As mentioned previously, this is a great way to train to solve cases by yourself using a consistent method. Thats why we modeled our practice case interviews against realistic cases that youll experience at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other top consulting firms.
Step 5: Connect the insights to the case objective. We do not recommend the practice materials on either of these websites for two reasons: They are overused, so will not lead to a competitive advantage, They are often not modeled on realistic cases of McKinsey, BCG, or Bain. When the chart is very long then you have an infographic.
Base your calculations on the facts and do a sanity check if the numbers make sense. Do not over-rotate on margins/profitability. Look for: Trends, % structures.
Next, Id like to understand the types of dishwashers were selling However, the below is what a typical one looks like: 1-4 weeks following your application, if you have been selected, you will receive an interview invitation, 1-4 weeks from invitation, you will have your first round interview (typically with Project Leaders or Principals), 2-36 hours following first round interview, you will be notified of the second round interview, 1-4 weeks following the notice, you will have your second round interview (typically with Partners or Senior Partners), 2 hours to 2 weeks following the second round interview, there will be a call from a partner or senior partner extending you an offer. This part tests your ability to generate new ideas or solutions. So how can you make sure you impress both managers in the first round and partners in the second round?
Taking into context the core objective, make a quick hypothesis based on the key metrics, Always take into consideration the question when delivering your answer, Make sure your answers are clear and logical, Take the time to explain the logic behind your answers, Seeing the whole graph with all the details and values can be intimidating, so break it down, When breaking it down, use only the data needed to calculate only the facts needed to draw your insights, Not all the data will be useful, take time to practice how to interpret and extract useful data from charts. Now lets turn our attention to case interviews at firms other than McKinsey. 
If your case is about P&L, focus on finding about profits, costs, F & Var costs, etc. As youve seen, the consulting recruiting process is rigorous. Most charts or graphs will have two axes, the x-axis and the y-axis.
One way to do this is to find peers to practice with either at your school (if youre a student) or online (if youre an experienced hire candidate). At Pass The Case, weve helped thousands of candidates prepare for their consulting interviews at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and other top consulting firms.
Case interview coaching / mock case interview: These are resources to put you in touch with an ex-McKinsey, BCG, or Bain consultant or case interviewer. In this example, you can see that Company B has the highest overall sales since the width of its bar is the widest.
Copyright Hacking the Case Interview 2022, The 6 Steps to Analyze Case Interview Graphs & Charts, The 10 Most Common Charts & Graphs in Case Interviews, The 10 most common charts and graphs in case interviews, One number may be much smaller or larger in size compared to other numbers, One number may be increasing or decreasing much more quickly or slowly than other numbers, The data may show a particular trend, either increasing or decreasing, There may be a correlation between two different variables, You may need to make some sort of calculation to identify insights, You may need to compare other information about the case that you already have with the data in the chart or graph, If the interviewer gives you multiple exhibits to analyze, you may need to compare data across two or more exhibits, List the biggest insights drawn from the chart or graph, Explain how these insights impact your hypothesis or answer to the case, Propose next steps to take to solve the case. Second, McKinsey case interviews are a lot more structured than other case interviews and the flow of questions you will get is usually quite standard. This means you need to outperform in as many of the sub-areas of the case as possible, consistently, and while under pressure. Focus your attention on identifying insights before presenting your thoughts. Consulting is a very intellectually-stimulating environment. Now that you have identified all of the insights in the chart or graph, you need to answer the question: so what? How does this insight help you solve the case or develop a recommendation? Finally, look at any other labels, such as a legend or key. However, the below is what a typical one looks like: 1-6 weeks following your application, if you have been selected, you will receive an interview invitation, 2-4 weeks from invitation, you will have your first round interview (typically with an Engagement Managers or Associate Principals), 2-48 hours following first round interview, you will be notified of the second round interview, 1-4 weeks following the notice, you will have your second round interview (typically with a Partners or Senior Partners), 2 hours to 4 weeks following the second round interview, there will be a call from a partner or senior partner extending you an offer. Heres our suggestion on how to best allocate your time, given the amount of hours you have to dedicate to case interview preparation: Review our Case Interview Tips and Techniques (1 hour), Practice our ten Case Interview Prep Course videos (1 hour each, incl. In this example, the x-axis represents different products, which includes desktops, laptops, and tablets. And another bonus, these practice case examples allow you to actively practice along vs. just being a passive listener. The advantage of a 100% stacked bar is that you can easily compare the relative proportion of a segment in one bar with that same segment in another bar. Examples include the weight of a group of people or the test results of a class. Yes, well cover consulting interview questions and answers, case interview frameworks, and realistic case interview examples. In addition, you can also take a look at our Free Case Interview Prep. Previously, he was a Management Consultant at Novantas with a focus on the financial services sector, where he advised on pricing, marketing, channel distribution, digital transformation and due diligence. Our approach to solving these questions involves the following steps: - Understanding the chart - The previous paragraph explains in details what types of charts you may find and how to understand them. To answer the clients questions, I would like to start by looking at our company and the competition You should do this in the following structured way: If you consistently follow this six step approach to reading and interpreting charts and graphs, you will find yourself getting much quicker and better at analyzing exhibits. To outperform, you need to know the key principles, use a consistent method, and be aware of what case interviewers need to hear in each question type.
