Thank you for your interest in McKinsey and welcome to the Business Analyst recruiting process - we are delighted to invite you to interview with our firm. We are excited about meeting with you and getting to know you better.

When you interview with us, you will meet some of our consultants, and these meetings will have two aims:

1	To enable us to learn more about your skills and experience so that we can determine your suitability for a career at our firm.
2	To allow you to learn more about what we do and who we are so that you can be more clear and confident in your career choices.

We want you to realize your full potential in your interviews. This simple guide is intended to help you prepare and give you some tips on what to do when the day arrives.

How do I prepare?
We try to ensure we are as accurate and fair as we can possibly be when we interview you. To do this, we employ a wide range of interviewing methods. In particular, you should be prepared for the following:

Case Studies
We believe the best way we can assess your problem solving skills is to discuss a typical McKinsey business problem with you - we call this a case study. Our interviewers are trained to use case studies which are fair to you and reflect the typical problem solving challenges faced by our consultants.
You will be required to have a discussion with your interviewer around a case study. During this discussion the interviewer will assess many things, including:

•	How you go about structuring a tough, often ambiguous, business problem.
•	How you think about which issues are important in the problem.
•	How you deal with and process data (numerical and otherwise).
•	How you think about making conclusions and recommending actions required to solve the problem.
•	How you articulate your thoughts during an interactive problem solving discussion.

Case studies are broad, two-way discussions, rather than one-way tests. There is no perfect answer. You will be assessed more on how you go about dealing with the problem, rather than on the specific answers you come up with.
Some practice at case study discussions is recommended, especially if you are inexperienced at interactive problem solving discussions. There are many ways you can practice. For example:

•	Try out the example case study.
•	Discuss some current business issues with friends/colleagues. The financial press will often contain articles that can prompt such discussion.
•	Try to think about what might be wrong and what you would do to fix it.
•	Practice your numerical agility through performing some basic calculations in your head, especially if you have not done this in a while.