Mock Technology Consulting Case Interview: Architecture Strategy | CAREER COACHING WITH CHRISTINE

hello everyone we have a special video today this is actually going to kick off our free 101 career coaching series and the first one we're going to be starting off is one that is highly requested it's like a tech case interview and we're going to be doing a mock interview with gerald here he's been so kind enough to actually allow us to record this and he also does have an interview coming up so we're going to be doing it for this particular reason so today we'll be using a case called the architecture strategy federal finance agency this is from deloitte it's also from their website so the link is down below if you also want to follow along so how we're going to be doing this is that i will be sending the link to the case itself to gerald and then he'll be reviewing the first page uh and then there's also like a second page by the way with like the key considerations then i'll be asking questions and he can also ask me questions as well to clarify and moving on so this is also his very first time doing like a real tech case interview as well so i'll be providing feedback and advice as we go along it won't be all at the end we'll we'll finally have like a last feedback session at the end but it will be a very interactive process so if you can just like open up the case in the actual chat right so you can start reviewing i'll be giving you a timer but um honestly most of these are going to be around like 20 to 30 minutes for most of these case interviews but i'll be giving you around like five minutes to review this case and then after that you can just stop where it says stop here and then we'll go from there sure thing okay cool so taking like initial notes and analyzing it right we haven't actually like started okay so before we get started can you kind of summarize what the case is either the business situation problem statement what do you think are the key points to focus on in this okay so to me the the main concern of the business or actually the business is a federal finance agency um ultimately they they just want to consolidate their systems like that's that's the big headliner right there a lot of it needs to improve efficiency there's a lot of redundant systems um and then the high turnover is spreading a lot of people thin so um especially with the it department it makes sense and then there's seven different data or systems being used and so just one it department being tailored to all seven of them it's like that's a lot on those workers yep um and then this also leads to a backlog of the paperwork uh what does the silo term mean exactly yeah so silo just means that they're very stuck in what they're doing they don't really know about anything else that's going on outside of what they're doing okay second department basically and so basically they don't interact with the other departments correct okay and then uh in the in the problem statement it says that they do want a new shirt enterprise solution so that's across all divisions which makes sense administering and enforcing economic and trade stations so basically they just make sure people are following the rules right okay as an agency okay and then a big problem i see is to this day uh that they're still using a lot of hard copies and while that should be in my opinion at least somewhere online in the cloud to access anywhere i mean that's basically all i got for the most part okay sounds good so we can continue on to the actual case itself so now that we're on at this point the question i have for you is that your manager has asked you to develop the new architecture plan by analyzing the current systems and interviewing stakeholders what aspects of the current system would you want to analyze and how would you gather the information so one big thing for me is let's see why isn't why aren't the departments talking to each other on one database um everything needs to connect and communicate that way um people aren't uploading redundant information that's one and then two i would say what are the cause of what's the cause of this high turnover okay i need to get to the root cause of that and then let's see and then along with that actually the hard copies i would say is a third big point for me personally just because in this day and age most things should be electronic by now it allows easy access from anywhere and the cloud just being one of those big things these days that companies utilize yeah okay so i have some feedback on this the first thing is that i'm noticing you have answers and then after that you're still thinking of the other answers so a better way to approach this is that you figure out your entire answer before you approach it you want to make sure everything is coherent almost like you're giving a little speech otherwise if it seems like you're in between answers it doesn't necessarily seem the most clear part of the actual case interview is to be very clear and logical with how you answer so this is also going to be a part of the case it's not necessarily just the answer itself it's also how you deliver it okay and one other thing was that the question also asked how would you gather the information you only really talked about the what aspects of the current system would you want to analyze or also like what are the other outside of the system like business problems that you would want to also analyze so there's also that one part of the question that you didn't really answer so if you want to in the future you could actually just kind of take a step back write down exactly what the question is and or while you well while i give you the question you can take notes of what the question is because i think like as people get questions they just kind of forget about it and they just only either clinch onto like the first part of the question or the last part of the question but they don't get the whole question and when it comes to case interviews a lot of them are going to be like a pretty full question where it can be asking you multiple parts oh i see okay um so as far as gathering the information um i honestly would not i i don't know exactly what that question entails because this whole world's new to me so what do you mean by that yeah so i'm going to