If you've been looking for a case interview complete prep guide, we've got
one for you. I'm gonna walk in this video through a lot of the key things that
you'll need to know about the case, especially if you're just getting
started or if you want to add a little nuance to your prep process. I'm gonna
cover a couple of things like the case interview: What is it?
And case interview examples, free case preparation, how you work through case
interview frameworks, case interview prep tips, and even finally the fit
interview and the PI interview and how they dovetail with what happens in
the case interview. I'm Jenny Rae Le Roux, the managing director
of Management Consulted and we've got a great set of material with you today. As
always I'm gonna refer to a few things that we have on our website because we
have a tremendous amount of free information for you and I want to make
sure that you really understand what it is inside the case interview that you
need to work on after you come away from this video. The first thing I'll start
with is just "what is the case interview?" So other than being a kind of evil
design by companies, the case interview is a type of interview that uses
real-world business problems to test a candidate's business acumen and
problem-solving skills. It's not just knowledge, it's also process, and the
case interview is an opportunity for you to say, instead of, "Have you done this
before," just show me how you do it. And it's a great opportunity for firms to
assess a candidate's not only business and problem-solving ability but also
their personality in the face of pressure. It is a very difficult test. By
our best estimates, which the firms release in some years and not in others,
so over the years we've had to make estimates around this, about 3% of people
that apply - submit a resume to a consulting firm - actually get accepted.
And that limited limited number go through a couple of processes. They go
through a consulting resume review. They go through the consulting initial screen
in some cases. They go through a resume review process and then they go through
one to three rounds of interviews. So, the case interview is a part of the
interview process toward the end of that, and there's a big amount of attrition
even in those rounds of interviews. Those however that go through our Black Belt
Interviewer program or our Black Belt Deluxe program are 55 percent likely to
get an interview at a top 10 firm - not just overall, but a top 10 firm. We have
an incredible rate of success and I'm gonna talk you through as I go through
the different parts of the case interview here, what makes candidates
successful when they understand each one of these pieces. For case interview
examples, let me break it down to three different types of cases. There are three
different types of cases that you might encounter. The one on one case interview,
a group case interview, and a presentation interview. I'm gonna give
you a little brief example of what each of those would be like. In the one on
one case interview you might get one of two types of cases. A brain teaser or
market sizing question. For example, one that's really popular is, how many
ping-pong balls fit in a Boeing 747? you probably don't know off the top of your
head and you might not have ever thought about it but they're looking for, in a
brain teaser or market sizing question, the process that you use in an ambiguous
situation to break down the problem. The second type is a strategy or ops
version of that same case, so instead of just asking an high level math question
instead you're gonna focus on a strategic question. For example, Boeing
has a capacity limit of seven plane types at a time that they can create.
Which plane type should they choose and why? Throughout the case you would go
through the data on the seven plane types, their operations, and you would
then make recommendation about which seven they should keep based on a whole
range of factors. How much it costs to produce, them how much they make on each
one, how much they might make in the future, or the market is headed, where
their competitors are going. And so they're going to be a lot of factors
that they'll have to look at in order to make that recommendation. Now, a group case
interview is going to be like that strategy or operations question - the
Boeing question - however it's going to be a little bit more data heavy, they'll
have more data to give you as a group, and it's going to require coordination
amongst the group. This is the best thought of as a psychology experiment,
where they watch you as the team either thrives toward the finish line or
decombusts, or somewhere in between, and your role in that is to be part of the
team, either as the quarterback or as somebody who's just solid at delivering
answers. You do not want to get aggressive with your teammate so be
careful about that, but you're gonna answer the same types of questions that
you would in a one-on-one interview. In addition in a presentation case
interview you're also going to answer the same types of questions, but instead
of going through the case as its unfolding, you're gonna do the whole case
on your own and then come with a written or a slide based recommendation about
what you think you should do. The pressure is real in a presentation case
interview and we have a resource that's called PowerPoint for Consulting where
you can get some additional help for that. Ultimately however our
recommendation is that no matter what kind of interview you're expected to
have, if it's a case interview start with one-on-one. If you have all of the core
skills to succeed in the hot seat in the moment, in a one-on-one interview, you
can succeed in the other forms as well. We have a big great resource that you're
gonna love. The free Case Interview Prep Course and our interview prep course
includes all kinds of great videos on the case interview as well as a link to
free case interview examples, so you're gonna want to check that out, make sure
you do. You can check out the link in the written description below. In addition,
let me talk just a little bit more about case interviews. One other key piece of
case interviews are case interview frameworks and there are four main
frameworks that we teach on when we do lessons at our 60-plus university
partners or digital programming. The first one is market sizing, the second
one is profitability, the third are market entry or 3C
cases. Market entry is the same as the 3 C's and a P framework and the
fourth is mergers and acquisitions. For each one of the case frameworks we've
created a video so you should go check those out, there's no reason that we
would talk about all of them in depth here because you could unpack them and
unpack them and unpack them. But the key thing that you need to know is that
there are four and if you don't know any one of those four you're not ready for
the case interview because you could get a case in which you need to use one of
the four or a mixture of the four together. Now we've got a long series of
case interview prep tips that I'm gonna run through really quickly and you can
just check the box. Did that, did that, oh didn't do that, didn't do that, oh did
that, did that, so our goal is just to kind of hammer through these so that you
make sure that in case interview prep tips you've got everything that you need
to make sure you're ready for the interview.
