McKinsey Imbellus Test

Hi,

Whilst you don't have to be a gamer to perform well, the game will certainly test your problem solving ability and your ability to navigate in challenging circumstances.

Which skills are tested?

The game records all of the candidate’s actions (e.g., every movement of the mouse, time spent to choose an action) and uses machine learning to assess candidates’ way of thinking. It’s as much about how close candidates come to the best solution as about how they tackle the problem through. During the game McK assesses 5 cognitive abilities that are critical for a career in consulting:

• Critical thinking: the ability analyze information objectively and make a reasoned judgment
• Decision making: the ability to select the best course of action among several options
• Self-awareness: the ability to self-assess
• Situational awareness: the ability to be fully aware of your surroundings at all times, allowing you to react effectively
• Systematic thinking: the ability to understand different parts of a system and how they work together through cause/ effect relationships

How to cultivate these skills? 

Let’s break down each skillset and find ways to improve.

Critical thinking could be broken down into the following subskills:

• Think about a topic in an objective and critical way
• Identify the connections between ideas and working out whether the evidence provided supports those ideas or not
• Evaluate a point of view to determine how strong or valid it is
• Recognize any weaknesses that there are in the evidence or argument
• Notice what implications there might be behind a statement
• Provide structured reasoning and support for an argument that we wish to make

In order to improve your critical thinking I would suggest using mind mapping technique. It exploits the fact that our brains process information visually much more effectively than they do when it’s presented in a written document.

The idea behind mind mapping is that you start with a central theme or idea, typically drawn in a box in the middle of the page, and then from that you create branches, which lead to other ideas, or to supporting evidence or ancillary information.

Decision making could be broken down into the following subskills:

• Establishing a positive decision-making environment
• Generating potential solutions
• Evaluating the solutions
• Deciding
• Checking the decision

In order to improve your decision making skills I would suggest that you start applying it to your everyday life situations and start developing small decision making frameworks for each situation (e.g. going to the shop)

Self-awareness could be broken down into the following subskills:

• Monitor Your Performance
• Seek Out Feedback and Then Use It

The best way to improve your self-awareness is to reduce your EGO barrier and blind spots. You can read Ray Dalio Principles for more details.

Situational awareness could be broken down into the following subskills:

• Identifying the baseline for the situation you are in
• Recognizing any variations to the baseline

In order to improve your situational awareness I suggest that you take typical life situation and:

• Monitor the Baseline. At first, this will require concentration effort. But after a while, you will find that you can monitor the baseline subconsciously
• Fight Normalcy Bias. This requires you to be paranoid for a while as you develop your skill. Look at every disturbance to the baseline - this will allow you to stop ignoring or discounting any factors

Systematic thinking could be broken down into the following subskills:

• Identifying all the elements in the system
• Understanding the correlations between the elements

This skill could be largely improved by solving business cases. 

ALSO I suggest that you should start investing your time into playing different computer/mobile game, where you can practice applying these skills. 

Hope it helps!

Anton

Dear A,

You will be given 1 hour to make your test.  To get more information, ust keep in mind following tips for the Digital Assessment.

1. Focus on the process
2. Follow time tracking. It is easy to get lost in the details and the sheer complexity of information overload the test presents. 
3. Look into the key skills that are being assessed by Imbellus and if you find any weaknesses - then work on them in advance.
4. Get ready to make 80/20 decisions based on incomplete information. Likely you won’t reach the best answer within 60 minutes, however, you should reach a good answer, demonstrating a clever problem-solving strategy along the way. 
5. Take notes of your observations on the mechanics of each scenario so that you can analyze it. 
6. Get comfortable to calculate with pen and paper math. 
7. Enjoy 

You will be notified about your passing to the nest round

Hope it helps,

André

Hello!

Some useful info:

• t's a gamified test
• Divided into 2 games, 1h to complete both of them:
  • 1st one is a game about keeping an ecosystem balanced
  • 2nd one is a defense game
• It´s fun and there is not really a "way" to prep for it My advise would be to be fresh when you do it and pick a right enviroment -during my BCG test in their office there was construction in the patio and the screen was even shaking-. The only thing that could indeed help you prep are logic test or games (GMAT perhaps, or some MENSA tests)

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hello,

I have an interesting paper on Imbellus valuation metrics that I would suggest to read.
More over, I have had the chance to follow several candidates taking this test and I have written (together with them) a detailed guide on how to successfully approach Imbellus test.
Feel free to text me if you are interested.

Best,
Luca

There is a good Q&A here on what to keep in mind: https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/imbellus-test-mckinsey-5682

You should prepare to be open-minded, flexible, turn on your problem-solving, and pay careful attention to the time + instructions

By the way, it's only additive to the rest of your interview, so you still need to make sure to prepare + do well on your fit and case interview!

Hi there,

This is probably too late for you, but hopefully useful for someone else.

I did an in-depth study on the Imbellus. Most of the comments I found online are something like this:

• You cannot prepare – it tests who you are
• Play a lot of videogames
• Don’t waste time
• Be yourself
• Be 80-20
• Take notes well
• Enjoy yourself

Not sure what you think, but I don’t believe that’s very useful. Nor did the several people I coached who had to do the test.

So I worked hard with the candidates that actually did the test and created a guide with everything you need to know on the Imbellus.

This guide will:

• Show you the perfect strategy for each of the 4 Game Scenarios
• Explain every single part of the Game with ad-hoc pictures
• Detail the exact steps to improve in the 5 Skills tested in the game
• Provide you insider information from previous applicants who succeeded in the game
• Reveal the must-know answers to the most common questions on the Imbellus
• Offer you a ready-to-use Excel template to maximize results in Scenario 1 with a detailed tutorial 
• Give you a proven template to build the food chain in Scenario 1

This guide will cover every single part of the Game, so you can be 100% confident the day of the assessment, without worrying “I should have prepared better for this”. You won’t need any additional material to prepare after it.

You can download the guide instantly here:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/shop/tests-2/mckinsey-imbellus-game-secrets-48

As an extra bonus, I am offering for a limited time the Consulting Industry Cheat Sheet (worth $29) for free with the guide. You will get access to key insights of the 17 most common industries in case interviews.

If you need additional support or have any questions on the guide please feel free to PM me, I am happy to provide extra tips for free.

Best,

Francesco