just reread the question and break it down a little bit your manager has asked you to develop a new architecture plan by analyzing current systems and interviewing stakeholders what aspects of the current system would you want to analyze so in this case out of the legacy systems the in-house solutions that they have what would you want to analyze from them and how would you gather the information so this could be like when you're interviewing the stakeholders and the first part of the question how would you want to gather that information what kind of questions or requirements or priorities would you want to ask from them and also what are you wanting to look from the actual system so it's like asking for the people aspect in the tech box but okay so basically the answers were just given in a sense right they're kind of giving you a framework of some sort so there is the people process and technology framework out there so that is a good way to kind of frame a lot of whenever it comes to technology consulting case interviews so knowing that there's different ways you can respond to it the best way is the one where you hit all the points oh i see okay so you can give an answer again if you want to do it again okay okay so let's just start all over yep okay to this question yep okay so the three main points i'd like to focus on are the cause of the the high turnover rate in the company obviously something's affecting the workers and then two why the company is using seven different systems instead of just one or at least communicating with each other even if there are multiple systems and then three why are why are hot hard copies of cases and licenses still being used in this day and age especially with technology the way it is now and how to gather this info could just be going about through interviews asking the key stakeholders or the the people of higher positions uh what their take on their processes and people are and two that analyzes their current systems so obviously we need a new the client needs a new system and it's important to learn from these legacy or older systems and then three the processes so what's being done right now in for example uh form reporting and processing and how exactly is that done and then how are the people and technology okay so some feedback on that is that first off you led off talking about the actual turnover rate to be honest that's not that important in this particular question because the whole point is to really analyze the current system and interviewing the stakeholders so like if we wanted a system that solved the turnover rate yes that would be a really good valid question to ask but this is specifically talking about consolidating them the other one would be would be when you said that why are there seven different systems and this is actually the business situation you don't need to kind of ask about the business situation unless it's actually helpful to this to the actual case but in this case all they care about is consolidating because in the end of the day let's say for example you are a law firm you have five different systems like one at the desk and one to actually schedule appointments and one to like have calls like that is something as a reason why they have multiple systems but depending on the actual firm or the consult or not the consulting firm the the client they have different reasons but the whole point of it is like how can we make this all cohesive together they're not really trying to debate the point of like why is it together why is it separate i think a better way to really approach this question is what are you looking for and then what kind of questions do you need to ask to find what you need so if you're asking about like why is there a high turnover rate unless the question or the case is asking for something specifically about the turnover rate then it makes sense to ask the question so everything is supposed to be targeted towards the solution of the actual case rather than just asking questions for the actual background information you could ask that in the very beginning but in this particular question they're asking about what should we be looking for when analyzing current systems and interviewing stakeholders so some examples could be like aligning the business processes so kind of similar to what you mentioned about being siloed so instead of asking like why are they siloed or how are they siloed it's really more about let's try to analyze how we can align them all so that way they're not siloed they're kind of all in sync and the other one could be like analyzing data issues in the database of like why they're redundancies and what are the issues from that so that way you can take that in consideration when you do build in this the new system so in this case they have a good answer and that's a great answer so the one that i just said is a good answer a great answer would include analyzing current business processes by identifying key use cases so this is something that's going to be very prevalent in consulting you want to make sure you have use case for everything you don't want to build something or develop something and there's like no use case for it you just wasted time and energy and then there's also created data mapping to see how the information is being recorded in different multiple systems so whenever there's actual like multiple systems and you have to kind of collaborate to see they're all on the same page data mapping or data model anything like that is very key to make sure that you have the right inputs and outputs and they do talk to each other it's not something that we expect a lot of people who are doing these case interviews to understand but it is what makes a good answer great yep so do you have any questions about this before we move on uh what do you mean by use case yeah so use cases like let's say for example mcdonald's why would you need a wrapper around the burger well the use case would be people want to take it on the go you need to have an actual purpose for it an actual reason that it's actually important otherwise if it's like you know i could just take the burger and go and it's no problem but then people want to take into their cars they want to take it to somewhere else like those are the ones that you start to see why is