My interviewer's name is Wayne Chen, and he appears to be a ABC too, speaking fluent English. So, I guess I can't impress with my language skills this time. Unlike Wednesday's interview, he started me off with the case question instead of resume based inquiries or a self introduction. My case was on Taiwan's High Speed Rail. In essence, I am to look into why the HSR's revenues hasn't picked up after 6 months in operation. I took a minute to draft up a structure which consisted of price and quantity. Throughout the interview, there was a lot of interaction with my interviewer, who guided me through the cases, giving hints as to where he want me to further explore. In the end, I summed my suggestion up into a 2 minute recommendation statement, and he wanted me to pretend I was presenting it to the CEO of HSR.
After the case, he asked me like 1 or 2 questions regarding my resume. Again, the 'can you read and write Chinese' question came up. This time, I simply replied, "oh, I got the highest score in my Chinese class last semester". That, I think speaks for itself. Then, as expected he asked if I had any questions regarding consulting. I started by fishing a question from my prepared list, then, following a different tactic, I listened carefully to his answer and asked follow up questions on things within his answer. The Q&A session went on for approximately 15 minutes, and I found out a lot about what being a consultant is like, some of its perks and what the summer BA program is about. Here's the list:
1. McKinsey typically treats summer BAs like full time BAs. They get assigned to project teams responsible for different studies with clients. I didn't ask about the pay, but I guess it won't be too shabby for a company like McKinsey.
2. If a consultant is assigned on a project abroad, McKinsey provides him/her a ticket to fly back to their home office every Friday. (Wow)
3. If a consultant is assigned on a project abroad, McKinsey provides him/her tickets to fly his/her family to their current location every other weekend. (Wow)
4. The length of projects can go from 4 weeks up to a full 6 months. It's a tradeoff between depth and scope.
5. McKinsey project teams are usually involved with the client during the engagement period, the actual implementation of the strategy is usually seen through by the client themselves.
There are many other facts that I found out during our QA session. When the time was up, he asked me one final question:
Interviewer: Did you practice for the case questions?
Me: Yes.
Interviewer: How long did you practice?
Me: Since I found out about the interview a week and a half ago, I practiced 3 hours per day with my friends.
He then asked with whom and how I practiced. He looked quite impressed that I spent so much time preparing for the interview. His ending remarks were: I'm impressed to see the amount of effort you'd put forth. My past experience with undergrad students was they never practice.
I guess that was a good sign! Audrey told me they will notify me of the results sometime next week (most likely Monday or Tuesday). In the meantime, I have no idea if I made it into round 2 of the case interviews. Though I think I did really well on both cases. The first consultant obviously took a liking in me, the one today seemed pretty impressed, I had a good session with him. I am also satisfied with myself for my own performance. If all goes well, I think I probably passed into round 2. Guess we'll wait and see!
P.S. - my first interviewer - Robert Yao, I thought he was a funny and nice guy. I mean, he gave me suggestions, and we chatted casually. However, I found out from Alex that another of the interviewee also got Robert, and the same Doraemon case, but was turned down on the spot!!! According to others, Robert was perceived as 'not-excessively-friendly', and the fact he turned down an interviewee in round 1.1 surprised me!!!! They all said I must've been a special case for Robert to like me the way I described it. That is a plus for me by all means !!!
Can't wait to know the results, there still seem to be a long way. Can't believe so much effort must go into securing a summer internship!!!! But, like I said, it's McKinsey, and it's all worth it.
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