Hi I'm Jenny Rae the managing director of Management consulted,
and we're back today to bring you another installment of our advanced case interview series.
In particular today, we're talking about BCG. And we're pulling back veil,
to help identify what some of the secret sauce is behind BCG specific interviews.
A lot of times, you are going to be preparing for multiple types of interviews at the same time.
So what we're trying to do is, just for the top firms, unveil a little bit about what happens behind the scenes,
and makes the interviews different from each other, so that you can make sure that you tailor your approach.
We're going to talk about style of BCG interviews, the math of BCG interviews, and ultimately – key tips to win at BCG interviews.
So, lets get started on BCG style. The first thing that you need to know about BCG style is that –
in general, BCG interviews are interviewee led.
In contrast to Mckinsey interviews, which are really directed, step-by-step, at least at the high level, by the Mckinsey interviewer.
BCG interviewers often sit back, relax, and let the consultants, or consultants to be,
either hang themselves in the process, or successfully go through navigating the case.
These types of cases can be incredibly painful if you haven't prepared for them because,
you are the boss, and its really important that you know what you're doing, that you have the confidence to solve
the problem, and that you use the interviewer in the same way that you would use a client.
The interviewer really is going to hold back information, unless you ask for it in the process.
The second thing thats helpful to know about BCG's style is that often they start with pretty general questions.
They're interested in understanding how you think, and the way that you navigate.
They're interested in mapping our your thought process to see if you're the type of person who can maintain structure, but also balance creativity.
So, general questions, instead of specific Mckinsey style questions are used to get at what you are really thinking.
And to identify whether or not you are going to take initiative in a BCG environment.
The third thing that's important to know is that emphasizes creative and nonstandard case questions.
You wont often a core profitability-decline case in BCG interviews, but you might find a case that asks,
which option is better for the client. At the end of the day, thats also a profitability question,
but it involves a different kind of data collection and a different focus on value propositions.
So, for BCG, it's really important to make sure that you can interpret the type of wording that they're using
when they're asking these broad and general questions in the case prompts, and also throughout the case.
They do value creativity, but at the same time, the final thing that is helpful to know is that they are conversational.
So they don't what you to creatively go off on a tangent outside of their box.
They are interested in making sure that you can adhere to the structure, stick to a creative problem solving process,
but still make sure that your process is conversational, and engaging to the person that listens.
So, you're not performing the case interview, you're relating in the case interview,
side-to-side with the interviewer. To address the one key issue that we talked about across the board here,
is that, in general, this conversational style is a little bit more loose than Mckinsey's style of interviews.
So it does place a lot of ownership on you, and one of the good things is that the key focus
for BCG, is on making sure that you have really great structure.
That's the key way that you can keep it conversational, but also keep it moving
We're going to talk a little bit more about that in just a second.
So now onto BCG math. BCG is a special situation because, its a very conversational,
pretty open ended process. So they are not looking to do the same data dump that you would get in Mckinsey
at the beginning of a question. Rather, there is more back and forth that they are expecting.
And there are two common types of math that come up in BCG cases.
First, is data gathering. When you're expected to lay out a structure,
and as a bunch of questions, in order to gather the data that you need.
The second is comparison. And comparison often comes from charts or graphs.
So I am going to break these up into two different sections.
First, data gathering I want to talk about. Because its really critical that in data gathering for BCG
you just do not go willy-nilly trying to gather data from the air. But rather,
you develop a little mini structure about what data you're going to need. You prioritize the most
important data, so you don't look for all the data at once. You ask about the most important data,
then at the end you just make sure that you ask if you missed anything, but you have to
give it a college try first. You have to at least offer three or four or five data points that you tried to gather
before you ask if there was anything else that you missed.
What they are looking for here is your ability to master the data, not to let the data master you.
They are just testing it in a different way, than for example McKinsey would.
The next thing that is important, after your talking about data gathering, is when BCG presents charts or graphs to you.
And there are a couple of key things that are important to know here.
They will present charts, which are long lists of pieces of information. And they will also present graphs.
So, I am going to talk a little about each one of those in turn.
