First-year recruiting puts everything into one fall: your stories, your cases, and your office choice, with first rounds landing in early January.
I spent 9 years at McKinsey, rose to Associate Partner, and conducted 300+ candidate interviews. As an MBA student at UCLA Anderson, I supported MBA recruiting there, with about 100 coffee chats and AMA sessions for students recruiting for consulting. Below are the three things MBA candidates ask me about most, and how 1:1 coaching works if you want help with them.
As an MBA student at UCLA Anderson, I held AMA sessions for classmates recruiting for consulting. If you lead a consulting club, I'm happy to work with you on an AMA, a live case walkthrough, or another session that fits your recruiting calendar.
Email me with your school, your club, and the timing you have in mind.
Email Michael about a club session →The Personal Experience Interview (PEI) takes 10 to 15 minutes of a 50-minute interview. It covers four themes McKinsey publishes on its careers site: Connection, Drive, Leadership, and Growth. Each interviewer usually goes deep on just one.
MBA candidates have the opposite problem from undergrads. You have too much material, not too little. Five years of work gives you dozens of resume bullets, and the bullets themselves are rarely where the stories are.
The good stories usually sit under a bullet, in the detail you could never fit on the page. Some come from outside work entirely: a club, a team, a personal project. Not all of mine matched my resume.
This one catches MBA candidates who have managed people. Interviewers keep asking what you personally did. "We restructured the process" isn't an answer until it becomes "I sat down with the two leads who disagreed, and here's what I said."
Not one generic story stretched across all four themes. The second story gives you an option when the first doesn't fit the question you're actually asked.
Know the outcome cold, but the decision points, what you did and why, are where the follow-up questions live. If a story can't survive five "why" follow-ups, it isn't ready yet.
The case takes 20 to 25 minutes, and it's interviewer-led: the interviewer steers and hands you new information as you go. That rewards a different habit than the candidate-led cases many casebooks are written for.
No one wants the robotic memorization of a framework. Your buckets, drivers, and hypothesis should only make sense for this business and this question.
Zero questions reads as generic. Three or more starts to read as stalling.
Your structure should update as new information comes in. It shouldn't sit on the page unchanged for the rest of the case.
Taking a moment to lay out your thinking is normal. Talking before you have a plan is what hurts.
The math, the exhibit, the recommendation: lay out your steps before you run them, so the interviewer can follow you the whole way.
Recommendation first, two or three supporting reasons, one risk or next step. Recapping what you already said is the most common way a strong case loses ground at the finish.
Most candidates treat the office as a box on the application. It decides where you live, the work you do, and the people you do it with.
You'll build your network, your client relationships, and your life in that city.
Offices differ in the industries their clients come from. Check the firm's public site to see what each office works on.
Conversations with consultants in the office tell you what it's like to work there in a way no website can.
Every session is live with me, and interviewer-level feedback follows each one. Pricing is shared once I review your application.
Already have an interview scheduled
About 2 hours of live mock interviews, no resume review. How it works
The base package
About 3 hours of live coaching across case and PEI, plus offline resume review and custom drills.
Foundation, plus the written work
About 4 hours of live coaching, a resume rebuild, and written PEI story review and rewrites.
Need one piece, like PEI stories or your resume? See the standalone services.
Want to prepare alongside other strong candidates? The MBB Elite Consulting Bootcamp is a 4-week cohort of about 10 MBA candidates, December through early January, ahead of first-round interviews. Applications open mid-November.
Apply for coaching →
Former McKinsey Associate Partner. 9 years at the firm and 300+ candidate interviews across undergrad and MBA recruiting, in both Round 1 and Final Round. Led BA recruiting for the UNC and New York offices. MBA from UCLA Anderson, where as a student I supported MBA recruiting with about 100 coffee chats and AMA sessions.
Earlier than feels necessary. For most first-years, applications close in the fall and first-round interviews land in early January, so the fall semester is the main prep window. Starting in September or October leaves time to practice until the habits stick. Confirm your own dates with your career center.
Classmates are the best free resource you have, and you should use them. A coach is for what classmates can't tell you: how an experienced interviewer would read your performance, and which two or three habits are costing you the most.
Yes. My specific expertise is McKinsey recruiting. The core case and behavioral skills carry over to Bain, BCG, and other consulting firms.
Yes. I held AMA sessions as a student at UCLA Anderson, and I'm happy to work with any MBA consulting club on an AMA, a live case walkthrough, or a session built around your recruiting calendar. Email me with your school and timing.
Apply online. I review every application personally. Candidates who move forward get a free 15-minute call to confirm fit, next steps, and pricing. Payment follows approval.
Tell me your school, your target firms and offices, and when your interviews are. I review every application myself.
Apply for coaching →