Consulting 101 — Part 4

A series of articles on landing a consulting job after an undergraduate degree

If you haven’t read Part 1 of this article which gives an introduction to consulting, drop by there first! In this article, I will talk about the dreaded interview process which is the make or break point for every aspirant.

Contents

1. What is a case interview?
2. What are interviewers looking for?
3. How to prepare?
4. Main components of a case
5. Intro and HR prep

What is a case interview?

A case interview is a 20–30 minute interview with a consultant or partner at the firm which can be broken down, as mentioned before, into —

• First 5 mins — Intro and context setting
• 20 mins — Case
• Last 5 mins — HR + end of interview questions

I will speak mainly about the case aspect of it, with a short note on intro and HR at the end of the article.

A case is a simplified version of a real-life business problem or a simulation of one which you are expected to solve in your day-to-day job as a consultant. There are a variety of frameworks that can be used to solve a case, with the main types being —

• Guesstimates — where you are asked to estimate any particular value or number, arguably the most important and frequent type of cases. For eg., to estimate the number of petrol pumps in the city of Bangalore
• Profitability — where the problem lies in the profit/profitability of the company and you are asked to find out why and suggest solutions. For eg., to identify why a steel manufacturer is facing a decline in profits
• Market entry — where you are asked to recommend for/against a client’s entry to a new market (customer segment, product line or geography) and devise a plan for the same. For eg., to suggest if and how a telecom operator should enter the smartphone business
• Unconventional — where there is no well defined goal and anything can be asked, for eg., questions ranging from identifying why a person is bored of their life to devising a framework for India to win the next Olympics
• There are other types of cases such as growth strategy and M&A (mergers and acquisitions) but as an undergraduate student, solving the above types of cases is enough to hone your case solving abilities.

While frameworks mentioned in books and case notes are an excellent starting point, as you start solving more cases, you will begin to adapt each framework to your liking and preference and add elements unique to you which are important to show the interviewer creativity and thinking ability as opposed to memorised frameworks. For example, in my set of preliminary questions for each framework, I made it a point to ask if I should consider the Covid situation if relevant because it affected a lot of businesses and could alter the outcome of my case, which might have afforded me a brownie point with my interviewer as it was not mentioned in any book. Anyone with one or more brownie points is more likely to go into the next round than someone who solved the case question without any innovation or individuality.

A basic profitability framework

What are interviewers looking for?

Although interviews are sort of a black box with you only hearing about whether you made it to the next round or not, there are some obvious tells that interviewers are looking for in order to push you into the next round —

• Communication skills — Considering consulting is a client facing role where you will be interacting with C-suite level executives frequently, communication and confidence are a must since a high standard of professionalism is essential when you represent the entire firm for your client.
• Problem solving skills — Since consulting is problem solving at its core, interviewers are looking to check if you are able to extract all the relevant information about a problem by asking the right questions, adapting a concise and structured framework that is MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive) to solve the problem, and drilling down until you isolate the root cause of the problem and finally suggesting feasible and innovative solutions to that problem. This includes excellent mathematical and calculation skills — making a maths error can be the worst thing you can do in your interview in an effort to be fast.
• Business fundamentals — While finance or business knowledge is not necessary, business acumen and fundamentals, even in your own sector is appreciated and can go a long way in differentiating you from your peers. For eg., me knowing that an airline always leases its aircrafts and their main costs are on fuel and hangar costs as an Aerospace Engineer would convey to my interviewer that my fundamentals are strong regardless of my chosen career path.

How to prepare?

While everyone has different ways of going about interview prep, this was the process I followed over a period of around 3-4 weeks —

