Reddit
Experience
·
2025 Q3
Bad interview experience at McKinsey. Should I tell HR before my second interview?
12 upvotes
22 replies
Interview Experience
Hi everyone, I wanted to get some outside perspective because I’m honestly frustrated after my first McKinsey interview and a scheduling issue with my second. Last Friday, I had my first interview sch
Full Details
Hi everyone, I wanted to get some outside perspective because I’m honestly frustrated after my first McKinsey interview and a scheduling issue with my second. Last Friday, I had my first interview scheduled for 2:30 p.m. Bogotá time which is 3:30 p.m. Baltimore. Around 3:00 p.m. the interviewer called to say he would be 15 to 20 minutes late. When he finally joined, he had camera issues for another 10 minutes. From the moment he turned on his camera, he looked visibly tired, kept rubbing his face, and gave me the impression that he just wanted to get the whole thing over with. That already made me uncomfortable because it felt like he didn’t really want to be there. He kept doing this throughout the entire interview. On top of that, his internet connection kept breaking up the entire time. I know it was not mine because I’ve had many interviews from my apartment with no issues. He said that he had to leave the office and was now connecting from home, and that is why his internet was unstable. But it made the whole conversation even more stressful because I had to keep asking him to repeat things. At some point, he said he would switch over to his phone because his laptop was slow, then later switched back to his computer so he could share the math case on the screen. It was this constant back and forth that just wasted more time. Honestly, I don’t know why he needed to be at home on a Friday afternoon, but it gave me the impression that this was not his priority. The interview itself started in Spanish since I am applying for a role in Bogotá and the interviewer was in the Peru office. That part was fine, but when we got to the case study, he read it entirely in English. I speak both English and Spanish very well, I have lived in the U.S. for ten years, I did all my degrees here, and my pronunciation is excellent, but his English was so poor that I could barely understand half of what he said. He also said he couldn’t share the case study on the screen (which I knew), so I asked him if he could repeat it in Spanish. He told me the case study was not written in Spanish but said he would translate it for me. Mind you, he had initially said that I could ask for him to repeat if I needed clarification at any point but when I did, he seemed frustrated. The way he reacted made me feel like he thought I didn’t understand English, when in reality I couldn’t understand him because his pronunciation was so unclear. That back and forth wasted more time and already added to the pressure. During the behavioral part, he asked me about a time I navigated a disagreement at work. I shared an example from four years ago and gave a lot of detail, but he kept pressing me for the exact conversation, like what exactly I said, where I was, and who was there. Of course I don’t remember a word-for-word conversation from four years ago, but I gave as much as I could. He still seemed unsatisfied and impatient. Then came the math part, which a McKinsey coach had told me would take about a third of the interview. But because of his lateness, the tech issues, and the language delays, we had barely five minutes left. I had been told I would be allowed to take notes, but when we started he suddenly said no, we don’t have time, just tell me how you would solve it. That completely threw me off. I have always been good at math, but under time pressure and without being allowed to take notes, I felt like I couldn’t really show my skills. I started reading through the problem on the screen and tried solving it from beginning to end, but he kept cutting me off, saying the problem should be solved in pieces and not line by line. Every time I made a mistake, he smirked sarcastically. At one point, when I tried to multiply numbers in my head, he interrupted with something like since you couldn’t multiply I’ll tell you it’s this much, which just felt unnecessarily condescending. His attitude made me anxious and uncomfortable and I walked away feeling like I didn’t get to demonstrate what I am actually capable of. Something else that stood out to me is the way he behaved throughout. I grew up in Colombia where the culture can be very misogynistic, and I’ve also known Peruvians who in my experience are even more so. I want to be clear that I know this is my personal perception, but the feelings I had during this interview were unlike any I’ve had before. I have done several interviews over the past ten years, and this year alone since graduating I’ve gone through multiple processes, both with women and men, and I have never felt this uncomfortable until now. That makes me think that it was not just my imagination, but that there was something in his attitude that made me feel I was not being taken seriously as a candidate. Fast forward to today, I was supposed to have my second interview at 9 a.m. Bogotá time. At 6:30 a.m. I got a text saying the interviewer could not connect and asking if I could reschedule for tomorrow. But shortly after, HR sent me a rescheduling link and the earliest availability was Friday, not tomorrow. So again, I rearranged my schedule only to have it pushed back at the last minute. At this point I am wondering, are my feelings about this valid or am I just overthinking, should I flag the interviewer’s unprofessional behavior with HR now or wait until after the process is over, if you have been in consulting how would you recommend handling this?
Free preview — Unlock all questions →