Case Interview 101: Solve Every Consulting Case Fast

have you ever read a case interview prompt and thought whoa how am I supposed to solve that if this is you don't worry by the end of this video You're Gonna Learn a method for how you can feel comfortable with any case prompt no matter how tough it may seem if you're first starting off with casing one of the things that I recommend is that you take a case problem a business problem that you actually might solve for a friend for example let's say a friend is looking for a way to increase her side income so she can pay off for an event let's say like a wedding that's the type of problem that you can do it might seem simple but doing this would allow you to be able to learn the Core Concepts of doing a case interview and apply it to even tougher cases I'm actually going to show you today how this is possible hi my name is Davis I'm a former band consultant and the founder of my Consulting offer here at my Consulting offer we're a team of former McKinsey Bain and BG recruiters consultants and interviewers and we've helped over 600 people from all different types of backgrounds become management consultants and get their foot in the door at some of the most prestigious firms in the world and I'm excited to share with you some of the lessons we've learned along the way in these videos here in this video we'll be walking through step by step a case called The Wedding crisis in this case a Management Consultant that's you we'll be working with a friend to figure out how she can earn additional money to save up for her wedding sounds simple right but this case you're going to learn how you're going to be able to apply everything you learned today to tougher cases today we're going to be covering all the elements that you'll encounter in any case interviews we're going to cover brainstorming we're in a cover case math Market sizing reading graphs communication structure all that and you're going to see how taking a simple problem such as helping a friend save some additional dollars could amount to you mastering the case interview process in a comfortable and easy Manner and at the end of the video I'm going to share with you five tips that you can use to actually learn to master the case interview process in as little as a week these videos take a ton of time to make but if you do benefit from them and you do like them and you want to see more videos for example covering how to master the case interview process if you just tap the like button they'll just tell me that hey Davis the I really like these videos and you make more and that will really help me and my team prioritize what kind of videos you want to see all right let's dive in so first off we have to recap the four parts of the case interview process and you might have already seen these parts from our previous video the case interview prep video these were the opening the structure the analysis and a recommendation if you haven't seen our case interview prep video or you're new to casing I highly recommend actually you start there because a lot of what I teach in that video will apply to what you'll be doing today so if you watch that video first and then come back here you're going to learn a ton more than if you just watch through this but if you're already comfortable with casing or you've seen the case interview prep video then stay on her head because we're going to start this case your friend Maria a violinist in New York City needs to replace her income that she earns from playing the violin because of a badly broken leg her doctor says that she can't leave the apartment until she is fully recovered and as with all our case interview example videos my goal for these videos is for you to learn how to master the case interview process and the best way for you to do that is for you to do the case with me again I have already gotten my offering Consulting and I can't show up for your interviews for you so even if I could be great at casing if you're not able to develop that same skill set you won't get that offer but luckily because you're on this video today the thing that you can do is at certain sections in the case what I'm going to do is I'm going to ask you just to pause and do the case with me don't worry because when you come back to the video and unpause it I'm gonna go ahead and share with you an example answer that way we can both learn together and you'll be on your way to getting that Consulting offer all right let's get started so we start every case with the opening and in the opening you're expected to do two things one you're expected to recap The Prompt that way to make sure that you're on the same page as the interviewer you didn't miss hearing anything and two to ask any clarifying questions that you might not understand for example for Maria you might want to know well how much money is she actually trying to save for her wedding and second how many months is she going to be in her apartment you should feel comfortable asking these questions in the opening because this is your time to get smart on the topic and if you ask the right questions in the opening is actually going to help you solve the case a lot easier I'll show you an example in a bit so now what I want you to do is pause the video and then pretend that I'm the interviewer or you can stare off the space wherever you're comfortable or you can stare at the laptop whatever makes you feel like you can practice and I want you to practice the opening figure out what would you recap and what kind of clarification questions would you ask and then when you come