories depending on the exact question your interviewer will ask. There are different structures you could use to tell your story but we recommend keeping it relatively simple:

• Context: start by giving the necessary context on the example you are using
• Problem: outline the problem you and your team were facing
• Solution: explain the solution you came up with to solve the problem outlined
• Impact: if possible, quantify the impact you had in solving the problem
• Lessons: finish by any lessons you might have learned in the process

There are two common mistakes candidates make when answering McKinsey PEI questions . First, a lot of candidates spend too much time on setting the context when telling their story. Second, some candidates forget that the question is about them.

When responding to PEI questions, focus on what you  did, and what your  impact was on the situation. This is an important step in presenting your qualifications well. When you craft your four stories you should keep these common pitfalls in mind and try to avoid them.

For more details and example answers, you should read the following blog post on how to impress your interviewer when answering Personal Experience Interview questions .

4. Preparation tips ↑

In this section, we're going to cover the most important things you can do in order to prepare for your McKinsey case interviews. Let's begin with maths preparation.

4.1. Become really confident at maths

You don't have to have a perfect GPA or GMAT score to succeed at case interview maths. However, during your McKinsey  interviews, you will be expected to quickly perform accurate mental maths. 

In order to do this, it’s essential to know the formulas for common metrics, like return on investment or breakeven point. And it’s also helpful to know a few maths shortcuts to help you solve problems more quickly. To learn more about these topics, check out our free guide to case interview maths . 

In our experience, the most successful applicants start their interview preparation by practising maths skills, so make sure you prioritise this step.  

4.2 Develop a consistent method to crack cases

One of the biggest challenges of interviewing with McKinsey  is solving cases that you’ve never seen before. Each case can be difficult, and you’ll have to perform well across multiple case interviews in order to get an offer.

As a result, it’s critical for you to have a consistent approach for solving cases. McKinsey  uses interviewer-led case interviews, which can be broken down into the following types of questions:

• Framework development
• Quant question – Data provided

If you can crack each type of question (within a case), then you can crack the overall case.

4.3 Practice cases out loud

How you solve each case is important, but your interviewers will also be evaluating how you COMMUNICATE your answers. It's important to speak in a structured way that makes it easy to clearly understand your points.

The best way to hone your communication skills is to practice interviewing out loud, and you can do that in three main ways:

• Interview yourself (out loud)
• Practice interviewing with peers
• Practice interviewing with ex-interviewers

To help you with this process, here is a broad  list of consulting interview questions  you can practice with. Practicing by yourself is a great way to get started, and can help you get more comfortable with the flow of a case interview. However, this type of practice won’t prepare you for realistic interview conditions. 

After getting some practice on your own, you should find someone who can do a mock interview with you, such as a friend or family member.

We’d also recommend that you do mock interviews with ex-interviewers from McKinsey. This is the best way to replicate the conditions of a real interview, and to get feedback from someone who understands the process extremely well. You may not have the connections to do this on your own, but we’ve made the connections for you. Book your McKinsey mock interview now .

5. Differences for specialist roles

The advice we've given in this article is aimed at candidates for general consulting at McKinsey, but much of it is also relevant for candidates applying for other roles (e.g. McKinsey Digital Labs, Implementation Consultant, Data Scientist, etc.) although as you'd expect, there are some differences.

Below, we've summarised our general guidance which will help you understand the differences at a high-level view. If you are currently in the interview process, your HR contact should be able to provide the details for your specific interview track.

5.1 McKinsey Digital Labs

Broadly speaking, there are two types of roles at McKinsey Digital Labs: consulting roles and specialist roles (e.g.: software developer).

• Consulting roles: if you're applying for an Analyst or Associate role, the interview process will follow the normal consultant interview track. You should therefore prepare for McKinsey-style case interviews, as well as McKinsey PEI questions .
• Specialist roles: specialists have function-specific interviews. For instance, software engineers / data scientists typically have a mix of technical questions (coding), and personal experience interview questions. Some of the data scientists we've worked with were also asked to solve a case in later rounds of interviews.

