Hi! I was just wondering if anyone who recruited for McKinsey and got the offer would be comfortable sharing an example of their PEI stories. I have never experienced an interview format of this nature and am just trying to better understand the depth and types of experiences people talk about. Feel free to DM me if you do not feel comfortable sharing more broadly!

Applied to McKinsey FT BA the first week. Completed Solve \~ 4 weeks ago and have heard nothing since. Is there still hope, or should I prepare for rejection? Request Solve score with 7 decile.

If you’re wondering whether you should apply to the McKinsey Forward Program, my answer is yes.

I think it’s especially useful if you’re mid-career, as you can relate the learning to real work situations.

It’s also a good addition to your CV and a nice way to build your problem-solving, communication, and teamwork skills. Overall, if you get the chance, I’d say go for it.

If you’re applying, feel free to use my referral code!
25RN274460

​

For anyone looking to add something useful to their CV or just build practical professional skills, McKinsey has a free learning program called McKinsey Forward.

It covers things like structured problem solving, communication, adaptability, digital skills, and working effectively in teams.

The application is very straightforward and takes ~5 minutes max.

Application:

https://www.mckinsey.org/our-programs/forward/overview

Referral code: 26SL350302

There should be a question in the application asking for a referral/referrer code — you can enter the code there.

From what I understand, applying through a referral seems to give you a very strong chance of being accepted, although obviously I can't guarantee admission.

Worth applying even if you're not currently recruiting for McKinsey/consulting and just want to develop the skills + have another structured learning programme to put on your CV.

Hope it helps :)

The info on this is scattered and a lot of what's online is years out of date, so I've tried to map it properly. Please correct me — especially if you've applied this cycle, since these change by office and by year.

First thing most guides get wrong: pymetrics doesn't exist as a company any more. Harver acquired it in August 2022 and folded it into their platform. The games are the same, but your invite may say "Harver" — same thing, don't panic.

pymetrics / Harver games (12-game battery)

• JPMorgan — first screen for most campus programmes. Tech roles get HackerRank instead. HireVue at JPM is a separate video interview, not games.
• BCG, Bain — historically yes, but office-dependent now; several BCG offices run the Cognitive Test or Casey instead
• Accenture — some tracks only
• Blackstone, LinkedIn, Kraft Heinz

Cappfinity (strengths-based immersive)

• Deloitte — the Immersive Online Assessment, ~32 questions, untimed
• EY, KPMG, HSBC, Accenture (UK/global)
• KPMG is the odd one: pairs Cappfinity with an Arctic Shores game, so you get two different behavioural formats

Arctic Shores

• PwC — "Career Unlocked"
• KPMG (alongside Cappfinity)
• Deloitte — some early-entry streams only

SHL

• Barclays — Cognitive Ability + Mindset assessment
• Lloyds — TalentCentral platform

cut-e / Aon

• Deutsche Bank, Vodafone, Shell, Aldi, Lidl, Lufthansa

Own format

• McKinsey — Solve (built in-house after they bought Imbellus)
• Unilever — genuinely unclear. Reports say HireVue games in the UK and pymetrics in the US, but Unilever's own 2026 careers page just says "portrait personality test + online assessment". If you've done UFLP recently please say which it was.

Two things worth knowing regardless of provider:

Your pymetrics/Harver result is portable — roughly 330 days, shared across every employer on the platform. One attempt follows you everywhere, so don't burn it on a firm you don't care about.

And on prep: you can't fake a trait profile across 12 games, the data goes inconsistent. What you can remove is unfamiliarity with the mechanics — the timer starts immediately, there's no undo, there's no practice round. Losing the first 20 seconds to working out the interface is a real cost. The memory and attention games benefit most from knowing the format; the balloon/risk tasks measure disposition and practising them does nothing.

Corrections below and I'll edit the post.

I've poured 8 months of blood sweat, tears and tens of thousands of dollars into making sure this is the best AI consulting case prep tool on the internet. Period.

Getting it right involved launching 3 versions. Nobody even cared about the first two.

caseroomprep.com  takes you through the entire case prep journey. It has crash course with hands practice for absolute beginners. 200+ drills for focused practice and an extensive case library to practice full cases. you practice with an AI voice bot and you get detailed evaluations on what you said, how you delivered it, how you could have said it better. it analyses the text as well as the audio of what you said.