First of all, start preparing for your case interviews early. If you're watching
this video and it's the night before your interview, don't cry right now but
this is the best practice for somebody who is just beginning to think about
consulting and case interviews. Practice early. In general for ADC's - Advanced
Degree Candidates - or experienced hires you all should begin your case interview
prep around February. Your peak recruiting season is going to be July
and August, so that's three to six months, it's not easy. You need to practice and
the more busy you are with other things that you're doing, the longer period of
time you need to give yourself. In the US, undergrads, you need to start
case interview study in March. Junior and senior recruiting peak is in
September and you'll have a summer in between there where you're going to be
working so during the school year and then during breaks in the summer you're going to
have to fit this in around it. International undergrads should start
one month later in April. Internships and full-time recruiting peak is in October
for internationals. There is one exception which are countries that are
on an annual calendar or their school starts in January and ends December, in
that situation the recruiting peak is actually in March, so you need to start
about 3 to 6 months before that. For MBAs, you should start case practice
in June as soon as you know you're gonna get your MBA, but before you start your
coursework or any of the social piece of being an MBA. It is an absolute nightmare
in the first semester to try to do your MBA, recruit, and prep for case interviews,
so part of this process needs to be in place. Our most successful MBA candidates
start in June of the year that they begin their MBA. And if you're in a
second year MBA program and you're deciding to do case interviews as a
second go-round, if you know early, start in June again because your peak
recruiting season is in September, but if you don't know we'll crush with you
until the very end. For everyone else the optimal time to apply is March and July.
Those are the two periods where the consulting firms are focused more on
recruiting than on other activities and so you have the best chance of
networking in and applying in March and July. In addition, you should start your
case interview preparation in September or January, we're gonna recommend the January to
February timeframe. Tip number 2, use audio case interview resources. Watch videos or
audio versions of the videos so that you can see how people talk through things.
We found that people that over index on audio and video are better at the case
interview than those that over index on reading. Reading is fine, but audio and
video are going to be much better for you. Number three, even better than listening
to other people do it is to practice cases out loud, a lot. If you practice
case interviews out loud you're going to be much more successful in the case
because you'll figure out what you do and don't know as you're trying to
explain it. One of the examples of this is if you've ever had something and
tried to demonstrate mastery of it sometimes somebody will ask you, can you
teach me. If you can't teach it, you don't have mastery of it so the case interview
is an opportunity to begin to talk through something to the point of
mastery. For number four, quality case interview
practice matters. What do I mean by this? if you practice well you can use 20 cases.
If you practice poorly, you'll need sixty to a hundred. If it was me going through
the process again, I would absolutely want the twenty limit but that doesn't
mean that I can practice the two the same way, I need to practice the twenty
better. What makes it more effective? You've got two options, number one you
need to review with a critical eye every performance you go through. Number two,
you need to go through and make sure that you are working with a coach. It can
be a peer who is one level above you or it can be an expert coach like the ones
that are hand selected, the limited number of people that are on our team
that are literally the best in the world. It can be one of us or it can be one of
them but it needs to be somebody who will give you outside feedback that will
push you further than you could go on your own. Number five, get comfortable
with mental math. If you're not comfortable with mental math and you're
used to using a calculator and Excel, it takes a little getting used to. So again,
three days before the interview, can we do it? Sure, we've done it. If we have our
choice we'd rather have you be getting comfortable with mental math over a
period of time, revamping that muscle. Number six, start every case strong. There
are four things that every interviewer is going to go through. Number one, what
is the industry. Number two, what is the company. Number three, what is the key
case data. Number four, what is the business problem. You need to provide a
recap of all four of those things, gather information that you missed, and ask key
clarifying questions. As long as you know what the four things are and you start
with the recap and ask great clarifying questions, the interviewer in some
situations has been known to say, I'm gonna need to read the rest of the case.
