SIMPLY THE CASE» | SIMPLY THE CASE

The Most Overlooked Way of Improving Case Performance

James — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 16:53:56 +0000

Interview others.

One way to start is to interview experienced interviewers. When students start preparing for case interviews, they often ask upperclassmen who have gone through the interview process to give them cases. This is great: you want experienced people to deliver the case in a realistic case and to give you tips. However, take this dialogue one step further: and to switch roles. They might be confused initially, but just go with it. Watching a live interview from someone you know personally (aka not the perfectly delivered interview at the BCG recruiting session) is a great way to learn. You can pick up subtleties that are really easily overlooked when you are the interviewee, such as when to pause, when to ask questions, etc. You can also ask these experienced interviewees to explain their thought process during more difficult parts of the case to get a realistic understanding of how to tackle these challenges.

Additionally, offer to interview your peers when OCR season begins. This allows you to learn about beginner mistakes, which again are hard to notice when you’re in the hot seat yourself. If they do remarkably well at a point you completely tripped on, think about what they did in terms of good structure and thought process that allowed them to smoothly move over that point.

Interviewing others gets you into the mindset of the interviewer, and can help you become more self-critical during your preparations.

The Art of The Behavioral/Fit Interview (Questions & Answers)

Robert — Mon, 01 Mar 2010 21:16:28 +0000

Here are questions you will most definitely receive in the behavioral interview. This breaks down each question into what exactly is the interviewer looking for and the key points you should hit to make sure the interviewer can see you are a good fit. Here are some general rules:

Answers should be concise! Ideal answers are around 1:30 to 2 min.
Even fit questions require structure. More on this within each question below.

1. Tell me about yourself

Most interviews will open with this question. You need to make use of this opportunity to tell your story. What the interviewer is really asking with this question is:

Why are you here today? (Why are you interviewing with our firm specifically?)
What are your goals? (What is it that you can gain by joining our firm?)
Why consulting now?

If you have never worked in consulting before or worked in a very unrelated industry (ie. banking, software development, etc.) this is the place to explain why you are suddenly trying to switch into consulting.

2. Why do you want to do consulting?

There is a 99.99% probability you will get this question. The interviewer wants to know not only whether you can handle consulting but whether you will truly love doing it. There are several things you want to emphasize:

You love the nature of the work

Diverse exposure to industries, diverse experiences in functions
Like big challenges, enjoy the problem solving process
Fits with your long term goals

Just mentioning these generic points is not enough since everyone simply can and will do that. You need to draw from your own experiences to demonstrate these points through stories that will stick in the interviewer’s head. Refer to a project that required you to break down an ambiguous problem. Talk about how you enjoyed the process and that you think that consulting can provide more of such experiences.

3. Why this firm?

The more specific you can be, the better. You might want to break it down into 2 or 3 key points. For example:

Type of work (firm is strong in your area of interest, it has your preferred location, etc.)
People (you liked the people you’ve met, they are not only smart but also fun, etc.)
Philosophy and culture (travel policy, hierarchical structure)

4. Tell about a time when you failed

Many people have a hard time with this one because they believe revealing a failure might contradict some of the strengths they’ve mentioned or make them look bad. This is absolutely not true if you do it right. You should pick a failure that you recovered from.

How to pick a good failure

Pick a failure that is unrelated to the job requirement. Hobbies provide a great pool of examples (sports, music, debate, programming projects, etc.) You can talk comfortably about these failures rather casually since they are not deal breakers for the job.
Pick a failure that shows you applied what you learned from the failure in achieving success the second time around. This demonstrates you have a positive attitude towards failure. You believe many successes are not possible without first failing and learning from the failure, and you have real life examples that demonstrate how a failure was instrumental in the success of future project.

How to tell the story

Set up the situation. What was the project at hand? What were you trying to achieve?
Describe the failure. Paint a picture of what you failed to do.
Explain what you learned from the failure. Make sure these are valuable learnings that you were able to apply in the future.
Explain how you recovered from the failure. A recovery does not necessary have to occur in the same project. Many entrepreneurs completely crash and burn in a startup and recover in a different and new startup. You can bring up an example of how you applied the learnings from your failure in achieving success in another endeavor.

