Many companies are moving toward case

interviewing as a test of functional skills.

Behavioral

Overview

Case

Marketing

Consulting

Consulting

General corporate

Marketing

Marketing

Companies that tend to

have a less-sophisticated
recruiting processes

I-banking

I-banking

Note that even in consulting, you will almost always

have at least one fit or behavioral interview

Consulting tends to be different because of the

heavy emphasis on case and analytic skills.

Key Interview Skills

Keys to Case Interviewing Success:

Structure driven (not any specific structurejust show
you can organize your thinkinglay out your approach)
Analytic nature (can you handle the numbers?)
Key business insights (do you know anything about
general businesses?)
Ability to 80/20 (dont rambleget to the most
leveraged areasfast)

The goal of a case interview is to have a business

CONVERSATION with the firm.

Consulting

Possible Interviewer Styles:

Only ONE Response:

Question-driven

Have an intelligent business

conversation & follow their
lead

Open-ended approach
Seeking a specific answer
Hostile (VERY rare)

Whether the firm specializes in strategy or operations, they are trying to

assess your ability to converse intelligently in front of the client. You are the
firms only assetthey want to invest wisely.

The first basic step in any case interview is to break

apart the problem horizontally.

Bucket Problems

Problem: A companys revenues have been

decliningwhy?
Revenues

Costs

This is basically a logic tree

The key is to make this first pass MECE or
Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive
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Drill Down

Once youre satisfied youve listed all of the MECE

buckets, you then drill down to find root causes.

Problem: A companys revenues have been

decliningwhy?
Revenues
Price

Volume

Price falling?

Volume down?

Costs
Mix
Shift to less
profitable lines?

Fixed
Rent too high?

Variable
Labor costs up?

The key is to figure out what is driving the problem

Drill Down

Frameworks often overlap--say, for example, you

know that prices have been falling...

Revenues
Price

Volume

Costs
Mix

Fixed

Variable

Prices ARE falling...

Use Porters to find out why prices are falling...

Industry rivalry
Buyers
Suppliers
Substitutes
Threats of new entrants

What is driving
price decline?
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In general, horizontal-then-vertical attacks work on

most problems. A random example.

An Example

Problem: I got a speeding ticketwhy?

I was speeding

Game Over

I was NOT speeding

The officers
radar gun is
broken

Cop does not

know how to
use radar gun

My stupid
speedometer
is broken

The officer is
misinformed re:
speed limit

Once you hit on the key bucket, you can investigate

further to get at root causes and suggested fixes.
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Problem Review
Overall, you pull a problem apart into buckets and find
MECE sub-assertions from which to further drill down.

Separate a problem horizontally

Then drill down into relevant areas

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Classic frameworks provide a generic structure for

you to think about business problems.

Frameworks

Revenue-Cost model
Three Cs / Four Ps
Porters Five Forces
Classic ways to enter a new market
Value Chain

They should not be memorizedit will make your

thinking sound artificial.

Tips

You need to practicethis will determine most of

your success.

Tips:
Order wetfeet press (wetfeet.com), vault reports
(vaultreports.com), and HBS industry/company reviews and do
some background reading
Get a few partners, rotate giving each other cases well before
the holiday breakbe disciplined
Get a sense for what type of work a firm does (ops vs. strategy)
this will often determine your case type
Know what makes firms different from one anotherthey
expect you to know
Do NOT forget about behavioraldo Reinheimers matrix

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