Fit is not a speech. It is "would I put this person in front of a client on Thursday". McKinsey calls it PEI. Bain and BCG want the same muscle with different labels. Deloitte and EY-P will stay in STAR longer.
Build the bank here. Then run a Deep dive session: one story, four follow-ups.
The four McKinsey signals (2025 names)
| Signal | What they are listening for | A story that works | A story that dies |
|---|---|---|---|
| Leadership | You moved a group when you did not have to | You changed the plan and people followed | You were "team lead" on a slide |
| Personal impact | You changed one person's mind | A specific objection, a specific meeting | "I am good with people" |
| Drive | You wanted a hard thing and paid for it | Months, not a weekend. A miss you owned | "I am very passionate" |
| Growth / adaptive | You changed how you work after being wrong | The second system you built | A training certificate |
Map every story to two signals. If a story only fits "I worked hard", it is not a PEI story yet.
Story bank: 12 slots
Write these in a notebook. One sentence each tonight. Expand the six strongest tomorrow.
- Changed someone's mind when they strongly disagreed
- Led without formal authority
- Led a team through an ambiguous problem
- Set an ambitious goal and missed it
- Developed someone who was struggling
- Failed and changed the system, not just your mood
- Delivered under an ugly constraint (time, budget, people)
- Ethical or values tension you actually felt
- Structured an ambiguous problem with incomplete data
- Grit over months, not a heroic weekend
- Influenced a commercial or pricing call
- Delivered an unwelcome recommendation and stayed in the relationship
If you are undergrad and "client" feels fake, use a society, a lab, a store, a family business. The test is ownership, not letterhead.
STAR, compressed
- Situation: one breath. Place, clock, constraint.
- Task: the decision you owned. Not the team's KPI.
- Action: about 60% of the airtime. Meetings, objections, trade-offs. "I", not "we".
- Result: a number, and what you would do again.
Write the action in three beats: the meeting, the objection, the move.
Follow-up ladder
They will ask "what did you do?" three times. Pre-load:
- The next meeting
- The strongest objection
- The number or evidence that changed the decision
- What you would do differently, and why
If you cannot answer 4 without collapsing, the story is still a highlight reel.
42 prompts to pressure-test the bank
Read one. If you do not have a story in 10 seconds, that slot is empty.
Leadership
- Tell me about a time you changed someone's mind when they strongly disagreed.
- Describe a time you led a team through an ambiguous problem.
- Tell me about a time you made an unpopular call and stuck with it.
- Give an example of leading without formal authority.
- Tell me about building a team from scratch.
- Describe a time you had to cut a workstream or a person from a plan.
- Tell me about aligning two groups that did not want to work together.
- Describe a time you owned the outcome after you delegated.
Personal impact 9. Tell me about influencing a decision without authority. 10. Describe a conflict on a team and how you resolved it. 11. When did you simplify a messy problem for a senior audience? 12. Tell me about a relationship that unlocked a result. 13. Describe delivering an unwelcome recommendation. 14. Give an example of coaching someone who was struggling. 15. Tell me about selling an idea with incomplete data. 16. Describe recovering a damaged working relationship.
Drive 17. Tell me about an ambitious goal you missed. 18. Describe grit over months, not a weekend. 19. Tell me about delivering under an ugly constraint. 20. Give an example of results orientation on a tight deadline. 21. Describe operating under distress or a turnaround-like clock. 22. Tell me about a time you raised the bar for a group. 23. Describe keeping going after a public miss. 24. Tell me about taking extra scope because it mattered.
Growth 25. Tell me about learning a new domain in days, not months. 26. Describe a failure that changed the system, not just your effort. 27. Tell me about feedback that stung and what you changed. 28. Describe being wrong in public and the second version of your work. 29. Tell me about working across cultures or countries on a hard problem. 30. Describe going deep on analysis and still telling a simple story. 31. Tell me about the first time you had to manage up. 32. Describe outgrowing a way of working that used to make you look good.
Firm flavour 33. Tell me about influencing a pricing or commercial decision. 34. Describe an operations problem you improved. 35. Tell me about an ethical tension you did not dodge. 36. Describe using data to change a plan already in motion. 37. Tell me about delivering in a matrixed environment. 38. Describe pushing back on a senior person. 39. Tell me about owning an outcome that was at risk. 40. Describe structuring an ambiguous client (or equivalent) problem. 41. Tell me about sizing a bet with incomplete data. 42. Describe a time you chose pragmatic over perfect, and were right.
Self-review rubric
Score 1–5. Anything under 4 gets rewritten.
| Check | 1 | 5 |
|---|---|---|
| Decision you owned is obvious in the first 20 seconds | Vague project | A call you made |
| "I" vs "we" | The team did it | You did three specific things |
| Number in the result | "It went well" | A figure that would survive a challenge |
| Second layer ready | You repeat the first story | Meeting, objection, evidence |
| You would tell it to a partner at dinner | Performance | Colleague |
How to practise this week
Tonight: fill 12 one-liners.
Tomorrow: expand 6 into STAR.
Wednesday: Deep dive on the weakest story.
Thursday: rewrite from the debrief.
Friday: one coffee-chat version (90 seconds) and one PEI version (3 minutes). Same story. Different clock.