One of our coaches is a former consultant from McKinsey Digital Labs. We have interviewed him in the following blog post, which you can read if you want to learn more about the interview process at McKinsey Digital Labs.

5.2 Implementation Consultant

Implementation Consultant is a consulting role. As a result, McKinsey interviewers will test the same skills as for other consultants, including problem solving, leadership and communication skills.

In addition, it's likely that McKinsey interviewers will also test specific implementation skills, such as the lean and six-sigma methods. They may cover it with a PEI question, by asking you to provide an example of how you led the implementation of a six-sigma project. Or, they may cover it during a case interview, by asking you to solve an implementation-related case.

5.3 Research Analyst and Data Scientist

In our experience, the interview process for Research Analyst is quite similar to the one for Consultant. Candidates for Research Analyst roles regularly prepare with our coaches.

For a Data Scientist role, the interview process is probably quite different, including coding interviews with statistics and computer science questions.

For any of these specialised roles at McKinsey, we would also encourage you to double check with your HR contact to understand the exact format.

The IGotAnOffer team

Photo: Ed Gregory / Stokpic

Related articles:

The ups and downs of global productivity

Demographic, regional, and technological shifts all influence the current story of global productivity . On this episode of The McKinsey Podcast , McKinsey senior partners Chris Bradley  and Olivia White  join editorial director Roberta Fusaro to discuss how best to measure productivity, what’s behind reduced productivity numbers, and what can be done to ramp up productivity rates again.

In our second segment, McKinsey senior partner Tania Holt  explores the challenge that Europe faces in filling many open skilled labor jobs. The answer, says Holt, is hiring ethnic-minority employees.

This transcript has been edited for clarity and length.

The McKinsey Podcast is cohosted by Lucia Rahilly and Roberta Fusaro.

The ABCs of productivity

Roberta Fusaro: We’re here to talk about the latest McKinsey Global Institute [MGI] report on productivity . 1 “ Investing in productivity growth ,” McKinsey Global Institute, March 27, 2024. McKinsey has taken a longitudinal look at global labor productivity going back 25 years. We’re going to get into the specifics, but I did want to step back for a moment and just define our terms.

What does productivity measure and why is it so important?

Chris Bradley: It’s a very simple measure but it has a lot of complexity. The measure of productivity  is how much output, how much GDP, is generated for every hour of work. And that matters, because over the long run it reflects two things.

First, it reflects how good we are as an economy at doing stuff. Second, it’s the main way by which all of the technical progress of the world, all of the capital accumulation, has found its way into the main way that we share our wealth, which is through wages.

Olivia White: Different ways to think about this are lattes pulled in an hour or in a minute; or cars that move down an assembly line in any given period. It matters a ton because this is the only way that we can raise wages and living standards for people in a country or across the world.

Roberta Fusaro: What’s the big-picture view of productivity?

Chris Bradley: The answer is really interesting. The first thing that happened was that we had an absolute productivity miracle. Globally, median country productivity is now six times more productive than it was 25 years ago.

Olivia White: And in terms of dollars, in 1997, labor productivity measured in terms of output per worker per year was about $7,000. In 2022, that number was $41,000. The world has grown much more productive and, as a result, at large, much richer.

Chris Bradley: But, equally, it’s a slowing miracle. In other words, while we have improved productivity over this time period, the rate at which we’re currently improving productivity is slowing just about everywhere. The fast lane is going slower, and the advanced economies are going slower as well.

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Understanding inconsistencies in productivity.

Roberta Fusaro: Olivia, the report uses a highway as analogy. Can you describe what the report means by different lanes with different speeds?

Olivia White: Emerging economies are on a highway with fast and slow lanes, with immensely diverging speeds between different lanes.

So for a fast-lane economy such as Poland, if it kept up the pace of productivity growth it’s had over the past 25 years, it would reach US productivity levels within the next 11 years. And China would be there in about 15 to 16 years. By contrast, for a country like Indonesia, which has been in the middle lane, it would take 135 years. And for countries in the slow lane, such as Argentina, at its pace of productivity growth over the past 25 years, it would never catch up.

