case study interview approach

• Case Interview: A comprehensive guide
• Pyramid Principle
• Hypothesis driven structure
• Fit Interview
• Consulting math
• The key to landing your consulting job
• What is a case interview?
• Types of case interview
• How to solve cases with the Problem-Driven Structure?
• What to remember in case interviews
• Case examples or building blocks?
• How do I prepare for case interviews
• Interview day tips
• How we can help

1. The key to landing your consulting job.

Case interviews - where you are asked to solve a business case study under scrutiny - are the core of the selection process right across McKinsey, Bain and BCG (the “MBB” firms). This interview format is also used pretty much universally across other high-end consultancies; including LEK, Kearney, Oliver Wyman and the consulting wings of the “Big Four”.

If you want to land a job at any of these firms, you will have to ace multiple case interviews.

It is increasingly likely that you will also have to solve online cases given by chatbots. You might need to pass these either before making it to interview or be asked to sit them alongside first round interviews.

Importantly, case studies aren’t something you can just wing . Firms explicitly expect you to have thoroughly prepared and many of your competitors on interview day will have been prepping for months.

Don’t worry though - MCC is here to help!

This article will take you through a full overview of everything you’ll need to know to do well, linking to more detailed articles and resources at each stage to let you really drill down into the details.

As well as traditional case interviews, we’ll also attend to the new formats in which cases are being delivered and otherwise make sure you’re up to speed with recent trends in this overall part of consulting recruitment.

Before we can figure out how to prepare for a case interview, though, we will first have to properly understand in detail what exactly you are up against. What format does a standard consulting case interview take? What is expected of you? How will you be assessed?

Let's dive right in and find out!

Professional help

Before going further, if this sounds like a lot to get your head around on your own, don't worry - help is available!

Our Case Academy course gives you everything you need to know to crack cases like a pro:

Case Academy Course

To put what you learn into practice (and secure some savings in the process) you can add mock interview coaching sessions with expereinced MBB consultants:

Coaching options

And, if you just want an experienced consultant to take charge of the whole selection process for you, you can check out our comprehensive mentoring programmes:

Explore mentoring

Now, back to the article!

2. What is a case interview?

Before we can hope to tackle a case interview, we have to understand what one is.

In short, a case interview simulates real consulting work by having you solve a business case study in conversation with your interviewer.

This case study will be a business problem where you have to advise a client - that is, an imaginary business or similar organisation in need of guidance.

You must help this client solve a problem and/or make a decision. This requires you to analyse the information you are given about that client organisation and figure out a final recommendation for what they should do next.

Business problems in general obviously vary in difficulty. Some are quite straightforward and can be addressed with fairly standard solutions. However, consulting firms exist precisely to solve the tough issues that businesses have failed to deal with internally - and so consultants will typically work on complex, idiosyncratic problems requiring novel solutions.

Some examples of case study questions might be:

• How much would you pay for a banking licence in Ghana?
• Estimate the potential value of the electric vehicle market in Germany
• How much gas storage capacity should a UK domestic energy supplier build?

Consulting firms need the brightest minds they can find to put to work on these important, difficult projects. You can expect the case studies you have to solve in interview, then, to echo the unique, complicated problems consultancies deal with every day. As we’ll explain here, this means that you need to be ready to think outside the box to figure out genuinely novel solutions.

2.1. Where are case interviews in the consulting selection process?

Not everyone who applies to a consulting firm will have a case interview - far from it!

In fact, case interviews are pretty expensive and inconvenient for firms to host, requiring them to take consultants off active projects and even fly them back to the office from location for in-person interviews (although this happens less frequently now). Ideally, firms want to cut costs and save time by narrowing down the candidate pool as much as possible before any live interviews.

As such, there are some hoops to jump through before you make it to interview rounds.

Firms will typically eliminate as much as 80% of the applicant pool before interviews start . For most firms, 50%+ of applicants might be cut based on resumes, before a similar cut is made on those remaining based on aptitude tests. McKinsey currently gives their Solve assessment to most applicants, but will use their resulting test scores alongside resumes to cut 70%+ of the candidate pool before interviews.

You'll need to be on top of your game to get as far as a case interview with a top firm. Getting through the resume screen and any aptitude tests is an achievement in itself! Also we need to note that the general timeline of an application can differ depending on a series of factors, including which position you apply, your background, and the office you are applying to. For example, an undergraduate applying for a Business Analyst position (the entry level job at McKinsey) will most likely be part of a recruitment cycle and as such have pretty fixed dates when they need to sit the pre-screening test, and have the first and second round interviews (see more on those below). Conversely, an experienced hire will most likely have a much greater choice of test and interview dates as well as more time at their disposal to prepare.

For readers not yet embroiled in the selection process themselves, let’s put case interviews in context and take a quick look at each stage in turn. Importantly, note that you might also be asked to solve case studies outside interviews as well…

2.1.1. Application screen

It’s sometimes easy to forget that such a large cut is made at the application stage. At larger firms, this will mean your resume and cover letter is looked at by some combination of AI tools, recruitment staff and junior consulting staff (often someone from your own university).

Only the best applications will be passed to later stages, so make sure to check out our free resume and cover letter guides, and potentially get help with editing , to give yourself the best chance possible.

2.1.2. Aptitude tests and online cases

This part of the selection process has been changing quickly in recent years and is increasingly beginning to blur into the traditionally separate case interview rounds.

In the past, GMAT or PST style tests were the norm. Firms then used increasingly sophisticated and often gamified aptitude tests, like the Pymetrics test currently used by several firms, including BCG and Bain, and the original version of McKinsey’s Solve assessment (then branded as the Problem Solving Game).

Now, though, there is a move towards delivering relatively sophisticated case studies online. For example, McKinsey has replaced half the old Solve assessment with an online case. BCG’s Casey chatbot case now directly replaces a live first round case interview, and in the new era of AI chatbots, we expect these online cases to quickly become more realistic and increasingly start to relieve firms of some of the costs of live case interviews.

Our consultants collectively reckon that, over time, 50% of case interviews are likely to be replaced with these kinds of cases . We give some specific advice for online cases in section six. However, the important thing to note is that these are still just simulations of traditional case interviews - you still need to learn how to solve cases in precisely the same way, and your prep will largely remain the same.

