A PhD Biologist gets a job at McKinsey

Git this email form a King’s PhD graduate

I would like to thank you very much for all your help during my application process. I had 17 consulting interviews in total and all were positive. For most companies you get only an offer after five interviews. In the end, I took a great offer from McKinsey. I will start in the Frankfurt office next month. It was definitely easier doing the applications in Germany than in London. I am not sure what was the reason for not getting interviews in London, it could be that I didn’t have industry internships or that English companies did not know how good the German grades were…

 

If you have students interested in concultancy, please tell them that it is all about preparation once you have an interview. They have to spent a lot of time on case studies and should practise interviews (I prepared from January till July!).

 

Furthermore, they need to know about trends and industries (Financial Times!!). Nothing is better than dragging your interviewer into a discussion about his favourite industry when he introduces himself/herself. Sometimes these discussions lasted 20-30 minutes and made the case interview at the end very short. In addition, the interview atmosphere was great as people like to talk about their favourite subject… Practising case interviews with other people is also very important.

 

I hope the information is helpful for others interested in consultancy. By the way, I also got an offer for the Accenture Navigator scheme you told me about; it was good training to do their interview and assessment centre!