Hi, I'm Jenny Rae Le Roux and this is Lisa Bright. I'm ex-Bain and Lisa is ex-McKinsey.
It's like the war of the consultants over here, and we've got some great
content for you. We just decided to put together after a brief discussion some
of our top tips for case interviews. These are really things that we see
almost 100% of the time people that come to our door that have issues with these
things. They are misunderstandings for the other content that's out there -
they're just things that they haven't understood because they haven't gotten
real honest feedback. So we wanted to share these with you today and we talked
about the number that we were going to do. I originally thought I would satisfy
with two - but Lisa as a McKinsey consultant, cannot handle it if we do less than
three, so we've got three total, exactly three; not four, not two, but
there must be three. So the three top tips for case interviews. Absolutely, so I
think that the first one is micro structuring. Do you want to talk just a
little bit about that and what you see. Yeah so, a lot of people will come to me
and they'll say, maybe they got some feedback around not being structured. All
the time. That is like the main thing that everyone gets feedback on. And so a lot
of times people will think it's the beginning structure, that first initial
after the prompt they take the time to gather their thoughts on how they're
going to attack the case. And can we be fair, that is usually a problem, on of
the main problem. But if you do that well there's still a lot of structure that
goes on throughout the entire case that you want to make sure you're doing. Talk a little
bit about some of the details around that. So you know when you're answering
the creative questions, you want to make sure that you're not just pulling ideas
out of thin air, but you've got some buckets, and you've got a game plan, or
like a process of how you're going through that.
So have some categories – kind of like your initial structure – and then come up
with creative ideas within each, so it shows you have a structure of thought
process .Or like a process flow, that can work too. And the other thing is with
the math. So you always want to make sure you structure the math before you start.
Talk a little bit about how you do that. I think about my page like an Excel
spreadsheet right. So you can even use graph paper if you want, and lay it out
as if you would lay out a model in Excel. You know, leave some sections for
yourself so you've allocated space for each section as you're going through.
And as you're going through the charts, a lot of times people say, well the first
thing I see is this, and I'm like well that's great there's a lot more, or
they'll miss some of the additional analyses. So a lot of times you know if I
look at a chart, I'll say okay there's these three things we could do with it,
let's tackle item 1 first, then number 2, again three things. It's a it's a structured thought
process so that you're getting to a full answer, and not just random ideas as you
go throughout a case. So it's really start to finish being structure and
organized. And I think that your note-taking strategy is actually really
interesting for this. We take notes differently, which I think is always fun
when we get together and do cases, but can you just talk a little bit about
your note-taking structure, and how that enables micro structure for your clients.
Right, so when I start off a case I have three sections on my paper. So I have the
prompt on one side, so that I keep track of all the information given early on.
Then I've got my structure, which is the driving force in my case, I want to make
sure I never lose sight of that. And then I also keep track of all my insights as
I go, so every time I finish a math question, a chart, a creative question –
I'll write down my main takeaway. So when I get to the end of the case, I don't
have notes scattered across five sheets of paper with like random things circled
everywhere. I've got all the main insights in one spot so I can just
summarize it. And what do you do with that piece of paper, where do you keep it.
Right here. You start with it in the middle, and then you move it to the side.
Here, and then this is my working page in front of me, but I always come back to
that one page, so I can keep everything organized for myself. Otherwise I like to
circle things, and I can get a little crazy with circling. So I want to make
sure that I actually have a condensed version of what's important. I just want
to add one thing to micro structuring that I've noticed has helped a lot of
people, its numbering, verbal numbering. And with the micro structure in general
when they start, they might know for example in the math that they need to
walk through certain steps, but they don't number how many steps they need to
walk through. Exactly, so it feels very elementary I think
when you're first starting to do cases, but it's incredibly helpful when
somebody is receiving information. The interviewers receiving information from
you in a verbal way, to recognize your structure. So everything from the initial
structure, numbering, how many buckets how, many items in each sub bucket do you
have. And then kind of recapping – we want to start with
this one first, and this one we want to dive into these three areas, and just
keeping that kind of structure throughout. I think a lot of people
really battle to do that, and the more creative and wild they get, the more
I begin to feel like they're really just not gonna be able to manage thesmselves well
inside the firm. And speaking with clients as well, when you're saying, hey
there are four initiatives that we're gonna tackle that I recommend that you do.