5. Tell me about a big challenge you have taken on. (Hardest problem you’ve ever had to solve)

How to tell the story

Layout the context of the situation. State the challenge up front in once concise sentence. What was the project and why was it so challenging? Why did you take on this challenge? Were you required to or did you proactively seek it?
Demonstrate what you did and how you tackled the challenge. Be detailed. Explain how you made this task less of a challenge by breaking it into smaller more manageable pieces.
Showcase the results. Quantify the results with NUMBERS. Don’t just say the task eventually went well. Say something like, “… resulting in a 20% improvement”, “… had a turnout of over 600 attendees”, “… raised over $10,000″, etc.

Key points you want to convey

You take initiative
You take on big challenge, big reward problems
You can put structure around ambiguity
You are results oriented. Show the facts!

6. What is your biggest weakness?

Pick a weakness you have made improvement on. A lot of guides tell you to pick a weakness that is not related to the job and they give some STUPID examples of “I tend to forget things”, “I have a hard time remembering names”, “”. If these sounds stupid to you, that’s because they are! You won’t be able to fool your interviewer with these. More reasonable and less silly weaknesses would be things like taking on more than you can handle or being too self-reliant.

How are you working on getting better at this area? Structure your process of improving as a work plan. Show them your thought process when you encounter these situations in the future.

Again, STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE, STRUCTURE! I cannot emphasize this enough. This is such a general communication skill that will help you not only the interview, but on the job, and in all life situations. If you currently don’t have structure in the way you communicate, this is a good opportunity to develop the skill.

The Market Sizing Question in 3 Steps

James — Sat, 06 Feb 2010 21:13:01 +0000

At first glance, market sizing questions are often the most intimidating questions that people come across during the interview process. After all, most interviewees have come across the types of business problems in the news or in class, but no one really thinks about wacky questions like ‘how many pancakes were eaten in New York last week?’ Even on the more ‘normal’ side – market sizing questions within normal case questions – interviewees often freeze up at the thought of tackling this ambiguous estimation question.

The 3 Steps

You have probably heard that there is ‘no right answer’ to these questions, and that’s probably right. But there’s definitely a right way to approach these problems, which is with structure.

1) Take a minute and structure your answer

After interviewing a lot of juniors going through the case interview process for the first time, I realized something peculiar: almost everyone took a minute to structure the problem before a ‘normal’ case, but almost no one took the time to structure the problem when a case question came up (either one within a normal case question or a standalone question).

This minute is critical in helping you break down the variables and refine the process, the next steps in helping you get the final answer.

2) Break down the variables

It may be helpful to review the purpose of the market sizing question, which is to see whether or not you can break down and explain a seemingly complex concept in a simple way. You know your end goal (the case question), so you want to work backwards and use a straightforward approach to break down the relevant variables, which will be a mix of assumptions/commonly known assumptions and variables that you have to calculate from these assumptions.

Pancake Example
Blue is a number you assume/know, green is a number you calculate
Goal: You want to figure out the number of pancakes eaten in New York last week
Number of pancakes eaten last week = Number of pancakes eaten per day x Days per week (7)
Number of pancakes eaten per day = Number of people who eat pancakes x Pancakes per person (3)
Number of people who eat pancakes = Number of people who eat breakfast x % of people who eat pancakes (0.20)
Number of people who eat breakfast = % of people who eat breakfast (0.80) x # of people in New York (10 million)

As you see, working backwards in a methodical way can lead you to a set of straightforward calculations. Throughout the process, you will be using a mix of variables you estimate/know and variables that you calculate from the step before. Obviously you want to present the structure in the ‘forward’ manner, as shown below.

Sample dialogue:

So our goal is to figure out to the total number of pancakes eaten last week, and here’s how I’m going to break it down: first we’ll start with the population of New York, then we’ll figure out the number of people who eat pancakes, and then after considering how many they eat a day and the 7 days per week, we’ll be able to get the final answer. How does that sound?

3) Refine the process

In part 2, you have the basic foundation to get you through the market sizing question. To really stand out, you want to refine the process by segmenting variables. This step both allows you to get more accurate estimations as well as to show off your creativity. This step is more of an art than science, since it depends a lot on the category of your case question.

Pancake Example
Number of pancakes eaten last week = Number of pancakes eaten per day x Days per week (7)
Refined-> Have a separate calculation for weekdays and weekends (brunch heavy days)
Number of people who eat pancakes = Number of people who eat breakfast x % of people who eat pancakes (0.20)

Refined-> Have separate calculations for different types of people, such as kids, adults (eat the least amount of pancakes by %), and elderly (eat the most by %).

