One of the most difficult tasks in a case interview is to ask the right questions at the beginning of the case. Many candidates ask questions that are too generic. As a result, this don’t really help them to solve the case. Sometimes candidates even ask questions just for the sake of asking questions to give the interviewer the impression that they know what they are doing. However, the goal of the questions must be to scope the subsequent structure and tailor it exactly to the case at hand. If you ask the right questions, you will have a huge advantage over your competitors. First, because you will understand the case more quickly, and second, because you will give the interviewer the impression that you have a clear understanding of the case.
So, what are the right questions to ask to better understand the case?
In this post, you will learn six questions that will help you enormously in setting up a good framework in almost any case.
1. What is the exact goal?
Probably the most obvious and at the same time the most underestimated question. Let’s say you are asked to identify cost savings. Most candidates think they already know the client’s goal, but often that is far from true. Instead, it’s much more about quantifying the goal. How many costs does the customer want to save? In what amount of time does the customer want to save those costs? Let’s say you’ve identified $10 million in potential savings over two years. Your conclusion will be completely different if the customer’s goal was to save $5 million in costs in two years versus $15 million in one year.
2. What is the business model of our client?
It will often happen that you will be given cases on industries you don’t know. Therefore, you will have to solve cases where you don’t know how the customer even earns its money. Let’s say the customer runs a mining business, what do their revenue streams look like in such a case? Where does the money come from if it is a software company? In a case where you have to identify potential sources of revenue growth, your analysis and conclusions will be completely different if you are looking at an insurance company or a food manufacturer.
3. What does the value chain of our customer look like?
You need to understand what other players are involved in the value chain and where exactly our customer adds value for their client. For example, a food manufacturer will most likely sell his food to a supermarket. What about the power structure between the food manufacturer and the supermarket? How big and successful is the supermarket? Also think about the upstream. Does the food manufacturer own its own farmland, or does it buy raw materials from different farmers? This will have a huge impact on the structure of the case. From the end consumer’s perspective, do they even need our customer in the value chain? Why do you think travel agencies are doing so poorly?
4. Is the problem at hand a market-wide problem?
Let’s say our customer is showing a decline in revenue. The information about whether our competitors are experiencing the same problem has implications for whether it is an internal problem, or perhaps the entire market is shrinking. Again, depending on the answer, you can tailor the structure of your analysis very precisely to the case at an early stage.
5. What kind of products does our customer offer and how do they differ from one another?
Try to understand our customer’s products or services in detail. Imagine a shoe manufacturer wants to increase its profit. In this case, it can be very helpful to know whether the customer manufactures only one or several shoes, and how the shoes differ. Should our customer produce only one shoe, he should probably enter new markets by providing a broader product portfolio. Should the customer offer several shoes, it may make sense to focus on increasing sales of the shoes with the highest profit margin.
6. Who are our customers and how do they differ from one another?
What customer segments do we currently serve and what are their needs? Are we meeting these needs or is there a mismatch between supply and demand at some point? Are the customer segments all equally profitable? Let’s say our shoe manufacturer from above offers a business shoe and a casual shoe. In this case, you should understand the differences between the customer segments. With this information, you can adjust your structure in the next step to identify the most profitable customer segment. Without this question, you might focus your structure much more on competitors and the interviewer gets the feeling that you are using a generic framework.
You may have already noticed that you can’t ask all six questions in every case, or that you simply don’t need to. Either because you already know the answer or because it is not relevant for this specific case. Most of the time, two or three good questions will already help you to better understand the problem at hand and to adjust the structure in the next step. If you manage to ask these questions at the beginning of each case, you can easily take your case performance to the next level. Feel free to go through some of your old cases and see if these questions would have helped you to set up a suitable structure.
Till Margraf is in his late 20s and an enthusiastic consultant at Roland Berger. After studying business administration in Cologne, he completed the CEMS Master in International Management in Lisbon. In his free time, Till enjoys sports and going out into nature.
Image: Pixabay
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