Case Interview Preparation & Management Consulting | Strategy | Critical Thinking

Entering BBM with a weak school on your resume can create problems. Though, all of them tend to be created by the candidates themselves. These consultants tend to have so many incorrect preconceived ideas of the firm that even when a McKinsey partner tells them something, they tend to go with their preconceived ideas. As strange as that may sound, that is what we have seen happen in many cases. There are certain things you can do this alter this spiral, should it occur.

As counter-intuitive as this sounds, mathematical precision in cases hurts most candidates. Many candidates focus heavily on being mathematically correct because it is far easier to see if your answer of $230MM is the same as the prescribed answer of $250MM. It is human nature to focus on what can be easily measured versus focusing on what should be measured. Candidates tend to confuse mathematical precision with being analytic. They are not the same and candidates should focus on being analytic, as explained in this podcast.

If you read forums worldwide everyone is obsessed with cracking the case. Yet, most people cannot communicate like a consultant. We hope by reading this post, candidates spend an equal, if not more, time focusing on their communication skills as well. If you cannot speak like a consultant, you cannot be a consultant.

We are not fans of case competitions. They do not teach the skills need by BCG and McKinsey nor do they matter when it comes to interviews. The dean of a European business school recently gave us carte-blanche to design the perfect case competition. This long podcast outlines the approach we took and why we followed this approach.

The rise of Asian female doctoral case candidates is one of the most important trends in management consulting. This is a large and dynamic group of case candidates who are underrepresented in consulting firms, poorly mentored and largely ignored. Consulting firms can do better to manage them, and should. We explain how and why. Since late 2011, Firmsconsulting has actively worked with PhD candidates, females in particular, to understand their unique needs and design techniques to address these needs. Much of this can be seen in Season One of the Consulting Offer with Felix.

Candidates are typically surprised to hear they have been declined for not providing sufficient details in a case interview. It usually surprises them since they believe they have provided more than enough case information detail. The difference comes down to how consulting firms define "detail". They are looking for facts and the relationships between issues, while candidates tend to speak in broader terms and are not very good at identifying and explaining the linkages between issues.

When thinking through a possible FIT / PEI or cover letter response, most candidates settle on the first idea that comes to mind. Future edits of this idea do not alter the idea, but merely rearrange the wording. That is a bad idea. We use the so-what rule when testing candidates. For their responses we constantly ask "so-what" until the candidate arrives at the core reason for their decision / answer. That core reason is what we want candidates to use.

That is true. It is myth interviewers do not hate frameworks in case interviews. Interviewers dislike the way the framework is introduced and used by the candidate. Most candidates memorize a framework, look at a case, see the loose link between both and gladly offer the framework without a proper explanation or even making adjustment to the framework. The best approach is to brainstorm unique structures for each case. However, where this is tough to do, candidates should take time to carefully adjust and integrate the framework into the case, using good communication skills.

Your case practice partner is the most important ally you have as you prepare. The problem is that most people completely squander this advantage. They tend to be unclear about their level of preparation and commitment they are willing to make. Many arrive late to practice sessions, prepare poorly and fail to keep track of their partners performance. When a practice partners breaks contact, you are left in the position of having to transfer all that important insight about yourself to a new practice partner and that is just inefficient even if it could be done. This podcast discusses ways to manage the problem.

Candidates sometimes prefer to be cautious and offer a solution earlier rather than waiting to fully flesh out the drivers and key issues in a case. The problem with this approach is that if you offer a solution before identifying the problem, it raises concerns to the interviewer about your thinking processes - how can you offer a solution before identifying the problem? This podcast describes this issue in much more detail.

In brainstorming the interviewer is looking for your approach to define an objective function, understand the direct drivers of the function, prioritize the drivers and explain how to manipulate them. There is only one definition for productivity and that is formally used in all studies. Productivity is the total value of outputs over the total cost to deliver those outputs. Other definitions are derivations which assess narrow areas only. A candidate will struggle to understand operations cases unless they understand the concept of productivity.

