Shine at a Bain Interview

the video you're about to watch will show examples of different answers to the same case question you will see sample interview questions and you'll see three different answers all three answers are pretty good and in fact none would be so bad that you wouldn't pass someone on to the next round however one answer is better than the others so as you watch listen to the answers and try to figure out which answer is the best and why also try to figure out why the other two were not the best answer finally assume that each question stands on its own when a person answers in one question don't assume they are the same person when they answer a later question we've mixed them up so each time the best answer is not from the same person as the question before so with that let's dive in and see what we can learn by watching three different responses to the same interview question so before we solve this 3d television question I want us to first get ourselves in the minds of the CEO of a branded television company and what I'd like you to think about is if you're the CEO what are the most important meetings you're facing in it in a given week what are the things that are keeping you up late at night what determines whether or not you win or lose what really matters to you sure so if I'm the CEO of this company the things that I would be thinking most about are the fact that we're in a high technology industry and so when we're thinking about what our competitors are doing it's going to be those features that are differentiating our product to the market yes and so what would be keeping me up at night I think a CEO would be the technology features what we can add from the engineering side to really differentiate our products from what the competitors are doing on the market I think you know if I'm the CEO of a television company the first and foremost thing that's always on my mind is how am I going to make money so I'm thinking about the income statement and profits okay as we know you know profit ci revenue minus costs so on both sides of that I think you know on the revenue side I'd really want to be focused on selling meeting with my sales force um how can we improve our marketing efforts yes how can we keep our operations movement moving efficiently good then on the cost side I think you know you need to looking at things like sourcing and can we be cost-cutting how do we think about manufacturing okay great great when I think back at televisions I look at my own experience okay so the last time I maybe went to a Best Buy to look at televisions when I was there I saw a lot of Tim similar sets couldn't quite tell what the technology difference was what the different features are and so I'd assumed to the average customer it's kind of hard to figure out what those differences really are yes and so therefore I would think about branding because in my personal experience I know that a Sony may be better than a different product but I never know exactly why okay so what can my marketing team be doing different to make sure that that that is clearer to our consumers second I think that there's you know when you're sitting in the in the store you see a bunch of different TVs and the prices do seem to be different so how does that affect my personal business how can I look at pricing is that supply chain more making that more efficient its sourcing materials from different places kind of diving into to some of those areas all three of these answers are very strong and clearly these candidates are articulate but the best answer is number three kristan we like her answer because it's not a canned answer she's actually taken the television market and put it in her own experience she's thought about how it really works and she recognizes that what matters is branding and cost that's what differentiates who wins and losses in the TV industry it explains why people like Sony spend a lot of money paying Peyton Manning to advertise Sony's and why people believe that Sony's might be better than an RCA and of course when you buy a TV you think about cost the price and so focusing on cost structure matters so Kristin did a nice job of pulling that together answer number one is also good Gayle's she talks about it being a high-tech product and what we like there is she's got to the point of figuring out that there's something that matters there's something that makes one win versus the other but unfortunately in this case she's chosen the wrong thing TVs are much less than a high-tech product they're more like washing machines and they are personal computers when it comes to buying a consumer television set and so she got the right idea that there's something that differentiates but she just got the wrong issue so it's starting to raise a question about business judgment and then of course answer number two Jen's answer about profitability and revenues and cost is just very generic um she articulates it very well so you almost become convinced that it's the right answer but in fact her answer would apply to a doughnut shop and auto dealership or a branded TV manufacturer we know that she's a polished speaker but we have big questions at this point about business judgment so best answer number three christen so before we go into the detail of how we actually figure this out I'd like to know how you're going to think about it in other words what's going to make you figure out whether or not you should go 3d with glasses 3d without glasses or maybe not do 3d at all how you going to think about that you mind if I take a few seconds to think about it for as you mentioned we have three options to choose from here I think I would want to understand it's almost so what do you have to believe question there's a couple things that I want to look at and I think you