Meet McKinsey & Company’s MBA Class Of 2023

AN OPEN-MIND LEADS TO OPPORTUNITIES

Placing the client’s – and the firm’s – needs before their own is one way for first-year MBA consultants to attract the right attention to themselves, Kutcher recalls his first project, when he told his engagement manager that he would do anything…except insurance. Sure enough, he was assigned to an insurance project out of the gate.

“The lesson for me was that you have to be open-minded. I tell every new joiner: You have to make your own McKinsey, but be open-minded about what you’re going to do. You’d be surprised by how your path – if you keep your mind open and you’re willing to experiment – may lead you down a path you might now have expected. It may even be a much better path than the one you’re thinking about. Those experiences will make you a better consultant in time, even if you decide you don’t want to [work in that area].”

Another way for MBAs to build their credibility is connecting with the right people who’ll invest in them – an iron-sharpens-iron dynamic that makes everyone better. Early in his McKinsey career, Kutcher had identified a manager with whom he wanted to work. One day, he joined another first-year associate in introducing themselves over lunch. The manager discussed a proposal he was working on and the duo jumped at the chance to help him. After the group authored the proposal, a partner pinged the manager to say the client was onboard and he needed to line up a team. Not surprisingly, the manager already had two first-year associates in mind.

“I’ll tell you, it was unbelievable,” Kutcher adds. “He took us into this most mundane industry, but the problem was exceptional and the client and team were exceptional. I probably got more mentorship and apprenticeship than I could’ve ever wanted. As a result, it was a memory I will forever have.”

THE MAN IN THE ARENA

Alas, McKinsey’s stature and influence has made it a target. Notably, the firm found itself in the headlines over advising Purdue Pharma – an uncomfortable spot considering the confidential nature of consulting work. Eric Kutcher is quick to acknowledge that mistakes happened. However, he also points out that it isn’t indicative of the kind of work that McKinsey is doing or the good their clients are doing.

“[Our work] has had an incredible impact on the world through our clients. We don’t tell our stories because it is our clients’ stories. We want our clients to succeed, not necessarily us, in the stories they can tell, so you don’t hear about the 99% and you hear about the 1%…We know there were mistakes we made that we have to change. And we’ve changed. Like everyone else, we care about grit. Grit is the ability to learn from your mistakes and succeed going forward and we think it is a motivation for us. [What happened] feels incongruent with what you read and the McKinsey you know. For most of us, the McKinsey we know is the 99% — what we do every day to make a difference.”

In doing so, McKinsey consultants enter the “arena” says Kutcher, to paraphrase Teddy Roosevelt’s speech on the importance of stepping up and taking action. “Sometimes when you are in the arena, as the quote says, you’re going to spill some blood. It is hard to be in the arena. That is where you are going to make a difference. If you come to the firm, you will be in the arena from the first day and you will get a chance to make a difference.”

CASE INTERVIEW STRATEGIES

When it comes to how MBA students can better grab McKinsey’s attention, Kutcher starts with artificial intelligence. He anticipates that AI will fundamentally change business. From a 30,000-foot view, he wants students to bring insights around how it will transform various industries and equip individuals to do way more than they previously could. On a more technical level, Kutcher hopes students dig into the platforms and know the ins-and-outs of how they work.

“I would urge everyone to play with it, understand it, know what it can do. The beauty is it doesn’t require all the hard coding, which was a limiting factor before. A lot of things that you are seeing through these autonomous agents is that it will require what they call low-code and no-code. If I were an MBA, I would have a real point of view on where this is going to end up because I think this is #1 thing we are doing for our clients for the next 5-7 years.”

AI may be revolutionizing business by helping organizations process data faster and analyze patterns deeper. At McKinsey, however, the case interview is one bedrock that continues to shape how the firm identifies talent. Here, MBAs show how they solve problems –be it big picture issues or quirky questions (such as finding out the number of pianos owned in a particular country).

Kutcher can still recall his case interviews nearly three decades later. An engineer weighing whether to enter medical school, he completed three rounds of interviews with McKinsey, with the final round involving four different people and four different cases. The first stemmed from a New York Times article on Turkducken, a turkey that is stuffed with de-boned duck and chicken. In the interview, Kutcher was asked how he would market it. As part of the exercise, he would identify and segment particular buyers and outline marketing channels he would prioritize. In a second case – one he admittedly botched –Kutcher was directed to a New York City intersection, where there were Chinese restaurants on all four corners. One establishment – the previous leader – had been losing share for two month and Kutcher was tasked with figuring out why. In both cases, he was being tested on the questions he’d ask; the variables he’d weigh; the tools and strategies he’d deploy; and the innate creativity he’d would bring to the situation.

