As most aspiring consultants know, one of the major hurdles in landing a job offer is the case interview.
Given a strict time limit and a small amount of information, applicants are expected to ask poignant questions to steer the interview in a direction where they can provide a clear and concise recommendation. Whether it is determining the reason why the client is making a loss, deciding if entering a particular market would be successful, or choosing between two new products, the goal is the same. The case interview will evaluate the candidate’s business and operational knowledge and ability to ask key questions, as well as performing public mental math and summing together key findings in a final recommendation.
While the case interview will likely not disappear anytime soon, it fails to represent a consultant’s day to day work. Consultants are staffed on engagements that can last from a few weeks to months in length, rather than assigned to clients for a single day or even single hour to solve their problems. Clients provide more than one to three exhibits of data to their consultants, and certainly allow for more than five minutes to process and analyze them. To better prepare for the consulting life, aspiring new hires should consider participating in something more than the case interview, something bigger. All potential consultants should participate in the case competition.
While each case competition is different, they tend to follow the same thread. A business problem is provided as a prompt along with vague details and overarching questions to be answered before a panel of judges. One main distinction between this prompt and the one given in a case interview is the fact that the timeline for completion is a few days rather than a few minutes. The prompt might provide the general direction and questions to be answered, but little to no data is provided for these competitions. All research must be conducted by the competitors during the timeframe allotted for the competition before the recommendation is made.
How does one person conduct enough research and draw enough conclusions before the time limit? Well, there lies the second main difference between the case interview and case competition: teammates. Case competitions encourage participants to form teams of two to five people, to divide and conquer the necessary research and data collection to satisfy the prompt. Unlike the case interview where applicants must answer individually, these competitions allow competitors to work together and synthesize a solution. This process perfectly mirrors consulting, where teams divide up the research tasks and then come together to provide the client with a solution.
Longer time limits and collaborating on teams are two important distinctions of the case competition experience, however, the method of providing the final recommendation changes as well. Rather than just telling the interviewer an answer, during a case competition, the team presents their solution in the form of a presentation. The use of electronic slides allows for clear presentation of data, analysis, synthesis, and conclusions, in a very organized format. Graphs, tables, and other visualizations of data can be used, a step up from purely numbers or percentages.
The case competition process mirrors the consulting world more accurately. Slide decks and final reports will be provided to the clients, rather than just verbal recommendations.
To participate in a case competition, you will need to find a team, networking with fellow aspiring consultants who might be your colleagues one day at a Big 3 Management Firm. The case competition might be held by a big-name school such as Duke University of the University of North Carolina, something recognizable to appear on your resume. You also must spend up to a week researching data to support your hypothesized answer to the prompt, balancing your usual slate of homework, research, and family life, almost as if you are already a consultant working an average 60 hour work week. While your final presentation might not be in front of an actual client, you will instead be presenting to a panel of current consultants, ready to provide feedback, insight, and experiences from their own roles as consultants.
While the case interview is a vital part of the hiring process for future consultants, becoming an expert at it is not the only way to prepare for a career in consulting. Participating in multiple case competitions might just give you a better insight into the lifestyle and work of a consultant, since you solve problems with longer time lines, work with other aspiring consultants, and present using digital tools.
Ricky Hollenbach is a third year Ph.D. student at Duke University, studying unsteady aerodynamics and mechanical vibrations in jet engines and turbomachinery. He aspires to become a management consultant in the aerospace and defense fields.
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