2.1.3. Rounds of Interviews

Now, let’s not go overboard with talk of AI. Even in the long term, the client facing nature of consulting means that firms will have live case interviews for as long as they are hiring anyone. And in the immediate term, case interviews are still absolutely the core of consulting selection.

Before landing an offer at McKinsey, Bain, BCG or any similar firm, you won’t just have one case interview, but will have to complete four to six case interviews, usually divided into two rounds, with each interview lasting approximately 50-60 minutes .

Being invited to first round usually means two or three case interviews. As noted above, you might also be asked to complete an online case or similar alongside your first round interviews.

If you ace first round, you will be invited to second round to face the same again, but more gruelling. Only then - after up to six case interviews in total, can you hope to receive an offer.

2.2. Differences between first and second round interviews

Despite case interviews in the first and second round following the same format, second/final round interviews will be significantly more intense . The seniority of the interviewer, time pressure (with up to three interviews back-to-back), and the sheer value of the job at stake will likely make a second round consulting case interview one of the most challenging moments of your professional life.

There are three key differences between the two rounds:

• Time Pressure : Final round case interviews test your ability to perform under pressure, with as many as three interviews in a row and often only very small breaks between them.
• Focus : Since second round interviewers tend to be more senior (usually partners with 12+ years experience) and will be more interested in your personality and ability to handle challenges independently. Some partners will drill down into your experiences and achievements to the extreme. They want to understand how you react to challenges and your ability to identify and learn from past mistakes.
• Psychological Pressure: While case interviews in the first round are usually more focused on you simply cracking the case, second round interviewers often employ a "bad cop" strategy to test the way you react to challenges and uncertainty.

2.3. What skills do case interviews assess?

Reliably impressing your interviewers means knowing what they are looking for. This means understanding the skills you are being assessed against in some detail.

Overall, it’s important always to remember that, with case studies, there are no strict right or wrong answers. What really matters is how you think problems through, how confident you are with your conclusions and how quick you are with the back of the envelope arithmetic.

The objective of this kind of interview isn’t to get to one particular solution, but to assess your skillset. This is even true of modern online cases, where sophisticated AI algorithms score how you work as well as the solutions you generate.

If you visit McKinsey , Bain and BCG web pages on case interviews, you will find that the three firms look for very similar traits, and the same will be true of other top consultancies.

Broadly speaking, your interviewer will be evaluating you across five key areas:

2.1.1.One: Probing mind

Showing intellectual curiosity by asking relevant and insightful questions that demonstrate critical thinking and a proactive nature. For instance, if we are told that revenues for a leading supermarket chain have been declining over the last ten years, a successful candidate would ask:

“ We know revenues have declined. This could be due to price or volume. Do we know how they changed over the same period? ”

This is as opposed to a laundry list of questions like:

• Did customers change their preferences?
• Which segment has shown the decline in volume?
• Is there a price war in the industry?

2.1.2. Structure

Structure in this context means structuring a problem. This, in turn, means creating a framework - that is, a series of clear, sequential steps in order to get to a solution.

As with the case interview in general, the focus with case study structures isn’t on reaching a solution, but on how you get there.

This is the trickiest part of the case interview and the single most common reason candidates fail.

We discuss how to properly structure a case in more detail in section three. In terms of what your interviewer is looking for at high level, though, key pieces of your structure should be:

• Proper understanding of the objective of the case - Ask yourself: "What is the single crucial piece of advice that the client absolutely needs?"
• Identification of the drivers - Ask yourself: "What are the key forces that play a role in defining the outcome?"

Our Problem Driven Structure method, discussed in section three, bakes this approach in at a fundamental level. This is as opposed to the framework-based approach you will find in older case-solving

Focus on going through memorised sequences of steps too-often means failing to develop a full understanding of the case and the real key drivers.

At this link, we run through a case to illustrate the difference between a standard framework-based approach and our Problem Driven Structure method.

2.1.3. Problem Solving

You’ll be tested on your ability to identify problems and drivers, isolate causes and effects, demonstrate creativity and prioritise issues. In particular, the interviewer will look for the following skills:

• Prioritisation - Can you distinguish relevant and irrelevant facts?
• Connecting the dots - Can you connect new facts and evidence to the big picture?
• Establishing conclusions - Can you establish correct conclusions without rushing to inferences not supported by evidence?

2.1.4. Numerical Agility

In case interviews, you are expected to be quick and confident with both precise and approximated numbers. This translates to:

• Performing simple calculations quickly - Essential to solve cases quickly and impress clients with quick estimates and preliminary conclusions.
• Analysing data - Extract data from graphs and charts, elaborate and draw insightful conclusions.
• Solving business problems - Translate a real world case to a mathematical problem and solve it.

Our article on consulting math is a great resource here, though the extensive math content in our MCC Academy is the best and most comprehensive material available.

2.1.5. Communication

Real consulting work isn’t just about the raw analysis to come up with a recommendation - this then needs to be sold to the client as the right course of action.

Similarly, in a case interview, you must be able to turn your answer into a compelling recommendation. This is just as essential to impressing your interviewer as your structure and analysis.

Consultants already comment on how difficult it is to find candidates with the right communication skills. Add to this the current direction of travel, where AI will be able to automate more and more of the routine analytic side of consulting, and communication becomes a bigger and bigger part of what consultants are being paid for.

So, how do you make sure that your recommendations are relevant, smart, and engaging? The answer is to master what is known as CEO-level communication .

This art of speaking like a CEO can be quite challenging, as it often involves presenting information in effectively the opposite way to how you might normally.

To get it right, there are three key areas to focus on in your communications:

• Top down : A CEO wants to hear the key message first. They will only ask for more details if they think that will actually be useful. Always consider what is absolutely critical for the CEO to know, and start with that. You can read more in our article on the Pyramid Principle .
• Concise : This is not the time for "boiling the ocean" or listing an endless number possible solutions. CEOs, and thus consultants, want a structured, quick and concise recommendation for their business problem, that they can implement immediately.
• Fact-based : Consultants share CEOs' hatred of opinions based on gut feel rather than facts. They want recommendations based on facts to make sure they are actually in control. Always go on to back up your conclusions with the relevant facts.