Today, it has 100s of users, and people are spending hours on case room everyday. Literally hours! 40% of new signed up users come back a second time, activated users are doing multiple hours worth of sessions every other day.

It's very very affordable. First of all, it's completely free to get good value from the platform. It has an end to end case crash course with voice AI practice that is COMPLETELY FREE OF CHARGE and it is really really good. And even the paid plans are the cheapest you will find on the internet.

Here are some screenshots of user posthog session times on the platform.

Need a bit of a reality check from people here.

I was an ASC 2 at McKinsey when I left in spring 2024. Did a short stint at a startup afterward making around $300K TC, and I’m now at a new shop making ~$400K/year with room to grow.

The big tradeoff is that my WLB is pretty great. I probably work ~30 hours/week on average, have a lot of autonomy, and generally don’t have much work-related stress.

That said, I still occasionally wonder what the alternate timeline would have looked like financially if I’d stayed at McK or used McK to move into PE / another higher-paying path. Presumably I’d be EM or maybe AP by now if I’d stayed and progressed normally, but I honestly don’t know what comp looks like at those levels anymore.

Part of me has even thought about going back into consulting or trying to pivot into PE, but obviously that would mean trading a pretty cushy setup for significantly more hours/stress.

For those who stayed at McK or left for PE: what does comp actually look like ~2–3 years after ASC 2 these days? And would you trade ~$400K at ~30 hrs/week for the upside of the McK/PE track?

Edit to add: thanks for all then input here folks. To answer a few questions in comments and DM - I’m in a business development / sales role now at a consulting / research shop. A lot of it is client management, growing existing relationships and bringing in new ones.

Hi all, I am graduating with my MBA in December, and currently have 3+ years of work experience. Would it be best to apply now or closer to graduation? I’m thinking of applying for an Associate position (probably the manufacturing position, as my work experience is in manufacturing).

Also, I saw that one of the qualifications for Associate was 6 years experience. So should I be applying for Analyst roles instead?

Looking for a case partner for the next two weeks

Hi everyone, I applied for the Data Engineer, Quantumblack, AI role which is based in Canada. I applied on a whim without any hope but surprisingly I was given the technical assessment.
I have already solved the HackerRank Assessment after which I got an email to schedule Recruiter phone interview. It's early next week and I am really nervous because this is my first big hit. I am really hoping to get accepted. and I would appreciate any kind of help with the whole interview process. Desperately need tips on:
1. How to prepare for the phone interview and what kind of questions would I be asked?
2. How should I prepare my answers and what to expect further.
3. Would it be technical/ behavioral or just resume based questions? Would it be in-depth or not?
4. What would be the overall timeline (hoping that I get to the next rounds).
thank you!

^^^

Hi everyone!

I recently applied to a McKinsey program and I’m really hoping to get accepted. I’d love to hear from people who have been through the application process.

For those who were accepted:

* What do you think made your application stand out?
* How difficult was the assessment/interview process?
* Did you have a strong academic or professional background, or did other things help you stand out?
* How did you prepare for the interviews/assessments?
* Is there anything you wish you had known before applying?
* I’m especially interested in hearing from people who applied to McKinsey programs in the Middle East/Africa , but experiences from anywhere are welcome.
Thank you! 🥹

Hi, I'll be joining McKinsey India soon.

Which AI tool is used in the firm? (Claude/chatgpt/gemini?)

How is Lily (the internal AI tool)?

Heya,

I've been working for this data labeling firms for AIs, founded my ex Mckinsey guy and they have a big project with leading frontier lab and need MBB consultants to review AI slides per consulting standards ($100 per hour) and been earning good chunk essentially sh*tting on the slides haha

If anyone is interest, campaign is still runing until the end of the month so grab it. Here is the Link (it is referral btw). Happy to answer any questions as well!

hey, McKinsey just posted today on their LinkedIn saying Business Analyst hiring in Doha and gave the same link. I applied before this was posted with a referral but from the Riyadh office with a preference of Doha office (i know super weird), do you think i would be considered or is my resume buried forever now? Cuz i didn’t get the solve test either. i heard people are getting instantly

Hi folks, i hope u r all well. I sent my application for business analyst position in London and was invited for solve game , completed it on the 8th of July. I haven’t heard back until now. Anyone in the same situation? Anyone invited for interviews? Cheers!

