The first step toward becoming a consultant at McKinsey is your written application. On the basis of your documentation, we decide whether we would like to get to know you better. If so, we will invite you for a quantitative assessment and a number of consecutive, one-on-one interviews with various consultants. All of your discussion partners will have a broad range of project experience.

We do not require you to take intelligence or personality tests. Rather, we have a practical selection process. In each interview you will be asked to solve a case study. This may be a business case or a very general conceptual problem. If you want to prepare yourself, you can try your hand at a real case at McKinsey worldwide.

After a numerical and problem-solving assessment and two interviews, the interviewing team will discuss its impressions of you and will decide how to proceed. If we conclude that the first round was successful, you will be offered the opportunity to attend three further interviews.

During the interviews we will try to form an opinion about the following characteristics:

• Structured and analytical thinking
• Ability with figures
• Entrepreneurial thinking and interest in business
• Ability to excel in a team environment
• Personal initiative
• Communication skills
• Inquisitiveness
• Creativity

We will not expect applicants without a background in economics to be able to apply business concepts, but we will expect them to demonstrate a feeling for entrepreneurial issues.