This is a highway where some economies are effectively going in reverse compared with advanced economies. Why does it matter? About half the world’s population consumes over 50 gigajoules of energy a year. This energy consumption powers productivity and is enabled as a country gets richer.

Chris Bradley: Now, in the middle lane are places like Thailand, Egypt, Tanzania, where their productivity growth is not as fast as it should be given their starting point. Remember, if you start with low capital, the incremental returns on capital should be very, very high, and you should be experiencing much higher productivity growth. It’s natural. But in this case, we didn’t see as much growth in these countries as we expected.

If you start with low capital, the incremental returns on capital should be very, very high, and you should be experiencing much higher productivity growth. Chris Bradley

This creates a Sherlock Holmes mystery of what’s going on? In the slow lane, we find parts of the Middle East, sub-Saharan Africa, and Latin America. These places live in a productivity shadow. This is one of the great tasks of the world: to move these economies into the fast lane.

One of the things we talk about in our report is a five-part formula of what it takes to get into the fast lane. We need to ask how do we get these billions of people in the slow lane who aren’t converging and move them into the fast lane?

Roberta Fusaro: What are some of the contributing factors to stalling productivity?

Chris Bradley: Let’s divide it into two sections. That’s one thing we did a lot in our report. We made sure we were looking at countries corrected for their context. And the most important context is where you start. This means if you’ve got a very basic economy where very few people live in cities and you have very little capital, the first tractor, the first freeway, the first skyscraper has a massive impact on productivity. But the millionth one, less so.

The first reason for this is good news, which is places like China and India  made a big leap forward and caught up a lot. They haven’t caught up all the way, but as those economies get closer to a fully industrialized economy, they are more and more limited by the same things we are in the West, which is fundamentally technical progress. At first, this will emulate and mostly just deepen your capital. Capital per worker, which is the stock of capital, in the US is still way higher. For example, it’s still three times higher than in China.

The US is more productive because it has more of that installed capital. But that first surge, that first bit of capital, that first bit of urbanization has a massive impact on productivity. And as you’d expect, it’s kind of an S-curve. It’s an impact that slows over time.

In advanced economies, we point to investment, but it’s a different case. Instead of surging investment, it’s slowing investment. And you might ask, why am I talking about capital when this is a report about productivity?

That’s because about 80 percent of productivity happens because each worker has more capital, more equipment. So in some ways, a productivity-rich world is an investment-rich world. Which is a good, simple framing. Because then it leads to an actionable question: how do we create an investment-rich world?

The impact of gen AI on productivity

Roberta Fusaro: The report talks about doing two things: boosting investments and boosting digital transformation. Almost every conversation that we have these days is about generative AI [gen AI]. When you talk about this acceleration and about digital transformation, what’s the link between gen AI and productivity?

About QuantumBlack, AI by McKinsey

QuantumBlack, McKinsey’s AI arm, helps companies transform using the power of technology, technical expertise, and industry experts. With thousands of practitioners at QuantumBlack (data engineers, data scientists, product managers, designers, and software engineers) and McKinsey (industry and domain experts), we are working to solve the world’s most important AI challenges. QuantumBlack Labs is our center of technology development and client innovation, which has been driving cutting-edge advancements and developments in AI through locations across the globe.

Olivia White: One aspect of whether AI and gen AI will boost productivity  is, are we deploying it and is it in place, enabling individuals to be more productive in the way that they work? But the other aspect is, are people qualified and prepared to do the jobs that are needed as gen AI, and AI more generally, become more integrated into the way that companies work?

And indeed, for people whose jobs may become less relevant as AI rolls out, are these workers being retrained? And are economies helping them find jobs that will enable them to be productive on an ongoing basis? So we can talk about the role that gen AI can play in boosting productivity. But we also need to talk about whether we’re helping with the job transitions that will be necessary to help economies and if it can happen in a way that’s inclusive and brings everybody along.