Merging the BCG and McKinsey approach, elegantly. This is a simple discussion on how to merge both approaches so you do not need to worry about learning different techniques. One caveat, as explained in latter podcasts is to assume there is just a simple BCG and simple McKinsey style. It is dangerous to make this assumption. About 50% to 60% of McKinsey cases cannot be solved with any framework at all. Most McKinsey cases require an hypotheses upfront, but not all, and they almost all interviewer led. It is crucial to understand the different ways a case can be done and listen carefully to the interviewer to figure out which is best for you.

Candidates always want to show improvement on their resumes in the months leading up to their applications. For those working in industry or rival consulting firms, showing leadership and career development is crucial. This podcast explains that career rotation, a lateral move at the same pay grade, is rarely a good idea unless it takes you to a part of the business where you can show leadership in solving a major problem. Career progression, a promotion to a new pay grade, always looks good on a resume because it demonstrates you are mastering your functional domain. It is better to stay in a role and achieve results than rotating for a better title.

We always teach clients estimation technique first, followed by brainstorming technique and finally full case technique. There is a simple reason for this, which is explained in this podcast. Estimations tend to be, but not always, a brainstorm with very few or just one branch. A brainstorm is therefore an estimation equation with multiple branches. A full case structure is a very large brainstorm with mini-brainstorms at each new branch. We want candidates to see this evolution so they can understand how crucial brainstorming is to the entire case interview approach.

If you are thinking through responses to leadership and teamwork questions, the starting point should be knowing the differences between both. At its core, to McKinsey especially, leadership is about influencing a group people to undertake and complete an initiative of importance. Yet, a better definition is that as the leader you tend to be the primary beneficiary of what is happening since you get the credit. As a great team member, you do much of the work but you do not get the great. Ensure your teamwork and leadership stories cover this crucial distinction.

Over the course of the case interview training program, it becomes very important for us to change our coaching style. First, candidates become used to solving cases in just this one style and we need to ensure they can adapt to any style. Second, candidates become adept at reading the "tell" in the coach/mentor so they know when they, the candidate, is making a mistake etc. By changing our coaching style and introducing mentors, we can easily avoid this problem and ensure candidates are becoming stronger at cases versus merely stronger at doing cases with the one coach. Ensure you are also practicing with partners who have different styles.

Most candidates would tackle a McKinsey profitability case by presenting a revenue-cost framework and offer options to lower costs and increase revenue. The reality is that such a framework and explanation shows a deep misunderstanding of business and business strategy. In this podcast, we present the correct way to understand profitability cases which require candidates to understand the growth and cost of growth needs of shareholders. This logic never fails to impress interviewers.

This podcast provides a simple set of priority areas that a novice aspiring consultant should focus upon in the building up to the MBA full-time September interviews. It ties together themes from existing podcasts but presents them in the format of a case interview preparation roadmap.

Brainstorming is very difficult and a crucial skill to have when solving cases, especially with McKinsey where the interviewer will constantly ask you to probe and brainstorm different areas of the case. This podcast examines the initial parts of the brainstorming structure. Since brainstorming happens in such a rapid-fire format and appears unstructured, the speed at which it is done creates the illusion it lacks structures. Yet, it does have structure, but is merely done very quickly in the candidate's mind. This podcast will teach candidates how to generate a structure/definition that can be used to guide the development of options or paths in the brainstorm.

Candidates good through a lot of trouble finding practice partners and reaching out to current and former consultants. We do, however, find that despite all of this effort, they tend to be very weak at the manner in which they capture valuable lessons. There is far too little planning and it is largely a trial and error process. They reach out to 10 people hoping that at least 3 will provide great feedback and possibly 7 will provide some feedback. We find the best candidates have a list of items that they want assessed in the practice session and this rolling list is continuously being updated after every session.