If you want to have a successful management consulting career, mastering case interviews is something you definitely need to do. One thing is sure, you can’t pass the interview without practice.
This kind of interview is designed to challenge you to solve a business problem. What they expect from you is to show your analytical thinking and ways to the resolution. In this article, we are going to show you some case interview examples of the top consulting firms.
Buckle up and enjoy!
Contents
Where to start?
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When it comes to the case interview a lot of people are wondering where to start and what to expect. Well, we are not going to lie, case interviews are a HUGE topic, that’s why we tried to find more examples that can help you feel ready!
The first thing you should be familiar with is two different formats of a consulting interview.
Candidate – led case interview
In this case, the interviewer is mostly silent, the candidate needs to lead to solutions alone, from the structuring problem to drawing frameworks, asking for necessary data, and finally proposing the solution.
This format is quite difficult for beginners but it gives you more control over the interview.
Interviewer – led case interview
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The second format is a case interview where the interviewer controls the case.
The interviewer leads you through the specific parts of the problem, and the goal of this kind of case interview is to nail every question rather than one big problem.
They do the evaluation based on those mini- questions that’s why it’s important to know how to answer them.
Now, when you know what kind of format you can expect, let’s concentrate on case interview examples.
McKinsey Case Interview Examples
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McKinsey is one of the top consulting firms, so, naturally, their interviews are among the hardest.
Still, even with the most demanding case interview like this one, preparation is the key, and it can help you succeed.
So, what can you expect?
Typically, you will be given a case study about a company facing a certain issue. You can focus on the profit challenge or come up with a strategic decision for a new product. As you already know case interviews present a more simple version of a real consulting project.
When it comes to the structure, McKinsey case interviews start with the situation, then come the framework and quantitative questions, and finally, there are the creative questions and recommendations.
First, the interviewer will introduce you to the problem and you will be asked to identify the areas and solve the problem ( framework question). You will also get one or two quantitative questions. Finally, they will expect you to outline some conclusions.
At the end of the interview, you will be asked to make an overall recommendation.
McKinsey interviewers will mostly control the interview and you will be asked to answer a lot of small questions. That’s because prefer“interviewer – led “ case interviews
There are usually two rounds of the interview but in some cases, you can have up to 8 interviews before you are offered a contract.
If you want to prepare yourself for McKinsey interviews you should practice with realistic questions.
BCG And Bain Case Interview Examples
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Together with McKinsey, BCG, and Bain are the best consulting firms in the world. It’s quite hard to get a job there, but like we already mentioned it’s not impossible.
BCG and Bain follow the candidate-led case interview format, unlike McKinsey. Like we already explained, this kind of interview focuses on resolving one big problem.
Still, you can’t yield solutions right away, you need to break it into small parts and handle each at a time.
There is another format of case interviews that are often used by BCG and Bain offices – written case interviews.
In this case, you need to deliver your answers in the form of a presentation. Here, we are not talking only about analysis, you will also need to select the right data.
You can expect to have from two to six interviews before landing a job with these companies.
Deloitte Case Interview Examples
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When it comes to Deloitte interviews, one thing is sure – they are quite challenging. Even more challenging compared to McKinsey, BCG, and Bain.
That’s because Deloitte has a very specific interview format. You will also have two rounds of interview, but in addition to the behavioral interview and a case interview, you will need to complete a group case interview.
When it comes to the regular case interview, Deloitte also follows a candidate-led format. Here, you will complete seven types of questions: Situation, Framework development, Framework exploration, quant questions with data provided, Quant questions with no data provided, Creativity question, and Recommendation.
Usually, in the final round, you will be presented with a group case interview. In this specific format, all the candidates get divided into several groups
Each group gets information about a case, and you have around 10 minutes to review the materials,
Next 20 minutes, you will be asked to discuss questions bout the case in front of your interviewer.
Next, the interviewer will ask questions to the group.
The goal of a group case interview is to test your ability to work in a team, that’s why the interviewer mainly just observes the groups.
Wrapping Up
As you could see all of the case interview examples are challenging. Getting a job in one of the top consulting companies is hard, especially because of the big competition.
The bottom line is to be well prepared, get familiarized with different case interview formats, work on developing business intuition, learn all the fundamentals and frameworks, and try to have a mock interview.
