Recruitment at strategy consulting firms has a reputation for being one of the most demanding hiring processes in the professional world. At McKinsey, BCG, or Bain - the trio nicknamed MBB - a candidate goes through four to six interviews on average before receiving an offer, most of which take the form of a very specific exercise: the case interview. Unlike a standard interview focused on discussing your background, the case interview puts the candidate face to face with a real business problem to solve live, in front of the interviewer. Here is how this process works, step by step, and how to prepare for it effectively.
The steps of the strategy consulting recruitment process
The strategy consulting recruitment process follows a fairly similar structure from one firm to another, with variations in the number of interviews and their exact format.
1. Online application and CV screening. Everything starts with submitting an application on the firm's careers site, usually with a CV and a cover letter. This step already eliminates a large share of applications: MBB firms receive several hundred thousand applications a year for a few thousand open positions. A poorly structured CV, or one that fails to highlight the right signals (school, academic ranking, quantified experiences), simply doesn't make it past this first filter.
2. Online tests. Many firms administer a reasoning test before the first interview even takes place. McKinsey uses its own digital assessment tool, Solve (formerly the Problem Solving Game), which tests logical reasoning through a game-like format. BCG has its own tool, the Casey online assessment, a text-based chatbot case simulation evaluating structured thinking and calculation speed. Bain uses a written problem-solving test, typically offered ahead of or alongside the first rounds of conversations.
3. First round of interviews. This generally consists of two consecutive interviews, each conducted by a senior consultant or manager, systematically combining a fit interview and a case interview. This first round lasts between 45 minutes and one hour per interview.
4. Final round. Reserved for candidates who cleared the first round, this final round typically involves partners or principals and includes more complex, sometimes multi-step cases, occasionally with several interviewers in the same day - the well-known "super day" also found in investment banking.
5. Decision and offer. The decision usually comes within one to two weeks. A positive outcome leads to an offer with a compensation package and a start date, often negotiable for junior candidates fresh out of school.
The entire process, from first contact to offer, generally spans four to eight weeks, longer if the candidate applies through a campus recruitment cycle with forums and pre-selection stages upstream.
💡 To learn more: Our dedicated guide covers all the levers for succeeding in your strategy consulting application, from keyword choice to structuring your experiences.
The expected CV and cover letter
Before even thinking about the case interview, you have to clear the CV filter. Strategy consulting firms' expectations differ from investment banking's on several points, even though the logic of a single, concise page remains identical.
The CV must fit on one page, no exceptions, and clearly show: education (school, ranking if relevant, specialization), professional experiences structured using the Problem-Action-Result method, and a skills/languages section. Strategy recruiters are particularly sensitive to three signals: leadership ability (student associations, high-level sport, student entrepreneurship), international exposure (academic exchange, internship abroad, languages), and evidence of structured reasoning in how experiences are presented - not just in their content. Every bullet point should quantify the outcome achieved, even outside a purely financial context: "Structured a market study across 3 product segments, presented to an 8-person executive committee" is far more convincing than "Conducted a market study."
The cover letter is still requested by most firms, even though its weight in the final decision is generally lower than that of the CV and the interviews. It needs to answer a simple but rarely well-addressed question: why this firm specifically, and why you. Avoid generic language about the firm's "excellence" or "prestige" - favor concrete elements instead: a firm project that caught your attention, a conversation with a consultant at a career fair, an engagement that resonates with your background.
⚠️ Watch out: Formatting mistakes (typos, inconsistent dates, a CV longer than one page) are disqualifying in consulting just as they are in finance. Our article on mistakes to avoid in a job interview also covers the most common pitfalls upstream of the interview, starting with the written application.
The fit interview: what gets evaluated
The fit interview, sometimes called the personal experience interview, is the other half of every consulting interview. It is too often under-prepared by candidates who pour all their effort into the cases - a mistake, since a failed fit interview eliminates a candidate just as surely as a poorly solved case.
What recruiters look to evaluate through the fit interview:
- Genuine motivation for consulting and for this specific firm, backed by concrete examples rather than a generic answer about wanting to learn fast.
- Leadership and teamwork, often tested through the classic question "tell me about a time you had to manage a conflict within a team" or "describe a moment you had to convince someone despite their initial disagreement."
- Resilience in the face of failure, through questions like "tell me about a failure and what you learned from it" - firms want to see genuine introspection, not false modesty disguised as a success story.
- Cultural fit with the target firm: each MBB firm has its own internal culture, and recruiters try to verify that a candidate will fit in and stay long-term.
The recommended structure for answering these behavioral questions is the STAR method (Situation, Task, Action, Result), very close to the PAR method used to write a CV: it forces you to tell a complete, contextualized story with a measurable outcome, rather than a vague anecdote.