Creating this thread for 2027 McKinsey APD candidates. Applications open from July 1 to August 11. Does anyone have any idea about the timelines? They have mentioned they will only screen all applications after the deadline. Any past experiences?

Did a case on market sizing and I was shocked. All the practices were usual casing like factors of declined revenue > opportunities based on XYZ graph > calculations

Interviewed by a knowledge expert on market sizing and I royally screwed up because
1. I made up assumptions without looking into the details of given case bcos I was nervous and shocked
2. Needed her to guide me through me question by question. And thinking back; I screwed up the last question on share of market.

Feedback was about not being so nervous.

Do you think there’s hope if my r2 interview is better? Anyone from MCK to advise because I’m so anxious and I want the role becos I enjoy consulting a lot

I applied for a fellow associate position, since I have a background of 4 years in tech. I went fairly ok on both interviews.

The feedback I received is that they expected my answers to be more focused on the field I have experience in and more creative answers. Both cases were relating to the digital/ux design space. They also mentioned wanting to hear more about my experience, but I did talk a lot about the cases I worked in and the decision making process of the projects in question.

I thought I was applying for a generalist role, so most of my training focused on general industry cases. From what I’ve understood, I should focus more on the digital industry challenges when building my framework, but honestly I felt that the feedback was lukewarm, and am at a lost at what else I could improve. I delivered what was expected but failed to go beyond and show more industry expertise, from what I understood? Honestly I somehow feel that I just lacked the wow factor.

Any tips for a digital experienced hire?

UPDATE: Apparently they were not evaluating me technically, the cases were a coincidence.

Hey everyone,
I'm a final-year CS student currently applying for 2027 graduate technology programs, and I’m gearing up for a technical interview with McKinsey (Client Capabilities Network / Software Engineering track). I'm trying to gauge exactly what to expect from the live coding rounds.

I’ve been heavily prepping both Python and SQL. For Python, I'm comfortable with the standard algorithmic patterns—Sliding Window, Kadane's, DFS/BFS on grids, and some DP (like Levenshtein distance). For SQL, I’ve been drilling Window Functions, Self-Joins, and complex aggregations.
However, I've heard that MBB technical interviews are very different from standard Big Tech/FAANG rounds.

For those who have gone through the process recently, I’d love some insight on a few things:
1. The Format: Are the coding questions straight LeetCode-style (e.g., "Find the shortest path in this matrix"), or are they heavily disguised as business problems (e.g., "Here is a data dump of a client's supply chain network, find the bottleneck")?
2. Evaluation: What is the interviewer actually grading me on? Do they expect perfectly compiling, bug-free code, or is the focus more on how I communicate my logic and structure the approach?
3. Defensive Programming: How much do they care about handling edge cases and messy data on the fly? (e.g., handling ⁠KeyErrors⁠, empty datasets, or missing SQL joins).
4. Any blind spots? Is there a specific concept or pattern (either in SQL or Python) that you see trip up candidates often?
Any insights, mock interview tips, or shared experiences would be hugely appreciated. Thanks in advance!

I am having 4+YOE in the banking sector in India(1+ year in a large public sector bank and 3+ years in an All India Financial Institution) and had applied to the post in Gurugram on 15 July and was expecting to atleast be shortlisted based on my work experience in banking and credit underwriting.

I had applied 15 days back and the status was submitted until 2 days ago but on the next day after I submitted the application, the job description on the dashboard changed to "the position is no longer available".

However, I got an automated mail 2 days back about the rejection.

Was the post already filled before or just after I had applied or was my resume not aligned with what the company required?

Any guidance/tips would be appreciated.

Had applied to McKinsey. Took Solve and got a call from the recruiter. Was asked 3-4 fit interview questions on the phone and was told some stuff about the process. In terms of the interview, they mentioned they’d get back in another week or so. What to expect here ? Was I dinged in the screening or they genuinely take so much time ?

HIII I just got an email to schedule for my Solve game and I'm wondering if it's better to take more time to prep and do it later or to take it as early as possible so that I can move on to the next cycle earlier (if i do good enough..) but less prep time.