The charts will often present multiple piece of information. So they will expect you,
in your structure, to ask for that information. But instead of giving you the information one piece at a time –
they'll ask for all the information that you're looking for, and then they will give you this large
chart with a whole bunch of numbers in it. It's really critical to make sure that, in these
multifaceted data charts, you take some time to understand them. And I am going to talk about that in just a second.
The second type of complicated chart or graph that you could get at McKinsey –
I think of them as complicated BCG style graphs.
These are often not the same data charts that have the list of information, but they are actually
pictures that try to portray multiple facets of a business or a market, all at the same time.
The most common type of this is the BCG growth-share matrix. Which highlights growth on one axis, and share on another axis.
It breaks the growth-share matrix into quadrants, but it maps on there business, or business units, or different
areas of the market. In terms of the revenues, the profits, the growth trends, or other metrics.
And often times, multiple metrics at the same time. So, make sure that for either of these complicated
charts with tons of data, or for the graphs – that you're going through a three step process.
First, go through and review what data is there. Identify what you have, and also if there
is anything missing. Then once you have done that, tell the BCG interviewer what you're approach
to use this data is going to be. So, tell them, I'm going to prioritize, identifying these segments.
Or, I'm going to make a calculation that is going to give us this final answer. Tell them what you're doing
next with the data. And then finally, manipulate the data in a way that you need to gather insights out of it.
That three step process will be a life saver, because otherwise, it is super easy to get into the weeds,
drown a little bit, sputter, come back up, and have wasted a lot of time isn the process of solving
BCG math. So, we've covered BCG style, and BCG math. I think the real question on my mind –
and hopefully your mind too – is how do you win at BCG cases?
Well, let me give you a couple key tips. The first thing is that you over-invest in a very strong upfront structure.
This structure is not like Mckinsey, where you're just trying to cover some topics that you will look at.
It's really critical here that you know you have to use the structure to solve the actual case.
This is one of the reasons why I recommend, when I am working with clients, that we start with BCG style cases.
Even if they are not planning to interview with BCG. Because it really helps give you the initiative to focus on
a great upfront structure from the beginning of the case. The second thing that is helpful to know is,
make sure you use a clear two-level structure. So that you don't muss key issues.
So not only do you have to work through your high level structure, but if you can actually over-invest
in that early structure – and make it two-levels. You are going to have, not only the areas that you want to look at,
but specific data that you will be looking for. At the beginning of the case. Which will really expedite
your problem solving process as you go through the BCG case.
The next thing that is important to know is that you have go to prioritize that most important issues in your structure.
I mentioned earlier that BCG really values creativity. They don't want to hear a common profitability framework that
starts with prices and volumes, if fixed costs are the key issue in the case. So make sure that you reconstruct
whatever frameworks you are using. Mix and match them. Do whatever you need to do, and start
with whatever the most important bucket is. Because for BCG you're not going to have all the time in the world to
casually look at all the areas that you want to. You are going to have to focus on the most important things first.
And then later, spend any extra time going back and looking at iterations or different scenarios.
The fourth thing that is critical to know about BCG is that you want to talk constantly.
But, don't waste time. You need to move on when you need to move on. So what I mean by this is that,
you're constantly talking and leading the person through the case. You're leading the whole case
from beginning to end. But that doesn't mean that you should just ramble on and on, and talk about something,
and explore and issue until it is absolutely dead, and dead, and dead seven times.
You want to make sure that, because you are leading the case, you are really managing the time clock,
when you are going through the process from beginning to end super clearly.
And then finally, for BCG case interviews, the most important thing to understand is how to handle
transitions from one section to another. For each transition, you want to just quickly review where you are.
Because you are leading the case, and assess where you want to go next.
So make sure that the interviewer can follow along with you. And you don't just say, great moving on,
here we go. So at the end of every piece that you look at. You can say, it looks like competitors aren't a key issue
in this market, so lets go ahead to my next bucket, which is customers –
and there we are going to identify X,Y, and Z. It just consistently gives a sense of structure
in a case that could feel highly unstructured otherwise.
Hopefully this has helped you really understand how to win at BCG interviews using the style, the math, and some key tips.
We hope that you have enjoyed the video, and if you have more questions about BCG interviews,
we've got a ton of resources. Including our consulting interview bible, and some free articles at managementconsulted.com