The top management consulting firms need a way to whittle down a pool of lots of high caliber candidates. : Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with a colleague., E.g.
Once you know how the chart or graph is structured, it will be easier to read. Now that you know the skills being tested during the consulting recruiting process, lets learn how interviewers make their offer or reject decisions. What factors may impact the decision on how to proceed, if at all, with creating our own store-brand dishwasher?
Specifically, this could be due to price declining, costs increasing, or a shift in our product mix..
Below is a general timeline of BCGs interview timeline from application to offer. The proposed steps are obviously just guidelines and they should be adapted to every problem one has to solve. And if you would recommend entry. Remember that numbers are not useful if you dont know what the units are.
- Is our pricing and/or costs out of line with our competitors? A case interview can be aced by incorporating a 4-step approach. Ive done three things in my career so far that are relevant to consulting and motivated me to apply for this firm. Preparing for case interviews does NOT have to be complicated. This feature is only available in our full Practice Case Interviews program. In this chapter you are going to learn the seven types of case interview questions to be prepared for.
- Extracting the relevant information from the chart - One of the main hurdles one faces when dealing with charts is extracting the relevant data to answer a question, which is typically 5% of what the chart actually shows as most questions deliberately overload you with information. In this question, you will be asked to perform math calculations. Entrepreneurial In the meantime, we suggest reading this blog post onfrequent McKinsey PEI questions how to answer them (coming soon). A bar chart, on the other hand, compares a variable. Candidate then provides answer of incremental profit amount. Heres another common question we get: Whats harder? You wouldnt believe how many materials from popular sites weve seen give misinformed and poor advice that can lead to you sabotaging your efforts. So, a few minutes into your case interview, the recruiter slides a chart across the table and asks what you can tell from that particular exhibit. If youre looking for REALISTIC McKinsey, BCG, or Bain case interview examples or even general business case interview examples, then this section is for you. After listening to the case situation, you may summarize what youve heard and clarify a few questions. At BCG, this is a Project Leader or a Principal. So, looking at the quadrant in the bottom right, we see that drugs in this segment have the highest sales, which makes sense intuitively. For example, we could conclude that if a companys annual growth in supply chain investments is 10%, then its annual revenue growth would be greater than 20%.
Once you pickup the grading rubric, youll want to go ahead and practice case interviews using the rubric in each practice case that you do. Venn diagrams are often used to show qualitative relationships. Each slice of the pie represents the proportion of total sales each product category accounts for. In addition, it will also be helpful to practice case interviews by yourself. Case interview questions test your ability to solve tough business problems based on previous consulting projects. However, in other case types like market entry or a new product launch, there is not necessarily a root-cause issue. For more information, be sure to check out our Definitive Guide on questions to ask when networking for consulting. WHAT you do outside of work does not really matter. Therefore, this stacked bar chart shows the sales of different products by company. Interviewers will immediately spot and penalize candidates who do this. Let us look at all the steps in more details. Weve covered the "Why McKinsey / BCG / Bain?" These are the insights that distinguish outstanding case interview candidates from average candidates. If youre interested in learning about the questions to ask when networking for consulting, check out our Definitive Guide. There are a few common patterns you should recognize when identifying these insights: Again, resist the urge to talk through everything that you see. Once youve written down your five stories, rehearse telling them out loud. In the instance where the lead is unnoted, you will be required to reverse the process and come up with the lead for the charts (e.g. Your client is the new SVP of appliances for a home improvement retailer.
Management believes that the vacuum sealer bag market may be an attractive opportunity. Example One of the most common questions we get is how much time is needed to prepare for case interviews?