Roberta Fusaro: Chris, anything you’d like to add?

Chris Bradley: Let me talk through the waves that have happened. In the US, for example, in the early 2000s somewhere between a third and a fifth of all the US productivity growth was just from that electronics manufacturing boom. Then the second wave was that we all had ubiquitous connectivity and the internet, and then digitalization happened.

If you’re a bank, you digitized your channels, you did e-commerce, and a lot of interactions were digitized. And I can tell you where we saw that in the productivity statistics, and it’s simple: nowhere. And why is that? Well, if you’re a supermarket chain, it’s not 100 percent clear that adding an e-commerce channel radically improved your productivity.

But you had to do it. Customers wanted it. You had to duplicate two channels. So we’re in this kind of midgame where the digital revolution has partially happened. But it hasn’t yet been a productivity miracle.

Which leads us to the third wave, which is intelligent machines and genuine automation and gen AI. And here we think it’s different this time, we really do. Under most of our midpoint scenarios, within ten years about one-third of what we do now is going to be automated.

And that’s even allowing for adoption timelines and much more. This means that one-third of the stuff we do now is effectively going to be done for us. If we can redeploy that one-third, this could be a massive productivity surge.

Why do I believe that this is different from the more standard digital technologies that came with the mobile internet? It’s because gen AI is an intelligent technology that can attach itself to many, many existing activities. We keep getting surprised by what gen AI should do and we need to stop being surprised. We need to start expecting to be surprised.

Roberta Fusaro: What about all the concerns about gen AI disrupting people’s lives and livelihoods?

Chris Bradley: I think gen AI is an interesting one because it can strike fear into people. Within our lifetimes, occupations that have been with us for generations, such as entry-level white-collar jobs, won’t exist because of gen AI.

But I don’t think we should be Luddites. There are a few reasons why we should have a very open mind about this stuff. Actually, the biggest problem in economies is not unemployment. The biggest problem is that there’s not enough labor supply. And these demographic issues aren’t going away.

We need automation just to get all the things done that we need to do. And what this means is that people will then move into doing jobs that only people can do.

The impact of regulation on productivity

Roberta Fusaro: How does regulation influence productivity going forward?

Olivia White: It is unquestionable that regulation is an ingredient that matters in the productivity recipe. That said, it’s an extraordinarily complex topic. And it has aspects that can either enhance or hinder investment. As a result, even specific issues or specific regulations, if you look at them, have mixed or unclear effects. So rather than talking about regulation per se or specific aspects of regulation, it is extraordinarily important to look at potential pieces of regulation and ask things like what impact will it have on investment?

Rather than talking about regulation per se or specific aspects of regulation, it is extraordinarily important to look at potential pieces of regulation and ask things like what impact will it have on investment? Olivia White

Chris Bradley: We don’t have a view that regulation is an unalloyed good or an unalloyed bad. We come back to what needs to happen to have productivity. In the long run, productivity is prosperity. That’s how we share in the benefits of our technology progress.

There are a few channels at this point in time that seem a bit locked, that are important that regulators think about. The first one is the investment channel. We’ve got to make sure the financing and the ability to build things is easy.

Readers should think about their countries and geographies and ask themselves, “Is it easier to make and build stuff now than it used to be or is it harder?” The other one is removing all of the barriers it takes to actually diffuse this technology into people’s everyday lives.

Measuring productivity

Roberta Fusaro: Do we still have the right tools to measure productivity?

Olivia White: Many countries spend a great deal of effort to measure a variety of macroeconomic indicators, of which productivity is one, so that they really do have a very good sense of what’s happening. And some countries do a better job than others. And in some countries, it’s easier than in others just because of the facts on the ground.

If you shift and ask what’s happening at the company level, if what we’re talking about is overall output per hour worked, then that’s the sum total of what’s happening across all of the private sector plus government. Are individual companies looking at this?