back I'm going to go ahead and share with you how I would do the opening all right pause the video all right you're back okay so what I would do here is the following for the opening you might have said something like Maria a violinist is stuck in her New York City apartment because of a broken leg and needs to replace that income and also save up for her wedding is that correct after the interviewer confirms The Prompt I would follow up with clarifying questions such as does Maria have any other skills besides to playing the violin that she would also want to use to supplement her income how much does Maria need to save how long until Maria's leg is recovered while Maria is open to other work Maria is in particular wanting to leverage her violin skills such as teaching violin lessons because she understands there's been an uptake in people wanting to spend time on hobbies and interests Maria's Target savings for the wedding is thirty thousand dollars she only needs to save up half because her fiance will be saving the other half as for the recovery period until she's back to normal and able to leave the apartment regularly again the doctor estimates that this will be about four to six months so after the opening the next phase of the case is the structure so the structure is when after you've gone through the opening you know what you're solving for the interview gives you some time to structure your thoughts and this is where you lay out your approach or your your tree and think about well what would I want to know in order to help my client and if the words issue tree or structure is new to you check out our structuring and issue tree videos it will give you a little bit more context so you can come back but if you're already familiar with issue trees and structuring let's dive ahead so what I want you to do is take a minute or two which is similar to what you would get in an interview pause the video do the structure and then come back and I'm going to share with you an example of a structure you could have alright pause the video now as a reminder there's no one true right answer there's so many different types of structure that you can produce the reason for this is that if there's only one true right structure it wouldn't make sense for consulting firms to use a case interview process because then they were not really evaluating you on your potential to be a consultant where there are many ways to approach a question so as I go through my structure just don't think that this is the only answer and also note though the areas where we have similarities but also areas where you're like huh I didn't include that in my structure I totally missed that because one of the keys to getting really great at case interviews is to become with knowing that you're not going to get it right all the time but you're able to go through note what is missing so the next time which is a similar question you won't have to answer all right let's go through one example of a structure you could produce at the top level I want to address four issues first how can we increase Maria's income more than we increase her cost this includes how's Maria currently supporting herself if in any form from her apartment how can we add other streams of income second whatever assets does she have such as a YouTube subscriber list or even an email list third I want to know what is the market demand for Maria's skills this includes looking at what is the market looking for when it comes to Maria's skills fourth I want to know does Maria face any competition within the market for her skills this includes knowing are there other people marking similar skills to Maria to make money and what makes Maria unique to stand out from them and by the way if you're interested in mastering the case interview process in as little time as possible then I highly recommend that you book a free 30-minute strategy session with my team and we'll lay out a methodology to get you from where you are in your casing abilities to ultimately being able to pass that interview and get that offer so I'll provide a link to that below this video so you can have a chance to book a free strategy session all right so let's say Maria likes your thinking and she wants to move ahead with the analysis and she wants to start with a brainstorming in particular she wants to brainstorm what are the different income streams that she should consider since this is a casing 101 video what I'm going to do is have you pause here do brainstorming brainstorm out all the ways that you can think of for Maria to make some income and then when you come back I'm going to share with you a methodology that you can use to double the amount of items that you have all right pause the video now and take a minute to brainstorm all right you're back okay so I'm going to share with you a brainstorming technique that I like to use called The X non-x method and this is going to help you come up with more creative ideas as well as provide a structure to your brainstorming for example let's Imagine The Prompt was name all the items that you might find in a fridge you might be like whoa there's a lot of things here but if you add a constraint to it I promise you're going to think of more items for example let's say we use the X not X method as the name implies you take one thing and then you do the opposite of it as the other list there's no limit to what it could be like for example you could choose x equals playing so playing violin now I'm playing violin it could be remote non-remote it could be like teaching as X non-teaching ideas as non-x take