McKinsey PEI – How to Prepare and Ace PEI Questions?

The McKinsey PEI (Personal Experience Interview) is a key part of consulting applications, but differs from the personal fit interviews at other firms like BCG or Bain. Despite being around for years, many candidates still struggle to prepare effectively for it.

A quick Google search often leads to myths or irrelevant advice, causing confusion and preparation for the wrong types of questions.

In this article, coach Florian will clarify the PEI by covering:

1. What it really is and why it matters.
2. How to prepare for it effectively.
3. How to answer the questions in the best way.

The article is divided into three sections: first, an introduction to the PEI's format and purpose; second, a breakdown of the content needed for each part; and third, tips on how to communicate your stories effectively, with examples for clarity. 🎯

The Role of the PEI in Your McKinsey Interview

Only 1% of McKinsey applicants receive an offer from the firm. While the case interviews play an important part in the evaluation the PEI is equally important. You can ace 5 cases in a row, yet, if you fail to demonstrate your leadership skills or your ability to influence senior leaders, you will not receive the offer.

I have noticed that many candidates often focus 95% of their preparation efforts on the case and completely neglect the PEI.

This is unfortunate since this is the part of the interview that is easy to prepare for if you know what you are doing. During the interview, you don’t want to remember for the first time or make up stories on the spot, but rather remind yourself of your prepared answers. You want to make sure that these answers are structured, to the point, and exactly hit the dimensions that the questions try to assess.

First, let us look at the role of the McKinsey PEI.

What is the McKinsey PEI (Personal Experience Interview)?

McKinsey interviews are highly standardized across the globe to ensure objectivity and reduce bias. That is why they consist of the same two main components in each office, the problem-solving interview, and the personal experience interview.

At its core, the McKinsey Personal Experience Interview is a behavioral interview, yet it comes with a twist. Instead of asking many rapid-fire questions like in a typical personal fit interview (e.g., what are your strengths, weaknesses, why consulting, why McKinsey, etc.) it revolves around three specific character traits that will be discussed in great detail.

How is the McKinsey PEI Structured?

Each Personal Experience Interview focuses on one specific trait at a time and can last up to 20 minutes. In the whole process, you will have to talk about three different traits, more specifically

• Entrepreneurial Drive OR Courageous Change
• Inclusive Leadership
• Personal Impact

For that matter, PEI always start with one question related to one of the three desired traits. For instance, the interviewer might ask a very specific prompt such as “Tell me about a time when you had to influence a senior leader of an organization or a group…”

Based on that question, you need to present your story.

The PEI is highly standardized to help interviewers understand how you behaved in past events to make assumptions on how you would handle daily situations as a McKinsey consultant in the future. The format helps to evaluate and compare candidates on a few objective metrics.

How to Succeed in the McKinsey PEI (Personal Experience Interview)

A common misconception is that you need to present superhuman success stories in the PEI. In reality, you should share authentic situations that show how you handled problems, led teams (e.g., in a university group project), and influenced others. These stories can come from professional experiences, university, or extracurricular activities.

To succeed, focus on telling the right stories that highlight the relevant traits and demonstrate how you handled challenges effectively. The closer your stories are to typical consultant challenges, the better. Prepare two stories per trait in case you have more than three interviews, with a focus on recent experiences (ideally within the last three years).

Drafting the Right Stories for the McKinsey PEI

In this section I discuss

• The McKinsey PEI dimensions and potential content ideas
• Criteria to select the perfect PEI story from your resume
• The level of depth to prepare for each story

As briefly touched upon above, the PEI revolves around three different types of stories. Below, let’s take a look into each dimension and potential content ideas that make a strong story.

One word of caution, before we dive deeper. Use these as examples to inspire your own story-telling and as examples only. While the format is standardized your stories still need to show authenticity and a large portion of ‘’uniqueness’’. Having overly prepared and rehearsed stories is as bad as having no prepared stories at all as interviewers are trained to spot such crafted stories.

Now, let's get to it.

The PEI Dimensions

1️⃣ Inclusive Leadership

The interviewer will ask you about a situation where you led a team through a challenging time to achieve a certain goal. For this dimension, you need to show that you ...

• ... can handle a diverse group that accepts you as their leader, with diversity being the result of different backgrounds, cultures, hierarchy levels, etc.
• ... tailor your leadership style to different groups and group members
• ... demonstrate your ability to make the team succeed by helping to structure, divide, and delegate tasks and providing them with work plans, deadlines, and effective communication
• ... motivate your team, improve the team spirit and the working environment for all involved
• ... are interested in the well-being of the team and their own individual development along the way
• ... deal with conflicts between teammates and goals effectively

Overall, showcase that your presence as a team leader had a positive impact on the team and lead to a strong outcome for a particular project or task.