The answer is that some are, and others are looking less at the overall output per amount of time worked and more in a more disaggregated way. Certain top-line indicators and certain cost indicators—would it help if they looked at these two things closer together in some instances? Absolutely. It would also help at the company level.

Chris Bradley: Productivity is an economic concept. It’s mighty hard to measure. And then you get to questions such as, how do you value better quality of life? How do you value freer entertainment? How do you value all these things? And is there a whole bunch going on in our economy that is undervalued or not valued?

I look at it quite practically. Since we’re measuring productivity in a consistent way across all these countries and across all these times, whether or not you might add or subtract a little bit of productivity for these measurement issues, the cross-country comparisons still matter.

And all this equivocation about whether we are measuring productivity correctly does not disguise the fact that productivity has slowed down. It doesn’t disguise the fact that it’s slowed down in Europe a lot and that Europe has major productivity challenges. And it doesn’t disguise the fact that in the parts of the world that don’t yet have advanced-economy status, half to two-thirds of them are not converging fast enough with our productivity standards.

The impact of demographics on productivity

Roberta Fusaro: We’ve talked about a number of different productivity factors including automation, technology, and capital investment. I’m curious about the demographics piece. What role do demographics play in this quest for productivity?

Olivia White: Most parts of the world are now aging. And that means most parts of the world are going to have a higher dependency ratio going forward. To support such a society, everybody working needs to generate more output per unit of labor because they need to be able to cover everybody. There is one counterexample to all of this, and that is Africa. Over the next 100 years or so, Africa will continue to grow its workforce and have a dependency ratio that’s actually going down.

Chris Bradley: There were more babies born last year in Nigeria  than there were in all of Europe. That’s an instant telescope to the future because it tells us what the future of the world is. The future of the world is African.

Olivia White: There are certainly parts of the world where aging has already kicked in and has started to mount the kind of challenge I was talking about. Japan is an example. Italy is an example. To some degree, Germany is an example. In most parts of the world, we’re not there yet, but we’re at a sort of “cuspy” place. And it heightens the imperative for everything we’re talking about.

Chris Bradley: Aging has an interesting impact on productivity. It seems that in most occupations, productivity peaks in a person’s 40s. And we’re still at a point where the median age in the US is about 39 years old, and that is the age of the bulk of US workers.

Currently, the median age in China is about the same as it is in the US. But by 2050, the average age in China will be 51. And we’ll be at a point where more than 30 percent of its population is over 64. In fact, China’s peak year of working-age population was 2015. So ever since 2015, the working-age population has been in decline. This matters. We looked closely at the stats to try and figure out what the demographic impact on productivity was. It’s too small to see at this point. But we know it’s big. But the bigger impact of demographics is less productivity. It’s more about not having enough workers to go around.

Looking ahead

Roberta Fusaro: What are the next big productivity issues to study, beyond demographics?

Chris Bradley: When it comes to our productivity agenda, a few things really matter. The first one is we’ve identified a very simple and essential focus that a pro-productivity world is, obviously, a pro-investment world.

So what is that going to take? We’re seeing signs of life in the US. For example, construction and manufacturing in the US are up three or four times their pre-COVID-19 levels. And this AI thing we keep talking about, which is not just a bunch of smart people sitting in a room tapping on computers—this is concrete and silicone and energy in massive proportions.

Another important angle we look at is what’s the future of globalization? One of the background features over the past 25 years has been unfettered and highly cooperative global trade. This is a time when trade grew at two times the GDP. And this was not just massively productivity enhancing; it was very good for inflation as well.

Now, it’s not going to disappear, because the world can’t work that way. We can’t work without each other. America imports 83 percent of its chips. China imports more chips than it does oil. So the world can’t work without each other.

The key to closing Europe’s employment gap

Lucia Rahilly: Next up, we hear from McKinsey senior partner Tania Holt, who says ethnic-minority  employees are the talent Europe needs to fill jobs in the region’s tightening labor market. Tania, historically, what has Europe’s relationship with inclusion been?