Why do I think structure is so important? During one of my Bain interviews, I laid out my structure, did one of the initial calculations, and then my interviewer stopped me and said I was done. He saw what he needed – a structured approach, and the ability to do basic calculations. Obviously, we can’t help you with the latter

Know Each Company’s Interview Style

James — Wed, 27 Jan 2010 04:46:07 +0000

Oftentimes, people lump all consulting interviews into the “case interview.” Although all consulting firms use the case method to some extent, each company has a distinctive style of conducting their interviews.

A few examples…

McKinsey

Command and control. Your structure up from doesn’t have to be that elaborate – after all, the case interviewer is going to be asking you all the questions. Be prepared for a lot of “Anything else?” McKinsey loves to see a ton of brainstorming and creativity.

(A side note: I heard McKinsey loves buzzwords. I didn’t hear this until after my interview and still got an offer, but it may be worth it to investigate this a bit more).

Bain

Bain generally has shorter interviews. You can almost always expect a market sizing question (or two!) in your first round. A lot of interviews are based off of the interviewer’s experiences, rather than a set interview materials.

BCG

You can always expect diagrams and slides to work off of. This means that there is always roughly a ‘right’ answer. This could be great or frustrating, depending on your personal preferences.

These are just a few brief tips on the Big 3. Spending a good 15 minutes or so to find out the style of each company you interview will really boost the productivity of your preparation. Good luck!

3 Key Charts For Case Interviews

Robert — Sun, 24 Jan 2010 20:47:13 +0000

Many people wonder how they can go above and beyond in an interview to stick in an interviewer’s mind. Knowing how to do a case interview merely puts you on the same level as everyone else. However, enhancing your communication through the use of diagrams and charts can put you over the top. Most interviewers’ eyes will immediately light up when they see you use the charts discussed below because this is the way consultants think and even how they communicate points to clients!

Market Share Pie Chart (Gaining Share vs. Growing The Pie)

This is probably the simplest, and most commonly applicable chart, but rarely anyone uses it! It’s low hanging fruit you can take advantage of. It’s great for demonstrating the various strategies available for:

Increasing sales (steal share or grow the total market?)
New product launch strategy (take a small slice of a big pie or a big slice of a small pie?)
Pretty much anything involving changing the levers on the percentage of the market you own or influencing the size of the total market.

The chart is super easy to draw. The hardest part is recognizing the opportunity to use it. These situations happen all too often, but most of the time people overlook them. A good trick is to keep it in mind whenever you read business news. Today I read an article on Bing’s search strategy and there was an example right in front of me.

Stefan Weitz (Bing spokesman): Competing with Google in classical ranked algorithm search isn’t a thing we spend tons and tons of time thinking about. We obviously try to understand what they’re doing so we can match or better that.
Really, the question about how we compete with the traditional engine assumes some type of zero-sum game. We think by enabling all these other decision type scenarios, we’re actually increasing the overall pie.

BAM! That’s a reference to the pie chart above. Bing can either compete on ranking algorithms in a zero-sum game (try to gain market share from Google), or focus their energies on different ways of searching (growing the search pie by bringing in people who do not currently use search). These examples are EVERYWHERE!

Profitability over time chart

A useful chart for declining profitability type of problems is to draw revenues and costs over time. For example, let’s say the client is experiencing declining profits, and you have come to the conclusion that it is due to rising costs (see first panel). You can illustrate the two ways of tackling the issue through method A and method B.

Method A: Do a short term fix by increasing profits through reducing costs (ie. cutting staff, using less materials, etc.). However, since this is just a shift of the cost curve, costs will continue to rise because the main issue still exists (ie. rising wages, rising cost of materials)
Method B: Use a more innovative approach to tackle the main issue of rising costs and rotate the cost curve (ie. use a different material that is stable in price, renegotiate with suppliers to lock in prices, switch from human labor to machine automation, etc ).

2×2 Matrix

Oh the classic BCG 2×2 Matrix. You’ve probably seen the traditional BCG matrix in a marketing textbook. It is a positioning map that shows the relative positions of products in your portfolio.

But be aware that you can pretty much use a 2×2 matrix for any problem involving 2 dimensions. It’s great for putting structure around a complex topic and making it easier for the interviewer to follow what you are saying.

For example, the Wharton 2006 Casebook has an offshoring case from a BCG 2nd round where this works well (Wharton Casebook 2006, case 8). The question at hand is whether a US software company should enter the Indian market and whether it should offshore its engineering unit to India. In order to organize your thoughts in evaluating such a decision, you should create the matrix below and gather information to fill in the boxes. When you explain your decision, the interview can easily follow your thought process.

