Case interviews can seem like a daunting task. You’re being asked to solve a business challenge, while being assessed for an internship you really want … I feel the nerves already.
Thankfully, by taking tangible steps you can be well prepared for your case interviews.
1. Get familiar with the format
If you are just getting into the space of consulting, you may feel overwhelmed and unsure where to begin. In my opinion, a productive place to begin is to watch videos about the case interview. Google search “case interview walkthroughs” to find expert consultants running through case practice interviews. From these videos you can get familiar with the format and process in which a case interview is done. This will help ease your nerves as you will have a better understanding of what is going on. Personally, I benefitted by watching Victor Cheng’s Case Interview Workshop and videos produced by Management Consulted.
2. Practice cases
Case interviews are not tests that you can cram for the night before. The skill of casing takes time, practice, and effort to improve. The best way to get there is to simply just get started.
An important resource to have during this time is a “casing buddy”. Casing is tough to do on your own as you need someone to read you the questions and share points of feedback. A “casing buddy” can be a roommate, friend, or classmate. It works best if your partner is also recruiting for consulting, as you can learn a lot by being an interviewer as well.
Set a cadence for practice that both of you will follow. You will be a busy student at this time, but it is important to make time to practice. For example, you could meet twice a week and do 1-2 cases each. My first case was terrible. I was nervous, stumbled when I spoke, and reached the wrong mathematical conclusion. However, I knew that I was only going to improve from there.
So, you have a buddy, but where do you get case books filled with cases for mock interviews? That’s a great question. There are a few resource hubs you may have access to. Check your college’s undergraduate and graduate business libraries, if you’re in a business club check your organization’s files, ask upperclassmen what resources they leveraged during recruitment. You can also use Google to find free case books and slide decks. These resources contain a collection of sample cases for you to get familiar with what to expect.
While each case interview question will be different, your answer will often be structured as follows:
- Background information about the client and business issue
- Questions to ask the interviewer
- Charts or tables requiring analysis
- A final recommendation the interviewee has for the client
3. Sharpen your mental math skills
Many case interviews will present you with numerical data and require you to calculate a firm’s profit, identify a break-even point, or respond to another business challenge.
Employers want to assess if you can think in a structured manner, both qualitatively and quantitatively. The purpose is not to stress you out doing math problems, but to assess your comfort with details.
Some quantitative skills you should be familiar with doing are:
- addition, subtraction, multiplication, division
- finding percentages of numbers (what is 7% of 2,000)
- developing equations to solve for X
- identifying ratios and patterns
For math practice, not only is it helpful to do practice cases, but also use Victor Cheng’s Free Math Tool. This tool gives you math questions of varying difficulty and expects a quick answer. Using this tool for only a few minutes every day significantly improved my quick math abilities. I highly recommend it!
The bottom line
There you go, you have a few tangible next steps to prepare for consulting interviews.
Start by getting a high level overview of the case interview format and process.
Practice case interviews by finding one or more “case buddies” and setting up a regular practice schedule.
While you practice cases, be sure to also hone your mental math skills so that you will be able to calmly solve detailed calculations in a structured way while under pressure.
Zuhair Imaduddin is a Senior Product Manager at Wells Fargo. He previously worked at JPMorgan Chase and graduated from Cornell University.
Image: Unsplash
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