Tania Holt: When you think about Europe, it has a long history of inclusion. That inclusion has placed Europe as a leading region in income equality, social mobility, and social progress. Among other factors, this inclusion has benefited the companies operating in Europe, as they have had access to a healthy and well-educated workforce.

But there is a scope for Europe to go further by pursuing the inclusion of ethnic- and cultural-minority communities—which make up roughly 10 percent of Europe’s workforce—as a source of talent. We believe that this group could help close that talent gap and therefore be a potential growth driver for companies.

Lucia Rahilly: Can you talk to us about the labor market in Europe? How tight is it at this juncture?

Tania Holt: By looking at the data for EU-27, plus Switzerland and Norway, we see that the region is experiencing labor shortages overall. If we look at the data since 2020, the vacancy rate has increased by 70 percent. This means that in 2022, we had six million vacant jobs.

We also looked at executives’ perceptions. We created a survey that asked executives, “What do you experience as a barrier to growth in your businesses?” We found that labor shortages were one of the top-three barriers on the executive agenda.

Lucia Rahilly: Are there particular jobs or categories of work that are proving most difficult to fill?

Tania Holt: We looked both at what we call in the report “ low-skill and high-skill occupations .”

Let’s take the low-skill group first. What we saw was that some of the jobs with the highest vacancy rates are elementary and personal-service workers, at 6.4 and 4 percent, respectively.

The second group of jobs that saw significant vacancies was in the tech sector. Overall, we found that approximately a fifth of the vacant jobs in Europe are jobs that require tertiary education. Ethnocultural minorities are currently underrepresented in these professions even though they have similar levels of higher education. This is often a bit of a surprise to people.

Lucia Rahilly: That is a surprise. What is inhibiting employment among these populations? Are there particular barriers that you would call out from the research?

Tania Holt: We conducted a survey of nearly 4,000 employees in five countries across medium and large publicly traded companies. The ethnocultural minorities in our survey were twice as likely as their nonminority peers to report facing obstacles when securing the right employment opportunities. They cited perceived discrimination based on cultural background as among the leading reasons—22 percentage points higher than nonminority employees.

The second question we asked was regarding the challenges ethnocultural minorities face when they are employed and they’re looking to advance from within.

Fifty-four percent of the ethnocultural-minority respondents reported that they had missed out on a career advancement opportunity such as a raise or a promotion. They also reported that their ethnic background was the second-most-cited barrier for why they had missed out on that particular advancement.

Finally, the third thing that really stood out to us was inclusion. We saw that the ethnocultural minorities surveyed were 2.5 times more likely than nonminority employees to report facing biased behaviors and microaggressions  on the job. An example of a microaggression was being confused for someone else of the same ethnic minority.

Lucia Rahilly: What are some immediate steps European leaders could take to get rolling on what you described as a triple-win opportunity?

Tania Holt: It’s about having a robust ethnocultural-minority-inclusion strategy and having that strategy be driven by data. We did an outside-in analysis, and 72 percent of the largest companies in Europe do not have a strategy for this particular group.

To get the ball rolling, the first step for many companies is to sit down and put a strategy together.

I also said data was important. It’s often cited as a barrier because all the various executives want to make sure they are GDPR-compliant. 2 General Data Protection Regulation.

And so we saw that some of the companies that are able to succeed were really looking into the data and used that data to put the different inclusion initiatives together. We’ve seen a real difference in three ways.

The first one is by having employer resource groups, which is where you put the ethnocultural minorities together and provide a safe space for the group to engage, have conversations, and come up with initiatives.

The second thing that makes a real difference is having targeted sponsorship programs and leadership development programs that are made available to the ethnic cultural minorities. Having antibias and inclusive-leadership training available for all managers in the companies makes a real difference to the experience that the ethnocultural minorities are having in the workspace.

And the last thing that would make a real difference is cross-sectoral engagement across the companies. Many of the companies are very keen about engaging on this in forums through their associations because they realize that they are early in the journey. One of the things that we know makes a difference when organizations are early on in their journey is that they have an opportunity to share and learn from each other.

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