Why Frameworks Are Overrated

James — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 02:43:00 +0000

Note: By frameworks we mean memorized ways of addressing specific business scenarios.

Many casebooks will often include a ton of frameworks to memorize for the case interview, whether it’s “Top 12 Business Scenarios,” the 7 Q’s, the 5 D’s, etc. I think that these frameworks might be useful to read (especially if you have no business experience whatsoever), but at the end of the day, trying to do crack the case by memorizing a set of frameworks is wrong for several reasons:

1) It may misguide you

When you memorize a lot of frameworks, it is easy to become myopic and even overconfident. During one of my first BCG interviews junior year, I heard a case and immediately thought of the Private Equity framework that I had memorized (and used correctly in practice). It turned out I was dead wrong – even though the term private equity was used, the case was just really about understanding an overall industry.

2) It sounds canned

Interviewers have read most of the guides out there. Think about it – they were probably in your shoes just a few years ago. Moreover, your peers are reading these same books. If you pull out a memorized framework, the interviewer will likely ding you for a lack of creativity.

3) It’s time consuming

There are literally hundreds of frameworks out there. Each book will try to show you why their case system is the best. In reality, cases are so easy to tweak that no set of framework really will really give you the magical solution.

4) It does not make up for lack of practice

If you are short on time, the worst thing you can do is spend it pounding frameworks into your head. Being able to recall frameworks will not help you much if you have not honed down the skill of being able to form structure around a problem. The only way to develop this skill is good old practice.

Again, we want to emphasize that structure, not frameworks, is the key to cracking the case. When you take the initial minute to plan out your thoughts, just try to think: what is a logical way of breaking this question down? What are some questions that I really need to answer to figure out this business problem? Really, it’s less difficult than it sounds. We will be putting up a post on how to do this soon.

Understanding The Case Interview

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:44:56 +0000

If you are just starting the case interview process, you probably have a million questions in your head about what exactly is a case interview and how is it run. You have probably heard about how you should take time to “write down your structure” and are wondering what the hell does that exactly mean? This quick overview guide answers those questions and lets you understand how all these pieces fit together. I elaborate on all the sections in the order they come up in the real interview so you can get a good image of how it all plays out. Note that each firm does things slightly differently and has its own style.

——————————————————————————————————————–

[You have just completed about 10-15 minutes of fit questions]

Interviewer: Okay, shall we move onto the case?

Description of business problem (1 – 3 minutes)

The interviewer will jump straight into reading you the business situation at hand. While this is happening, you should be taking careful notes of all the important facts you may need. It does not have to be verbatim, but you should have enough down to fully understand the context of the current situation, what has changed in the business, what is the problem you are asked to solve, and of course any numbers given to you.

Confirmation of facts (30 seconds)

Interviewee: Sounds like an interesting problem. Do you mind if I confirm the facts?

Yes, this does sound a little stupid to repeat back what was just told to you, but the purpose is NOT to repeat here. The purpose is to tell the interviewer your interpretation of the problem to make sure you understood it correctly. This step is NOT optional, you should ALWAYS do this. Give the interviewer your interpretation of the situation, including facts and figures. If it appears you are not on the same page or misheard a number, he will correct you. It’s much better to get these misunderstandings fixed early than halfway through the case. This is also your chance to ask the interviewer to repeat a number that you could not write down quickly enough.

A moment to structure thoughts (1 – 2 minutes MAX)

Interviewee: Do you mind if I take a moment to structure my thoughts?
Interviewer: Absolutely, go ahead.

The first time I heard of this, I also thought it was a bit strange. You mean I should literally take time in the middle of the interview to write down my approach??? YES, this is expected, and you should ALWAYS do it. Many beginner interviewers make the mistake of jumping straight into the problem without doing this, and that is the ultimate deal breaker! I would even go so far as to say this is the most important step.

The purpose of this step is for you to structure your plan of attacking a problem once that you have understood it. If this is a declining profitability case, you would typically draw out a tree diagram splitting profits into revenues and costs, then revenue into price and value, and then costs into fixed and variable costs. You would also include on your paper any external factors you think might affect the situation such as customers and competitors. And that’s it. All the items you have written down are your areas of investigation. Remember, a case is like a treasure hunt. You are hunting to find the source of the problem.

Be aware that by structure, I do NOT necessarily mean pull out a framework. Learn why frameworks are overrated.