They can get their head around, okay there's four – versus if you jumble them
all together it's really unclear as to what am I supposed to do. There are
those discrete options, or are they all mix together, I'm not quite sure. Absolutely,
so micro structuring is key and we could talk about it forever, but let's
talk about the second tip. What do you want to talk about next. I want to
talk about numbers, I usually help people through the math, that tends to be a key
area that people struggle with. I actually, when I do boot camps with
groups, which I do lots of every year. I have them raise their hand, and it's so
interesting to me because I usually ask people to pick one – whether they think
the math is more challenging or the brainstorming is more challenging – and
even though I feel like I see challenges in the math pretty much across the board,
there are a lot of people who really battle with the brainstorming too. So I
just wanted to talk about how to actually tie those numbers together
throughout the case, and just be numbers driven. So if you're if it's ok with you
I'll just kind of dive into that. From the very beginning of the case, I
really recommend that people utilize numbers in their background. So if there
are numbers that come out, some looking for an opportunity to do bonus math
right at the beginning of the case, is a great sign that somebody is numbers
oriented. Then when they're going through their structure, I really usually
recommend that they have numbers, not actual numbers, but metrics themselves
that they're looking for. And I personally start with my coaching with
BCG style cases, and I think that they're the hardest, and the easiest to kind of
fall off a cliff if you really don't know where you're going. So I really
enjoy training people to lead themselves through the case. And in order to do that,
you have to identify what metrics you want, and then you have to go for those
first. So you can't be loosey-goosey in terms of all of your numbers, because
in BCG, they'll say, sure go through your whole structure, and 20 minutes later you
won't have found a number and you won't have anything close to an answer. So just
really driving toward making sure the first
item in every bucket is a number that you're looking to gather, and then really looking
to gather those numbers. Do you want to talk a little bit about the actual math
portion of the case, which a lot of people know that they are that numbers
are supposed to be involved. But what are some, you know some kind of
pointers for that section. So one thing is just talking through the steps, and
making sure that you're kind of communicating everything as you go.
I usually tell people, think about it like you are a tutor, and you're teaching
someone the math that you're doing– and it's literally the step by step, don't
skip steps and logic because that's likely where errors happen. It's usually
when people go silent, they're in a little black box of working on something,
and that's when things usually go wrong. So that's one, and then also, we
talked about this earlier, but be structured in the math, and don't have
numbers floating all over the place. That can happen a lot too. You know one thing
that I've also found is really interesting, a lot of people think of the
math as the math, instead of the math as a tool to get an insight. That's a
lot of what I mean by being numbers driven. Is that, if you're looking to
validate all of your assumptions with numbers, then when you get a math problem
you're actually not looking to crunch the numbers, or that's not your ultimate
focus, your focus is I need an answer here so that I can develop an insight
related to the bigger question that I'm trying to solve. Yeah, that's one, and then
also with the I would say with the math overall, it's look for math and charts. So
a lot of the charts have opportunities that crunch numbers, and instead of just
kind of looking at and going, oh I can qualitatively here's what I see, run the
numbers. Right think of what analyses you could do. Even if you don't crunch it
right away, just say I'm thinking about these three analyses that we could do
with this chart. And then you could say, you know I think I want to
dive into those, and your interviewer may sat, yeah it's a good idea. And then
you can kind of dive into the numbers, so look for opportunities to crunch numbers
in a case. So it almost seems a little masochistic to volunteer for that, but
it's absolutely essential if you're really comfortable with numbers. So we've
talked about numbers in the opening, we've talked about numbers in the
structure, we've talked about numbers in the creative part, and also in the math part.
Let's talk a little bit about recommendation. One of the things that I
really like to see is when people bring the numbers that they had throughout the
case back in for the recommendation, and when they recommend something they're
backing it up with numbers. And then when they're building next steps, their next
steps are again metrics based. So that just really helps me know that somebody
is consistently thinking about numbers. What about you?
When I do my inside section that I mentioned before, I'm always bringing in
some of the numbers that back up any recommendation that I have. With a
statistic or a number that goes along with it, so it's building that case. Not
just saying, well our market share is low, how low right, so you want to
have a number there to make sure you're backing up all your recommendations.
So I think that ultimately that covers micro structuring and it also
covers being numbers or metrics oriented throughout the case. What about the last
one. I think it's just about driving the case. A lot of times people are sitting
there waiting for me to ask them the next question, well what do you want
to do. Why is that important, let's just talk about tying that back to what it's
actually like to be a consultant. So you really don't have a boss, no one is
trying to define – here are the 10 things you need to do throughout the week.
You want to be starting your week off, every week, going ok here all the things I need
to get done to arrive at the answer I'm looking for. And when you finish one
piece of it, you want to take the inside of that and then really develop your own
work stream. Right so you get assigned very large tasks, so you need to
figure out if there's any room to cut costs in this category. No one's telling
you the individual analyses that you need to do, like in a typical job or they
might say that, so you're expected to drive your own work. Your manager does
not want to be micromanaging you if it all cost, right. They want to be
hands-off, you run with it, this is your your task, it's your work stream to run.