whichever one you're comfortable with and take another minute and brainstorm ideas and if you do it correctly with X naught X you'll find that you had more ideas than you did the first time all right take a minute now and pause the video all right you're back so as I mentioned you could pick any X non X so in this scenario I'm going to pick playing non-playing and I'm gonna share with you my list under playing the violin I've included One streaming solo live performances to coordinating virtual group performances three starting a YouTube channel so you can get ad revenue or even sponsorships for performing at virtual weddings and events five emailing her past clients and customers to see if they want private events via Zoom 6. creating music tracks to license for example putting them on Spotify seven creating a patreon account for her fans to donate in exchange for let's say exclusive music eight creating music tracks to sell directly and nine performing for her neighbors who might want to come over my non-playing violin ideas one she could teach online violin lessons one-on-one two she could teach online violin lessons in group formats three she can teach online music theory classes four she could coordinates special music events that don't need her to be there in person for example being an organizer fifth creating an online course for how to play the violin and six creating an online course for how to take care of your violin or seven creating an online course for how to buy a violin eight taking her existing music track in an uploading dose of Spotify so she doesn't have to create anything new just upload past recordings that she has and now I'm creating sheet music for popular songs and potentially selling and Licensing them after the brainstorming analysis I don't want to test you even deeper across the different areas of problem solving so they might say something like the following Maria likes all your ideas and in particular the one around being a violin teacher since she wants to play the violin and has thought about being a violin teacher at one point because she had a great violin teacher growing up Maria is curious how much could she make if she were to teach one-on-one Zoom classes for the next month she wants to start small with one-on-one lessons before she goes to a group format how would you answer this question this is known as a market sizing question that is the interviewer wants to test how well you can estimate the population or size let's say revenue from a market they're less interested in the actual answer itself and more about your thought process the logic behind it and the assumptions that you make if this is your first time going through a market sizing we're gonna go through it together and if you want to learn more about it there's more videos that I cover this I'll include that as well but let's go through this Market sizing together because this is a casing 101 video what I want to do is I'm going to give you one piece of advice what you want to avoid is starting with a calculation because there's nothing worse than starting a calculation halfway through you realize oh wait I missed a step right so pause this video now and write out your approach and then when you come back I'm going to share with you my Approach and we're going to go through the maps together here's how I would approach estimating how much Maria could make in one month I assume that there are going to be four weeks in a month I would assume that Maria is is only teaching five days and not seven days a week this would give her time to get more students do invoicing and plan for the lessons this would give us a total of 20 days of active teaching per month that is I took the four weeks and multiplied by the five teaching days per week I'll also assume that Maria won't have a full schedule right away and she would need some time to get some students I'm going to estimate that this will take about two weeks or ten working days for Maria to ramp up to a schedule of students this leaves us 10 paid days next month 10 days to get the students and 10 days of working with the students I'll also assume that she'll have 10 hour working days and she'll take two hour breaks for example for lunch and spend the rest of the eight hours teaching in a month she'll have 80 teaching hours so that is the 10 days times 8 hours per day to get 80 hours of teaching for each hour I'm also going to assume that she's going to charge the same amount to every student to keep the math simple while I haven't hired a violin teacher before I do know when I see Flyers around my town new teachers tend to charge about 50 an hour so I'm going to assume that Maria will also be able to charge fifty dollars an hour this has been Maria would be considered a new teacher so I'm going to take her hourly rate of 50 and multiply it by the number of teaching hours which we said already is going to be 80 hours per month when I multiply it to two together I get four thousand dollars so I would expect Maria to earn about four thousand dollars during her first month as a violin teacher and potentially if she continued this she might be able to make twice as much on the following month when she has a full roster of students and not spending the first half of the month trying to get her first students so that concludes the market sizing so at this point the interviewer has two paths that they can take one if time has run out or they've seen enough of your casing they might move to wrap up the case or if there is time and they want to see more of your casing abilities they're going to push you a little