If you start strong, you gain runway for mistakes or foibles later in the case. If
you want to really get great at case prep you need to make sure that you are
adding hypotheses throughout the case in some, stay
hypothesis-driven as we work through the entire case. What do we mean by that?
Well at the beginning, tell me what you think the answer is likely to be, what's
the key focus area or the likely yes or no that you're going to come to. As you
you go through it, in each little point say, I hypothesize that this is the most
important area, let's verify that with more data. So you're gonna use hypotheses,
big ones, for the whole case and then mini hypotheses as you go through the case.
Number eight, be case specific, make sure that your structure addresses the case so in
the Boeing structure it wouldn't make sense to have something that included
nothing about operations in it. If you just talk to me about the customers and
then if you talk to me about the competitors we have nothing about
operations. That wouldn't make any sense, Boeing is a huge operations company. If you
didn't specify any metrics that are true for the airline industry, like the
capacity that's fixed, I would think that that was weird so be case specific in
your subject matter and be case specific in your data when you're building your
structure upfront. Number nine, ask about trends. Make sure that when you're
talking in the case you identify what trends are when you have the data and
ask for trend data if you don't have it. Many companies try to make business
decisions in isolation, the best thing that you can do as an advisor to them is
to push them to look for trends. We recommend that you do the same thing
inside the case interview. In addition, practice analyzing charts
and graphs. Case charts are different and case graphs are different than regular
charts and regular graphs, so if you need help with this, we have an amazing course,
our Mental Math Course, or you can do a lot of chart and graph practice
interpretation. In addition, round your case math numbers wherever possible but
not too egregiously. Our general rule is round the ones place and keep everything
before a decimal point so if it's 298 you keep that instead of 298 comma 127
you just dropped 127 and keep 298,000 so round the numbers but don't round
egregiously. Unless that number is really easy to calculate then 298
is pretty close to 300, so that might be fine, but if it was 246, we
wouldn't wanna round down to 200, we might want to round to 250. In addition, number 12
think out loud as much as you can. One of the challenges if you haven't
done case practice out loud and you haven't listened to cases and watched
videos is that a lot of people get very in their head. You need to be
ready to walk through a lot of the words for thinking out loud.
In addition, follow the data, not the case framework. What does that mean? In the
beginning of the case you'll say, here are the areas that I want to look at and
the case framework that I want to walk through. And they'll say, that's great,
brilliant, totally fine, and in a normal world where you have six months to do
the case it might be a great structure. But in reality they only have two or
four pieces of information, just limited information that they're going to give
you, so don't go back to your framework and adhere to it like it's rigid. Follow
where the data is that they're giving you, it might be in point three of
your structure, just follow what they're giving you and work on it. That doesn't
mean that you just aimlessly wander through the case, it means that as they
give you pieces of information you should assume that they're important.
Number fourteen, finish with a strong recommendation, it's super critical that
you end the case with an answer and a clear recommendation. If you don't it
will sound like you're just wandering through the process. Number fifteen, it's
critical that you maintain a positive attitude and a confident persona.
Maintaining a positive attitude means that you are ready with an answer, that
you're ready to constantly relook at something or take another view on it and
that you have an idea behind what you say but you demonstrate 10% of
flexibility. At Bain we called it the ability to be 1% open to a hundred
percent chance that we were wrong. So, that's what they're looking for from you.
At the end of the day these 15 tips are gonna help you in the case interview but
only if you really understand them so we have a series of videos on YouTube on
the case interview, our free Case Interview Prep course, free Case Math
Drills, free cases and more on our website at Management Consulted, so we'd
love for you to check those out. Finally to wrap this up, the case interview is a
big portion of the total interview in consulting. The consulting interview
consists of more than just the case interview. It also consists of the fit
interview and in the first round the fit interview is just to dabble of two
to three questions in the second round, it's almost half of the time and the
score that you'll spend and some firms even overweight it more than that in the
final round. The assumption in the final round is that you can do a case, the
question is are you a good fit with the organization. McKinsey calls their
specific fit interview the McKinsey PEI or the McKinsey personal experience
interview. So as you're walking through the case interview process we just
wanted to put a red flag up and say don't forget the big fit interview is
also going to be super and important. In conclusion the case interview is
probably the hardest interview that you'll have for your life, it's one of
the most challenging things to train for, but there are a lot of people that have
gone before you that have done it well. In general we would love for you to
succeed and we'd love to help you in a future Black Belt course or in one of
our digital courses online at Management Consulted. Thanks for joining this video
today we hope that you enjoy this and all the other free resources that we
have for you as you continue your journey on your way to becoming a
consultant and beyond.