went through the Bain PM loop earlier this year. i'm a blunt person so i'll give you the blunt version.
Bain's PM role sits within their products and digital practice, not the core consulting track. so the interview is a hybrid: some PM fundamentals, some consulting-flavored problem-solving, and yes, behavioral.
the stages i went through: recruiter screen (30 min, see other threads) PM phone screen with a senior PM (60 min) written case (take-home, 48 hours) final onsite: two PM sessions + one behavioral
questions in the PM phone screen: 'tell me about a product you've shipped from 0 to 1. what would you do differently now?' 'how do you prioritize when stakeholders want different things and there's no clear data to break the tie?' 'give me an example of a time you killed a feature you'd championed.'
they like that last one. killing your darlings shows strategic maturity and intellectual honesty. it's a filter.
the written case:
48 hours to turn around a product strategy memo. roughly: 'a hypothetical enterprise client is launching a new internal productivity tool. define the MVP, how you'd measure success, and what the first 6 months look like.' about 6-8 pages. don't pad it. they want structured thinking, not volume.
what the PM interviewers care about: discovery before solutioning. if you jump to features before articulating the user problem, they'll mark you down. metrics specificity. 'we'd track engagement' is not an answer. 'we'd track DAU/WAU ratio and time-to-first-value within 7 days of activation' lands better. communication clarity. this is a client-facing org. foggy answers translate to foggy client decks.
overall the PM interview felt more rigorous than typical tech-company PM loops. probably because of the consulting DNA. if you've done case prep it's actually an advantage, even for the PM track.