Being concise and to the point is key in many areas, networking being one for them. For more detail on all this, check out our full article on delivering recommendations .

Prep the right way

3. types of case interview.

While most case interviews share a similar structure, firms will have some differences in the particular ways they like to do things in terms of both the case study and the fit component.

As we’ll see, these differences aren’t hugely impactful in terms of how you prepare. That said, it's always good to know as much as possible about what you will be going up against.

3.1. Different case objectives

A guiding thread throughout this article and our approach in general will be to treat each case as a self-contained problem and not try to pigeonhole it into a certain category. Having said that, there are of course similarities between cases and we can identify certain parameters and objectives.

Broadly speaking, cases can be divided into issue-based cases and strategic decision cases. In the former you will be asked to solve a certain issue, such as declining profits, or low productivity whereas in the latter you will be ask whether your client should or should not do something, such as enter a specific market or acquire another company. The chart below is a good breakdown of these different objectives:

3.2. How do interviewers craft cases

While interviewers will very likely be given a case bank to choose from by their company, a good number of them will also choose to adapt the cases they would currently be working on to a case interview setting. The difference is that the latter cases will be harder to pigeonhole and apply standard frameworks to, so a tailored approach will be paramount.

If you’ve applied for a specific practice or type of consulting - such as operational consulting, for example - it’s very likely that you will receive a case geared towards that particular area alongside a ‘generalist’ consulting case (however, if that’s the case, you will generally be notified). The other main distinction when it comes to case interviews is between interviewer-led and candidate-led.

3.3. Candidate-led cases

Most consulting case interview questions test your ability to crack a broad problem, with a case prompt often going something like:

" How much would you pay to secure the rights to run a restaurant in the British Museum? "

You, as a candidate, are then expected to identify your path to solve the case (that is, provide a structure), leveraging your interviewer to collect the data and test your assumptions.

This is known as a “candidate-led” case interview and is used by Bain, BCG and other firms. From a structuring perspective, it’s easier to lose direction in a candidate-led case as there are no sign-posts along the way. As such, you need to come up with an approach that is both broad enough to cover all of the potential drivers in a case but also tailored enough to the problem you are asked to solve. It’s also up to you to figure out when you need to delve deeper into a certain branch of the case, brainstorm or ask for data. The following case from Bain is an excellent example on how to navigate a candidate-led case.

3.4. Interviewer-led cases

This type of case - employed most famously by McKinsey - is slightly different, with the interviewer controlling the pace and direction of the conversation much more than with other case interviews.

At McKinsey, your interviewer will ask you a set of pre-determined questions, regardless of your initial structure. For each question, you will have to understand the problem, come up with a mini structure, ask for additional data (if necessary) and come to the conclusion that answers the question. This more structured format of case also shows up in online cases by other firms - notably including BCG’s Casey chatbot (with the amusing result that practising McKinsey-style cases can be a great addition when prepping for BCG).

Essentially, these interviewer-led case studies are large cases made up of lots of mini-cases. You still use basically the same method as you would for standard (or candidate-led) cases - the main difference is simply that, instead of using that method to solve one big case, you are solving several mini-cases sequentially. These cases are easier to follow as the interviewer will guide you in the right direction. However, this doesn’t mean you should pay less attention to structure and deliver a generic framework! Also, usually (but not always!) the first question will ask you to map your approach and is the equivalent of the structuring question in candidate-led cases. Sometimes, if you’re missing key elements, the interviewer might prompt you in the right direction - so make sure to take those prompts seriously as they are there to help you get back on track (ask for 30 seconds to think on the prompt and structure your approach). Other times - and this is a less fortunate scenario - the interviewer might say nothing and simply move on to the next question. This is why you should put just as much thought (if not more) into the framework you build for interviewer-led cases , as you may be penalized if you produce something too generic or that doesn’t encompass all the issues of the case.

3.5. Case and fit

The standard case interview can be thought of as splitting into two standalone sub-interviews. Thus “case interviews” can be divided into the case study itself and a “fit interview” section, where culture fit questions are asked.

This can lead to a bit of confusion, as the actual case interview component might take up as little as half of your scheduled “case interview”. You need to make sure you are ready for both aspects.

To illustrate, here is the typical case interview timeline:

• First 15-30 minutes: Fit Interview - with questions assessing your motivation to be a consultant in that specific firm and your traits around leadership and teamwork. Learn more about the fit interview in our in-depth article here .
• Next 30-40 minutes: Case Interview - solving a case study
• Last 5 minutes: Fit Interview again - this time focussing on your questions for your interviewer.

Both the Case and Fit interviews play crucial roles in the finial hiring decision. There is no “average” taken between case and fit interviews: if your performance is not up to scratch in either of the two, you will not be able to move on to the next interview round or get an offer.

NB: No case without fit

Note that, even if you have only been told you are having a case interview or otherwise are just doing a case study, always be prepared to answer fit questions. At most firms, it is standard practice to include some fit questions in all case interviews, even if there are also separate explicit fit interviews, and interviewers will almost invariably include some of these questions around your case. This is perfectly natural - imagine how odd and artificial it would be to show up to an interview, simply do a case and leave again, without talking about anything else with the interviewer before or after.

3.5.1 Differences between firms

For the most part, a case interview is a case interview. However, firms will have some differences in the particular ways they like to do things in terms of both the case study and the fit component.

3.5.2. The McKinsey PEI

McKinsey brands its fit aspect of interviews as the Personal Experience Interview or PEI. Despite the different name, this is really much the same interview you will be going up against in Bain, BCG and any similar firms.

McKinsey does have a reputation for pushing candidates a little harder with fit or PEI questions , focusing on one story per interview and drilling down further into the specific details each time. We discuss this tendency more in our fit interview article . However, no top end firm is going to go easy on you and you should absolutely be ready for the same level of grilling at Bain, BCG and others. Thus any difference isn’t hugely salient in terms of prep.

3.6. What is different in 2023?

For the foreseeable future, you are going to have to go through multiple live case interviews to secure any decent consulting job. These might increasingly happen via Zoom rather than in person, but they should remain largely the same otherwise.

However, things are changing and the rise of AI in recent months seems pretty much guaranteed to accelerate existing trends.