need to think about which option is going to be sort of the best in this what do you have to believe question so the first thing is just investment you'd mentioned that each option sort of has different investment criteria so I'd really want to understand you know which of the options actually has the highest ROI and return on investment the second I think is looking at the competitive marketplace and I'd really want to understand sort of how the competitors are going to react and which of the options might have the best sort of competitive reaction for my business okay the third I think that I'd want to look at is my existing business so you know which of the three options are going to sort of create the least cannibalization on my existing sort of non-3d market okay and then the last I think another important thing to look at is just execution so are we going to be able to execute on this as a company and which of the options has sort of the least execution risk do you mind if I take a second just to think about this sure so if I were to think about this there are three different buckets that I want to consider okay so that would first be looking at the revenues second the investment in costs upfront and then third comparing those to the status quo so within each of those on the revenue side you mentioned that will have a different profitability depending upon if we go with a glasses option or the no glasses yes the price point will be different and we'll need to think through how that impacts the business okay good second in terms of costs you also mention that it would actually require a different amount of investment on our end yes you develop the two different types of products you'll want to figure out what the actual amount of investment is and how that compares the profitability okay finally once we have those two pieces for the no glasses and glasses options we'll want to compare that to the status quo so what are we actually doing today and how do our economics look today in order to sort of believe which is the right way to head I'm looking for different things so the first thing I would look at is customers how are my customers going to accept this new product yes I'd have to imagine that someone will prefer to watch TV without the glasses but you know there's a little bit more of doing some research and seeing what our customers are really thinking there the second thing I would look at is what are my competitor is going to do how easy is it going to be for them to go to market what are they going to be thinking about pricing I think there's a lot of interesting information that could be seen there okay um a third you know I think about cost implications obviously sort of how is how are we going to have to change what materials were sourcing what are the Rd costs going to be okay how you know just sort of looking at that those those topics and more details and then the fourth thing I would think about is kind of how is this fitting in with my current capabilities how can I use the processes I already have in place to make this how's it going to affect my current products that I'm offering so those are the four things I would look at two of these answers are very good but the preferred answer is number one Jen notice what Jen does she has an answer first approach to her answer she says this is what you'd have to believe and then she goes through four different buckets to frame how she's going to do her analysis focusing on the economics what a competitor is going to do what's it going to do the existing business and then hitting execution risk and the fact that she's thinking not just about the analysis but also execution implies that she kind of has a a practical results delivery mindset it's a good solid framework that allows her to do the analysis to figure what the right answer is giel also has a nice framework she highlights three things economics costs and then comparing it to the status quo it's an okay framework but because the fact that you're going to think about status quo when you're looking at economics at cost really mean that it's not quite as sophisticated as as Jen's was and so answer to is not quite as strong as answer one but we certainly would have been very happy hearing that answer as well and then finally answer three Kristen's where she walks through effectively a four C's framework probably is thought about it before she's walked in the room has already decided that how we answer asked a question she's going to probably use that type of framework and while she's very articulate in describing it it's unclear how we're going to tie that back to the analysis she's going to need to solve this equation so overall the right answer is number one Jen so I hear you saying that the volume of 3d TVs is very important how are you going to figure out what the ramp-up volume is of the 3d TVs in other words how fast they're going to buy them when you first start to launch the product well clearly this is a new product so one of the first things I'd want to look at is just what the adoption is going to look like and I know from other new product introductions that typically the adoption looks kind of like an s-curve you have your early adopters until the rest of the market catches on so in order to figure out what the shape of that s-curve might look like I'd probably look at other comparable products and those introductions so something like high-definition TVs also a TV product you could look at that and sort of see how that performed in the market iPads might be another comparable example I think ultimately the question is you know how fast or how much does it ramp up and sure what's the maximum that it's going to get to I would actually believe that you know most of the market if not all the market is going to get their 3d TVs are