And so they want to see that you can do that in a case, and make sure that you're
driving that start to finish. I also have a hypothesis about this. I think a lot of
people think that consultants have this magic box, in which they hold all the
secrets in the universe, and they just hide them there and pull them out. That would be
nice. It's incredibly creative as a practice, and there is not a defined
answer, there's not a playbook, there's not even within structures there's not a
set of we do these five analyses for every client. Especially at the higher
levels at McKinsey and Bain, we are in there rolling our sleeves up and really
trying to identify what's going to work independently for a client. So even
though there are some best practices that you can gently lean on, really there
isn't a playbook. So I think also a part of it is that they're also beginning to train
you for the senior levels. Where you have to walk into a company and
you really have to define what a strategy would look like, it's very
executive level thinking. What have you noticed for people that don't drive
cases, how do you help fix it, how do you help them identify what some of their
issues are. I always talk about the transitions. So when you finish a
creative question, pick out one of your ideas that you're most interested in.
Kind of focus on that, and drive that forward. Or within a chart, always be
thinking about the recommendation, and then how you would dive into that
further. So what additional data would you need, or when you're looking at the
math – talking about what research you want to do next, what analyses you could
do next. So it's always, it's not so much in the middle, you know work on each
question that you have, but then in the transition, as soon as you're done you
should never be looking at your interview and going okay the answer is
this I'm done. And then be waiting. I'm like no no, what additional data
would you want, what additional analyses could you crunch. So it's all about the
transitions in a case to make sure pushing that forward. I go even further
do you want to here what I do. I time everyone. And I found this to be a really
effective tool, and something that I've recommended for my clients. Even though
it's not that in the case someone is actually timing you, I don't know if you
found this, but the more senior the client, the shorter their attention span.
And so if somebody is able to drive to analysis in five minutes, and the next
person who walks in the door can drive to it in three – I'm naturally going to be
favorable toward the person who is a clearer driver. ie spending less time on
their actual analysis. So I actually use that as a metric or a tool in coaching
to help people understand how long they're taking to do specific things.
And I've set just kind of general timelines, in terms of your case should look like
this, in terms of the breakdown of your time. And small deviations from it are
fine, but if you're taking let's say eight minutes to do a math problem, and
one minute to do a brainstorming problem, you have a problem in terms of driving
the case toward a well-rounded solution. So just helping people really identify
what some of their weak areas are. And also just be aware, I think as a
consultant, don't you get to the point where you realize for me at about twenty
eight and a half minutes, I know exactly how long something has gone.
My life is in 30-minute increments, I understand exactly how its broken down.
But a lot of people that don't have this training, don't come in with that
naturally. And so they actually truly just aren't aware of the fact that
they're not driving the case, and they're not managing their time well. I think
that in consulting that was one of my toughest things that used to was the
rapid pace at which things work. I mean you've got a CEO meeting in 24 hours,
there's a ton of work that needs to get done, so it's about driving analysis very
quickly, and being very efficient. It's not, coming from like an academic
perspective, where it's good to take a long time to do the work. It's about
efficiency.
One of my hypotheses is that in this area alone, engineers are often very good.
I don't know if you found that, but I found that a lot of Engineers I'm
working with them are incredibly efficient with their time management. And
I've seen that on the job as a consultant as well that they can be
really strong. I'd say coming from more of like a law background, or academics,
that tends to be those cases tend to go a little bit longer. I'm like gotta keep
going. They want to explore all the things along the way. They dont want to leave any stone unturned.
I think the ultimate denouement, is that in the end when we pull it all together, our goal is to try to get
everything to the solution. So when somebody is taking a long time, I begin
when I'm leaving the case I feel like they actually don't care about getting
to a solution. They're more interested in the process. So, I can really tell
when somebody's on top of their game, because they take me as the interviewer
all the way to the solution. And they make sure that we get there, and they
keep referring back to the problem, and they keep driving us forward. And that
gives me a tremendous amount of confidence that I would be able to, like
you said, on the job just give them some liberal direction and tell them to go
figure it out. And one thing is the recap, and looking at the insights after
every section, a lot of people will say, well when do I get time to do that.
In terms of taking some time to write down my main takeaways, you know I'm being
pushed along to the next part of the case, like you're driving the case.
What you want to say okay so what I've
learned here is this, and then say, well
let me write that down. And then you can say okay let's move to
the next piece. So you want to make sure that as an interviewee, you're in control
of your timing. It's not your interviewer kind of pushing you through the case.
If they're doing that maybe you're moving to a little slow.
I absolutely agree. Awesome Lisa, well I know that we could talk about this so
much longer, and we have so many insights that we've gained from working with
people. But over it management consulted we'd love to work with you and
we'd love to help you take your case to the next level!