McKinsey R2 Early Interview End
I just had my first McKinsey R2 / final-round interview for the Taipei office with a Hong Kong partner. It was scheduled for 60 minutes but ended after around 30. There was no PEI; after intros, we went straight into the case.
The case was about an investment fund considering acquiring a U.S. toy manufacturer involved in traditional toys and video games. For the market-sizing portion, he asked me to size the U.S. traditional toy market.
Before the framework, I asked some clarifying questions. He said some of them were good, but also told me one question about the fund’s business model / portfolio was not relevant because the case was focused on the target company and market.
I built a framework around market attractiveness, target attractiveness, value creation, and client capabilities.
For the sizing, he gave me three customer groups — grandparents buying for kids, parents buying for kids, and adults buying toys for themselves — along with purchase frequency and price per toy. He told me to make my own assumptions.
I used age cohorts and calculated a total market size of around $163B. The arithmetic was correct, but in hindsight, I made a major assumption error: I implicitly assumed 100% penetration in each segment. Basically, I treated all relevant adults as active toy buyers, which probably inflated the market size a lot. I also did not sanity-check the number against the actual U.S. traditional toy market.
During the calculation, he said “good” or similar a few times. Near the end, his camera/mic seemed to cut out or mute for 5–10 seconds, but I kept going and finished.
After the sizing, I said it seemed like a large market and that I’d next want to understand the target’s current market share, positioning, projected share, and product segments. He then moved straight into Q&A.
At the end of Q&A, he said something like:
“Don’t be discouraged if I cut the case short, because I already have everything I needed.”
Am I cooked lol.