obviously better functionality than 2d TVs of course there's always the chance that you know just no one or very few people adopted in which case would be a very short and small s-curve it's a good question you know this is a brand-new product and nobody's ever bought a 3d television before and so there's no current data that we could use a tell us that so what I really would like to do is a market research survey okay because I think what we could do is actually ask consumers first would they be interested in buying a 3d television yeah and then second at what price point would they be willing to buy a 3d television and so if we took that data together we could have an understanding of what the maximum market share could potentially be okay and so we know that in the there will be a ramp up because this is a new product we're not going to immediately hit that number okay and so to understand what our volume could be in the ramp up period our best assumption would be to take the average between today at zero and that maximum that we find through market research well since we don't have 3d televisions yet we sort of are going to have to make a bunch of assumptions okay so let me start with there's a hundred million households in the United States okay you told me earlier that I believe it was every four years a households buying a new TV yes so we can assume that 25 million households will buy a TV okay um I'd assume not everyone's gonna want a 3d TV so I'm gonna make an assumption let's call it 20% are going to want to buy a TV okay which gets us down to five million households that will actually buy 3d TVs okay um I'd make a guess and not everyone's going to buy in the first year so let's say about a million will buy it in the first year and then maybe the next year we'll have about two million folks buying TVs and eventually that will ramp up and we'll get to that five million of the five million households which will actually buy our TVs the best answer is number two gales answer she realizes that the only way to understand the potential demand is to go and talk to the customer to do primary customer research which of course is what we do here at Bain she also recognizes that there's going to be a relationship between price and volume so even if she's telling you a little bit about how she would design that survey she's already highlighting that issue which is you've got to be thinking about price because that's going to impact the volume so it shows a real level of sophistication finally the thing we like about Gail's answer is that she also recognizes that the ramped up volume is not going to all happen on day one that you're going to go from zero to something and the way you would analytically start to think about that is taking the average between point zero and point n she's obviously got an analytical background even while she's giving you a practical thought about how to gather this data so a very strong answer ants number one by Jen is good she talks about s curves and of course there is an S curve and she clearly understands the dynamics of how new products get adopted but in this case it's a little bit too theoretical because while it may be an S curve shape we don't know what the exact parameters that S curve will be there's no market exactly like 3d televisions and so you still don't get a sense of what the total volume will be which of course makes it hard for you to figure out and calculate the economics later on you have to anchor that in some way shape or form so right kind of business judgment but maybe not quite pragmatic and not thinking about the analytics and answer number three Kristen's is just not the right answer she comes in and starts making a lot of assumptions and I think showing that she is comfortable making such assumptions but that's not what we're really testing here what we're testing to see is whether or not they understand how you would go and get this and and get the right data so the best answer once again is number two Gail's answer so given everything that we've talked about up to this point which option do you choose so I would choose option number two the television without glasses first the economics are far superior so we'll see an incremental profit profitability of seven hundred and fifty million dollars versus a 300 million dollar of profitability that we would see with the first option the television with glasses okay and now that seven hundred and fifty million dollars is also incremental and on top of the five hundred million dollar upfront investment that we'll need to make to develop the technology okay outside of just the economics we'll also be providing a better customer experience so people in their homes would far prefer to be watching 3d television without glasses so will not only be more profitability for our company but will also be a stronger option for the customer you know we've talked about sort of the economics of each I think you know option one is good it's it's less risky you don't have to risk as much money up front it's a little bit safer but it has less of a payoff in the end yes however on the other hand option two has this great you know a big payout seven hundred fifty million dollars but it makes me really nervous that we'd have to invest so five hundred million dollars up front that's you know twice as much as four more than twice as much as we make in a year and that just seems like something that you know I would be nervous if the market doesn't take off and we end up losing a lot of money on the other hand option one you know feels a little too safe in some ways and maybe we're not capitalizing on the on the right the right things but ultimately I think if I had to choose I'd go with option one it just seems to be the better and safer option but I'd really want to see what