2️⃣ Entrepreneurial Drive

For this dimension, the interviewer will ask you about a situation where you set a goal for yourself and achieved it against all odds. You need to demonstrate

• ambition and dedication by pursuing several goals at the same time
• an intrinsic desire and motivation to achieve this goal
• how you overcame obstacles or faced headwinds along the way by coming up with creative and new ideas or approaches
• how you follow the goals with energy and passion until you reached the desired outcome

3️⃣ Personal Impact

For this dimension, you will be asked to tell a story in which you influenced or persuaded an individual or a group of people. This can either be about them adopting a certain idea or plan of yours, helping you with achieving your own goals and driving something together, etc. Focus on stories that showcase how you

• worked with challenging individuals or groups, ideally more senior than your own role
• needed to understand their concerns and reservations first
• were able to convince them by using a mix of the right set of arguments and effective communication
• created a sustainable way of working together or even a solution to a difficult problem

4️⃣ Courageous Change

At the time of writing, McKinsey has started to replace the Entrepreneurial Drive dimension with a new dimension called Courageous Change in a couple of countries. What they want you to talk about is a situation where you faced and maneuvered a significant change or an ambiguous situation, adapting to new circumstances. You need to demonstrate that you

• are able to quickly adjust to new situations and change your course of action if needed
• have the resilience to deal with setbacks and stressful environments
• use challenging situations as a learning and step-up opportunity
• can act based on limited or ambiguous information that is available to you
• overcome obstacles or face headwinds along the way by coming up with creative and new ideas or approaches
• remain positive throughout the whole experience

The new dimension is very similar to Entrepreneurial Drive and most of your content elements overlap.

General Characteristics of a Good Story

Besides showcasing the relevant traits for each dimension, other characteristics enhance every story. While you don’t need to be superhuman you still need to show peaks in certain traits.

1. Think about situations set in really challenging environments. You might have encountered several obstacles or problems, which you decided to overcome with persistence and hard work. Ideally, you have encountered some resistance. The odds were definitely not in your favor, but you came out as a winner in the end.
2. Provide brief but exhaustive context to each story and all characters that played an important role in it. For instance, if you describe how you had to influence a certain senior leader, first introduce them, and discuss their character for a bit.
3. Focus on your own actions all the time. The interviewer is almost exclusively interested in how your contributions and actions changed the outcome. Everything in the PEI needs to start and end with your own actions.
4. Add personal statements of people involved in the situations. Think about what was said during your interactions, how people reacted, etc.
5. Create a convincing headline or 3-sentence summary at the beginning of the story that conveys the core message of the story to instantly capture the attention of the interviewer and to make sure that the story won’t be rejected from the start (more on that below).

Now that you know what content is desirable for the McKinsey PEI, let’s look into how you can actually select the right stories from your resume and experience.

What Stories Should You Select for Your PEI?

When you go through your resume to select your McKinsey PEI stories, you need to think about three dimensions in the following order:

1. Fit: The stories need to fit the criteria set out by McKinsey to match with Entrepreneurial Drive, Inclusive Leadership, and Personal Impact. See above for potential content ideas.

2. Diversity of experience: Your stories should be from different walks of life, e.g., jobs or careers, universities, extracurriculars, etc. Don’t take all stories from one experience or context.

3. Recency: In general, the more recent the better. Unless you interview for an experienced hire or more senior position, your stories should not date back more than 2-3 years.

Select and develop 6 stories based on the criteria above, with at least two stories per trait. You may need to discuss a trait in multiple interviews, but duplicates are generally not allowed. In some cases, you may need to share two stories about the same trait in one interview, especially if the first story doesn't meet expectations (which can be avoided with proper preparation).

How Detailed Should the Stories Be?

In the McKinsey PEI, you should highlight key aspects of the story yourself. If you don’t provide important details or address the relevant points McKinsey is looking for, the interviewer will ask more questions to clarify. The more details you leave out, the more probing questions you’ll face.

When introducing a story, keep the context brief and focus on your actions (80%). Interviewers want to know what YOU did and how it led to success. Focus on a few pivotal moments that were crucial for the outcome, diving deep into specific actions and interactions. This depth is more impactful than covering many surface-level points.

Prepare specific stories for each dimension, rather than "summary" stories to use for all.

Setting up and Communicating Your Stories the Right Way

Apart from drafting the right stories with the right content, you need to be able to tell each story the right way. Storytelling is one of the key tools for successful management consultants to bring their messages across and increase buy-in within the team and in the organization, they are consulting. Stories are used to pack analyses and recommendations into powerful messages and drive change.

That is why for the PEI it is also essential to communicate stories effectively. A tool you can use for that matter is the SCORE framework I have developed.

It enables you to best prepare and presents compelling top-down stories to your audience.

