The McKinsey Moment

Like most other third years, I have been vacillating this year. The future is uncertain and my preferences are incomplete.  I have been mostly clueless about what I really want to do after this year. Not that I don’t have choices, but that I have a plethora of choices – in short, I am spoiled by choices. I can go for a Masters in Economics – in D-school or ISI or abroad at LSE, I can go for a job – there are plenty of recruiters coming through the Campus Placement Cell or I could make long term plans and plan to sit for civils or still, I could go for a PhD in an area of interest and choose to teach (I would love to do that!). To decide what I want to do next, I need to be clear about the long term plan. I wish I had constraints of some kind – that would help me eliminate choices and zero down to one or two. Well, I ought to be happy about that, you would say. Anyways, read on.

The pre placement talk made me feel as if McKinsey was looking for me. I had all the qualities they were looking for (I thought) – and better still, I liked the job profile. I have been recently entranced by the world of psychology and counseling. A little bit of practical exposure to counseling (and success at it!) made me feel as if I really liked solving problems. So, McKinsey I thought would be the same. Just the way I counsel a friend who is all forlorn and gloomy and make her see her own strengths and weaknesses, I would be here, consulting big companies who would approach McK with all their financial, organizational blues. Relationship problems would have similarities with financial problems, I presumed and the approach adopted to counsel the client would have some resemblance. Also, the profile of a Business Analyst would give me both – hands on experience in practical economics as well as that in practical psychology, since they mentioned in the talk how ‘inter-personal skills’ were crucial to the life of a BA.

The initial process was smooth, I got through the CV shortlisting round and was called for interview. I also got a taste of luxury through one trip to the McK office in Gurgaon for the case interview workshop. It was a different world – a secret world where crack teams were assigned sealed cabins to brainstorm and reach solutions to real life cases. (I was more wonderstruck by the slew of jhuggis in the plot adjoining the gargantuan building, where construction work was in progress and dark, nude kids roamed around in piles of sand in the morning sunlight – construction sites never fail to evade me…anyways) A walk inside the huge, green office with the spacious gym and soothing lawns made me fall in love with it.

The interview was scheduled for 8^th October and I was diagnosed positive for dengue. I sent a mail to the Recruitment Officer describing my circumstances.  I got an instant reply and then a personal call from her side. My dad attended the call and I could hear the female voice telling him – ‘Please let her rest and let her know that we would take her interview later, only once she recuperates completely.’ I was even more touched and became more determined. I had once more reason to go for the job – they valued the quality of lives of not only their employees but even prospective employees! So, profile, office, and people. I now had three reasons to seriously consider aiming for it.

Its November now and I have recovered from dengue. I was called for interview with McKinsey and Co. on 8^th of this month. I didn’t really prepare hard for the case interviews, apart from watching some Victor Cheng videos and reading his long email tips. Somehow, the idea of ‘preparing’ for the interview vexes me. All through the Victor Cheng videos, I felt as if he was trying to train people to a certain way of thinking. People who are really desperate about it supposedly go through his LOMS program multiple times just to start thinking like a consultant. It then becomes a drill, you walk through the framework, let the client see the state of things and then synthesise and conclude. Probably it suits them, but I would rather prefer a job where I don’t have to change myself for the job – I would like a job which suits my way of thinking. Not that I have a better way of thinking – in fact, I discovered how chaotic my initial attempts at solving cases were. They got more structured and clear over time with a bit of practice. It helps if you can calculate with clerical accuracy and speed and handle astronomical calculations of client turnovers and profits. Overall, I discovered on the way till 8^th of this month that a considerable chunk of my skills were disjunct from the skills they were looking for and that I would have to institute real changes in my ways of thinking about issues and yes, that I wasn’t that comfortable with exponential number crunching. They look for people who have an appetite to handle ‘ambiguity’ they say – so missing data, ballpark calculations and uncertain results were part of the lives of consultants. I also discovered I would have to overcome my level of ambiguity aversion till the 8^th.

The D-Day and the H-Hour came. And went.

I am a bit less uncertain about future now. Guess what?

I have decided I am not going for it.

The two rounds of interviews with the Engagement Managers made me conclude two things about myself:

One, I don’t really ‘love’ solving cases – they are interesting, I can handle them with ease, I can think about things logically and rationally, but I don’t really enjoy doing them over and over again.

Two, the most interesting part of the interview was the personal part.

I was asked about the ‘self-driven’ study I had done with regard to RSBY (Rashtriya Swasthya Bima Yojana) in the summer (as my CV put it) – I could go on and on about it, in the interview. I started with the story – of how the DG Labour Welfare had delivered a talk in college about the construct and design of RSBY and how I was amazed with the whole idea of health insurance for the poor via smart cards and how I had then gone to the office of the DG at Jaisalmer House and got encouraged to conduct an independent assessment. The enumeration team, the interviews with migrant laborers, the travails to the far ends of my city – I described each and every aspect. For a moment, I was transported back to the summer with my peers – Harshpreet, Ganga and Gurbachan veer. I found I gleaned more joy out of those scooter rides to empanelled hospitals than the Innova ride to the McK office.

I had to wait for long at the office on the D-Day after the Problem Solving Test (PST) for my case interviews. One was in person, and another was via video conferencing. I could rant about the waiting time – how I had to spend one and a half hour in a posh steel and wooden chamber with modern art paintings on the wall, but in retrospection, I think it was ‘reflection time’ for me. I didn’t like the silence that hung in the corridors, it was as if all conversation happened behind closed doors, in confidential cabins. I didn’t like the luxury of the world here. Something strangulated me, as I longed to get out and fly in my world. Something told me, we were just not meant for each other.

And there I am. Much tranquil and calm. I have one less choice now. I am nearing my focus. I would probably try considering civil services (something I started abhorring after I spent a day in the office of a District Collector) – if I could design and implement such ambitious schemes like RSBY, the way Anil Swarup did, I would give everything else for it. For now I see, the civil services are also about problem solving – just that the context is different. The paycheque is smaller and the world is a bit more humble and a bit lackluster.

But I am still not sure about the civil thing – please don’t ask me the next time you bump into me, ‘how’s the prep going?’ I just added it in my preference spectrum.

I like this ambiguity of life, I guess. Each day life unfolds itself to you and you discover new things about your own self. I will always remain grateful to McKinsey for providing me some of its silent consultancy services in the waiting room and during the case interviews, about the case of my life’s career and that too for free!