happens with option two and see how that plays out well mark when we start we looked at I was going to look at three different things first being the economics second being market acceptance in the third being execution risk so when I look at the first of those the economics clearly option to going without the glasses is the better investment for us a bigger return on our investment the end of the day but then when I look at option two which is market acceptance I realize that there's just uncertainty about what's going to happen we just don't know how to have enough data on whether folks are going to be interested in this product or not and what I'm thinking about here is you know if we go with option one which is just with glasses do we have the opportunity to go into option two later kind of test it out in the market see if that works and then we can invest in option two later once we can see what our customers are interested in and the third is execution risk which kind of a certain follows a similar story so I would assume that executing without glasses is going to be much harder undertaking obviously we know the R&D dollars are much higher but the technology is just going to be more difficult and so therefore we would it be able to backtrack if all of our competitors go with option one and so that leads me to believe that option ones are better are safer bet they're the smarter bet so looking at all this the clear answer to me is option one I know I lose a little bit the short-term economic incentives of going with option two but I know that long-term option one is the best option for us because eventually if we wanted to go into launching a TV without 3d glasses we'd be able to we'd have a nice platform in order to do that but I think right now the clear answers option one all three candidates do a very nice job of pulling back the facts of the work that they've just gone through and analyzed they can make an argument but answer number three christen is the best most notably what she does is she takes her argument and ties it back to that original hypothesis and framework that she set out at the beginning so in that way it's easy for you to understand it she walks through and gives a very cogent argument and we like that she firmly takes a stand number one Gail also takes a stand and she makes an argument to talking about the economics and the customer experience but it doesn't once again tie back to what we talked about at the beginning and it's very pithy it's almost like she's giving a simple answer we'd expect a little bit more sophistication once again not bad good but not as strong as answer number three which was Kristen and then finally with answer number two Jen good argument she understands all the facts but she's very wishy-washy you hear talking about with glasses without glasses and back and forth and so we it raises concern there that while she may have done an excellent job of analysis actually taking action in deciding what she wants to do maybe a little bit more difficult for her the best answer though number three Kristen she ties it back to our hypothesis she takes a firm stand and she understands everything that she did up to that point okay I hear that you're going to do option 1 3d with the glasses but what happens if once we launch the product we figure out that in fact nobody buys it there's very low market acceptance what happens then that'd be quite unfortunate given the the investment we made but in the end I'm really glad I actually went with option 1 because I didn't destroy the company you know I didn't sort of invest the the largest amount of money and now you know we still consider a move forward with our existing technologies on the other you know in addition I think I'm also glad I did this and went through this exercise and developed this technology because you know now I'm smart about it I understand it and we have the technology available so if in the future it does become popular or a competitor sort of goes full fledging in the market with this technology we have something to compete with and furthermore there actually may be an opportunity to to sort of recoup my investment I'm in a different way potentially licensing the technology maybe to the military or maybe there's some other applications or somebody who might value it for a different purpose than the consumer market very glad I went with option one I give in our you know the investment of a hundred million dollars to go with with glasses versus the investment of a five hundred million dollars to go without it clearly made sense given our current profitability of two hundred million dollars so we haven't destroyed the business we have a bet the farm we're going to continue moving forward so I'm obviously glad that I went with the first option and frankly I have to tell you mark I'm not that all that surprised by this and you know I'm never really thought 3d TVs we're going to take off anyway so I wonder if given you know not being forced to make a decision I would have never launched anyway which was probably the right call you know it's really interesting because all of our market research studies they said that customers are really excited about this product so that really leaves me to think that it's a problem on our end maybe we haven't been advertising the product appropriately maybe we can go back and do some more consumer market research studies with the actual advertisements that we're using to make sure that our message is really reaching our end customer second you know I wonder if it's really just a problem with the content that's available okay perhaps there just aren't enough 3d television shows being made so we might actually want to look at investing further and companies that are producing television shows for 3d to make sure there's enough