Consulting-style case interviews are highly effective, and the same format is being adopted more and more widely. The major consultancies have converged on a largely identical interview style, precisely because it excels in picking out the most genuinely capable candidates from the huge pools of applications received.
However, consultancies are not the only oversubscribed employers who need to find the individuals to cope with demanding jobs. As such, I’ve increasingly seen case interviews being used to recruit for corporate strategy roles in all sectors and business operation (“BizOps”) roles at startups.
Now, case interviews for non-consulting industries tend to really intimidate candidates. They assume that these interviews will be of a very different kind to the consulting case interview, a belief which is contributed to by the fact that there just isn’t a lot of material that covers the topic.
However, the main message you should take away from this article is that case interviews in other sectors really are very similar to the consulting interviews from which they are derived. Of course, there are some differences which you do need to be aware of, and I will run through them below. However, the key takeaway is that good quality material for consulting interview prep will be perfectly well-suited to preparing you to face case interviews in other industries as well.
Why are case interviews so similar across industries?
If you think it through, it makes a lot of sense that case interviews for different industries are fundamentally similar. We can approach this realization from a few angles:
- Each industry is a subset of the interests of general consulting: Simply put, whatever industry you are in will also be one where consultants will potentially operate. Consultants are often generalists and their candidates can expect to receive cases from literally any industry. As such, pretty well any business problem you might be asked to deal with within a specific industry could also fall within the purview of general consulting (after all, if the company can’t solve an issue in-house they will call in the consultants).
- A fundamental skillset: Case interviews are fundamentally an assessment of basic reasoning skills and a specific problem-solving mindset. These are universals. You will need to adopt the same logical, rigorous-but-efficient approach to solve a case for BCG as you will in a case interview for Uber or Canada Goose. Indeed, the same foundational principles and skills will be crucial to day-to-day success for any high-end professional. Concepts like the MECE rule are elaborations of the fundamental logical principles which underpin any kind of rigorous thought.
- Higher level commonalities: Now, all this talk of logic may sound a bit abstract and meaningless if you’re new to case studies. However, even at a more “practical” level, many of the specific “concrete” skills required to tackle cases will overlap across different industries. For example, whether your case is dealing with a market entry project in a corporate strategy interview or optimizing price in a management consulting interview, you are going to have to interpret financial information and various charts and graphs as well as do things like make valuations and use discount rates.
Key Differences
Now, as similar as case interviews are between consulting and other industries, there are still some differences which candidates will need to be aware of during their preparation.
- Zooming in on a single sector: Consulting cases can be in any industry, but elsewhere they will be confined to the specific industry you are applying to. If you are applying to retail, you will have a retail case. If you are applying to pharma you will have a pharma case. Now, this might all seem obvious and somewhat trivial, but this “zooming in” does have some genuinely salient implications. In particular, the narrower focus means that the same kinds of cases will recur more often than in general consulting interviews. For example, for those applying to department stores (e.g. Nordstrom, Hudson’s Bay, or Holt Renfrew), store closure and business development cases will be common (hint: it is crucial to calculate NPV and the implication of closing/opening a store in an area). Obviously, recurrence brings with it the potential for specialization. Certainly, you should make sure to be razor sharp on any frequent case-types. However, a common error made by candidates is to learn and/or practice only how to deal with these kinds of cases. This is a huge mistake and the next point will explain why.
- The problem with over-specialization: Just as with candidates who only prepare using generic frameworks for consulting interviews, those who learn to deal only with the most common case types for their industry inherently run the risk of being completely stumped by cases which don’t conform to their ready-made solutions. Indeed, given that interviewers are trying to identify genuinely quick, adaptable candidates, you can expect to be given cases which don’t fit into standard molds. If you want to be able to solve cases reliably, which you are going to need to do to make it through multiple rounds of interviews, you need to know how to solve cases in general, not simply a few common case types.
- Background knowledge: Now, it is not quite accurate to say that the kinds of cases you will receive in all other industries are simply a subset of the cases which might be given to a general consulting candidate. Another symptom of zooming-in on a certain sector is that there will often be some requirement for specific background knowledge about the industry, which would be unreasonable to expect within general consulting. To take an example of a corporate strategy role at an apparel company, you might be expected to know what kind of product categories they have, geographies they operate in, and recent trends in the industry. The best resource is to listen to earnings calls, read through company presentations (which can be found on the company’s investor relation pages), and flip through recent news on the company. If the specific company is private, look at the competitors, which will usually offer relevant information. However, you will almost certainly not need to go into deep technical detail on these topics. Industry specific aspects will be more about understanding the context of the problem, and your solution will still be reached primarily through basic reasoning rather than textbook knowledge. To be clear, the whole point of the case interview format is to test general reasoning skills as opposed to depth of knowledge on a certain subject, so it would be pointless to use a case study for the latter purpose.
As a final note, don’t let this requirement for specific knowledge worry you unduly. Generally, recruiters will make their demands for previous experience or knowledge crystal clear. As I have noted above, case studies will not typically require a great deal of specific knowledge beyond the basics. If you have a background in the field, you don’t have anything to worry about.
How do I prepare, then?
As I have alluded to above, the deep degree of commonality across case interviews for all sectors means that good quality consulting interview prep material also makes a perfect resource to prepare for interviews in other sectors.
You should spend most of your prep time becoming a solid case interview generalist. Thus, you will spend time ingraining key concepts like the MECE principle, honing your mental math and learning fundamental economics, finance and accounting ideas.
To cement what you learn, you should practice with a wide variety of cases – not necessarily limited to your sector and certainly not limited only to common scenarios within that sector. Once you have a robust foundation in place and are confident you can make a good go at tackling anything you are given, you can spend the last 15% of your prep time honing in on any case-types which are particularly common within your chosen industry.
Jason Oh is a Senior Consultant, Strategy & Customer at EY. Previously, he was a Management Consultant at Novantas with a focus on the financial services sector, where he advised on pricing, marketing, channel distribution, digital transformation and due diligence.
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