This article is from a series of articles on management consulting. You can access the previously published resources at:
This article will introduce you to a strategic step-by-step plan to ace your consulting interviews. The following discussion pertains specifically to the ‘case’ element of your interview. To prepare for other sections of your interview read this article How to prepare for any interview | The 7 key components.
A comprehensive and strategic 4-step preparation plan to ace your case interview is given below.
Step 1: Orient yourself to the process
Before you get your hands dirty with actually solving cases, it is important to get into the right frame of mind and understand exactly what you’re getting into. Orienting yourself involves understanding how a typical case interview functions and what is expected of you. The articles listed above serve that purpose. Another key resource you can use for the same is the material of Mr. Victor Cheng. You can either view his YouTube video series at this link or read his book Case Interview Secrets. This is an essential first step to begin your preparation.
Step 2: Learning how to solve cases and practicing basic case solving
Now it's time to begin case solving. You can begin by reading up on basic case-solving strategies (called frameworks) but reading can only take you so far. You have to actually practice case solving to pick up the skill.
One of the best resources for this stage is the book Case Interviews Cracked (CIC). It walks you through a highly logical and intuitive approach to case solving. Begin with practicing these three types of cases: Guesstimates, Profit/ Profitability, and Market Entry. CIC has excellent cases in these three domains. Become adequately comfortable with these three case types, before moving on to other case types.
Step 3: Exploring diverse cases types and books
After you’re comfortable with the three basic types of cases, you can start exploring a bunch of other case types and also practice cases from different case books. A very good resource to explore other case types is IIM A case books. Apart from that, there are a large number of case books available online from reputed institutes such as Harvard, Wharton, Darden, Kellogg, etc. that you can explore. Other popular case books include Day 1.0 and Case in Point.
After exploring different case types from IIM A, it's best to pick up a few cases from each of these different case books and try to solve them. This will help you to be prepared for a wider range of case types and variations.
Bear in mind, some of these case books may not give you a very logical way to solve the case, however, the case questions in themselves can be useful for your practice.
Step 4: Broadening your skills
If you still have time and want to further broaden your preparation base, you can do the following: Read up on a few industries, in terms of the basic business models in that industry, who the major stakeholders are, the value chain, etc. Stay up to date with current affairs and pick a few business journals/magazines to read.
Bear in mind, as discussed in this article, you are not expected to have any specific industry-level knowledge. The reason reading up about these things is useful is because you can understand the basic principles of business organization from your research and apply them to a range of neighboring industries and situations if they appear in your interview. No specific resources for this step, you can use Google searches for the same.
________
E-copies of most of the above resources mentioned are available online. Apart from the resources mentioned above, there are several video series on YouTube, that illustrate case-solving such as by Case Interviews Cracked, IIM, Bain & Company, etc.
There are a few more nuances to highlight, keeping in mind the above preparation plan.
Q. What case types should I prepare for?
No matter what anyone tells you, when it comes to your actual interview, there are no boundaries. You can be given any type of case. Once you are in your interview you cannot tell your interviewer that you haven’t prepared for a certain type of case. Thus you should be prepared for any type of case that you come across from the various case books listed above. The most common case types are: Guesstimates, Profit/Profitability, Market Entry, Pricing, Growth, M&A, and Unconventional cases.
Q. How to practice solving a case?
Solving a case on your own is not a very fruitful process. Neither is reading a case from a case book as it is essential to solve a case within the simulation of an actual interview that involves interactive and dynamic elements.
Case solving practice is a pair (or group) activity. You and your partner(s) simulate an actual interview, in which one of you is the interviewer, the second is the candidate, and others (if any) are silent observers. The interviewer refers to a case book, reads out a case, and guides the candidate to solve it. You take turns within your case group to be the candidate and solve a case. After having solved a case, it is very important to give feedback to the candidate on how they solved the case and to brainstorm and identify a better method to approach the case, if any. As you solve the next case, make sure to incorporate the feedback that you received from the previous case. Track your progress as you move from one case to another.
Apart from solving cases with your peer group, it is important to solve a few cases with a senior who is working at a consulting firm. The kind of feedback and insights they will share with you will help you fine-tune your skills.
Q. How long should I prepare? How many cases to solve?
The answers to these questions are very subjective. It really depends on how much time and effort you put into case practice on a daily basis and your current case solving skills. Some colleges follow an intense 2-month preparation plan whereas other colleges pick a more spread out preparation over 6-8 months. Look at the trend on your campus and your personal schedule and streamline your preparation accordingly. Keep in mind that you’ll also have to map your preparation timeline with that of your case partner/case group as it is not an individualistic journey. Prepare until you are comfortable with solving different types of cases, across different industries and until you have a good grasp over the core interview skills as mentioned in this article (essentially, what an interviewer looks for in a candidate).
Q. Do I need to practice maths / quantitative skills?
From an interview point of view, you should be able to handle all the calculations from your case/guesstimate mentally. As you practice cases, if you feel that you aren’t able to crunch the numbers easily or quickly, then you can practice basic mental math to improve your accuracy and speed.
Q. Do I need to learn specific facts and figures for guesstimates or market sizing?
Yes. You should be equipped with a few basic data sets that will help you to solve your guesstimates. Some of the common data sets you should familiarize yourself with are income distribution, gender distribution, age distribution, urban/rural population split, electricity penetration, internet penetration, average household sizes, population size, expenditure distribution, and land-use area distribution of a city.
An effective way to go about this is to learn these data sets at a national level and for the city you come from. If you are needed to make these estimates for any other city, then you can ballpark it based on the figures of your city.
Final words of advice, don’t think of it as something you ‘have to do’. Preparing for a consulting interview is actually a really fun process and you learn a lot through it. Give it your best shot.
You can connect with me for a session to help you better prepare for an interview and/or to solve mock cases with me in an interview simulation. Wishing you all the best.
Further Reading:
Subscribe to the website and follow on Instagram or LinkedIn to be notified about new resources on management consulting, internships, CV-building, interview preparation, and more.
留言