content for our consumers actually be taking it in their house so in the end I think this is still a viable market and I think we just may need to ensure that we are executing appropriately I think that the market will be there and we just need to be patient and developing it so now we've thrown in a twist after they've gone through and solved the case assuming that there's going to be demand we tell them that in fact that assumptions not true it doesn't work out that way and it's important to throw a twist in on candidates to see how they react to it as you look at the answers number ones Jen's is the best first she accepts the fact that that's what the data says and because she's done a nice job of understanding the case she realizes that if it's not there it's not there she then talks about the fact that she gets some value and she understood that there was some learning that occurred because they went through this exercise and launched the product she understands its building corporate capability capability it sounds very real world and then the thing we liked most about her in this case is that she comes up with a creative idea even though it might not work for consumer televisions it could work in another market military and licensing so I really feels like a businessperson talking to you who's just been dealt a bad hand or an unfortunate event and making the best out of it answer number two uh Kristen's is also pretty good she's clearly very smart because she immediately gets the fact that if it doesn't work out the way that we said it was going to work out the big company is still in business we didn't bet the farm she says however is she really going to be open to accepting the data that gets put in front of her and accepting the situation and then of course we finally get to answer number three Gail's answer which is a little bit alarming and raises some questions she clearly is committed to her answer too long she still thinks it's a good idea she's either very inflexible or she's a fighter notice that she starts saying we'd have to do different things we'd have to market it differently we'd have to go and push harder she believes the markets there if there's really no reason for her to take such a strong stand because the only thing she knows is what we've told her throughout the period of this case but for some reason she's locked on to it and so that should raise some red flags of what she might be like when a client tells her of something will she be able to question it and raise outside issues or will she just lock into it and will we be able to manage her if a workstream changes so some certainly some red flags here that would be worth checking in a later question or perhaps in a second-round interview but overall number one Jen's answer was the best okay so now I'd like you to think about the analytical achievement you're most proud of and by that I mean where you really nailed something where you were where you were at your best where you might have said to yourself I really crush that can you give me an example of that one good example for you when I was working at Goldman Sachs we were putting together a book for an IPO they needed to go out okay and so this was going to be presented to a few analysts and we had the deadline was three weeks away plenty of time we all felt very good about that we found out that they had to move the deadline up a week and so we had two weeks to finish the rest of our work which you can imagine was quite stressful for all that were involved yes Anahata it was sort of sheer panic in the group I was very surprised that folks didn't know where to focus their energy there was no sort of game plan and so I was able to say these are the spreadsheets that need to get done these are the processes we need to be in place these are n goals and so kind of get the team going and then it was just all about pulling all-nighters putting my head down getting that work done and at the end of the day we made the deadline it was successful meeting we were very happy and I'm personally proud of it because of the investment I was able to be to put in and I think that I really contributed to it being a success so before business school I was working at Johnson & Johnson specifically on their coughs here at brand and so they had traditionally only sold a four ounce size and I started thinking about cough syrup and the different SKUs that we actually provide and I wondered whether or not it made sense for actually as to move into the eight ounce size as well to have a larger product for people especially thinking about a family right who multiple people might be sick they probably need more than a four ounce product so I started running analyses I did some sensitivity analyses I collected all the data that I could looked at what competitors are actually doing and it turns out that I found there was a very strong potential in this market so I came back and I pitched the idea to both the sales team and the brand team and they were very positive about it and they actually gave me the go-ahead to set up a test and run a pilot and the pilot was very successful and we've actually now rolled out an 8 ounce cough syrup brand and it's been very successful today and I actually always buy it when I get sick I think the example I'll talk about was back actually when I was an undergrad okay um and I was taking a programming class and I'm not a CS major you know not a math major so this is pretty tricky and pretty challenging for me so we had to write a program where actually you had to calculate all of the prime numbers between a million and two million oh wow yeah it was pretty funny it was pretty complicated I was really nervous about it you know last sleep a little bit and then I sort of sat down and was able to figure it out and wrote