Stuck in a Case Interview? Is the Game Over?

the worst feeling one can ever experience is to get stuck in the middle of a case interview we don't know what to do we don't know what to say and even added to that the stupid thought of bombing the case keeps echoing in our heads too bad this does happen and quite often for many of us how do we avoid falling into that situation though what to do when you happen to be there welcome to our next video it's happening right here right now hi my name is Kim Tran a former McKinsey consultant and the founder of this platform well based on my experience coaching many candidates of various backgrounds and levels there are three most popular spots where people get stuck let's tackle each one at a time number one getting stuck when needing to set up an issue tree or framework sometimes it's the first issue tree but most of the times candidates really struggle after having explored and exhausted the first issue tree and not knowing what to do next the textbook solution is to develop an issue tree drawing scales so good and robust you can react and proceed in any situation while one part of our case interview end-to-end secrets the business intuition part does focus on that long-term purpose the solution most last-minute case interviewees do is to learn as many frameworks as possible more frameworks better chance of drawing good issue trees like I said in the framework video this is only partially true sometimes learning a lot of frameworks without knowing what to do with them is actually dangerous so how do we find the sweet spot here well there's one thing that never gets mentioned as a conventional framework but works like a framework and is very safe to use it doesn't work 100% of the time but it works most of the time and at worst it won't hurt you to use it the magical thing is segments whenever you feel like you don't know how to break things down amid the vast universe of possible frameworks to apply out there just go for segmentation say things like at this point I would like to break down the situation one good way to do this is through segmentation what's the natural way to segment ABC in this industry number two people get stuck when getting a piece of data a lot of the times that's because we don't intuitively perceive what a number piece of data means in an unfamiliar industry the quick tip here is to benchmark that number a number can only have some meaning when put into perspective - very good benchmarks are a history MB competitor sales this years at ten billion dollars what's that in each of the last five years profit margin is twelve percent what's that for competitors customer index is eighty two points how does that compare to historic index and out of competitors number three getting stuck in the middle of analysis of the three this is probably the most difficult to deal with so first of all we have to understand technically why do people get stuck in the middle of the analysis well if you've watched the video candidate lead case technically it's impossible to get stuck like that if you haven't watched that video or you haven't grasped that concept super well I strongly recommend going back and watching that video before continuing here the link is right here assuming you've got through the basic learning of the case interview there are only two possible causes of getting stuck in the middle of analysis and one is obvious there are parts of our analysis that are not me see come back to the movie theater example suppose the question to solve is there's an anonymous feedback the sound was really bad from his or her seat if we divide the whole theater into the back area on the Left area we may not find the exact bad sounding seat and get stuck on the other hand if we divide the whole theater into left and right or back in front we almost never get stuck except for one very special situation like in number two below so number two the way we divided the problems somehow doesn't isolate the root cause if you conduct case interviews sometimes you'll run into this you notice the interviewee do a perfectly messy analysis but it doesn't lead to the root cause or possible answer you have in mind suppose all the seats in the back have audio problems and the interviewee divides a theater into left and right areas this structure doesn't isolate the problem and the interviewee will find partial problems in all groups okay that's a two ways you can get stuck in the middle of analysis now what should we do to avoid it a always always make sure your analysis is perfectly me see watch our video on me see for much more details be aligned with the interviewer as much as possible interviewers rarely deduct points when you ask questions and even if they do it's much much better to be on the side of asking too many questions then on the side of asking too few questions and ending up going into directions that don't fit with the interviewers idea at all see mentally plan for the worst even if you hope you never run into the situation being mentally prepared for what to do and what to say will help at least you'll stay calm and score some points and work your way out of the situation okay so those were some very helpful tips I'm not getting stuck but we can never completely eliminate that possibility assuming you've done everything you can to avoid getting stuck and you still do what's the best course of action at that point step 1 calmly and confidently admit to the interviewer that you are stuck do it with style everybody is stuck at some point and in many cases it's not his or her fault so acting like this is something very normal and you're still in good control this situation is a good idea step 2 literally say the following script you can develop your own wording a little bit to be more natural but this is what I would say my whole analysis seems to go into a dead-end which means either part of my issue tree is not me see or my method of breaking down doesn't isolate the problem either way I would like to take a timeout to take another look at it just by saying that you get a plus point immediately step 3 now use your timeout to look into your analysis critically if it's not me see fix it if it's perfectly me see confidently say you need to break down the problem down through another perspective make a restructure the issue tree or framework okay this is a rather short video but I hope it adds some value to your prep I really hope to include an example here to demonstrate all these insights but it's hard to do that without bringing a whole case I hope you grasp these tips really well and along throughout the process of practice you'll get stuck at some point well it's strange to hope you get stuck but that's really what I mean I hope your practice so hard and so much that all the worst case scenarios all the worst mistakes you'll get out during the practice at that point remember to apply the insights I show you in this video I promise that you will feel this much more profoundly and much more helpful well comment below for any questions or suggestions have you got stuck before how was it what was the cause for it and what did you do what would you do differently after seeing this video don't forget to subscribe to our channel to add management consulting prep we believe everybody can make it to consulting are you a believer

Channel: MConsultingPrep Official Channel

Views: 56,494

Keywords: McKinsey, case interview, case interview tips & tricks, Management Consulting, Consulting case interview, Consulting case study, Kim Tran, BCG & Company, case interview example, consulting interview, case interview preparation, get stuck in case, get stuck, how to proceed in case

Id: _KNl-eoWK00

Length: 8min 25sec (505 seconds)

Published: Thu Oct 27 2016