bit further so let's imagine that that's the case right now and the interviewer is impressed so far with what you've done but they want to see more of your thinking the interviewer might then transition to another analysis by saying something like this so Maria is really happy about your calculations in fact she got so excited that she started doing her own research so this enters us into another part of the analysis which is the exhibit reading as the name implies this is when the interviewer gives you to an exhibit like a graph or chart and ask you to analyze what it means so when you're given an exhibit which is often one of the most common types of analysis that you can be asked to do during case interview so you definitely want to be comfortable with this you want to accomplish a few things but mainly you want to know what exactly does the data say what are the insights from it and third how does it apply to the actual client what I want you to do is read aloud all the things that we talked about to work with the interviewer through this process so I want you to do here is pause the video and then think about how you would approach this exhibit if this was given to you all right you're back so let me share with you how I would approach this exhibit this chart has data about the willingness to pay and the competitiveness across various market segments for people looking for violin lessons it gives an idea about the level of competition from other violin instructors the market size of each segment is portrayed using the size of the circle at first glance it might seem that Maria should go ahead with the segment which has the lowest competition and the highest willingness to pay which is the adult Advanced segment but that segment has a really small Market size and Maria would likely need extensive teaching experience to cater to the advanced adult students this is Maria's first time teaching violin and she might want to have a high earning potential so the optimal segment I would think of would be one with a good Market size and a reasonable trade-off between willingness to pay as well as competitiveness based on this data here I would recommend that Maria go with the college intermediate and adult intermediate segments this is because she has the skills to cater to both these segments with ease Additionally the combined market share is considerable and a relative trade-off of competitiveness and willing miss the pay is suitable as well all right so that concludes the exhibit reading portion of the analysis at this point the interviewer again has two options they can continue to push you on your thinking or they might choose to wrap up the case because time ran out or they've seen enough if they choose to continue to push you on your thinking take that is a really good sign it means that the interviewer is really impressed with what you've seen so far they haven't rejected you otherwise they're in the case and they want to see more they want to see the limits of your thinking they want to see your true Consulting potential so take it as a really good sign but in this scenario let's say in our case the interviewer has seen enough and they're impressed so far and they want to see how well we can wrap up the case so they might say something like Maria's really enjoyed this conversation with you and in fact she's excited to make some money what's your final recommendation for her for your recommendation you want to recap the problem give the recommendation give your reasons for recommendation list the major risks that comes from this recommendation and figure out a way to retain the client that is if they continue to work with you what would you want to work on remember the point of recommendation is to be succinct just list out the main arguments you don't have to cover every single detail that you've learned over the case just the main ones go ahead and say the recommendation either to your webcam to the laptop to me to the wall whatever you just need to be able to practice it and get that rep in all right so pause the video and then when you come back I'll be here Maria you wanted to know how you can make money towards your wedding while being stuck recovering in your apartment I recommend that you begin teaching one-on-one violin lessons focusing on the adult intermediate and the college intermediate segments I recommend this for three reasons first you want to use your violin talents to reach your wedding goal and this would net us four thousand dollars per month the first month and likely eight thousand dollars a month in future months second teaching one-on-one classes allows you to have both in person if a student decides to come to your apartment or online if they prefer to do it remotely and third because there is a clear opportunity among intermediate level clients a good number of clients already exist and competition is manageable the risk to my assessment is that we haven't thought about how to reach these potential students and how to identify which students would be considered intermediate so you don't have to waste your time targeting the wrong segment if given more time I've helped you figure out which your marketing channels to quickly reach your target students so you can start earning money right away alright that was our case if this was your first case practice congratulations on completing your first case practice and if this wasn't your first case practice I hope you learned something today that will help you be able to accelerate how quickly you can Master the case interview process and be on your way to learning that