the program not only that I got the the best grade in the class and you know I was just really proud of that in the end because you know it's not something that necessarily I was focused on or majoring in but you know I was still able to succeed when asking experienced questions there's no right or wrong answer we're asking these questions to learn what type of teammate this candidate might be what their strengths and weaknesses are as far as how they would behave on an actual case and so we want to be careful here not just to say what is the best answer but really more importantly what are we learning from the answer what are we learning about the person so for example answer number one Kristin from Goldman Sachs she talks about being a hard worker and she defines being at her best as when she was able to push through things which is great we certainly want hard workers at Bain & Company but note that she doesn't talk about a truly analytical achievement it raised this question which is she may be somebody who really pushes through but she hasn't given us an indication that she demonstrates being at her best as being smart or analytical so not a fatal flaw but just something we want to check on answer number two Gail's answer the cough syrup the new SKU of cough syrup is the answer I like the best I liked it because she talks about figuring something out and she talks about the analytical process she went through but perhaps more interesting to me is that she talks about then convincing people to do something and the fact that they actually changed behavior feels very Bain like the fact that she can talk about a measurable change because of something she did however noticed that she there's two questions that come to my mind when we listen to Gail's answer one is it seems a little simplistic that why wouldn't this company have thought about an 8-ounce product before it seems a little unrealistic that she's the first person ever come up with that so maybe she's sort of manufacturing that story and then a little bit at the end she talked about the word mimimi a couple times once again not a fatal flaw I like the way the story that she went through but just something we're going to want to pay attention to and finally number three Jen's answered the computer program she took our question literally analytical achievement she was most proud of and clearly designing this computer program was a very difficult challenge but it's not really applicable to the real world or what we do at Bain and so well she's answered the question it does start to raise questions which is is she theoretical is she some hoo-uh is just very analytical and can is that really when she's at her best I also wonder with Jen that is this something that she thinks of was a rarity that she saw this computer program or just how she normally is but once again all three answers are fine we've learned something very important about each candidate I want you to picture a team that you've been on a team of peers it could be a school team or a work team if I were to bring those people here today and have them around the table and say give me some constructive criticism on you what can you do better from a team dynamic what would they tell me you need to improve I think they probably tend to say that I take on too much of the work myself okay I'm always sort of looking for ways to help out and take things over if we have a lot going on as a team I'll take on too much myself yes and what do you think you do that I think it's probably because some of these things I take really seriously maybe more seriously than some of my team members um you know ultimately I don't want to see us fail as a team I have a my grades on the line as well and and I want to make sure that we succeed hmm good question I think that they would say that I typically avoid confrontation okay tell me a little bit more about that so I think what they would say is that I really want everybody to get along I think the team is most productive when everybody is you know feeling good about the team and they're happy working with each other and you know I've just never found it productive - you know publicly embarrass people in front of their peers or you know have those conversations in front of others I think many of those situations are best handled offline I think the number-one issue for me is that I'm taking on too much I'm working too hard that's feedback I've gone before and is that something that in it's something that you need to improve on that sounds good it's it's a little bit of both I think it's both a good and a bad I think what I find in situations is is that I am often able not necessary to get to the answer sooner but to push forward a little bit quicker than the rest of my team and so because of that I'm trying to help the team and so not only I doing sort of my own work but I'm also kind of helping them get up to speed and therefore just kind of taking on a little bit more than I normally would in this question we're asking about people's weaknesses and once again we learned something interesting about all three candidates the first answer from Jen she talks about taking on too much work and how she pulls it all onto herself and it raises a question if she's somebody who doesn't really trust her teammates is she just too much of a ball hog does she want to put things the spotlight on herself or in fact is she somebody who's very much at cause she says she takes the work very seriously and that she's committed to success obviously if it's the second set of characteristics that's a Great Dane person somebody who will do anything that needs to be done to make sure we get the right answer but if it's somebody who doesn't really trust her teammates well that's a more serious question answer true from Gail where she talks