just finished the McKinsey engineering manager interview for a role in their tech build group. i'm a first-time manager, about a year and a half in, and i was nervous about not having the 'right' resume for a firm like McKinsey. here's what happened.
the loop
five rounds, which felt like a lot. phone screen with recruiter, phone screen with a senior EM, then a half-day virtual onsite with four back-to-back sessions: leadership/behavioral, technical depth, case-style problem solving, and a final session with a partner.
leadership and behavioral this was the heaviest part for an EM. they asked about: how i handle an underperforming engineer (with specifics), how i've managed conflicting priorities across two squads, how i've pushed back on a product decision i disagreed with. classic PEI format: tell me a situation, they drill down with 'what exactly did you say', 'what was the data that drove that call', 'what happened after.' my answers needed receipts. 'i held a 1:1 and discussed it' didn't fly as a full answer.
technical depth they're not expecting you to whiteboard algorithms as an EM. but they went deep on: how i do code review at the team level, how i think about tech debt prioritization, how i'd approach hiring for a senior IC vs a generalist. one question was essentially 'your team's p99 latency has been creeping up for two sprints, what do you do?' they wanted structured diagnosis, not just 'i look at the dashboards.'
the case this was a lite version of a consulting case, adapted for a tech context. 'a client's engineering team is shipping half as fast as a year ago, what's going on?' they gave me some fake metrics: PR cycle time, deploy frequency, incident rate. i walked through a structured diagnosis. they pushed on my reasoning at each step.
what i'd tell someone else preparing
prepare 4-5 leadership stories that have measurable outcomes. don't be vague. know your metrics. the case is actually doable if you treat it like a system design problem instead of a consulting problem. and don't underestimate the partner call at the end. it's low pressure but it's also when the decision gets made, so bring your energy.