The PEI and Fit Workbook, Printed Out on This Page

What the firms publish about the fit interview

Start with the material that is not ours. McKinsey runs a personal experience interview and publishes four named themes for it. Each theme comes with a definition and one example question, and both are printed here word for word, because paraphrasing a firm's own wording is where preparation pages go wrong.

The same firm suggests arriving with two personal examples for each of those four areas. Four themes at two examples each is eight prepared stories, which is a heavier ask than most candidates plan for, and it comes from the firm rather than from us.

BCG publishes a different half of the picture. It defines a behavioral interview as "a technique we use to evaluate a candidate's past behavior in different situations in order to predict their future performance and how they would fit at BCG", and it warns what the format excludes: "You won't get asked questions like 'tell me about yourself' or 'what are your strengths and weaknesses' in this style of interview." It then names seven competencies it reviews answers against, in this order: technical role expertise, work and time management, organization, problem solving, client and customer focus, communication, and teaming. Five values sit alongside them: integrity, respect for the individual, diversity, partnership, and social impact.

The fourteen signals, with the question that opens each

Now the part that is ours. Sorting a question bank by wording invites one rehearsed answer per question, and that collapses the moment the wording shifts. Sorting by signal lets one story serve several questions. These are the fourteen signals we index against, with an opening question for each.

Compare the two lists and the overlap is the useful finding. McKinsey's Personal Impact theme sits over three of our signals at once, and Courageous Change sits over recovering from a failure and creating clarity. That is a reading rather than an equivalence, and treating one as a translation of the other is how a preparation page ends up inventing a firm's rubric.

The fit interview worksheet, and the arithmetic of coverage

Here is the whole worksheet. Six rows, six columns, one story per row.

The arithmetic decides how many rows you need. Six stories at three signals apiece is 18 slots, against 14 signals to cover. That leaves four slots of redundancy, which is the right margin: it means one story being unavailable, because it was already used, does not leave a signal uncovered. Prepare four stories instead and you have 12 slots for 14 signals, so at least two signals have no story at all.

Rank the three signals per row rather than listing them loosely. Under pressure you will reach for the first one, and the first one should be the signal that story evidences most strongly. And keep the running time honest. A story that reads well in notes routinely runs three minutes when spoken, and the minute past the point of interest is the minute that costs you.

STAR, as its publisher defines it

STAR is everywhere and usually defined loosely. BCG defines each of the four parts itself, and its definitions are more specific than the usual gloss, particularly on the third.

1. Situation: "The 'situation' sets the stage for your story, outlining the challenge that you came up against and ultimately had to solve."
2. Task: "The 'task' outlines what your specific role was and what you had to manage in the situation."
3. Action: "The 'action' explains the steps that you took to address the situation. This is the most in-depth part of your overall response and should highlight transferable skills that would be valuable in your role at BCG."
4. Result: "The 'result' details the outcome that your actions led to and wraps up your story."

Read the third one again. The firm says the action is the most in depth part, which means the situation and the task are setup and should be short. Most answers invert this: two minutes of context and twenty seconds of what the candidate actually did. The three question stems the same page publishes are "How have you done this task in the past?", "Describe a time when you..." and "Share an example of a situation where...", and all three point at the action.

One fit interview workbook row, filled in

An empty worksheet is easy to agree with and hard to use, so here is a row at the level of detail that survives probing.

Story name: the supplier renegotiation. Signals: commercial judgment, then persuading upwards, then delivering under a hard constraint. The decision: to hold the existing supplier at a higher price rather than switch to a cheaper one mid project, against the view of the person who owned the budget. The number: the switch would have saved about 9 percent on unit cost and cost four weeks of schedule, and the schedule was worth more than the 9 percent. What I would do differently: I made that case verbally and lost a week re-arguing it, so I would have written the two options with their costs on one page first. Running time, spoken: one minute fifty.

Notice what carries the weight there. A decision that could have gone the other way, one number that makes the trade-off legible, and a named mistake. Those three elements are what turn a description of events into evidence about you.

Why the PEI and fit workbook is here rather than in a download

The resources page lists a fit workbook as a PDF, and that download sits behind an account, as every card there states. Rather than send you to a form, the material is above: the published themes, the published competencies, fourteen signals, the worksheet and a worked row. Nothing here is held back for a paid version.

There is a practical reason beyond principle. A PDF ages badly and silently. The four themes above were read from the module payload the firm serves, on 30 September 2026, and if that module changes this page can change with it in an afternoon. A file already sitting in somebody's downloads folder cannot.

What a plan adds is the spoken rehearsal, which is a different thing from the document. Answering out loud with follow-ups arriving is the part of fit preparation that a worksheet cannot simulate, and it comes with every plan. The behavioral practice page lists the fourteen signals with the follow-up on each, and our page on that practice is a companion on the case side.

What nobody publishes about fit

Three absences, named. No firm publishes a rubric for a fit answer. Bain goes furthest by telling candidates that feedback rests on "an objective scoring system", and then says nothing about what it measures. No firm publishes how many stories it expects per interview either, beyond McKinsey's suggestion of two examples per theme.

The third absence is the one candidates most want closed. Nobody publishes what separates a story that clears the bar from one that does not. McKinsey gives a definition per theme and a question per theme, and stops there. BCG gives a competency list and a structure, and stops there. Any page that hands you a scoring threshold for a fit answer has invented it, and the invention is easy to spot because the firm's own page is two clicks away.

And on our side: none of our six rubrics scores a behavioral answer. All six are case rubrics, so any weight you see on this site belongs to structuring, arithmetic, estimation, ideas, exhibits or synthesis. Those weights are listed at how an answer is assessed, and the fact that the fit half has none is the honest state of it rather than an omission we are hiding. Build the bank above, run it aloud against the probes, and use a human listener for the reading a rubric does not perform.