I applied through college or university. The process took 2 weeks. I interviewed at Bain & Company (San Francisco, CA) in Feb 2015
Interview
I had two case interviews on campus with associates from Bain. They were very helpful and friendly and mostly guided me through the interview. First case was on the groceries industry, and second was on used-phones. Quite esoteric, but not unfamiliar markets to a typical college student. The math required was not very demanding.
Second round was with two analysts and a partner in the Bain SF office. The partner usually has the shortest and easiest case, but also asked a couple behavioral questions (Why Bain? What do you want to do in the future? What interests you? etc.)
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A client in private equity is thinking of acquiring a IT security company (like McAfee). What would you recommend?
Includes: Market-sizing of the IT security market, growth potential for the IT security market, evaluation of competition.
Really smooth and clear. Was supported at every stage and felt like I could clearly demonstrate my skills. Found the casing harder than expected but behaviorals were genuinely interesting to answer.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Imagine you are working on an M&A case and you meet a friend for dinner who works for that company and has just been fired. He reports huge issues that are non-public material information. What would you do?
I applied through college or university. The process took 7 weeks. I interviewed at Bain & Company in Mar 2026
Interview
Very Professional and Structured. Unique way of process with the behavioural and written case on top of the standard case. 2 round, total 5 interviews.
All the interviewers are really nice, genuinely want you to succeed.
MBA on-campus recruiting cycle. One super day of two cases and one behavioral. All done by partners. Countless coffee chats before actual interview day. Interview was in-person, but not at local office for which we were interviewing.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Have you ever had a colleague who didn't work out and how did you handle it?