1. Make a case group with 3-4 people who are like-minded, ambitious, targeting similar profiles, honest and transparent about feedback and throughout the entire process, and can spend up to 3 hours daily on case solving.
2. Pool together all your resources — tips, tricks, frameworks, case books, etc. and identify which books to start solving from and how to go about it, i.e., who will solve which case with whom and when, a timetable or calendar would be perfect. Here is a folder with a plethora of resources to choose from, the main books being Case Interviews Cracked and Day 1.0.
3. Start off with these videos which give a solid introduction to each type of case and a basic framework to get started. This series by Victor Cheng is equally good for an introduction if you have some time before you have to start hardcore prep.
4. Solve at least 1 guesstimate and one case daily with your case group for the first 2 weeks. More important than solving the case is the record you make of it and the reflection time given to each case (at least ~30 mins), where you meticulously list down things you missed, and places you could have done better. It is NOT about the number of cases, but about the quality of your preparation and the learning you get from each case. Your performance and frameworks should visibly improve with each case you do if you are receiving the right feedback. Here is a video series on improving your case performance by breaking down each aspect of the case from the open to the middle and finally the close.
5. Once there is some stagnation in performance, its time to reach out to seniors who have done extensive case prep, written case books, shared case notes, and/or gotten into consulting firms in the previous years (need not be just MBB, don’t limit yourself). Feedback given by seniors is extremely crucial to improving your performance, bettering your frameworks and ensuring they are MECE, keeping your case within a 15–20 minute time limit, and learning their tips and tricks for a particular industry or case type. 2 weeks of solving at least 2 cases daily with seniors should put you among the top case solvers in your batch. With this, your case count would be ~40. This is not a set number and the number of cases you do should solely depend on what you think you require and not on peers or seniors.
6. Try to ensure you have practised a few cases of each type, with the priority given to guesstimates, profitability and unconventional cases. The last 1 week should be given to a revision of each and every case you have solved, going through feedback, perfecting all your frameworks, practising mental maths online (through tools like these), and doing a bit of HR prep. You can get your frameworks and HR prep questions verified by your peers and/or close seniors for more validation.

Main components of a case

Every case can be broken down into the following sections —

• Preliminary questions — to gain a qualitative understanding of the company, its customers, products, competitors and quantitative metrics to help you get started
• An overall MECE structure — apart from the frameworks given in books, there are 3 ways to be MECE (credits to Eknoor Malhotra for teaching me this xD) —
  a) opposite words — internal x external, monetary x non-monetary, etc.
  b) process based — looking at every step in a process from beginning to end, for eg., raw material sourcing to distribution in a manufacturing plant
  c) maths — using a mathematical formula to describe a relationship, for eg., total revenue = # customers * revenue/customer
• Questions after each drill down into the case, listing down all potential problems, and finally identifying the root cause
• Suggesting recommendations (feasibility vs impact scale or short — term vs long — term scale)
• Summarising the entire case using a bottom up approach (with the problem identified, the process used, and finally the recommendations given)

You can prepare frameworks encompassing every stage of a case for completeness and keep adding to each stage to make your process better and more infallible.

Intro and HR prep

An introduction is the first impression you are giving your interviewer, and as a sure shot question, you should prepare your introduction and write it down. You can structure your introduction as well, into 3 parts —

1. Basic identifying information + unique piece about you
2. Professional and academic achievements
3. Extra-curricular activities

End with a line on your eagerness for the interview process with that particular firm.

The next 3 main questions you should prepare for are —

1. Why that firm?— Research on the firm, talk to your seniors and buddies (if allotted) and use the company’s pre-placement talk (PPT) information if they gave one to make a well-structured, concise and believable answer. The firm should be convinced that they are the first and only choice for you.
2. Why consulting? — Use your past experiences, interactions with consultants, and any other supporting information to convey to the interviewer why consulting is the perfect career for you and how you went about choosing it.
3. Your priority among MBB? — Consulting firms are known for their proactive HR policies and hotlist procedure, and you should convey your priorities between MBB with reasons very clearly so that you have a higher chance of being on your target firm’s priority list.

Finally, you should prepare for end-of-interview questions. Sometimes you are given an opportunity to ask any question to your interviewer, and you should make full use of this opportunity to convey the amount of research you have done and interest you have taken in the firm by asking relevant, interesting and nuanced questions. This is an excellent article on decoding ‘Do you have any questions for us?’ at the end of a case interview.

You can also prepare for other general HR questions and make a preparation document to go through before D-day. This 3-part series provides an elaborate approach to HR questions and how to prepare for them. The amount of importance given to HR questions varies with each firm, with McKinsey spending up to 10 mins on such questions while BCG focuses mainly on case solving skills, nevertheless, it is always good to be prepared with HR questions. It should be noted that HR prep covers your CV as well, although by the time you have made a consult-worthy CV, you’re almost already full prepared with CV questions :p

This part was extremely detailed, and although I have not added frameworks themselves here, this information should aid you in going about making your own frameworks to solve cases like a pro. In the next and final part, I will talk about how to be a part of a case group, i.e., how to go about giving proper and constructive feedback to your peers and/or juniors. Read on here!