The third step ofyour case interview preparation shouldbe to do focused practice drills on the specific areas of the case that youre not yet great on. Volume). The last step of your preparation should be to apply the step-by-step methods you learned in the free case interview prep course and the case question drills youve done to now practice case interviews. The first step ofyour case interview preparation shouldbe to learn a consistent method for outperforming in each of the seven case interview question types. This is the "mental model" they useto type each of the aspects of your case as either "good" or "great.". Simply outperform on each case interview question type and do it consistently. Bar charts and line charts are very commonly used for the purpose of comparison. You can find yourself working with a wide variety of backgrounds including liberal arts, business, PhDs, lawyers, and medical doctors. Some of the information in these exhibits will be useful while other information will not be. And here is a small selection of thecase interview tips (coming soon) we provide in our program. The slight nuance is that BCG typically follow-ups with candidates faster than McKinsey in both rounds based on field reports we receive from our readers. Lastly, there is the occasional: Case Interview Market Sizing - Question.
Theyll intervene if you are going off-base.
Second round interviewers are typically with Partners or Senior Partners. #4 Tell me something thats not on your resume. Second, the fact that you are driving the case means youll often want to take a hypothesis-driven approach. In this example, you can see that the proportion of sales from tablets is highest in Company C since its tablet segment is the tallest. Its important to keep these four attributes in mind because top consulting firms will grade you along these dimensions at each step of their recruiting process. Whats more important is HOW you do it. Youll be expected to understand the data in these graphs and charts quickly and identify the key insights that will shape your recommendation. Much of it is the same, but there are a few nuances that are important to understand. There are some others but these are the biggest ones. Example
As a rule of thumb, we recommend putting about 20% of your preparation time aside to prepare good answers to common fit and PEI questions.
Consider the format of the data theres a reason why its presented that way.
After that, you will typically have to pass two rounds of interviews (assuming you pass the first round). The next chart is called the Marimekko or Mekko chart, which adds yet another dimension of data to the 100% stacked bar chart. Youd then investigate the revenue side of your framework to identify if thats where the root-cause of the issue is. Required fields are marked *. The client wants to know why the category isn't as profitable as he expects. A trendline is used in scatterplots to show this correlation. Consulting firms are all looking for similar skills. A scatterplot shows points to visualize the values of two different variables. When your interviewer asks that question they are trying to get to know you on a more personal level.
However, in a Mekko, you can also compare the size of one entire bar with another. For an example of how to use a hypothesis-driven approach in case interviews you can watch the case interview examples in the bonus chapter of this guide. First, etc.
In other words, if you know how to outperform during each type of question, you by virtue end up outperforming on the overall case. IMPORTANT! For instance, you may want to ask if the client has any specific profitability targets and understand how long the problem has been going on. Once you have your framework setup, the interviewer will sometimes ask you to explore the areas you identified to find the root-cause of the clients issue. Not all the information will be needed to make the calculation one of the core functions of a consultant is to know how to separate the useful data from the rest. A 100% stacked bar chart transforms the y-axis of a stacked bar chart. Composition Charts A fancy name for a pie chart that shows how data is composed. You'll see the nuanced difference in answers showing good vs. great (this translates to almost passing vs. definitely passing). Column and Line Histogram charts are frequently used as distribution charts. You will work get early exposure to senior executives.
Most of the time theyll lead you from one question to the next. The goal of this step is to orient you on how the chart or graph is structured. In this example, the chart shows how we get from year one profit, represented by the first bar furthest to the left, to year two profit, represented by the last bar furthest to the right. The bars in light blue show drivers that increased profits. From this histogram, we can conclude that the 81+ years age group has the fewest number of people. However, you should not blindly use either one. Within the last year, many small competitors entered. But even if you don't end up using this program, we still encourage you to take this five-step approach.
Vendor Relationship Risk Your interviewer will let you decide in which direction to take the case. While the firms continually change their approved question banks, weve analyzed hundreds of questions on glassdoor.com for McKinsey, BCG and Bain.
(from Former McKinsey, BCG, and Bain Case Interviewers). Now its time for us to show you full case interview examples in action. This way you can focus your energy on the specific areas that need the most improvement and get rid of the weak links in your overall case performance.
feedback), Practice ten realistic case interviews with peers (1 hour each, incl.
