No case interview experience? That’s what we’re here to talk about today. I’m Jenny Rae Le Roux,
the Managing Director of Management Consulted, and I started out just like you did, with absolutely
no case interview experience. After all, this isn’t something that you learn in middle school,
or high school. This isn’t even something that you learn in college. The case interview is a totally
different beast. Totally different than any other kind of interview you’ve done before,
and it takes a special approach. We want to walk you through a step-by-step place to start today
so that you know how to go from no interview experience to a great case interview experience.
First of all, I just want to let you know that the first thing that you should do with cases
is kind of a surprise. It’s not intuitive. Most people naturally, when we want to learn about
something, the first thing that we do is read about it. But with cases, reading is nothing,
and doing is everything. And so the first thing you should actually do when starting case prep
is to do a few cases out loud. If you need the peer pressure to do them with somebody else,
have someone ask you a few market sizing questions. Like what is the size of the
market for ceiling fans. Or what is the size of the market for cell phones in Mexico. Have them
ask you specific questions, and then try to figure out how you would answer them.
In the wrestle, in the struggle and the lack of knowledge, you will begin to determine what is
natural for you and what you need to work on. And we would recommend that you do 3 to 5 questions,
basic questions like those questions, or even more complicated case questions by yourself.
This does two things. It starts you off on a foot where you don’t assume that you’re good,
because naturally you’re going to feel incredibly uncomfortable, and it motivates you to practice.
Second, it gives you differentiation between the things that you’re naturally good at, things that
are easy for you, and the things that are hard. So once you’ve done that first section of 3 to
5 cases, which, by the way, if you want to find cases, we have a free sample case of the month, or
you can get access to our whole case library with over 500 cases in it. You should go through to
step number two. In step number two, after you’ve done those first 3 to 5 cases either by yourself
out loud, or just with somebody who’s not a super knowledgeable partner, you want to start getting
together with partners that are higher quality. And you can do that by either referencing our
scoring chart, or you can make sure that you work with people who have case experience. You can work
with professional coaches like the one we offer at Management Consulted, or you can work with
your friends who have gotten offers in consulting firms. But in the 5 to 15 case range is the most
important time to get good feedback. It’s the time that you can begin to cement bad habits,
or you have the opportunity to really accelerate into great habits. And so we find that people in
their 5 to 15 case range work either with a coach or with somebody who is an expert in consulting
really succeed. In addition, during that time, if you’re working with somebody who’s really good,
they can give you specific focus areas to work on. If you’re not great at structuring,
instead of doing 15 straight cases, you should do one case, and then do three structures. Or do
an entire structure session with a coach where they run you through one structure. You make it
better a second time, maybe even the third time that you move onto the next one. Getting that
drill-based practice is incredibly helpful. And again, we have math drills and structure drills
on our website. The math drills, there is a free sample that you can use, and you can just
scroll right down to the bottom of our webpage and you can find those free drills down there.
This drill-based prep in cases five through 15 accelerates your process, makes you so that you
have the ability to solve a lot of different kinds of cases, and helps you build on your weak areas.
Now, there are some things that you should pay attention to, such as what not to do in case
interview prep. Number one, don’t read first. Read second. This is one of the things that we impart
to people when we’re in our training sessions with our top universities. If you start out by reading
books, you will have an overinflated sense of confidence when you walk into the interview.
Rather, books are valuable, but only secondarily. Do cases, find your weak areas, read books to
help fix them. Make sure that you follow that pattern. It’s really important. In addition,
don’t focus on volume. Quality of case practice will always trump volume. We have some really
weird statistics. When we have surveyed people, we found out that those that are successful
in the first round of casing have done on an average 50 to 75 cases, depending on the year.
When we survey the ones that get offers from the firms, we found that they get between 20 and 30
cases. What does this mean? Well, volume gets you into the first round. It gets you over the hurdle.
But quality is really what gets you the offer, and ultimately, you don’t just want to get
into the second round of these interviews, you want the offer at the end of the day.
Finally, I just want to go over a couple of great tips for case interview prep. Number one,
you want to make sure that you focus on the process that you use more than the answer that
you’re going toward. The process is what makes someone comfortable, and in a virtual environment,
in particular, it’s incredibly important that you make someone comfortable with the way that you
work because they can’t sit next to you. They won’t supervise you. They won’t be in person,
and that’s going to push a lot of them toward a very challenging way of operating and managing.
It’s new for them, so they want to make sure that they can trust you. Number two,
start with a hypothesis. We have two kinds of hypotheses at Management Consulted. The open and
the defined, or the closed hypothesis. The open hypothesis is where you say
I don’t know what the answer is, but here’s where I would like to start. The defined hypothesis is
for a yes or a no question, and it’s when you say I think the answer will be yes because.
So using an approach that is clear about where you want to start or what you think the answer
is going to be will help ensure that you have the right data to solve the problem.
The third thing that’s important is that insight is always going to be better than robotically
walking through the motions. The interviewer is looking for you to kind of take a step back and
say oh yeah, what if we did do that. We have some great examples of free cases like this up on our
podcast at Strategy Simplified. And then finally, probably most importantly, as you’re going through
the case prep process and you have no case experience to start out, it can feel daunting.
The people who have fun with casing, and even enjoy it when they’re in the interviews,
have the best success because of course, I’m not just looking for those who can do
the job dutifully, but those who will thrive in my company. And that’s what you’re looking to convey.
We hope that you enjoyed this primer to where to start with case interviews if you have absolutely
no case experience. Hopefully this prep plan will either help you if you’re starting out at zero, or
if you’re somewhere along the pathway and you want to go back to what you think you should have done
originally, you can course correct at this point. If you are interested in doing coaching
with Management Consulted, you can check out our services, and also look at our coaches’
availability on an open calendar. You just have to purchase before you can book the sessions.
We do keep availability open every week of every year, and so you have opportunities to coach
even if you’re in an emergency situation, or if you want to get started months ahead of time.
Finally, if you’re interested in joining a black belt cohort, which is a group of people who go
through the training process together, who do some cases on the side, and who also get some
extra homework, some extra training, and do their eight one-on-one sessions whenever they want to,
you can find the dates for our next cohorts up on the website. We’re excited to help you
in your journey toward the case interview. It’s daunting, but it’s also exciting, and I can say
from experience, an incredibly rewarding process when you win an offer from one of the top firms.
Thanks for joining us today. you