The One Piece Of Feedback That Won Me Offers From McKinsey, BCG & Bain

As an engineer raised in a family of engineers, I had no idea what strategy consulting was until business school. Once I learned more, I was hooked: it felt like being a doctor to businesses. At Kellogg, the networking and the case practice were fun for me, which told me I was on the right track, and I received offers from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other firms.

Now, after five years as a McKinsey Engagement Manager and interviewer, and after building a case interview platform, I can see why it worked.

NETWORK LIKE YOU’RE MAKING FRIENDS

I hated my first few coffee chats. I was doing a voice-over of my résumé, then asking questions I already knew the answers to, frantically thinking: what else can I ask? What would make me stand out?
Then I realized I was going about it the wrong way. A coffee chat is not an interview. The person across from me was tired, often squeezing me in between meetings, and would remember a person, not a question. So, I started treating it like making friends, with three principles:

• I told stories, not résumé bullets. Everyone’s background is impressive, so my résumé was never going to make me stand out; a vivid memory of me would. Find your funniest stories (think of what your mom would tell your boyfriend or girlfriend at Christmas) and your most impactful work moments. Mine came from my engineering fieldwork, where run-ins with cows and bears were part of the job. It is also the best preparation for behavioral interviews: by then, I knew which stories made people lean in, and how to tell them.
• I shared before I asked. Asking a bare question hands the other person work and tells them nothing new about you. Instead, I shared a short story about why a topic mattered to me, then asked about it. People engaged immediately, because I had given them a reason to, not a random question.
• I treated them like friends. They were tired from back-to-back chats and wanted to be treated like people. Whenever they were open to it, I talked about something personal to get to know them, watched how much I talked versus how much they did, and noticed what they enjoyed. That made following up natural.

That is what made me stand out: I came across as three-dimensional, and they saw how I think. I kept building the relationships after the referral, too. Over Christmas break, two consultants I had met during recruiting had coffee with me at their office and gave me a case to practice. Their camaraderie let me be myself, so I walked into the interview far less nervous. I practiced more cases with real consultants than my classmates did, and without realizing it, I had prepared for the behavioral part too: I had told my stories so often that it felt natural. Start with your stories early; the same reflection pays off twice.

THE CASE IS A PERFORMANCE

At first, I treated every case like a test: find the answer, say it, move on. In one mock case with a consultant, built on a simple chart from McKinsey’s website, I told her the main insight, and that was it.

Her feedback had nothing to do with whether I was right. “You didn’t make a boring chart interesting for me,” she said. Then she walked me through the same chart so vividly that I could have seen it with my eyes closed, as if I could infer the history of the company.

Then I realized a case is not a test. It is a performance, and you are auditioning. From then on, I had three principles:

• I made every exhibit pop. Her standard was that you should have enough to say about an exhibit, and a strong enough opinion, to write a review of it. So, I no longer stopped at the obvious takeaway: I said what made sense given how the client’s business works, and what surprised me.
• I told a story with every calculation. Math was never my strong suit, and I even made a math mistake in the final round. So, I took my time and talked it through: what I was calculating, why, and the so what for the client. As an interviewer, I later saw why: I could only credit thinking I heard, and the right number alone will never be what makes you stand out.
• I drove the case like it was mine. Interviewer-led or interviewee-led, I ran the case the same way: note what they said, ask the most important questions, move the case forward, and ask for their buy-in.
  How I practiced

What made the difference was not how many cases I did, but how I practiced. I had four habits:

• I never memorized frameworks. I spent the time understanding how a business works: how it makes money, what drives its costs, how it grows, on its own or through acquisitions. That gave me one framework that covered any business, so there was nothing to memorize. In each case, I only had to pick the priorities for that client.- I learned each industry’s language. In a notebook, I rewrote that one framework in the words of each industry. For a grocery store, “price and quantity” became basket size and frequency of visit, with levers like shelf placement. I did the same for SaaS, manufacturing, and more. On breaks, I asked of every business I came across: how does it make money, and how could it make more? Soon I sounded natural in any sector, as if I already knew the client.
• I reviewed every case in detail. I kept clean notes, circling key numbers and insights, so afterward I could picture each exhibit and rewrite the whole case: different frameworks, more brainstorming, math. I pushed for more insights and other structures until the best points were clear. That way, I improved after every single case, and chose quality over quantity.
• I trained for stamina and switching. Before final rounds, I practiced full Super Days of back-to-back cases, learning to go straight into the next case without letting how I did in the last one follow me into the room.

START NOW

Application deadlines have moved earlier, so start networking and collecting your stories now.

If you remember one thing, make it this: neither the networking nor the case is a static test like the SAT or the GMAT. Both are alive, and you give them life by reflecting on your past and thinking out loud, so the other person can see how you think.

Today I run The Case Room, a platform for live case interviews that push back, so candidates can practice whenever they want. Practice alone did not get me my offers, though, and neither did right answers. What did was everything around them: the friendships, the stories, and the performance.

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Chang Liu is the founder of The Case Room, a platform for live case interviews that push back. An engineer before business school, she received summer internship offers from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and PwC Strategy& while at Kellogg, then spent five years at McKinsey, where she was an engagement manager and interviewer.

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