it important and whenever it comes to interviewing stakeholders you want to know like is there an actual use case for it isn't like you need it rather than you want it you always want to see like the priorities from there and what is the priority from which right requirements you want to prioritize and then which ones are like if we have time and money we'll we can do those awesome okay yeah okay i'm good perfect and then i can go a little bit more into the actual frameworks a little bit later on i don't know if you have a time to look at it but there was like the people the process and the technology and then there's also the big little chart that i built as well it's really good to kind of keep those in mind while you're doing the case so that way you can keep in mind of the actual industry the client and then the technology of it so that way it's not just like whenever i give a question regardless of the case it would be the same answer it should be slightly tailored towards actual client based off of like the nature of their business or maybe like the kind of ask that they're asking for and the problems okay so uh i actually wanted to ask you about that because i based i i made like a little template in a sense based off your framework so with industry you just focus on the industry they're in so in this case it would be um economic trade sanctions right oh technically this this would be government government okay yeah so and then the problem actually lists a couple of or just says that recent um rules and regulations have changed and affected so that would be like a good thing to focus on possibly if it does end up like asking a question about like how a project can like have an impact on it or maybe some considerations to look into but uh as the questions come up if it's relevant to that question then you can talk about it if you just want to preemptively mention it as long as you can tie it into the question or to the answer then that's good okay and then you said the the high turnover rate isn't exactly something to focus on but it's something to take into consideration yes exactly yeah if it's like maybe like a yep go on focus more on consolidating the systems first yeah so the problem statement should be the one you focus on and then all the other things is what you consider so for example i mean i don't want to get the answer away but let's say for example training or maybe like knowing how to use the technology if there's a higher turnover rate you have to constantly train so you may want to build some assets so that way when you do have like someone new coming on they know how to use a system because one thing you do notice in the key considerations is that there's like people that are not necessarily the best with technology there so that is something to consider but it's not something to focus on of like why is there a high turnover that's more of like a management consulting role but whenever it comes to technology it's more of like all those management consulting those macro elements or things to consider but it's not the driving force of the actual solution i see unless it's directly related and then for the technology it's just just asking about what do they use right now correct yeah you can talk about like what do they use right now what are some current things that they value or what are some like things that they want to do in the future because even though like this is the technology they have now they're trying to use this as a way to kind of transform their technology or their systems and then that's what you can take in consideration to build their future use okay and when you say contingency plans for risks what do you mean by that exactly yeah so let's say for example the high turnover rate that is technically a risk itself so maybe people who are misusing the system or when they are putting in input and data it's not the right data just because they're not trained for it that is also risk so you may want to introduce training or assets or guides or aids or anything like that another thing could be like if you were trying to put in clean data which is how it starts in the very beginning and then you start putting in bad data then you're like you need to redo the whole thing again or at least clean it up so that is like an example of a risk another one could be like cutting funding then now like you may have to focus more on like a minimum viable product or you maybe like a risk could be like the key stakeholders like maybe they left the firm or left the company so that is something to also consider these are just like speculations of like in the future if you do have cases where it's about that uh another one could be like let's say for example contractors they're not technically employees of the company but you may have them as a potential breach of security so that is something to also consider it's like all these tiny little things they're not expecting you to learn this in school they're not expecting you to know about like all these potential things they just want you to know about like think about all the connections that it could potentially have and mostly the risk and the practicality so these risks apply to the legacy process and systems i think yes okay okay awesome all right i think i'm good okay so the next question is and tell me when you're ready i am ready okay the scope of the project is potentially very large given the consolidation of software systems data structures and potential new development efforts how would you prioritize the list of requirements for the new system i'm sorry can you repeat that yep the scope of the project is potentially very large given the consolidation of software systems data structures and potential new development efforts how would you prioritize the list of requirements for the new system you might have to take a moment yep okay i am ready okay so first uh i would get an initial analysis of the current systems and processes uh talk to all the key important people what exactly do they do what do they not communicate to other people and then combine all that into uh one database right combine all seven and see how exactly the database works with all the departments working together and then three it would just to get feedback on any any problems on the new system and