Even before the explosive development of AI chatbots like ChatGPT we have seen in recent months, automation was already starting to change the recruitment process.

As we mentioned, case interviews are expensive and inconvenient for firms to run . Ideally, then, firms will try to reduce the number of interviews required for recruitment as far as possible. For many years, tests of various kinds served to cut down the applicant pool and thus the number of interviews. However, these tests had a limited capacity to assess candidates against the full consulting skillset in the way that case interviews do so well.

More recently, though, the development of online testing has allowed for more and more advanced assessments. Top consulting firms have been leveraging screening tests that better and better capture the same skillset as case interviews. Eventually this is converging on automated case studies. We see this very clearly with the addition of the Redrock case to McKinsey’s Solve assessment.

As these digital cases become closer to the real thing, the line between test and case interview blurs. Online cases don’t just reduce the number of candidates to case interview, but start directly replacing them.

Case in point here is BCG’s Casey chatbot . Previously, BCG had deployed less advanced online cases and similar tests to weed out some candidates before live case interviews began. Now, though, Casey actually replaces one first round case interview.

Casey, at time of writing, is still a relatively “basic” chatbot, basically running through a pre-set script. The Whatsapp-like interface does a lot of work to make it feel like one is chatting to a “real person” - the chatbot itself, though, cannot provide feedback or nudges to candidates as would a human interviewer.

We fully expect that, as soon as BCG and other firms can train a truer AI, these online cases will become more widespread and start replacing more live interviews.

We discuss the likely impacts of advanced AI on consulting recruitment and the industry more broadly in our blog.

Here, though, the real message is that you should expect to run into digital cases as well as traditional case interviews.

Luckily, despite any changes in specific case interview format, you will still need to master the same fundamental skills and prepare in much the same way.

We’ll cover a few ways to help prepare for chatbot cases in section four. Ultimately, though, firms are looking for the same problem solving ability and mindset as a real interviewer. Especially as chatbots get better at mimicking a real interviewer, candidates who are well prepared for case cracking in general should have no problem with AI administered cases.

3.6.1. Automated fit interviews

Analogous to online cases, in recent years there has been a trend towards automated, “one way” fit interviews, with these typically being administered for consultancies by specialist contractors like HireVue or SparkHire.

These are kind of like Zoom interviews, but if the interviewer didn’t show up. Instead you will be given fit questions to answer and must record your answer in your computer webcam. Your response will then go on to be assessed by an algorithm, scoring both what you say and how you say it.

Again, with advances in AI, it is easy to imagine these automated case interviews going from fully scripted interactions, where all candidates are asked the same list of questions, to a more interactive experience. Thus, we might soon arrive at a point where you are being grilled on the details of your stories - McKinsey PEI style - but by a bot rather than a human.

We include some tips on this kind of “one way” fit interview in section six here.

4. How to solve cases with the Problem-Driven Structure?

If you look around online for material on how to solve case studies, a lot of what you find will set out framework-based approaches. However, as we have mentioned, these frameworks tend to break down with more complex, unique cases - with these being exactly the kind of tough case studies you can expect to be given in your case interviews.

To address this problem, the MyConsultingCoach team has synthesized a new approach to case cracking that replicates how top management consultants approach actual engagements.

MyConsultingCoach’s Problem Driven Structure approach is a universal problem solving method that can be applied to any business problem , irrespective of its nature.

As opposed to just selecting a generic framework for each case interview, the Problem Driven Structure approach works by generating a bespoke structure for each individual question and is a simplified version of the roadmap McKinsey consultants use when working on engagements.

The canonical seven steps from McKinsey on real projects are simplified to four for case interview questions, as the analysis required for a six-month engagement is somewhat less than that needed for a 45-minute case study. However, the underlying flow is the same (see the method in action in the video below)

Let's zoom in to see how our method actually works in more detail:

4.1. Identify the problem

Identifying the problem means properly understanding the prompt/question you are given, so you get to the actual point of the case.

This might sound simple, but cases are often very tricky, and many candidates irretrievably mess things up within the first few minutes of starting. Often, they won’t notice this has happened until they are getting to the end of their analysis. Then, they suddenly realise that they have misunderstood the case prompt - and have effectively been answering the wrong question all along!

With no time to go back and start again, there is nothing to do. Even if there were time, making such a silly mistake early on will make a terrible impression on their interviewer, who might well have written them off already. The interview is scuppered and all the candidate’s preparation has been for nothing.

This error is so galling as it is so readily avoidable.

Our method prevents this problem by placing huge emphasis on a full understanding of the case prompt. This lays the foundations for success as, once we have identified the fundamental, underlying problem our client is facing, we focus our whole analysis around finding solutions to this specific issue.

Now, some case interview prompts are easy to digest. For example, “Our client, a supermarket, has seen a decline in profits. How can we bring them up?”. However, many of the prompts given in interviews for top firms are much more difficult and might refer to unfamiliar business areas or industries. For example, “How much would you pay for a banking license in Ghana?” or “What would be your key areas of concern be when setting up an NGO?”

Don’t worry if you have no idea how you might go about tackling some of these prompts!

In our article on identifying the problem and in our full lesson on the subject in our MCC Academy course, we teach a systematic, four step approach to identifying the problem , as well as running through common errors to ensure you start off on the right foot every time!

This is summarised here:

Following this method lets you excel where your competitors mess up and get off to a great start in impressing your interviewer!

4.2. Build your problem driven structure

After you have properly understood the problem, the next step is to successfully crack a case is to draw up a bespoke structure that captures all the unique features of the case.

This is what will guide your analysis through the rest of the case study and is precisely the same method used by real consultants working on real engagements.

Of course, it might be easier here to simply roll out one an old-fashioned framework, and a lot of candidates will do so. This is likely to be faster at this stage and requires a lot less thought than our problem-driven structure approach.

However, whilst our problem driven structure approach requires more work from you, our method has the advantage of actually working in the kind of complex case studies where generic frameworks fail - that is exactly the kind of cases you can expect at an MBB interview .

Since we effectively start from first principles every time, we can tackle any case with the same overarching method. Simple or complex, every case is the same to you and you don’t have to gamble a job on whether a framework will actually work

4.2.1 Issue trees

Issue trees break down the overall problem into a set of smaller problems that you can then solve individually. Representing this on a diagram also makes it easy for both you and your interviewer to keep track of your analysis.