dream Consulting offer I hope you see now the value of taking simple everyday problems and being able to turn that into a case practice so that when you do encounter a tougher more complex case you'll be able to master those as well and if you want more examples of cases whether they're on the same level as today's case or even more complex ones you can check a lot of them out in our YouTube channel so highly encourage that you check those videos out as you do your case practices and since you've made it to the very end of this video what I want to do is be able to share with you five additional tips that you can use to speed up your case interview prep tip number one stop counting the number of cases that you're doing this is a terrible terrible measure number of cases you do isn't correlated way of how well you can actually do a case interview so for example if we took two people who've never done a case interview before one of them does 10 case practices but they're quality Case practices have good case partners and so forth and then you compare their results to someone else who also starts with no casing experience but they do 50 cases but they're with Bad Case Partners they're bad practices at the end of the 50 cases versus the 10 cases the person who does the 10 cases is going to be much further ahead similar to how you wouldn't take swimming lessons from someone who's never been in a pool you want to practice with Quality Partners who know what they're doing and can give you great feedback so focus on the number of quality cases not the number of cases you just happen to do number two is consistency matters more than the number of hours that you put in it doesn't matter if you put in a lot of hours or your practice if you're not consistent about it week to week you're going to see very little progress invest a number of hours in case interview practice each week this way it will be clear how many hours exactly you need to improve tip number three is to take your past case examples and practices to speed up your practice record your case answers and watch yourself afterwards it may be weird at first to watch yourself presenting and to spot all of your mistakes but it goes a long way in terms of helping you improve quickly so that's why I highly recommend that if you can just during your case practices take out your phone and record the sessions that way you can just review the recording as well as the notes that you took so you want to make sure you have a recording and clean notes tip number four is to master one part of the case interview process at a time the fastest way for you to learn how to master the case end to end is actually to isolate out the parts and to do them one at a time until you're comfortable with them and then move on to the next section of the case for example if you're struggling with case interview math take the time to figure out what's causing math to be your weakness if you're having issues converting fractions into percentages then take the time to memorize the most common fractions and percentage conversions tip number five is to avoid case burnout and to take breaks it's okay to take breaks as you're doing your case practices avoid case burnout if you're not motivated to do the case you won't be able to learn from your case interview practice if you show for your actual interviews you're not going to be enthusiastic about the case interview you're going to be like oh this is another case or I'm gonna be on autopilot the interviewer is going to quickly pick this up and as a result think that you're not a good fit for the firm so if you're feeling like you're about to burn out it's okay to take a day or two off in fact even professional athletes take breaks so you can too so now you've learned a method for being comfortable with tough business prompts by taking simpler problems and solving those and I've also shared with you the five tips that you can use to speed up your Mastery of case interviews in as little as a week and if you're serious about learning how to master the case interview process in as little time as possible and as with little stress as possible I want to help you so my team and I want to make sure that you succeed So currently right now we're offering free 30-minute strategy sessions we're going to get on a call with you figure out where you are in your casing journey and figure out a map for you to master the case interview process in as low as a week all you have to do to claim one of your spots is to click the link below so during the call my team and I will walk you through step by step how to get from where you are to Landing your dream offer no matter what firm it is so we're excited about this in fact we've helped over 600 people and many of them had very little time to prepare for the case interviews had no business background and some of them didn't even know where to start when it came to a case interview we're able to get them up to speed in as little as a week and be on your way to Landing multiple offers but you don't take my word for it hear from Helena about what it was like to learn our proven method and be on her way to mastering the case interview

Channel: My Consulting Offer

Views: 33,835

Keywords: #ConsultingCase, #CaseInterview101, #CasePrep, #Consulting 101, #CaseInterviewPrep, #MBBCase, #MBBConsultingCase, #CaseInterview, #CaseStudy, #case, #ConsultingInterviewTips, #CaseInterviewExample, #Consulting, #ConsultingInterview, #ManagementConsulting, #MBB, #McKinseyCase, #InterviewerLetCase

Id: BrF3iqwcIKk

Length: 21min 32sec (1292 seconds)

Published: Mon Jun 19 2023