then improve them there okay so you have basically described gathering the requirements now how do you actually prioritize those requirements which ones to prioritize which ones not to like how do you tell the difference between wants and needs how do i tell the difference between wants and needs [Music] so after talking to all the key stakeholders for example just to see what's required for everyday functions what are the essential job necessities that they need in this new system to work right off the bat work on the smaller problems after that let's just say managing your user account on the system that's a little less important than having to process an actual form or a case and then once it would also be good to hear about the everyday users you know below the managers just to see what they do in and out every day that a manager may not do hearing feedback on what can you improve on the new uh or what do you want to see on this new system and taking those into consideration as well and seeing if it's essential or it's secondary that's good all right so what we would be looking for is that we want you to rank and weight the requirements based on based off of an objective methodology so this is where people can get very emotional or personally involved in this because they're like oh we need this but really you don't need this you just want this to make your life a little bit easier so that's why it's very important to rank it by needs and wants and then after that but what you mentioned that is actually a really key point is that you went to the end users and say what was something you needed because managers are kind of a little bit more up there like key stakeholders are not always the ones that are using the system maybe there are other things to keep in mind but even with that you still want to keep in consideration which ones are the needs and which ones are the ones maybe whatever the users are saying it's like so maybe they just like didn't do it properly and then the whole time the key sticker was right so that communication is good another thing is that we also need to make sure to track it while we're doing this implementation are we actually on track or are we going to be doing a lot of things that people don't actually care about and doesn't address the main issue so that is one so for example when we're consolidating all these systems if we maybe wanted to make sure security is there so that way people can access what they want to access that's a need meanwhile there could be like a want of like here we want this random report that only one stakeholder uses just for the sake of profitability it is not a need it is a want but if it's like required for maybe reporting purposes or tax purposes or anything like that that's a need so that is a good way to kind of see like does it actually solve a problem or is it just something that will help you solve a problem so that's a good way to kind of prioritize another thing which is like a pretty key thing in consulting is that you always want the key stakeholders to actually approve the list of requirements you don't want to act on these requirements and then they're just like oh we never asked for this like why are you working on this we are paying you x number of dollars to be working on something we don't actually want so it's always good to have them to sign off on requirements as well to make sure it is exactly what they want and that way we're not going to get in trouble for working on it okay because ultimately those stakeholders have this of the ultimate stage exactly yeah by the way in this particular case they gave me a b and c and you have to tell me which ones are all of the above but just to make it a little bit more interesting i just asked you point blank oh okay did i at least get one of them you yeah you got two of them oh sick yeah and you actually added one that wasn't even on there so that that's even better awesome a lot of these are just like here's a good answer here's a great answer but they're not all inclusive like this is where the actual interviewer comes in and provides their own ideas of like what's a good and what's a great answer so a lot of this is also kind of objective so one of the reasons why i like to kind of research who the interviewer is is for this particular reason all right so when you're ready we have our last question actually two last questions all right so this is kind of similar across the question that i you asked me before is what factors out of deloitte's control will determine the scope of the project can you reword that question yep yeah so what are some things to consider to make sure that deloitte is successful in this project some potential risks let's see and feel free to resort to your notes or the case that's provided through the link okay i'm just going to take an attempt because yeah so to me it would just make sure the the consultant takes into account of everything talks to all the important people needed and it's not just about the higher up view it's the the ground view as well so talking with those people under the managers um but to also not get too lost in the details make sure the overall goal is to consolidate the this database maybe it's contributing to that by turnover rate but ultimately it's just to make the process a lot easier and then um yeah that's honestly all it comes with okay all right so this one is very in line with project management triangle of money time and resources or scope in this case so this is something where like let's say for example they cut in budget now we have a lot less time to work with or we just have a lot fewer resources to work with to make this happen another one could be maybe they cut the timeline or like now instead of two years you get one year there's not much time to work on it you may have to kind of forego a lot of the required required features the other one could be maybe resources like i mentioned like maybe people have left the firm or maybe people have left the client in this case like you may have to kind of work with that turnover rate and see like okay we may need to regather all this uh energy and requirements and make sure people are okay to test it a great answer is the ones that actually require all of the macro elements so when i mention anything about like maybe