McKinsey Problem Solving Test

Question:

I am trying to prepare for the Problem Solving Test portion of McKinsey's interview process and am not sure how to structure my practice strategy.  Are you familiar with it?  I am a law school graduate and have taken business law classes and had business law internships but have no serious business background.

I want to be as prepared as possible for the Problem Solving Test and case interviews.  I have less than a week to prepare but I have been studying the practice Problem Solving Test on the website for the past couple of days.

I ordered Case In Point by Consentino (recommended by a current McKinsey employee) and will begin to use it today.  Though the Problem Solving Test is not difficult, it requires business savvy and comfort with numbers.

I think the Problem Solving Test is a milder written version of case questions but I am not familiar with the case method.  Any suggestions on how can I strengthen my business judgment in the upcoming days?    Any guidance would be greatly appreciated.

My Response:

The McKinsey Problem Solving Test wasn't used when I was at McKinsey. I did take a look at it and think I understand it's role.

First, it is really a case interview where much of the data has already been gathered for you. In a typical case interview, you start with no data and the candidate is expected to determine what kind of data would be relevant and then asking for it.

The McKinsey Problem Solving Test provides much of this data in advanced and is asking you which conclusions can mathematically and logically be drawn from the data. Similarly, it also test what conclusions can NOT be mathematically and logically drawn from the data.

From the sample I saw on the McKinsey website, it does NOT require business savvy in order to perform well on the test. The sample test I saw was written very well to be accessible to people with non-business backgrounds and from a variety of countries/cultures.

It is primarily a math, estimation, and logic test.

It's actually fairly reflective of the day-to-day work of a consultant — looking at a bunch of data and determining what conclusions you can and can present to a client based on the data.

I think the fact that you're not permitted to use a calculator is interesting.

Given all the computations one could do, there probably isn't enough time to run every computation on there. You have to "ballpark-it" and do a lot of applied estimations.

I think practicing Cosentino's explanation of the estimation question (which is excellent) portion of a traditional case interview is useful.

The only other tip I would suggest is to READ THE QUESTION CAREFULLY.

Confession: I took a shot at the first 4 questions on the sample test… and I missed 2 of them! (Granted I have a 3 week old newborn in the house, am sleeping 3 hours a night this week, but still…)

My mistakes were basically careless errors.

I didn't read the question carefully, or I glossed over the labels in charts and made the assumption of what data I thought it covered, without actually looking at the labels carefully to see literally what it covers.

In some respects, have some business background can be a bit of a liability. Someone with an analytical and logical bent will take the questions and the data literally — which is good.

Someone like me in a rush is tempted to rush to a conclusion, notice a familiar data format (and assume I know what's being explained), and quickly attempt to answer the question I think is being asked using the data I think is being presented… rather than answering the literal question being asked using the actual data being presented.

So long story short, other than practicing a few estimation questions to get used to doing "ball park math", there isn't much you can do to prepare for the McKinsey Problem Solving Test. Either you're inherently logical and can think in approximate mathematical terms, or you're just wired a different way (e.g., lateral thinker, creative thinker, intuitive thinker… all of which are wonderful gifts, but don't always lend themselves well to consulting).

Also see my post on the Monitor Written Case Interview.