First, seek to understand the foundational elements of the case interview: problem structuring, problem solving, quantitative analysis, insights generation, and creativity. Upon initial inspection, we see that profit has increased from year 1 to year 2. For many years, this market had just a handful of large players, including our client. So now, lets dive in and understand what each of these 7 types of questions are in more detail. -Does the competition offer similar products and similar pricing as us? Again, there are a variety of factors that influence the timeline and it may differ between offices, positions, candidate types, and application cycles. Example #3: Southwire sees more competition entering. Passing the first round or passing the final round? The client wants to know why the category isn't as profitable as he expects.
Practice thirty realistic case interviews with peers (1 hour each, incl. Whenever I show a graph to someone where the profits were growing from yr1-5 and falling from yr5-7 but margins were falling much faster from yr5-7, and if they come back repeat that same info to me, they get rejected in my book. This question is particularly popular at Bain. The point is that every chart, whether there is a lead noted or not, serves as a source of insights. - Is our benchmark a fair comparison to our client?
1.
The objective of this question is to test your structured thinking, logic, and business acumen, given your initial understanding of the problem. This means youll be expected to play a much more proactive role in the case interviews at these firms than at McKinsey. These cases are typically inspired from actual consulting projects. In this example, we can conclude that out of all three companies, Company B has the highest proportion of sales coming from desktops. In this example, we can conclude that laptops have the highest sales at $5,000 and tablets have the lowest sales at $1,500. Flow/Process Charts Again, quite self explanatory, these charts show you how a process is carried out. Also what, if any, action should the client take in responding? More importantly, the majority of these resources will not push you to great. Ability to lead, Problem solvers
At Bain, this is a Manager or a Principal. The ones who land offers simply learned and internalized how to consistently outperform in each type of case interview question. Tell me about your greatest accomplishment. Interviewer prompt: What are your preliminary observations and takeaways? Take note of the most obvious information first. Let's step through each stage of the preparation plan to give you more details about what you should do in each. Its important to note that every office will have some variation in the timeline. This article contains everything you need to know. Youll learn about each of these in the next chapter of this guide. Users need to have a vacuum sealer machine in order to use these vacuum sealer bags. Copyright 2019 Incredipedia LLC. Here are the top 5 most common Personal Experience Interview (PEI) questions: You worked in a team and had to manage conflict, You had a disagreement with a colleague / boss, You had to change someone's / a group's mind, You overcame a really difficult challenge. This is usually stated as the header of the diagram below, read this! You make some relevant and reasonable assumptions, You are somewhat effective with calculations, You make mostly relevant and reasonable assumptions, You are mostly effective with calculations.
Jason Oh is a Senior Consultant, Strategy & Customer at EY with project experiences in commercial due diligence and corporate strategy planning. Charts questions usually require extracting information from a chart, elaborating on it and getting useful insights from it, which is what consultants usually do. Heres why these case interview examples are going to be better than 99% of the stuff of the internet: You get to be an active participant instead of just a passive listener. A great answer will focus on a recent achievement thats relevant to the skills you need to be a great management consultant. -Id also like to understand if the competition has a cost advantage over us We suggest the simple SCARF framework below. Getting into this habit will help you tremendously on the actual day of your interviews. Youll find out in the next chapter of this guide! Additionally, we see that Company A has two drugs in this quadrant while Company B only has one. We found that were selling too much of GE, which is a lower margin product and this is whats driving down our profitability Over the years, weve designed a system to get you from "Whats a case interview?"
If you learn revenues have been flat, youd update your hypothesis and explore mix or cost issues. Practice with other people: There are two popular platforms sites that let you to practice with other people. As mentioned in the previous chapter, being hypothesis-driven is very helpful in framework exploration questions when you need to find the root-cause. Personal impact He's noticing something odd in the dishwasher category. These two variables are labeled on the x-axis and y-axis. Store brand margins are high
Your competition is not the case, it is simply other very smart and very-well prepared people. Customer This graph shows how annual revenue has changed over five years. In this example, drugs with high efficacy rates and low mortality rates are the best. Tell me something thats not on your resume.
This is what distinguishes outstanding case interview candidates from average candidates. The majority of the time, the flow of the case follows the order of these questions.
First, you need to get selected for an interview after you pass the resume and cover letter screen.
This is why we have put together the McKinsey Case Interview Training Program and the BCG & Bain Case Interview Training Program. Below is a general timeline of McKinseys interview timeline from application to offer.
In the first round you will typically meet with 2 interviewers, In the second round (also called the Decision Round or Final Round you will typically meet with 3 interviewers.