The case interview: structure and expectations
The case interview is the central exercise of strategy consulting recruitment, and the one that unsettles unprepared candidates the most. The principle: the interviewer presents a realistic business situation - a company losing market share, a product launch to evaluate, a geographic expansion decision - and the candidate has to structure their thinking out loud, ask the right questions, work through quantitative data, and land on a well-argued recommendation, all within 20 to 30 minutes.
Two styles dominate depending on the firm. The interviewer-led style, used notably by McKinsey, where the interviewer actively guides the candidate from one sub-question to the next. The candidate-led style, more common at BCG and Bain, where it's up to the candidate to define the analytical structure and the order in which they tackle each part.
In both cases, four skills are evaluated: problem structuring (framework), mental math and quantitative analysis ability, creativity in generating hypotheses, and the final synthesis into a clear recommendation.
Worked example: a profitability case
Let's take a classic declining-profitability case, very representative of what you might encounter in a first round.
Sample prompt: "Our client is a coffee shop chain present in 40 cities across France. Its profit dropped 20% last year while revenue remained stable. The CEO wants you to identify the causes of this decline and propose recommendations."
Step 1 - Clarify the problem. Before structuring anything, a good candidate asks a few scoping questions: over what exact period did the decline occur, is the problem widespread across all cities or localized, has the coffee market itself shifted, has there been a recent structural change (new competitor, cost increase, new store openings).
Step 2 - Build a framework. Since Profit = Revenue - Costs, and revenue is stable, the profit decline necessarily comes from rising costs. A structured framework could break down as follows:
- Fixed costs: store rent, headquarters payroll, equipment depreciation
- Variable costs: raw material costs (coffee, milk, sugar), in-store labor, packaging
- One-off items: litigation, provisions, one-time restructuring costs
Step 3 - Analyze the data. At this point the interviewer hands over a table or chart: for example, a 35% increase in green coffee prices over the period, combined with a 10% rise in labor costs following a pay increase. The candidate must then quantify the impact of each factor on overall margin - this is where calculation speed gets directly tested.
Step 4 - Formulate hypotheses and recommendations. Based on this analysis, a strong candidate will propose several prioritized options: renegotiate coffee supplier contracts, adjust prices on certain low-margin items, rethink in-store staffing to limit the labor cost increase, or explore diversifying the menu toward higher-margin products.
Step 5 - Synthesize. The final step, often neglected by candidates under stress, is to summarize in 30 seconds the main recommendation, the associated risks, and the next steps to explore - exactly as a senior consultant would do at the end of a client meeting.
The same type of structuring applies to other classic case families: market sizing cases (estimate how many electric bikes are sold in France each year, for instance, starting from assumptions about population, ownership rate, and replacement frequency), market entry cases (should the client enter a given geography or segment), or investment cases (should a company acquire a competitor).
📊 Go deeper on technical interview prep: The assessment center format also exists in investment banking - our article on investment banking recruitment, assessment centers and tests lets you compare evaluation approaches across the two sectors.
How to prepare effectively for cases
Preparing for the case interview rests on three pillars that work together, never on just one in isolation.
1. Master frameworks without becoming mechanical. Knowing the main framework families (profitability, market entry, market sizing, growth, M&A) is essential so you're never starting from a blank page. But recruiters spot immediately a candidate who recites a memorized framework without adapting it to the specific case at hand - it's actually one of the most commonly cited negative signals among interviewers. The goal is to use frameworks as a starting point to customize, never as a box-ticking checklist.
2. Practice under real conditions, with a partner. Solving cases alone by reading solutions isn't enough: you need to practice out loud, under time pressure, ideally with someone playing the interviewer who can give honest feedback on clarity of structure and verbal fluency. Business and engineering school consulting clubs very often organize paired case-practice sessions - one of the best ways to progress quickly.
3. Rely on the firms' own official resources. All three MBB firms publish their own free, detailed prep resources, which remain the most reliable reference since they reflect exactly the format you'll encounter on the day. McKinsey provides, on its dedicated interviewing page 🔗, several full practice cases with data and suggested approaches. BCG offers, on its case interview preparation page 🔗, interactive practice cases as well as a downloadable written case example. Bain, for its part, details on its dedicated case interview prep page 🔗 several official cases, including the classic digital printing market-entry case.
One last practical tip: practice mental math without a calculator - percentages, orders of magnitude, rule of three - since calculation speed and reliability are closely scrutinized in every case, regardless of the firm.
💡 To learn more: If you're still a student, our guide on the summer internship selection process explains how to adapt this preparation for a work-study or summer internship recruitment cycle, often the first entry point into strategy consulting.
Once the substance of your application is ready - experiences, education, key skills - what remains is formatting, which shouldn't be an obstacle at this stage. FinanceCV lets you enter your background without worrying about layout: the tool automatically structures the page according to the standards expected in consulting, and generates a document compatible with the ATS used by recruiting firms - the systems that filter out a large share of applications before a recruiter ever opens them.
Ready to structure your strategy consulting application? Use our free generator to get a professional, ATS-compatible CV in just a few minutes.