“What I will tell you is that you will attract someone who cares about learning and problem-solving in that moment, who engages in the problem,” Kutcher adds. “For us, the case interview is all about exposing [students] to what we do and do they like doing what we do? It does test a little bit of the analytical, conceptual, and quantitative problem solving. Ultimately it asks, are you intellectually curious and asking the right questions and shows how you approach getting underneath [the issue].”

Fast forward to now and Sofoklis Melissovas and Usama Arshad clearly made a strong impression on McKinsey during their case interviews. For Arshad, the secret is “nail(ing) the structure of your casing” – a process for analyzing the broad situation, breaking it down into its parts, identifying the options, and concisely delivering recommendations. If a candidate would ask how many cases to digest to prepare for a McKinsey interview, Melissovas would contend that they are asking the wrong question.

“It’s not about how many cases you do, but how well you understand and apply the problem-solving framework.”

WHAT THE MCKINSEY INTERVIEWER IS THINKING

Beyond casing, Eric Kutcher also emphasizes that McKinsey is evaluating personal achievements, academic performance, leadership experience, and personal growth. That starts with the resume, he explains. “Does this person have the academic experience and demonstrated the ability to succeed in a difficult academic environment? Have they done things from a leadership point of view that would be beneficial and allow them to grow in ways you might now expect for someone with that amount of life experience? Last, what are some of the experiences they’ve had that they might have learned from?

Along with these components, Kutcher notes, McKinsey also evaluates how candidates influence the people around them. “Remember, we hire people relatively early in their careers. And we give them this enormous access to very senior executives with very difficult problems. How do they influence people? How do they learn? We’ll ask them, Tell me about a leadership experience where you failed?. We’ll ask them a series of questions: What did you do?, What were you thinking?, and What did you say?. We want to go into questions like, Were they influencing through others?, Did they influence through authority?, and Did they build coalitions?. We also ask ourselves, Do they show empathy?, Do they build relationships?, and How do they deal with people much more senior than them?. We are looking for the experience and how they learn.”

Whatever MBAs do, adds Tunde Gafaar, don’t view the interviewer as an obstacle to be overcome. If anything, they represent a learning and networking opportunity. “I would tell myself that the interviewers are not there to trip you up, but to see you succeed. Viewing interviewers as potential colleagues or even friends rather than as daunting figures can really help ease the nerves and make the interaction more engaging and productive.”

With a year under their belt, the MBAs from McKinsey’s Class of 2023 have so many paths now available to them. Some may find their niche and become the experts that their McKinsey colleagues always call. Others may take an off-ramp and bring the McKinsey mentality to the c-suite of another firm. Chances are, a few are destined to lead a practice that doesn’t even exist yet. That’s the dynamic nature of McKinsey – and that’s exactly why Anna Rummel loves working there.

“I am unsure where I’ll ultimately land,” she admits, “but that’s part of why I chose McKinsey.”

Click on the links below for in-depth  profiles of McKinsey MBA hires.

MBA Graduate	McKinsey Office	Hometown	MBA Program
Bárbara Argeri	São Paulo	São Paulo, Brazil	New York University (Stern)
Usama Arshad	Dubai	Faisalabad, Pakistan	Harvard Business School
Andy Chen	Taipei	Taipei, Taiwan	Wharton School
Firas Dar	Detroit	Detroit, MI	Cornell University (Johnson)
Tunde Gafaar	London	Lagos, Nigeria	London Business School
Jourdan Henry	Los Angeles	Spring Valley, NY	Harvard Business School
Sofoklis Melissovas	Miami	Ioannina, Greece	Harvard Business School
Jessica Palffy	Detroit	Grosse Pointe, MI	University of Michigan (Ross)
Eliane Röösli	Zurich	Cham, Canton of Zug, Switzerland	INSEAD
Benno Rosenwald	New York City	Santa Monica, CA	Columbia Business School
Anna Rummel	Minneapolis	Minneapolis, MN	University of Minnesota (Carlson)
Eddie Shih	Taipei	Taipei, Taiwan	London Business School
Travus White	Philadelphia	Jacksonville, Florida	Wharton School

DON’T MISS: MEET MCKINSEY’S MBA CLASS OF 2022