Hi! I'm Jenny Rae, the Managing Director of Management Consulted. I'm back
today to continue our series on case interviews. In particular today,
I'm doing a deep dive on one of the most important elements that you as the
interviewee will have to display, which is structure. Structure is paramount.
Every consultant thinks in a structured way, lays out their diagrams in a
structured way, breaks down problems in a structured way. So what I'm going to talk
about today is how you can use structure; and in particular, I'm gonna break down
structure into different areas where it's used in the case. I'm gonna talk
about how to use it effectively and I'm also going to talk about key mistakes
that we often see when we're training people to do case interviews well.
So, without further ado, let's get started. The first thing that's most important to
understand when you're walking through cases with structure is how to present
ideas in logical lists. It's amazing. A lot of you will break down your ideas
into different levels, but you will never present them verbally in a list.
So at the beginning of the case you'll write out a structure, but you'll just portray
it as though it's a paragraph. What we're looking for in consulting are generally
two level structures: the first level is the list, and the second level is the
explanation of what's under that list. I'm going to break down two areas where
structure is particularly used with great importance inside cases.
The first one is at the start of the case. At the start of the case, after you've completed
the recap and asking any clarifying questions, you move into the piece that
we call the grand pause. In the grand pause, you prepare your game plan. The game plan
is also known as a structure and is also known as a framework. We specifically
call it a game plan because it needs to be very action-oriented to make sure
that you solve the client's problem. But in this game plan, as we'll go into
further detail in future videos, in the game plan, it's critically
important that you present your ideas in logical lists. So for example, if you
were the type of person who was opening up a profitability case, and you were
saying well here's a couple of ideas for what we're gonna look at in
profitability, and you just rattled off the ideas that wouldn't be a
demonstration of sufficient structure, what would be a demonstration
of sufficient structure would be if you would go through each one of the categories.
You would say there are three areas within profitability that I'm
interested in looking at, and you would break each one of them down into their
component parts. So make sure that as you're opening the case you are
numbering each of the areas that you're looking at, and you're breaking each one
of them down to a second-level. That's what we mean by structure at the
beginning of the case. If they ever say as the interviewer that you're
unstructured, what they mean is that you're not presenting everything in a
clear and concise way. The second place that structure is most often used inside
cases is at creative questions. In these creative questions often I, as the
interviewer, will ask you an open-ended question, for example "What are the
influences that competitors may have on this market?" The reality is that we could
talk for 25 minutes about what competitors may have as the influences,
but here, we're trying to break down the key issues into just their core
constituent component parts. So, in response to that question, I would expect
for you to say there are a few things that competitors are doing potentially
in this market. The first one is X -- explanation, the second one is Y --
explanation, and the third one is Z -- explanation. So in summary, X, Y, and Z are
some of the key issues, and I think that we should explore X first. All of those
together are a great way to answer a creative question without letting it
balloon into taking too much time, and also without trying to focus on every
possible issue that competitors may be driving to in the market. So those two areas,
the opening of the case and the creative part of the case, are really
important places where you demonstrate structure. The third piece which is often
overlooked is actually in the math. A lot of times people just dive into the
numbers absolutely clueless, but if you are the type of person that a top
consulting firm is going to take, you're gonna break down the math into multiple
different parts. You're gonna break it down into algebra, assumptions, and then
ultimately, calculations. So as you're breaking down each of the pieces, you're
also going to even demonstrate structure when you're doing that. If I haven't said it already,
make sure that you get this clear -- structure is incredibly important,
and speaking in a structured way is very important throughout the case.
But when consultants give you feedback about being unstructured, these are some
of the things that they're talking about. They talk about key mistakes that we're
gonna highlight here. The first one-- I call it paragraph chatting.
It's basically giving you all the same ideas that I just gave you, but rather than
numbering them or putting them in itemized lists and giving me summaries
at the end, you just give me a whole bunch of information in a blob.
A lot of times it's easy to do this if you're nervous, but it's critical in your case
practice that you make sure you're identifying key separate issues, and then
giving a concise summary at the end. The second thing is that you don't number.
A lot of times it's difficult to number when you're just walking through
something, like in the middle of a case, and a creative question oftentimes,
you don't know if you'll have three or four or maybe five ideas, but you do know that
you'll have a few. So it's critical to number in the summary. At the beginning
of the case, however, when you have two minutes to plan, you should always number,
because you know how many sections are on your plate and you know how many
you're going to present as you're going through each one with the person who's
interviewing you. So make sure in that part that you're numbering at the beginning.
Make sure in all the other parts that you're numbering in the end.
Which brings me to my third point, the final key mistake that we see is the
lack of the use of summaries. As you're going through the case, if you're not
able to demonstrate structure upfront, which is not natural and totally not
necessary, if you at the end don't go back and give a quick numbered recap,
that is where you really fall down. So make sure that you're using all of these
pieces in tandem: you're giving good clear structure upfront, that you're
giving numbering when you're able to at the beginning, and that you're giving
summaries with numbering at the end where it's not possible to give it at
the beginning. Those are a couple of key ways that you can use structure.