us foreign policy or maybe anything about the actual government because at the end of the day this is a federal agency that is something that may actually make an impact on this and another one is the actual agency's availability of resources so maybe if like even you do have all the time and the resources maybe they just don't have them available for like these meetings or to actually do the documentation of all of this like at the end of the day it's a it's like both people it's not necessarily just the client that's doing all the work you also do need the client's engagement as well to make sure that like at least like you're building a product or service that is what they're looking for i see yeah so mostly it's always about time resources and budget and then you also need to always go above that and say like oh the macro elements of it so an example could be like maybe the technology in a case would be self-driving cars well there could be a macro element of well what if there's a law or regulation about self-driving cars now the solution is kind of put you need to figure out a contingency plan on it so in regards to the question you you asked me with deloitte's control yeah how would those three time money and resources um it's still kind of unclear to me sorry yeah these are all out there the question is asking i'm just gonna read it out again what factors out of deloitte's control will determine the scope of the project so this is not something that delay can control maybe the client control but the question was not asking about that it was asking about outside of deloitte's control it could be the client it could be the climate the industry the actual world itself there's so many factors that can come into this what are the potential factors of that into the actual project do you get it now i don't know i'm sorry you said ow yeah oh okay my bad sorry about that no problem but it's good that you asked to rephrase it but this is that that's a good way of like can you repeat it but then not want to sound like you didn't know it oh okay yeah sorry about that yeah no problem well now you know yep there's one more question so this one it's gonna be a pretty long one actually so let me know when you're ready good all right after your current state analysis has been determined that the client's biggest pain point is the amount of time it takes to enter data into each system and this could be improved by creating a unified data architecture to be used across all the systems what steps would you go through to implement this new database what do each of these steps entail okay do you mind if i have a moment yeah okay all right okay so just to make sure uh the big concern is the amount of time data entered and what they want to do is to consolidate and they just want to know the steps to create this new database and how what exactly do that's entailed okay so number one i'd first analyze so we interview everyone like i said before uh and it'd be the first initial interview so it'd be kind of kind of long in terms of just getting to know what the system currently does it's about what everything um it's used for so after that we see the over-the-shoulder usage so we go up to someone that uses it every day um see what's needed what's not needed and what interacts with what because in the end we're gonna have to use um like erds yeah so we consult with the needed teams so we get with the developer teams or any other necessary necessary teams that are needed to build this new database and we get the best direction and approach from them and three we present the plan to the key stakeholders and uh possibly also any other uh or a standard employee regular employee just to see how they like the direction that we might that we're pointing at right now and we receive feedback we take all that into account and we go on to step four where we build we have the developer team and any other teams build the actual database and we're taking again we take into account all those ideas and feedback five we implement so basically we just implement the system uh to use uh just as a practice run though not not company-wide but just like on a smaller scope to see how it functions and then we receive feedback from those people that are in that limited scope and then when it's deemed worthy enough to implement company wide then company wide and see further feedback i would say your answer was really good in this one you you covered almost all of the points you went through identifying the requirements designing building training in this case like you not did not really touch that point but you also you talked about testing without using the word testing so testing is very important because after you basically went through the whole sdlc but you did not really talk about testing that much you did talk about which i really liked about here let's start with this little small area and then see do people accept it do people like it before you deploy it in that case like i would consider that almost like your testing but you did not really mention about all the types of testing so you want to make sure that this is system work is there like user acceptance testing like do they actually like it and then all those kind of things and what you did like the big structure that actually is good uh one thing that you did not mention really is training so like i mentioned about the people process and technology you did mention all about like okay yeah maybe the stakeholders like it and then you want to make sure do they accept it from the little minimal viable product that you have but you did not really mention training because like we mentioned in actual key considerations was that over there they said you know not everyone is pretty good with technology you have a lot of lawyers and ex-military officers so this is where you bring it back to the case and try to look into and see okay what are some considerations we're going to need to consider so this is for example a key risk so one could be like training maybe they're just not really good with technology and if they don't like technology they're just going to be like well this is a new system i'm not going to try it so you always want to make sure you provide that training aspect where you want to make sure that they feel comfortable