about avoiding confrontation your natural reaction is to assume maybe she's passive but in fact maybe she's just very good at people management and that she understands that you can't always have an in-your-face style and then in fact she might be really terrific at creating change in organizations and then finally with Kristin the third answer she doesn't really want to answer the question about weakness you notice that she wants to all keep making it back of strength she says well I'm a hard worker and then I I asked her well is that bad and she says well I sometimes I try to do too much and I oftentimes a smartest person and she's just continually coming back and making it sound like any weakness is not really a weakness she really doesn't want to let you know what her weakness is so we haven't really learned that she clearly is a very confident young lady and might be a great bany but we want to understand this issue about whether or not she's really understands how it feels to work with on a team with her once again none of these answers are bad we just learned some different things what do you think the hardest part about coming to Bain & Company would be for you for me I think one of the challenges could be just the way that the staffing process work okay so knowing that I could be on a variety of different cases that don't necessarily line up with sort of where my interests are what my background is okay so I could see that that could be challenging working on some of those cases there's a lot of variability and staffing and I just I think that that would be a challenge for me personally I think it will be going to a client where I am young and I'm new I may not have worked in the industry before with that particular client and knowing that you know I can do great analyses I have the data analytic side behind me and I have the support of my Bain team but actually trying to change that from just being the data and implementing it with my clients who might be set in their ways they've been working this industry perhaps for many years if not their whole career they have a certain way that they do things and to me it's pretty intimidating to actually think about changing their behaviors so I think the hardest part I believe is actually sort of gaining credibility with your clients you know I realized that Bain has a whole support system and sort of a team mentality but ultimately it comes down to to me to be the expert in this field and you know you're working with clients who've been doing this maybe their entire lives and really have achieved expert status and from my perspective you know I think I'll just have to work really hard to come up to speed you know I think it's possible and I'm excited to do it but it's definitely something that could be a challenge in asking this question we hope to learn a few things one is do they really understand what it is that Bain does and how our industry works many people are unfamiliar or have romanticized what it's like to be a management consultant and of course it's a very hard job as we all know and so we want to make sure they come in eyes wide open and so we want to understand that and in fact by hearing how they articulate what they think the challenges the job will be it helps us start to figure out not just what kind of questions we should ask them but even things like who we should be mapping onto them and what kind of conversations we might have in closing when we in fact make them an offer and then of course by asking what part they think they personally would have a hard time with we learn a little bit about what they think might be their weaknesses or where they might have some insecurities so as we look at answer number one from Kristin who talks about the staffing process she talks about the fact that she might be put on a case that she's unfamiliar with or maybe not something that was she was thinking about or energizer it raises a question is she afraid of new things is she going to be open to be putting on a case that's a little bit out of her comfort zone and so we want to push her on that and in fact make sure that people tell her that yeah in the first year or two you might in fact be put on such cases the answer to question number two from Gayle who talks about the fact that she's young and new and having to interact with more senior executives I think shows a nice understanding of the business um it may make us also wonder whether or not she's thinks of herself as an analyst because she talks about that where she knows her data and she knows the work that she's done and so she feels comfortable in analytical capabilities but you see her get a little bit hesitant about convincing people to change and so once again this issue of issue somebody who's going to be able to grow in our job and really have those kinds of client interactions and get energy out of those client energy jack interactions or instead maybe be a little bit fearful of those and then finally the answer number three from Jen where she talks about credibility I thought it was a good answer there was nothing wrong with it and clearly she understands our business she's giving us straight down the middle a description of one of the concerns that happens about all management consults which is our clients know more than we do about their own business but we haven't learned much about Jen from this answer and so we probably want to push a little bit more on that because we don't know what she's actually concerned about but once again three Grady answers will be very helpful to further interviewers and how we might think about a closing process

Channel: Bain & Company Careers

Views: 553,100

Rating: 4.8952026 out of 5

Keywords: 2751064035001, bc2ytcu

Id: Nib4_5_4afA

Length: 40min 35sec (2435 seconds)

Published: Wed May 07 2014