Verbally present your approach (30 seconds – 1 minute)

Interviewee: Okay, it looks like there are several areas that might be affecting the situation. Since the client is experiencing a decline in profitability, an obvious place would be to break down profits into revenues and costs, and within revenues to look at price and volume, and within costs to look at fixed costs and variable costs. I would also like to look at external factors that might be influencing the situation such as customers and the specific segments, and also competitors to see if this is an industry-wide problem or a firm-specific problem. Would you recommend a place to start?

Once you’ve written down your framework, you have to verbally present it to the interviewer. You should use the diagrams you drew as visual aids while you are explaining. Now the interviewer fully understands how you are thinking about the problem and can clearly follow your thought process as you move from investigating area to area.

Diving into the data gathering and analysis (around 20 minutes)

This is where you will spend the bulk of your time. I personally like to end my presentation of my approach with, “Would you recommend a place to start?” Most of the time the interviewer would give you a place to start, which might save you a lot of time than had you just picked a place yourself. At other times, the interviewer might just say, “Nope, where do you think is a good place to start?” Your decision here depends from case to case.

Up to this point, you are lacking a LOT of information. Beginner case interviewers try to solve the case without asking for more information and it’s just crash and burn. It is like trying to solve a 1000 piece puzzle when you only have 200 of the pieces. The point is to dig to uncover more of the pieces in order to understand the full picture.

For example, when you investigate an area like revenue, you should ask to understand revenue more deeply. How exactly does the company make money? What are the different revenue streams and products? What are the prices for each product? What percentage of overall revenues does each product make up? Learn how to ask the right questions that will reveal the answer to the case for you.

Conclusion (30 seconds MAX)

After around 20 minutes of digging, the interviewer will say, “Okay, let’s say the CEO at the client bumps into you in the elevator and wants to know your conclusion on the problem. Explain it to him.”

This will happen either when:
1) You have all the information necessary to solve the case
2) Time is up and the interview needs to be wrapped up

A pro interviewee will be able to recognize that he has all the information necessary and transition into the conclusion himself.

Be clear and state your key finding up front!

Good: The key area of profitability decline is that sales have been shifting towards a lower margin product. Some ways we can solve this are to reduce costs by using cheaper materials or renegotiating with supplier, or by increasing prices. So far I’ve analyzed the profitability of each of our own products, but some areas going forward I think are worth looking at are new products we could introduce and targeting a new segment with our higher margin products.

Bad: (Repeating your roadmap) Well, I’ve investigated revenues and costs, and also customers and competitors. (GET TO THE POINT!)

Really visualize yourself in the elevator going from the 30th floor to the lobby. You only have 30 seconds! Interviewers are pretty serious about this because the requirement for such concise and clear communication happens more than you would think!

What Questions Should I Ask During The Case Interview?

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 16:31:40 +0000

A lot of people get stuck when it comes to the case because they have no idea what questions to ask in order to gather data and crack the case. Once you’ve set up your structure, you move onto “data gathering and analysis”. But what exactly does “analysis” mean? If you have a well-formed structure, the ambiguous problem should be segmented into pretty clean buckets such as customers and competitors, but then what? What questions should you ask about customers? Here’s how you should go about thinking about it:

Analysis = Breaking the problem apart to identify the specific source of the problem

For example, when you think about customers, you should not just ask about the total number of customers and the revenue they generate. That only keeps your thinking on the surface level. You should break down customers and ask for the different segments of customers, and then gather information on each segment. (How much revenue does each segment bring in? What percent is that of total revenue? What is the growth rate of each segment? How does purchase behavior differ across segments? What is the profit margin on the products that each segment buys?)

When do I stop drilling down?

Stop drill down once you have identified the problem area. If you ask insightful questions, usually the problem will appear in one of these areas. For example, a highly profitable customer segment may be shrinking, which would explain why the company is experiencing profit decline.

This concept of drilling down is also good to keep in mind when you get stuck
If you get stuck, ask yourself:

Have I found the source of the problem? If no, then…
Can this problem be broken down further? If we are trying to understand revenue decline, break down revenue into product groups. If we are trying to understand loss of customers, break down customers into each segment and gather data for each one. If a product has very low margins, what is the breakdown of costs causing low margin (materials, labor, sales, etc.)?
Repeat until you find the source of the problem.

Columbia Consulting Casebook 2006

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:43:55 +0000

Columbia Casebook 2006

Wharton Consulting Casebook 2006

Robert — Sat, 16 Jan 2010 04:40:35 +0000

Wharton Casebook 2005 – 2006