1. What’s your guiding philosophy for cases?
Everybody’s case philosophy should be tailored to their own individual method of problem-solving. Therefore, take mine with a grain of salt.
I have two core philosophies to solving cases.
- You should be the ideal teammate. Consultants are, above all else, looking for someone they will LOVE working with. Think about the best teammate you’ve had, and think about how they’ve made you feel special. My role model was communicative, aware, and always spoke as concisely as he could, and I took a lot of inspiration from him.
- Break it down. To solve a case, break it down into pieces and tackle each separately. To answer a difficult question, break it down into its assumptions, its constraints, and how you might try to find the answer. A framework is just a set way of breaking down a common problem. Once you see a case as nothing more than a complex challenge to break down, the set of possibilities seems a lot less daunting.
2. Do I REALLY have to do so many cases?
It’s difficult to overstate the importance of practice here. The case interview is by far the most challenging type of interview (with maybe the exception of algorithmic interviews at top tech shops like Google). McKinsey, BCG and Bain consistently rank among the top for interview difficulty.
The struggle stems from 3 things:
- The case can come from any industry, from any business, with often counterintuitive solutions. The possibilities for testing are endless.
- Your interviewer is usually someone quick and intellectual, who has had a wealth of experience. That can be intimidating.
- There’s a lot of things to juggle with. You have to learn the business, build a framework, ask the right questions, make the interviewer feel good, and constantly synthesize information.
Practice acclimatizes your body to the stress of points 2 and 3. This lets you focus on understanding the content and coming up with creative but workable solutions.
You could probably wing a few good ones without much practice. But statistically, the odds are against you. In a game that’s this competitive, having every single bit of edge helps.
3. When should I start preparing?
This one’s hard to answer without context.
Read this and other personal journey articles. Then, gauge how much time you need and work backwards from it.
4. What frameworks should I study?
I started out by form-fitting cases into familiar frameworks. However, I gradually moved towards customizing new frameworks to tackle each new case.
You can start out with frameworks to tackle these cases:
- Market Sizing
- Mergers & Acquisitions
- Should I invest / should I build / how should I choose between different projects
- Pricing
- New Competitor Threat
- Entering a New Market
- Profitability
But once you’re familiar with them, my advice is to move towards being able to draw up a customized approach to each case. It gives you the flexibility to handle the finest details in each case. You also tend to miss out important categories a whole lot less.
5. How should I prepare between interviewer vs interviewee-led interviews?
The conventional wisdom is that some firms are interviewer-led, some are interviewee-led. And that catering to that preference increases your chances with that particular firm.
I think this “wisdom” is dangerous. It’s entirely possible that a consultant at Bain, a firm “known” for interviewer-led styles, would sit back and let you dictate the next move. It’s equally likely that a partner at BCG, a firm “known” for the interviewee-led styles, would want to take the lead on certain parts of the case. Pigeonholing firms into specific styles makes your case-driving inflexible. That may easily cost you your offer.
Rather, focus on reading the interviewer, taking the lead when necessary and listening when needed. That demonstrates skill in reading the room, something that is critical when working with actual clients.
6. How should I prepare for my behavioral interview?
I focused a lot less on the behavioral interview. It’s a lot more straightforward, and there are more resources online.
So I’ll just give you a list of 4 easy points to follow.
- Watch Management Consulted videos (especially the ones on Fit Interviews) to find out which questions you have to prepare. There are 4 or 5 critical ones that you really have to nail.
- Build a list of personal stories — leadership/personal/professional achievements that you can allude to.
- Practice talking through your stories as concisely as possible. Follow the STAR model (Situation, Task, Action, Result). At the same time, make sure it’s engaging — it should be something you can tell your friends at the end of a work day.
- If you have time, run through some other less common behavioral questions. You can find a lot of them just by Googling.
7. How do you get case partners?
If you’re still schooling, chances are you can find a large pool of willing & able partners from university interest clubs.
If you’re short on options, I would recommend you look at online communities to find them. In particular, I want to recommend PrepLounge. It’s a free matchmaker for consulting candidates, complete with rating and feedback services. I’ve tried doing cases with someone halfway across the world on PrepLounge, and have found it to work perfectly fine.
8. Is networking necessary?
I want to establish upfront that networking does not swing your application AT ALL for the large majority of candidates. Consulting firms (especially the big ones) take great pains to ensure the process is as meritocratic as possible. That means that the first-round gatekeepers (recruiters) judge your resume simply by its 4 elements — school, GPA, professional experience, and extracurriculars, and the subsequent-round gatekeepers (associates to partners) judge your entry by the rigor of interview.
Having said that, meeting consultants is important if you’re trying to get information about the firm and the application process.
The takeaway? Meet new people without expecting anything in return. Just be interested in who they are and what they do.
9. What should I do if I have exploding offers?
Offers are tricky. Sometimes, when you have an exploding offer in hand, you could try to contact other consulting firms you’re interested in to try and set up an interview. Often times though, you’ll have to make a tough decision to either accept or drop it and reapply.
The competition for talent in this field is tough and many times firms have all the power.
10. Is there a higher bar for international students?
I used to think that there was a higher bar for international students, because of the premium firms have to pay to apply for their visa and the risk that they may not be able to stay in the country.
I don’t think that’s true now. Everyone is evaluated on the same bell-curve. International students naturally do have it harder because they have a larger number of challenges to overcome (especially on language, cultural fit, personality fit). But I don’t think the partners immediately discount an international applicant in any way when making hiring decisions.
11. What other paths do I have into consulting?
Consulting firms (again, the larger ones) tend to recruit fresh graduates, fresh MBAs, or fresh PhDs/MDs/JDs. Thus, any of these paths are all possible gateways into consulting.
Consulting firms also like hiring from the clients they work with (and the same goes the other way). If you work well with the consultants your department brought in, there’s a good chance they might be keen to bring you in.
Of course, you can always apply; consulting firms are known for not worrying too much about your background. They focus on what you can deliver instead. For the applicant who’s looking to break in from a non-traditional route, the best would be to find a similar profile on LinkedIn and ask the individual out for coffee.
12. What are the main cultural differences between firms?
This subject has been debated many times (most notoriously on online forums). I think the cultural differences between firms is definitely overstated. Consultants as a whole are generally more similar than they are different. Cultural norms, if any, are usually set by the partner(s) on the case or managing the office anyways.
If you’re aiming for a specific firm in a specific office, hang out with those people and see if you can find a community there. Other than that, cultural differences should not play a huge role in your decision between firms at all.
13. What other miscellaneous tips should I know?
Besides everything I’ve mentioned, I did 2 additional tasks that helped me quite a bit.
The first was to build a list of catchphrases. When you interact in a case interview setting, you often have to rephrase common terms AND say things you usually don’t. A great example is “Does that sound like a good plan of action for you?” — something I don’t say in real life but say pretty often to an interviewer. Having a list pre-made like that means you don’t have to come up with these phrases on the spot, eliminating some of the stress your mind needs to handle.
The second was to collate some common interview facts. These were things like the median age of Americans, the median income, the average population of a city, etc. Having a useful and semi-extensive set of facts helps in market sizing, brainstorming, and sanity checking your solutions.
Have any more questions? Let’s carry on the conversation.
Email: caibohan@gmail.com, Twitter: @bryancai91