with it or like and the good thing is that you wanted to do something where you get them involved too so it does get that involvement and in some cases will involve them to train themselves that way but a really key point is really training and testing in your answer but i really liked the way you approached it you first and i can see throughout the progression of today you've actually gone better at first you like jumped in with your answer and now you're like actually like confirming the question first before you gave you my gave me like your actual progression of your list which is a very logical way of saying it so i think i would applaud you this is probably your best answer yet in addition to just including the word testing and then invention of training okay awesome well yeah to be honest what helped with it was i'm going through a database management class right now it's a two semester long project where we had to reach out to a local company and then just offer them to hey we'll improve your database or make a new one and so that's what we've been doing and we're actually in the middle of developing the gui for it right now that's great and when you mentioned about the erd i was like oh good thing because like that was actually what made a good answer great in addition to all the additional things i mentioned oh okay okay hopefully i get something simple yeah yours might be a little bit more related to cyber security so i will kind of touch up a little bit more on the topic of cyber security you may or may not get a topic on it specifically just maybe something in technology but overall i think you're getting the sense of how to conduct yourself in a case interview like the way you communicate yourself the way you want to clarify the question before you jump into conclusions and then also just like the actual kind of questions and answers that you'll expect is more focus on people process technology that's like generally the most used framework when it comes to technology consulting and then the framework that i provided is also a good thing to consider while you're kind of like planning the entire thing out for the grand scheme of things do you abide by your your framework like kind of verbatim in a sense like you go boom boom boom i don't really just like here i'm gonna draw the framework before i even start this case and write down for a little bit things here and there it's just like a good thing to keep in consideration so it's more like a reminder than it is like an actual worksheet of anything so when i get a question and this is actually something i do on a typical day basis like the good thing about technology consulting case interviews is that they're very similar to how you would get it in real life the only difference is that you're not getting a pain like a paper pencil or you're not saying it you're doing it so the difference is like well maybe if there's like an industry out there you need to take in consideration uh maybe it's like particular businesses that like whatever they're doing that is very specific to the technology solution that we need to consider and then actual technology itself like is this something that would work for them and then what are the project uh you know the poll triangle there is like the budget then you have your time and scope that's also something you need to take in consideration it's not the thing about technology is that it's very focused on the actual implementation the practicality the risk that all the execution itself a lot of the management consulting case interviews they focus on strategy here's like a theory it may or may not work we'll leave that to the technology consultants to do but then that's where we have to deal with what is actually doable we have to like we can't do everything we have to kind of give up some features like do something make in consideration of this we are the ones that tell them what they should be considering rather than here's our recommendation because they have to take it or if they don't take it then there will be some consequences down the line awesome okay and i just had um two questions regarding general virtually or actually first one with technology do i expect to do any calculations or that's more management you should not be doing calculations if you do do them it's like very basic okay but like they're not going to ask me like what's our revenue or projected something like they they shouldn't be but it really does depend on again like if you know who your interviewer is i would research them if they are coming from like a more technical background you'll probably get a case that we just got today if they're coming from a management consulting background they may go into more about like oh what is the roi if we did this solution kind of thing and you may have to kind of back it up with all the things that we talked about today but just back it up with those reasons you don't need to give an exact number but it's just things to consider okay and then virtual interviewing should i have looked more directly at the camera yeah i noticed that during the case you were just looking at your paper you weren't really looking at the webcam itself so it is okay the way i like to do it is i always position zoom to have like the person directly under the webcam so as if i'm looking at them i'm looking at the webcam kind of but that is like something that's good to do so what i like to do on case interviews is that i would be doing the case interview do my own thing and then when i'm actually trying to like either clarify a question or say my solution i would look at them and then if i need to look back i would but i wouldn't be looking at this the whole time okay yeah you can also say something is like oh i'm let me refer back to my notes and then it'll be like oh you're not necessarily being rude of anything all right and then should i have like the ipad more visible like oh i i didn't care about that if you are actually a good thing to do about case interviews in light of this is that you could technically draw diagrams if you want to maybe like for example the design then you have the build test and then deploy for that you can draw a diagram and you can show it to the camera that is something you can do too or the other thing could be that you just