If you are interested in consulting you have probably heard of the case interview. It is a key component of the consulting interview to test how you approach problems. Practicing cases can teach you how to think like a consultant, yet they can also be a large source of stress and anxiety for candidates.
It’s important to start practicing early and often. It can be overwhelming the first time you practice a case and not knowing how to start can often times lead to procrastination.
How to start practicing
A good place to start is to watch a couple of live case interviews which can be found on YouTube here and here. Pay attention to the dialogue and the flow of the interview.
There is a structure that underlies each interview and it can be broken into a few key segments:
- Listening to the prompt and opening the case
- Structuring the case
- Completing 1-3 prompts (market sizing/estimation, brainstorming, chart interpretation, or a computation)
- Closing the case and providing a recommendation
How to approach and answer each section of the case can be found in detail on other case prep websites and books. Take notes from multiple sources and find the underlying principles that you can use to build your own skill set.
Practicing by yourself
You should start by making a plan for how and when you are going to practice and track what you do. You should have sessions that are blocked for a specific skill and sessions that have two or more skills, also known as interleaving. Blocking each portion of the case independently can help you assess your performance on each part of the case. Interleaving multiple sections will help you practice switching between skills and get better at the flow of the interview.
Once you gain confidence doing each piece independently start to practice an entire case by yourself. You may need to edit sections from a casebook (found online from various business schools) so that you don’t give yourself the answers. On the first case it’s ok to take as long as you need. But practicing under pressure is going to be more realistic. Use a timer and record yourself as you talk through the case.
It will be painful to listen to yourself the first few times, but it will help you improve. When you are able to critique yourself and are conscious of your performance it’s time to start practicing with others.
Practicing with a partner
Practicing with a partner is ideal for getting realistic case practice and useful feedback on your performance. There are a few websites to help you find a partner if your school doesn’t have a consulting club. Try to find a mix of people to practice with based on their casing skills – those who are worse, the same, and better than you. You can learn something from each of these groups of people.
Find a couple cases that you think are interesting and get to know them really well. Use these cases regularly as you practice. After you finish the case compare their structuring and thinking to your own and evaluate how you could improve your performance.
If you can find a core group of people to practice with on a regular basis this will be helpful. You can create a study plan to accommodate the strengths and weaknesses of the group. Leading up to interviews, consistency is key and diversity of cases and content is important.
You can practice casing in different ways other than just doing examples from case books. Dissecting an industry newsletter or company whitepaper can be a good way to build industry knowledge and practice structuring.
Remember you are doing more than just practicing for an interview – you are trying to change the way you think and approach a problem.
Confidence going into the interview
If you are able to land an interview, hopefully you are ready for the case questions. You should feel confident if you can identify the parts of a case and know how to approach your answer, you can critique your own performance, and you can teach it to someone else. These few items are good indicators you have the foundational knowledge base and application of the core competencies to perform well on a case.
Importantly, you should have a standard level of performance as you will be expected to answer multiple case prompts during your interview cycle. This means you should be able to use your knowledge effectively and readily in order to reliably perform.
How many cases are enough?
This is a common question although probably not the right question to ask – rather how can you master the sections of a case to reliably perform on an interview? It is important to do cases from start to finish however you need to be consistently assessing your performance on the individual components of the case and evaluating your thinking and approach to answering case questions.
Doing at least one of each type of case question is good. Doing the same cases more than once can be a great learning tool. Always evaluate your performance and deconstruct your thinking and approach to a level where you understand why you made a certain decision.
Remember, as you interview the number of cases you do will increase merely as part of the interview process. The goal is that your performance is already as close to perfect as possible before getting to the interview. Finally, it would be wise to have a couple of practice sessions where you do 5-6 cases back to back to build your stamina and simulate the intensity of interview day.
Keep Calm and Case On!
Andrew Kuczmarski is a PhD candidate at the University of Delaware whose passion lies at the intersection of science and business.
Image: Pexels
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