Hi, I'm Jenny Rae La Roux, the Managing Director of Management Consulted. And I'm
here today to talk a little bit about the all-important case interview prep process.
This is your complete guide to case interview prep. First of all, when do you
start prepping for the case interview? Our recommendation is six months in
advance. And in the best case scenario, you're going to work through multiple
different pieces of the prep process. You're gonna go through a diagnostic
interview, you're gonna break everything down, you're gonna dig into a lot of the
issues that you might have, you're gonna put it all back together, and you're
gonna do all this in a very systematic way. We recognize that a lot of you are
gonna be coming to us and binge watching youtube videos three days before your interviews.
So let me just speak to you. What do you need to do if you're
prepping right away. You need to come through those very same diligent
processes, incredibly quickly. So you need to start with a diagnostic interview. Then
you need to practice sections of the interview, even if it feels like it's
time inefficient, and you're too close to the interview. On your third day
beforehand, you need to break down the interview and make sure that you've got
all the component pieces just right. And then just before the interview you need
to pull everything back together. So even if you're working in a compressed
timeframe, that's our recommendation. In addition the prep process really can
take longer than six months, if you have absolutely no business background. And
you want to weave in some practical experience, to build in tools, for
yourself so you can refer to them inside the interview.
The second piece that's really important to understand, is how to prepare. There
are two main ways that are effective for preparation. Number one, audio review. You
can listen and watch other people doing case interviews. When you're listening
to them and you're watching them happen, you get a sense for how the nuances of
the flow works, for how the back-and-forth should be working, for
when you should be driving, and when you should be receiving. If you don't get
that and you're just reading the interviews, it seems like a much more
static question and answer process. So understanding from the beginning, the way
that the conversation naturally flows, is really critical. And again you can do
that through audio resources, or you can for example, YouTube videos on case
interviews. Then after you've absorbed some information or potentially even
before, you need to make sure that you yourself are practicing out loud. Because
again just reading something or going through it in isolation, does not give
you the simulation for what you'll need to go through the interview. So if you have
a long period of time, I recommend that you do a diagnostic interview to start
with, so that you know where you should be focusing. And then use your audio
practice to build up some skills as you are working through your own processes.
If you have a very limited amount of time we recommend that you flip that,
watch a few videos, listen to some audio, then dive straight into the practice. Now
let's talk a little bit about the structuring process. When you're going
through the beginning of a case, the most critical piece is building a good
structure. At the beginning and it's critical for two reasons. Number one, in
many of the situations like a BCG or Deloitte case, you'll actually use
that structure to solve the case. So it's important for your ability to complete
the task you have. But for cases where you're maybe not using that structure
exactly, like a McKinsey case, it's also really important to communicate that you
have the ability to structure a work plan effectively. How do you build a
structure? Well first of all, you need to make sure that you have isolated
categories, four categories is our recommendation. Second, you need to make
sure that you're drawing on practical experience. It's really important to the
interviewer that every structure does not sound the same to one another, from
case to case. And that every person structure does not sound the same,
because you are relying on your own personal experience. And in addition, you
need to make sure that your structure is prioritized. Because you may use it to
solve the case, and even if you don't, what they want to see from you is that
you can out of the sea of data that you can collect, identify the keys that
you'll really need to solve the case. Which brings me to my last point of the
structure section. Every line in your structure, outside of the category
headings, needs to be data driven. And there's a reason for that. Because step
number four of case practice, is making sure that you ace the math. And the one
way you can make sure, from the beginning when you ace the math, is identify the
data, that you'll need to solve the problem. When you're working through the
math, there are other things you need to keep in mind.
First of all follow the data, not your structure. So even if you came up in
the beginning with some great ideas for how to structure the case, you need to
make sure that you are identifying inside the case what data is available
to you, that's gonna be a hint, that it's the key to an insight. Because data is
only gonna be brought into the case if there is an insight there. In addition,
you need to make sure that you spend five minutes working through the math
portions of the case, and that you use our four recommended steps. First you
recap the problem. Second you structure the math and you explain verbally what
you're about to do. Third you solve the math. And fourth you come up with insights.
And then finally make sure that you practice all three types of math. Verbal
math, chart math, and graph math. If you're able to do all of those, you are going be
adequately prepared for the math portion, inside the interview. And one final note
about that, just a little tip or hint, we do recommend a minor amount of rounding
to help facilitate speed in the math. But ultimately speed is not the most
important thing, the level of your insight is important. And when we're
training people, especially if they have a good bit of time before the interview,
we actually recommend that they don't do any rounding. We look for exact numbers
to build confidence in that ability. Final piece that's important to understand
when prepping for the case interview, is how to conclude. How to build a
recommendation at the end. One thing that's really important to note, as we've
seen this in multiple parts of our practice and in our seminars, is that people
are reluctant to make conclusions without perfect data. That's not what
they're looking for from you. You need to know from the beginning, that they're
looking for a "Yes", or a "No" answer. A "Do this" a "Don't do that". They're looking for a
clear recommendation even if it's based on limited data. And you can put in your
next steps of the recommendation what else you would like to do to verify
where you are, but it's really critical that you put all of that together. There's
so much more that we could say and do say about case interviews, in our other
videos as well as our case interview course. And we would love to work with
you to prepare for your case interview. Just visit us on social or at
www.managementconsulted.com.