To see how this is done, let’s look at the issue tree below breaking down the revenues of an airline:

These revenues can be segmented as the number of customers multiplied by the average ticket price. The number of customers can be further broken down into a number of flights multiplied by the number of seats, times average occupancy rate. The node corresponding to the average ticket price can then be segmented further.

4.2.2 Hypothesis trees

Hypothesis trees are similar, the only difference being that rather than just trying to break up the issue into smaller issues you are assuming that the problem can be solved and you are formulating solutions.

In the example above, you would assume revenues can be increased by either increasing the average ticket price or the number of customers . You can then hypothesize that you can increase the average occupancy rate in three ways: align the schedule of short and long haul flights, run a promotion to boost occupancy in off-peak times, or offer early bird discounts.

4.2.3 Other structures:structured lists

Structured lists are simply subcategories of a problem into which you can fit similar elements. This McKinsey case answer starts off by identifying several buckets such as retailer response, competitor response, current capabilities and brand image and then proceeds to consider what could fit into these categories.

Buckets can be a good way to start the structure of a complex case but when using them it can be very difficult to be MECE and consistent, so you should always aim to then re-organize them into either an issue or a hypothesis tree.

It is worth noting that the same problem can be structured in multiple valid ways by choosing different means to segment the key issues. Ultimately all these lists are methods to set out a logical hierachy among elements.

4.2.4 Structures in practice

That said, not all valid structures are equally useful in solving the underlying problem. A good structure fulfils several requirements - including MECE-ness , level consistency, materiality, simplicity, and actionability. It’s important to put in the time to master segmentation, so you can choose a scheme isn’t only valid, but actually useful in addressing the problem.

After taking the effort to identify the problem properly, an advantage of our method is that it will help ensure you stay focused on that same fundamental problem throughout. This might not sound like much, but many candidates end up getting lost in their own analysis, veering off on huge tangents and returning with an answer to a question they weren’t asked.

Another frequent issue - particularly with certain frameworks - is that candidates finish their analysis and, even if they have successfully stuck to the initial question, they have not actually reached a definite solution. Instead, they might simply have generated a laundry list of pros and cons, with no clear single recommendation for action.

Clients employ consultants for actionable answers, and this is what is expected in the case interview. The problem driven structure excels in ensuring that everything you do is clearly related back to the key question in a way that will generate a definitive answer. Thus, the problem driven structure builds in the hypothesis driven approach so characteristic of real consulting practice.

You can learn how to set out your own problem driven structures in our article here and in our full lesson in the MCC Academy course.

4.2. Lead the analysis

A problem driven structure might ensure we reach a proper solution eventually, but how do we actually get there?

We call this step " leading the analysis ", and it is the process whereby you systematically navigate through your structure, identifying the key factors driving the issue you are addressing.

Generally, this will mean continuing to grow your tree diagram, further segmenting what you identify as the most salient end nodes and thus drilling down into the most crucial factors causing the client’s central problem.

Once you have gotten right down into the detail of what is actually causing the company’s issues, solutions can then be generated quite straightforwardly.

To see this process in action, we can return to our airline revenue example:

Let’s say we discover the average ticket price to be a key issue in the airline’s problems. Looking closer at the drivers of average ticket price, we find that the problem lies with economy class ticket prices. We can then further segment that price into the base fare and additional items such as food.

Having broken down the issue to such a fine-grained level and considering the 80/20 rule(see below), solutions occur quite naturally. In this case, we can suggest incentivising the crew to increase onboard sales, improving assortment in the plane, or offering discounts for online purchases.

Our article on leading the analysis is a great primer on the subject, with our video lesson in the MCC Academy providing the most comprehensive guide available.

4.4. Provide recommendations

So you have a solution - but you aren’t finished yet!

Now, you need to deliver your solution as a final recommendation.

This should be done as if you are briefing a busy CEO and thus should be a one minute, top-down, concise, structured, clear, and fact-based account of your findings.

The brevity of the final recommendation belies its importance. In real life consulting, the recommendation is what the client has potentially paid millions for - from their point of view, it is the only thing that matters.

In a case interview, your performance in this final summing up of your case is going to significantly colour your interviewer’s parting impression of you - and thus your chances of getting hired!

So, how do we do it right?

Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle elegantly sums up almost everything required for a perfect recommendation. The answer comes first , as this is what is most important. This is then supported by a few key arguments , which are in turn buttressed by supporting facts .

Across the whole recommendation, the goal isn’t to just summarise what you have done. Instead, you are aiming to synthesize your findings to extract the key "so what?" insight that is useful to the client going forward.

All this might seem like common sense, but it is actually the opposite of how we relay results in academia and other fields. There, we typically move from data, through arguments and eventually to conclusions. As such, making good recommendations is a skill that takes practice to master.

We can see the Pyramid Principle illustrated in the diagram below:

To supplement the basic Pyramid Principle scheme, we suggest candidates add a few brief remarks on potential risks and suggested next steps . This helps demonstrate the ability for critical self-reflection and lets your interviewer see you going the extra mile.

The combination of logical rigour and communication skills that is so definitive of consulting is particularly on display in the final recommendation.

Despite it only lasting 60 seconds, you will need to leverage a full set of key consulting skills to deliver a really excellent recommendation and leave your interviewer with a good final impression of your case solving abilities.

Our specific article on final recommendations and the specific video lesson on the same topic within our MCC Academy are great, comprehensive resources. Beyond those, our lesson on consulting thinking and our articles on MECE and the Pyramid Principle are also very useful.

4.5. What if I get stuck?

Naturally with case interviews being difficult problems there may be times where you’re unsure what to do or which direction to take. The most common scenario is that you will get stuck midway through the case and there are essentially two things that you should do:

• 1. Go back to your structure
• 2. Ask the interviewer for clarification

Your structure should always be your best friend - after all, this is why you put so much thought and effort into it: if it’s MECE it will point you in the right direction. This may seem abstract but let’s take the very simple example of a profitability case interview: if you’ve started your analysis by segmenting profit into revenue minus costs and you’ve seen that the cost side of the analysis is leading you nowhere, you can be certain that the declining profit is due to a decline in revenue.

