I did a spring week at McKinsey and later had an offer there, and McKinsey is the firm I'd most want students to understand before applying, because it's so clear about what it wants. Most people just don't listen.
The three things McKinsey screens for
McKinsey says, in webinars and recruiting events more than on its website, that it scores CVs on three things:
- Leadership: someone else's outcome depended on decisions you made.
- Problem-solving: you faced a real problem, worked out what to do, and something changed.
- Personal drive: you started something, or pushed something much further than anyone asked you to.
If a screener can't find a clear example of any one of the three, the CV is dismissed. Not marked down. Dismissed. That's why I'd build a McKinsey CV backwards: find your best example of each, make sure each is unmissable in an eight-second read, and only then fill in the rest.
What that looks like on the page
| Criterion | Weak | Strong |
|---|---|---|
| Leadership | Member, Consulting Society | President, Consulting Society (400 members); ran 6 pro bono projects for local charities with 30 student consultants |
| Problem-solving | Conducted market research for a client | Found that 70% of a charity's lapsed donors left after one email change; the fix brought back £12k in a quarter |
| Personal drive | Interested in entrepreneurship | Started a tutoring business in Year 12; grew it to 14 tutors and 60 regular students |
You don't need consulting experience. McKinsey takes all-rounders from every degree. You do need those three examples.
Spring week
Mine was virtual. We were taken through a case project from start to finish, doing a simplified version of each stage. It's a much better feel for the actual job than most spring weeks give you, and it's genuinely useful practice for case interviews later.
McKinsey's spring and insight programmes are competitive and some are aimed at specific groups of students. Apply the week they open.
CV length and cover letters
- McKinsey has been one of the few firms happy to see two pages. That doesn't mean you should use them. A tight one-page CV is still easier to read in eight seconds.
- McKinsey generally doesn't care much about cover letters, except when you're applying to an office outside your home country. Then they want to know why. If you're a Chinese, Indian or Nigerian student applying to London, a short, honest answer to "why London?" is worth writing well.
After the CV
There's an online problem-solving test, which in recent years has been a game-style assessment. Then case interviews and personal experience interviews, where you'll be asked to go deep on one story. Pick the stories you'd tell from your three examples above. If they hold up for twenty minutes of questions, they'll hold up on the CV.
See whether your CV shows all three things McKinsey looks for.