There are some other pieces-- the second one is managing the flow of the case with ease.
Now I'm going to break this down into a couple of additional pieces.
First, the two things that you have to know when you're managing the flow of the case is
both where you are, which includes the time that you have left to solve the
case, and also where you're going, how much remains in your problem solving
category. One of the key issues with structure
that a lot of people have a list of 4,500 questions that they would be
interested in asking the company. It's great that you're curious, but it's not
helpful when you have 19 minutes, maybe at the most,
inside a first-round interview to actually solve the case. When you have
such limited time you have to really focus on where you're going, how much
time you've got left, and what's still remaining. So make sure if you're gonna
manage the flow of the case, do you understand where you are and where you
need to go. Some key mistakes that we see with this I've already touched on a
couple of them. The first one is that you don't drive the case according to your
initial structure. This is one way that we can always tell that your initial
structure was crappy, because at the beginning of the case if you come up
with an idea list, but then you don't follow to actually solve the case, it was
not a sufficient game plan so make sure that as you're pushing yourself in case
interview practice, you go back at the end of each case and review your initial
structure and see if you were able to use it to actually solve the case.
If you weren't, it wasn't a structure, it was a list of ideas which is not the same thing.
The second thing that's really critical is that you don't dive into the
second level of detail. As I mentioned, this is one of the key mistakes.
What I mean by this is that you stay at a very high level but you don't appropriately
dive into the second level of detail. Sometimes people will want to peel back
an onion -- so they'll have this list of 4,500 issues that they want to look at,
but they'll have no sense of prioritization, and they won't be able to
look at the data-driven values underneath each one. So make sure that as
you are going through the case you understand both the high level
categories, the areas that you want to explore, but also the second level of detail --
the key data points that you want to look at in order to confirm or deny
the importance of a specific section. The third part of this is making sure that
you utilize next steps to move the case forward. If you don't do this you're
falling into one of the key mistake traps. If you don't follow me up at the
end of every part of the case with what the client should be thinking about next,
either another piece of analysis or another list of areas to explore, or even
some implementation steps. Then you're really missing a key opportunity to move
the case fluidly forward, which is a really important part of structure.
The third thing that's really important to do in this case is to make sure that
you don't get confused. Now getting confused may seem kind of obvious,
because you don't want to get confused. You don't want to demonstrate confusion
and you would never want it to happen in a case, but it happens, it happens to the
best of us. So the key in this situation is knowing how to get un-confused when
you actually have gotten confused in the first place. I'm gonna talk about a
couple of key tactics for this. The first thing is that a successful interviewer
knows what is important -- they know the ultimate question to the client, they
know what the client is really looking for, and they make sure that they don't
go off and do analysis, and look at areas that are just nice to have, they focus on
the key issues for each of the specific clients. The second thing is that they
know how to simplify assumptions, so they know how not to make everything super
complicated and make it take a long time, but how to focus on the key issues --
simplify assumptions, simplify numbers, simplify the problem that you're looking at
and make sure that you're able to come up with direct and actionable solutions.
The final thing is that they know how to push everything back to
the answer. So this type of person, the successful interviewer, is the one who is
moving with great pace throughout the case, but also knows what's most
important, and what is going to get us to the answer at the end of the day.
Some key mistakes that we see in this realm are the following: the first one is
trying to solve every possible problem for the client. What happens is that you
don't finish the case, which is a huge problem. You need to make sure that
you're working through and finishing the entire case. So don't try to solve every
possible problem for the client, try to solve their most important problem.
If you don't know what that is, you need to begin to train yourself to understand
that at the very beginning of the case. By the end of the time that you present
your initial structure, you should know what the key problem is for the client.
The next thing is making sure that you're trying to look at every angle
without priorities. If you look at everything across the board, again, you
probably won't finish the case and you won't demonstrate that you understand
what the most important thing is to the client. Then finally, if you focus too
much on details and not enough at the big picture, you may get some really
interesting information about competitors or the market but you may
not be able to address the client's core issue. What if they're trying to grow
market share? You have to make sure that you're tying each of
the pieces of information that you're getting back to the big picture, and
that's really critical at the end of the day.
So in summary, all of these key pieces work together to really demonstrate that
you are structured throughout the case, that you're walking through each of the
pieces of the case using numbered lists wherever possible, that you're moving the
flow of the case forward, and you're making sure that you focus just on the
most important issues. If you've got more questions about structure, come and work
with us. We'd love to do a session with you to analyze how you're doing, or you
can read up on structure in our Consulting Interview Bible. For more information,
you can also check us out on the web at managementconsulted.com.