Similarly, when you’re stuck on the quantitative section of the case interview, make sure that your framework for calculations is set up correctly (you can confirm this with the interviewer) and see what it is you’re trying to solve for: for example if you’re trying to find what price the client should sell their new t-shirt in order to break even on their investment, you should realize that what you’re trying to find is the break even point, so you can start by calculating either the costs or the revenues. You have all the data for the costs side and you know they’re trying to sell 10.000 pairs so you can simply set up the equation with x being the price.

As we’ve emphasised on several occasions, your case interview will be a dialogue. As such, if you don’t know what to do next or don’t understand something, make sure to ask the interviewer (and as a general rule always follow their prompts as they are trying to help, not trick you). This is especially true for the quantitative questions, where you should really understand what data you’re looking at before you jump into any calculations. Ideally you should ask your questions before you take time to formulate your approach but don’t be afraid to ask for further clarification if you really can’t make sense of what’s going on. It’s always good to walk your interviewer through your approach before you start doing the calculations and it’s no mistake to make sure that you both have the same understanding of the data. For example when confronted with the chart below, you might ask what GW (in this case gigawatt) means from the get-go and ask to confirm the different metrics (i.e. whether 1 GW = 1000 megawatts). You will never be penalised for asking a question like that.

5. What to remember in case interviews

If you’re new to case cracking you might feel a bit hopeless when you see a difficult case question, not having any idea where to start.

In fact though, cracking case interviews is much like playing chess. The rules you need to know to get started are actually pretty simple. What will make you really proficient is time and practice.

In this section, we’ll run through a high level overview of everything you need to know, linking to more detailed resources at every step.

5.1. An overall clear structure

You will probably hear this more than you care for but it is the most important thing to keep in mind as you start solving cases, as not only it is a key evaluation criterion but the greatest tool you will have at your disposal. The ability to build a clear structure in all aspects of the case inteview will be the difference between breezing through a complicated case and struggling at its every step. Let’s look a bit closer at the key areas where you should be structured!

5.1.1 Structured notes

Every case interview starts with a prompt, usually verbal, and as such you will have to take some notes. And here is where your foray into structure begins, as the notes you take should be clear, concise and structured in a way that will allow you to repeat the case back to the interviewer without writing down any unnecessary information.

This may sound very basic but you should absolutely not be dismissive about it: taking clear and organized notes will allow what we found helps is to have separate sections for:

• The case brief
• Follow-up questions and answers
• Numerical data
• Case structure (the most crucial part when solving the case)
• Any scrap work during the case (usually calculations)

When solving the case - or, as we call it here, in the Lead the analysis step, it is highly recommended to keep on feeding and integrating your structure, so that you never get lost. Maintaining a clear high level view is one of the most critical aspects in case interviews as it is a key skill in consulting: by constantly keeping track of where you are following your structure, you’ll never lose your focus on the end goal.

In the case of an interviewer-led case, you can also have separate sheets for each question (e.g. Question 1. What factors can we look at that drive profitability?). If you develop a system like this you’ll know exactly where to look for each point of data rather than rummage around in untidy notes. There are a couple more sections that you may have, depending on preference - we’ll get to these in the next sections.

5.1.2 Structured communication

There will be three main types of communication in cases:

• 1. Asking and answering questions
• 2. Walking the interviewer through your structure (either the case or calculation framework - we’ll get to that in a bit!)
• 3. Delivering your recommendation

Asking and answering questions will be the most common of these and the key thing to do before you speak is ask for some time to collect your thoughts and get organised. What you want to avoid is a ‘laundry list’ of questions or anything that sounds too much like a stream of consciousness.

Different systems work for different candidates but a sure-fire way of being organised is numbering your questions and answers. So rather than saying something like ‘I would like to ask about the business model, operational capacity and customer personas’ it’s much better to break it down and say something along the lines of ‘I’ve got three key questions. Firstly I would like to inquire into the business model of our client. Secondly I would like to ask about their operational capacity. Thirdly I would like to know more about the different customer personas they are serving’.

A similar principle should be applied when walking the interviewer through your structure, and this is especially true of online case interviews (more and more frequent now) when the interviewer can’t see your notes. Even if you have your branches or buckets clearly defined, you should still use a numbering system to make it obvious to the interviewer. So, for example, when asked to identify whether a company should make an acquisition, you might say ‘I would like to examine the following key areas. Firstly the financial aspects of this issue, secondly the synergies and thirdly the client’s expertise’

The recommendation should be delivered top-down (see section 4.4 for specifics) and should employ the same numbering principle. To do so in a speedy manner, you should circle or mark the key facts that you encounter throughout the case so you can easily pull them out at the end.

5.1.3 Structured framework

It’s very important that you have a systematic approach - or framework - for every case. Let’s get one thing straight: there is a difference between having a problem-solving framework for your case and trying to force a case into a predetermined framework. Doing the former is an absolute must , whilst doing the latter will most likely have you unceremoniously dismissed.

We have seen there are several ways of building a framework, from identifying several categories of issues (or ‘buckets’) to building an issue or hypothesis tree (which is the most efficient type of framework). For the purpose of organization, we recommend having a separate sheet for the framework of the case, or, if it’s too much to manage, you can have it on the same sheet as the initial case prompt. That way you’ll have all the details as well as your proposed solution in one place.

5.1.4 Structured calculations

Whether it’s interviewer or candidate-led, at some point in the case you will get a bunch of numerical data and you will have to perform some calculations (for the specifics of the math you’ll need on consulting interviews, have a look at our Consulting Math Guide ). Here’s where we urge you to take your time and not dive straight into calculating! And here’s why: while your numerical agility is sure to impress interviewers, what they’re actually looking for is your logic and the calculations you need to perform in order to solve the problem . So it’s ok if you make a small mistake, as long as you’re solving for the right thing.

