Have you ever game planned for the ultimate case
interview, where you're gonna have to break down a
problem, do some math, follow creative structures and
ultimately come up with a recommendation - but then gotten thrown completely for a
loop in a more conversational case interview?
Well, a lot of our readers and clients have and so we decided to bring you a
video today focused on how you can solve case
interviews that are more informal in nature. I'm Jenny Rae Le Roux,
the managing director of Management Consulted, the world's leading resource
on consulting interviews, and our focus today is on the informal
interview and specifically, Deloitte's deployment of the informal
interview. What I want to talk about today are a
few do's and don'ts for informal case interviews. First of
all, I'll start with how you can recognize them. Informal case
interviews are usually introduced by partners or managers in a different
way than regular interviews are. You'll notice if they don't have a lot
of paperwork in front of them, and if they say "we just want to have an
open-ended chat today about a problem that I'm currently
working on," that that's a cue for they don't have the work done on
their side and it probably means it's meant to be informal on yours.
So, once you've assessed that an interview is going to be an informal
interview, you'll want to start it off in the same way that you would a regular
case interview, by listening to the beginning and by
restating the question back to them. But that's where the similarities end.
After that, you're going to want to make sure that you
focus on keying in on how you would solve the problem.
The power of an informal interview is that it demonstrates your
thought process, not how you solve for an answer.
And your rigidity, your linearity, which is not always considered a great thing,
is a test here when you're in these kinds of interviews.
So, instead of where you would normally go into
"may I have two minutes to build a structure?" You're going to say
"would you mind if I just lay out for you while I'm doing it on paper,
my thought process for how I would go about solving this case?"
That gives them the ability to give you a red flag if you're headed down the
informal direction when they think you should be formal,
but it also gives an opportunity for you to just say
"okay, here is what I'm planning to do, I'm about to let you into my thought
process," and no matter what kind of case you're
in, that's a good thing. If they don't stop you, then you'll go ahead and do
that. You'll let them know the things in a couple of categories you would
think about in the case similar to the way that we would
recommend you do a creative question inside the case a little bit
later. So you pull the creative process up to
your initial structure and you begin the case in a very
conversational way. You let them know three categories or four categories of
areas that you'd want to look at, you give them some subcategories that
you want to talk about, and then you let them know where you would want
to start if you had full information or full access to go get the information,
and then ask them at the end "is there anywhere in particular that you
would like to begin?" Once you've done that, they will guide
you into whether they want you to pursue further parts in the case just through
open-ended questions, but effectively, an informal interview or
a Deloitte interview that is an informal case, will appear like a series
of creative questions that you're doing structured brainstorming to
every single time. Here are a couple of the no-no's
for informal interviews. Don't take them so informally to the point where you
don't write anything down. The interviewer is still evaluating the
structure and clarity of your thought process,
and we've tested it out on thousands of candidates,
if you don't use structure and you just talk into the air,
it's much more difficult to appear clear and concise, so you're going to need to
write as you're thinking in every step of the case.
The second thing is that in a case like this, you need to
tell them what data you would want but not
push to ask for the data. They're less interested,
again, in you solving the problem and more in understanding
how you would solve a real life problem like this.
So you're going to be mentioning things like "there are three points of data that
I would be really interested in testing out," and you're going to write them down
and you're going to read them out and then at the end you would say "do you
have any data, or would you like to take the discussion in a different way?"
So you keep it conversational by leaving the end of each part of the case
quite open. Ultimately, the final thing that you don't want to
do is try to push too hard for data and answers. Remember, this is
about your thought process and about the clarity with which you've defined the
problem, not your answer to the problem. They're looking for you to persuade them
in the way that you structure and approach the problem,
not in the way that you solve the problem. Informal case interviews, when
you've practiced diligently, can come across as real
curveballs, but if you take these things to heart
make sure that you structure, write, and verbally go through your
process, and if you make sure you stay away from
the no-no areas like being too rigid, pushing too hard for
answers or data, and pushing too hard for your ideas,
you'll find that these kinds of cases are actually easier to
pass, as long as you're prepared for them. If
you have questions about case interviews, we'd love to help you.
Join us at www.managementconsulted.com or on social.