The SCORE Framework

When you start your story, the interviewer will ask you to introduce it briefly to ensure it covers the key points before diving deeper. Begin with a clear, memorable headline that captures the core of the story in one sentence. For example, instead of saying:
“I worked at a company last year, and we had a project to increase online sales by 10%. My boss asked me to be involved...”
Start with something like:
“I led a team at Company X last year to increase online sales by 10%.”
This immediately signals that the story is relevant to leadership. Then, add three sentences answering:

• Situation: What was the situation?
• Complication: What challenges did you face?
• Resolution: How did you overcome them?

Each sentence should add value and avoid unnecessary details. This introduction sets the stage for the interviewer to explore the story further.
Once you’ve set the scene, the interviewer will ask for more context. The SCORE framework helps you explain your story in detail, guiding a natural flow and ensuring you cover all aspects. It’s been proven successful after analyzing many interview stories.

In each PEI story, the main focus should be on the remedial actions (R). The situation, complication, and outcome should only make up 10-20% of your story. The interviewer is most interested in how you solved the issue through your actions.

Example:
Julia is asked to share a leadership experience: “I led a diverse team to create a board-level presentation when my boss fell ill the day before, and the team was unsure of what to do.”

She continues:

• Situation: We had a major board presentation, and I was responsible for one workstream along with 5 other managers.

• Complication: The day before, my boss got sick, stopping our progress and leaving us without guidance.

• Resolution: I stepped in, reorganized the team, and led the preparation of a successful presentation.

Now, Julia goes deeper into her actions:

She describes calming the team, reallocating tasks, guiding individuals through challenges, solving conflicts, and integrating everyone’s input. Her actions ensured the presentation was successful, and the team’s budget was increased.

The McKinsey PEI Checklist

Finally, rehearse your answers with friends and case partners. Let them play an active role and ask tricky questions to simulate a real-life McKinsey interview situation.

Now that you know how to prepare for the PEI, follow the checklist below to make sure your stories are polished for the interview day, and you are ready to go.

Learn About the PEI Dimensions

Below are the three dimensions plus some ideas on what to include:

Entrepreneurial Drive

• Set a goal for yourself and pursue it relentlessly against all odds
• The focus here should be on overcoming obstacles, showing ambition and dedication as well as ingenuity

Personal Impact

• Persuade a group or individual to adopt a certain idea or plan of yours
• The focus should really be on the influencing tactics you used to reach your desired outcome

Inclusive Leadership

• Show that you can manage a diverse team, leading it to a successful outcome
• The focus here should be on all traits that make a great leader (e.g., inclusiveness, mentor, mediator, go-to person, people person,...)

Courageous Change

• Demonstrate that you can adjust quickly to changing situations or new challenges
• The focus should be on your grit, persistence, and the actions you take to react to something unexpected

Select The Right Stories With the Right Content

When it comes to the selection of your McKinsey PEI stories, you need to think about three dimensions in the following order:

a. Fit with the actual dimension that is asked. The stories need to fit the criteria set out by McKinsey to match with Entrepreneurial Drive, Leadership, and Personal Impact. For content ideas see above.

b. Diversity of experience. Your stories should be from different walks of life, e.g., jobs or careers, universities, extracurriculars, etc. Don’t take all stories from one experience.

c. Recency. In general, the more recent the better. Unless you interview for an experienced hire or more senior position, your stories should not date back more than 2-3 years.

Make sure that

• you draft two stories each to always have a backup story in case the interviewer rejects the first story
• you are aware that the interviewer might interrupt you a lot to ask detailed questions, which means your stories need to go very deep as you should be ready to answer very focused questions such as ''what did you say at that moment?'', ''How did he react'', etc.
• create catchy headlines for each story that already convey the main message

• you create content for each story to be able to talk freely for around 10 minutes

Learn How to Communicate The Most Effectively

Communication is key in the interview. Speak like a consultant, follow a logical, top-down structure, and make sure to

• focus on yourself and your own role all the time
• keep the context brief and really focus on your own actions (context 2 minutes, your actions 8 minutes)
• practice your stories with peers and friends

Get it Right Quickly

Book a session with a coach that knows these dimensions inside out to make sure that

• they contain the right content
• they are communicated in the most McKinsey-like way
• you can anticipate and prepare for the detailed drill-down questions the interviewers will ask

You have reached the end of this article and have collected a lot of valuable information on how to crack the McKinsey PEI. If you still have questions after that, feel free to ask them in our Consulting Q&A. Our experienced coaches are happy to share their personal experiences and have valuable tips for you at hand! Alternatively, you can browse through all the existing questions about the McKinsey PEI in our forum to find out what other candidates struggled with, with valuable tips from our case coaches.

By the way, in addition to this article, we also have more content about McKinsey & Company:

👉 The Ultimate Guide to MBB: McKinsey, BCG, and Bain

👉 McKinsey Case Interview

👉 McKinsey Internship Application Guide

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