screen share as well if you have the capability to actually draw it on your computer okay um and so well do you have anything else like are you going to move on to something this is that's the last question okay well i do have a question for you what would have your what would have what would have been your chosen buckets for this case interview what do you mean by buckets like your main points okay yeah uh let me pull up the case again so what i would be focusing a little bit more on is when i mentioned about the people process and technology i would mostly focus on the people and process technology this could be like an erp system one thing that we could mention though is you mentioned actually in the very beginning about like oh you know like there's a lot of like paper lying around this could be a good opportunity to also consider cloud so when you have seven systems and you're consolidating them one good thing to use is probably cloud otherwise you're kind of using like seven systems on premise so that is something to consider so what they're looking for is like here's your answer but you can also put in your own spin of creativity so like oh you know we can include cloud and you can also put in your own little spin of like oh i have experience working with databases due to my class that you're taking right now and then you can also provide some additional points to consider so like when you mention the primary key i was like oh that's a good thing because you're not necessarily focusing on the technical part but you're kind of showing that you have some kind of understanding to it so in this i would talk about more about the considerations of consolidating from multiple data systems and then a recommendation on it would be maybe going to the cloud and then another thing could be more about the actual uh training aspect of it so we keep on getting information about high turnover rates or maybe people just don't know how to use technology that clearly shows there's some kind of point to focus on there as well it's the training aspect and especially being in like a federal agency they're not necessarily the most tech savvy as well so maybe something in security is also good too so really like um a good way to learn about all of this and just having an eye for this is other than like working in the industry about this is really looking at all the current events what are the things that people of these particular industries are doing or maybe what are they valuing so maybe like when you'll hear about all these security breaches like why are there security breaches what are they doing about it and anything about like data like how are they doing it how are and then really learning about all these tech concepts like what is cloud to be able to even put like propose this idea because when i did my case interview they actually had a very similar case to this where they said we have all these systems it's actually a higher education client and i was like well you know you can use cloud and then that way you don't have to worry about all these different legacy systems you just put them all in one and then it will be able to be used all across campus and another thing another thing i mentioned was the actual nature of being a higher education client is that maybe they're also not as tech savvy and maybe they're older so that is also something to bring in training honestly training is like always something i like to bring in who doesn't need training it's like there's always going to be older people in here and always there's going to be people that are also resistance to change so that's also something to bring up as well i see yeah that actually fits in line with one of the notes i took a while back uh someone said that if it's not efficient enough focus on interaction of people and process and see what you're feeling the scale yeah yeah and then tasks not being done fast enough focus on interaction of process and tech and automation yes exactly that's pretty cool yeah and a lot of it it could be right it's just a matter of the actual backing that you provide because a lot of this is just a framework uh so whatever you say to the interviewer as long as interviewer thinks it's a good answer or maybe it makes sense then they'll just say yeah yeah you're good because they're not trying to fit you into a box where you have to check these answers off to be able to pass the interview i see and so what you did today with the questions would that be what i should probably expect from the interview you could there's two different types of case interviews one is the interviewee led where they just give you the case and they just sit there and they're expecting you to provide the whole solution based off of the actual case the other one is interview where led which is the one we just had where we give questions and you answer off of the case so there could be two different ways whenever it comes to like i think it was mckinsey and accenture they're more focused on interview we led and everything else is more focused on interview were led so knowing that the particular firm that you're interviewing for may potentially be doing the one that we just did today i see okay awesome well this was a good learning experience thank you very much no problem and good luck with your interview i appreciate it all right thank you so much and if you have any other questions you can leave down a comment and if you're interested in doing one of these also career coaching 101 leave a comment down below and also check out the forum we have in the description so you can also apply for that thank you so much gerald thank you christine have a good one take care bye bye

Channel: Christine Wong

Views: 28,026

Keywords: technology consultant, tech consulting, consulting, technology consulting, christine wong, case interview, mock case interview, mock tech case interview, mock technology consulting case interview, technology consulting interview, it consulting interview, architecture strategy case, deloitte case interview, kpmg case interview, pwc case interview, ey case interview, big 4 case interview, accenture case interview, career coaching with christine, consulting case interview

Id: 92FQs2fXJ9I

Length: 43min 11sec (2591 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 29 2021