Case competitions are amazing opportunities to demonstrate your ‘case cracking’ abilities in front of industry judges, quickly expand your network, and win great prizes. I was fortunate enough to be involved with several during my undergraduate days, both as a participant and as a judge. I even started one, which is now one of the largest case competitions in the Waterloo, Canada region.
All case competitions are not created equal. Some last for a few hours, others can run for months, and some even extend to an international level where schools around the world compete. However, while the format may differ considerably depending on the case competition, the following 3 tips can generally be applied across the board.
1. Choose the right team
Most case competitions require 3-4 participants in a team and it is crucial to build a balanced team with different backgrounds and strengths. Often I have witnessed a team consisting of members purely based on strong work experience or high academic achievement. Even though these are great indicators that the individual team members are hard-working and have an edge over others by having prior industry knowledge, by no means do they equate to “winning”. Rather, a strong team will have competencies in diverse fields such as finance, strategic planning (SWOT, PEST, 5-Ps), public speaking, graphic design (creating a beautiful slide deck), and Excel (modeling things like valuations, sensitivity analysis, and graphs). Teams that can leverage each member’s strengths and allocate roles accordingly will have a higher chance of success. Also, if you have a passion for a specific field or subject area, communicate that to your team and take the lead in that area. Passion leads to enthusiasm, enjoyment creates a fun team-dynamic, and excitement becomes a powerful tool to convince the judges.
2. Be creative but not over the line
Most case competitions require teams to consider a real situation that a business faced in the past and ask what the company should do. Try not to propose a very similar strategy to what the company has actually undertaken because this risks your answer being viewed as “too-safe” (though benchmarking similar situations that happened in other industries works quite well). You want to distinguish yourself from the crowd by thinking “outside the box”.
However, you have to balance ideas that are too safe versus too extreme. A great way to check your solution is by actively seeking out expertise and insight by meeting faculty members or others from relevant disciplines (don’t just keep the ideas among your team as if it is a secret). Taking this kind of initiative will take you a long way in the competition as it demonstrates commitment and genuine interest to help the client. Once you’ve brainstormed solutions, categorize them into “Safe”, “Moderate”, and “Risky” ideas, and aim to propose mostly Moderate strategies. For example, don’t propose that Uber expands their business by creating a service like UberEats (after knowing this has already been launched), or that they start offering a private jet service. Suggesting instead that they enter a specific region after careful due diligence would be a better balance of not too boring and not too crazy.
3. Present well
This tip has a lot of components to it so I’ll highlight three things.
- Understand who your audience is and get to the heart of the issue right away. Just like in a case interview, provide your recommendation upfront and support it with analysis X, Y, Z, followed by implementation plan, risk assessment, and conclusion. I’m sure you put so much work into it and want to show all your findings, but you just don’t have the time. Do not lose sight of the big picture.
- Be confident when you’re presenting. A client or judge may not agree with your final recommendation but if they can see the path you have taken to arrive at your conclusion, this provides a firm basis for further discussion. Once you are sure that you have arrived at a solution, can back up your recommendations with accurate data, and are confident that your ideas will deliver, hold fast to your convictions. Even a slight doubt in yourself will be witnessed by the judges.
- Drive the presentation the way you want. Prior to the presentation, it is always a good exercise for team members to ask each other questions to anticipate what the judges might ask. You can also lead the judges into asking you specific questions during the presentation, which is called “hooking”. Throughout your presentation you bring up a few interesting items, but don’t elaborate on them too much. You throw out the bait, and hope the judges bite. Combine this with having basket slides (extra slides like an appendix that you didn’t use), and you look amazing to the judges. You were so “prepared” that you “knew” what the judges were going to ask you and not only were you able to think on your feet, but you even planned for it ahead of time and had a slide on that specific question.
Other useful tips
- Don’t stress about it and try to have fun
- Engage with other participants to make connections
- Go outside your comfort zone and take on additional responsibilities
- Winning isn’t everything – sometimes it really does come down to luck
- Even if you don’t win, consulting firms will take interest in you if you show strength in other ways
- Thank your teammates
Jason Oh is a management consulting enthusiast with past experience in helping F500 financial services clients with product management, go-to-market and distribution channel strategy.
Image: Flickr
🔴 Interested in consulting?