As such, make it easy for them - and yourself. Before you start, write down in steps the calculations you need to perform. Here’s an example: let’s say you need to find out by how much profits will change if variable costs are reduced by 10%. Your approach should look something like:

• 1. Calculate current profits: Profits = Revenues - (Variable costs + Fixed costs)
• 2. Calculate the reduction in variable costs: Variable costs x 0.9
• 3. Calculate new profits: New profits = Revenues - (New variable costs + Fixed costs)

Of course, there may be more efficient ways to do that calculation, but what’s important - much like in the framework section - is to show your interviewer that you have a plan, in the form of a structured approach. You can write your plan on the sheet containing the data, then perform the calculations on a scrap sheet and fill in the results afterward.

5.2. Common business knowledge and formulas

Although some consulting firms claim they don’t evaluate candidates based on their business knowledge, familiarity with basic business concepts and formulae is very useful in terms of understanding the case studies you are given in the first instance and drawing inspiration for structuring and brainstorming.

If you are coming from a business undergrad, an MBA or are an experienced hire, you might well have this covered already. For those coming from a different background, it may be useful to cover some.

Luckily, you don’t need a degree-level understanding of business to crack case interviews , and a lot of the information you will pick up by osmosis as you read through articles like this and go through cases.

However, some things you will just need to sit down and learn. We cover everything you need to know in some detail in our Case Academy Course course. However, some examples here of things you need to learn are:

• Basic accounting (particularly how to understand all the elements of a balance sheet)
• Basic economics
• Basic marketing
• Basic strategy

Below we include a few elementary concepts and formulae so you can hit the ground running in solving cases. We should note that you should not memorise these and indeed a good portion of them can be worked out logically, but you should have at least some idea of what to expect as this will make you faster and will free up much of your mental computing power. In what follows we’ll tackle concepts that you will encounter in the private business sector as well as some situations that come up in cases that feature clients from the NGO or governmental sector.

5.2.1 Business sector concepts

These concepts are the bread and butter of almost any business case so you need to make sure you have them down. Naturally, there will be specificities and differences between cases but for the most part here is a breakdown of each of them.

5.2.1.1. Revenue

The revenue is the money that the company brings in and is usually equal to the number of products they sell multiplied to the price per item and can be expressed with the following equation:

Revenue = Volume x Price

Companies may have various sources of revenue or indeed multiple types of products, all priced differently which is something you will need to account for in your case interview. Let’s consider some situations. A clothing company such as Nike will derive most of their revenue from the number of products they sell times the average price per item. Conversely, for a retail bank revenue is measured as the volume of loans multiplied by the interest rate at which the loans are given out. As we’ll see below, we might consider primary revenues and ancillary revenues: in the case of a football club, we might calculate primary revenues by multiplying the number of tickets sold by the average ticket price, and ancillary revenues those coming from sales of merchandise (similarly, let’s say average t-shirt price times the number of t-shirts sold), tv rights and sponsorships.

These are but a few examples and another reminder that you should always aim to ask questions and understand the precise revenue structure of the companies you encounter in cases.

5.2.1.2. Costs

The costs are the expenses that a company incurs during its operations. Generally, they can be broken down into fixed and variable costs :

Costs = Fixed Costs + Variable Costs

As their name implies, fixed costs do not change based on the number of units produced or sold. For example, if you produce shoes and are renting the space for your factory, you will have to pay the rent regardless of whether you produce one pair or 100. On the other hand, variable costs depend on the level of activity, so in our shoe factory example they would be equivalent to the materials used to produce each pair of shoes and would increase the more we produce.

These concepts are of course guidelines used in order to simplify the analysis in cases, and you should be aware that in reality often the situation can be more complicated. However, this should be enough for case interviews. Costs can also be quasi-fixed, in that they increase marginally with volume. Take the example of a restaurant which has a regular staff, incurring a fixed cost but during very busy hours or periods they also employ some part-time workers. This cost is not exactly variable (as it doesn’t increase with the quantity of food produced) but also not entirely fixed, as the number of extra hands will depend on how busy the restaurant is. Fixed costs can also be non-linear in nature. Let’s consider the rent in the same restaurant: we would normally pay a fixed amount every month, but if the restaurant becomes very popular we might need to rent out some extra space so the cost will increase. Again, this is not always relevant for case interviews.

5.2.1.3. Profit and profit margin

The profit is the amount of money a company is left with after it has paid all of its expenses and can be expressed as follows:

Profit = Revenue - Costs

It’s very likely that you will encounter a profitability issue in one of your case interviews, namely you will be asked to increase a company’s profit. There are two main ways of doing this: increasing revenues and reducing costs , so these will be the two main areas you will have to investigate. This may seem simple but what you will really need to understand in a case are the key drivers of a business (and this should be done through clarifying questions to the interviewer - just as a real consultant would question their client).

For example, if your client is an airline you can assume that the main source of revenue is sales of tickets, but you should inquire how many types of ticket the specific airline sells. You may naturally consider economy and business class tickets, but you may find out that there is a more premium option - such as first class - and several in-between options. Similarly to our football club example, there may be ancillary revenues from selling of food and beverage as well as advertising certain products or services on flights.

You may also come across the profit margin in case interviews. This is simply the percentage of profit compared to the revenue and can be expressed as follows:

Profit margin = Profit/Revenue x 100

5.2.1.4. Break-even point

An ancillary concept to profit, the break-even point is the moment where revenues equal costs making the profit zero and can be expressed as the following equation:

Revenues = Costs (Fixed costs + Variable costs)

This formula will be useful when you are asked questions such as ‘What is the minimum price I should sell product X?’ or ‘What quantity do I need to sell in order to recoup my investment?’. Let’s say in a case interview an owner of a sandwich store asks us to figure out how many salami and cheese salami sandwiches she needs to sell in order to break even. She’s spending $4 on salami and $2 for cheese and lettuce per sandwich, and believes she can sell the sandwiches at around $7. The cost of utilities and personnel is around $5000 per month. We could lay this all out in the break-even equation:

7 x Q ( quantity ) = (4+2) x Q + 5000 ( variable + fixed costs )

In a different scenario, we may be asked to calculate the break-even price . Let’s consider our sandwich example and say our owner knows she has enough ingredients for about 5000 sandwiches per month but is not sure how much to sell them for. In that case, if we know our break-even equation, we can simply make the following changes:

P ( price ) x 5000 = (4+2) x 5000 + 5000

By solving the equation we get to the price of $7 per sandwich.

5.2.1.5. Market share and market size

We can also consider the market closely with profit, as in fact the company’s performance in the market is what drives profits. The market size is the total number of potential customers for a certain business or product, whereas the market share is the percentage of that market that your business controls (or could control, depending on the case).

There is a good chance you will have to estimate the market size in one of your case interviews and we get into more details on how to do that below. You may be asked to estimate this in either number of potential customers or total value . The latter simply refers to the number of customers multiplied by the average value of the product or service.

To calculate the market share you will have to divide the company’s share by the total market size and multiply by 100:

Note, though, that learning the very basics of business is the beginning rather than the end of your journey. Once you are able to “speak business” at a rudimentary level, you should try to “become fluent” and immerse yourself in reading/viewing/listening to as wide a variety of business material as possible, getting a feel for all kinds of companies and industries - and especially the kinds of problems that can come up in each context and how they are solved. The material put out by the consulting firms themselves is a great place to start, but you should also follow the business news and find out about different companies and sectors as much as possible between now and interviews. Remember, if you’re going to be a consultant, this should be fun rather than a chore!

5.3 Public sector and NGO concepts

As we mentioned, there will be some cases (see section 6.6 for a more detailed example) where the key performance indicators (or KPIs in short) will not be connected to profit. The most common ones will involve the government of a country or an NGO, but they can be way more diverse and require more thought and application of first principles. We have laid out a couple of the key concepts or KPIs that come up below

5.3.1 Quantifiability

In many such scenarios you will be asked to make an important strategic decision of some kind or to optimise a process. Of course these are not restricted to non-private sector cases but this is where they really come into their own as there can be great variation in the type of decision and the types of field.

While there may be no familiar business concepts to anchor yourself onto, a concept that is essential is quantifiability . This means, however qualitative the decision might seem, consultants rely on data so you should always aim to have aspects of a decision that can be quantified, even if the data doesn’t present itself in a straightforward manner.

Let’s take a practical example. Your younger sibling asks you to help them decide which university they should choose if they want to study engineering. One way to structure your approach would be to segment the problem into factors affecting your sibling’s experience at university and experience post-university. Within the ‘at uni’ category you might think about the following:

• Financials : How much are tuition costs and accommodation costs?
• Quality of teaching and research : How are possible universities ranked in the QS guide based on teaching and research?
• Quality of resources : How well stocked is their library, are the labs well equipped etc.?
• Subject ranking : How is engineering at different unis ranked?
• Life on campus and the city : What are the living costs in the city where the university is based? What are the extracurricular opportunities and would your sibling like to live in that specific city based on them?

Within the ‘out of uni’ category you might think about:

• Exit options : What are the fields in which your sibling could be employed and how long does it take the average student of that university to find a job?
• Alumni network : What percentage of alumni are employed by major companies?
• Signal : What percentage of applicants from the university get an interview in major engineering companies and related technical fields?

You will perhaps notice that all the buckets discussed pose quantifiable questions meant to provide us with data necessary to make a decision. It’s no point to ask ‘Which university has the nicest teaching staff?’ as that can be a very subjective metric.

5.3.1 Impact

Another key concept to consider when dealing with sectors other than the private one is how impactful a decision or a line of inquiry is on the overarching issue , or whether all our branches in our issue tree have a similar impact. This can often come in the form of impact on lives, such as in McKinsey’s conservation case discussed below, namely how many species can we save with our choice of habitat.

5.4 Common consulting concepts

Consultants use basic business concepts on an every day basis, as they help them articulate their frameworks to problems. However, they also use some consulting specific tools to quality check their analysis and perform in the most efficient way possible. These principles can be applied to all aspects of a consultant’s work, but for brevity we can say they mostly impact a consultant’s systematic approach and communication - two very important things that are also tested in case interviews. Therefore, it’s imperative that you not only get to know them, but learn how and when to use them as they are at the very core of good casing. They are MECE-ness, the Pareto Principle and the Pyramid principle and are explained briefly below - you should, however, go on to study them in-depth in their respective articles.

Perhaps the central pillar of all consulting work and an invaluable tool to solve cases, MECE stands for Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive . It can refer to any and every aspect in a case but is most often used when talking about structure. We have a detailed article explaining the concept here , but the short version is that MECE-ness ensures that there is no overlap between elements of a structure (i.e. the Mutually Exclusive component) and that it covers all the drivers or areas of a problem (Collectively Exhaustive). It is a concept that can be applied to any segmentation when dividing a set into subsets that include it wholly but do not overlap.

Let’s take a simple example and then a case framework example. In simple terms, when we are asked to break down the set ‘cars’ into subsets, dividing cars into ‘red cars’ and ‘sports cars’ is neither mutually exclusive (as there are indeed red sports cars) nor exhaustive of the whole set (i.e. there are also yellow non-sports cars that are not covered by this segmentation). A MECE way to segment would be ‘cars produced before 2000’ and ‘cars produced after 2000’ as this segmentation allows for no overlap and covers all the cars in existence.

Dividing cars can be simple, but how can we ensure MECEness in a case-interview a.k.a. a business situation. While the same principles apply, a good tip to ensure that your structure is MECE is to think about all the stakeholders - i.e. those whom a specific venture involves.

Let’s consider that our client is a soda manufacturer who wants to move from a business-to-business strategy, i.e. selling to large chains of stores and supermarkets, to a business-to-consumer strategy where it sells directly to consumers. In doing so they would like to retrain part of their account managers as direct salespeople and need to know what factors to consider.

A stakeholder-driven approach would be to consider the workforce and customers and move further down the issue tree, thinking about individual issues that might affect them. In the case of the workforce, we might consider how the shift would affect their workload and whether it takes their skillset into account. As for the customers, we might wonder whether existing customers would be satisfied with this move: will the remaining B2B account managers be able to provide for the needs of all their clients and will the fact that the company is selling directly to consumers now not cannibalise their businesses? We see how by taking a stakeholder-centred approach we can ensure that every single perspective and potential issue arising from it is fully covered.

5.4.2 The Pareto Principle

Also known as the 80/20 rule, this principle is important when gauging the impact of a decision or a factor in your analysis. It simply states that in business (but not only) 80% of outcomes come from 20% of causes. What this means is you can make a few significant changes that will impact most of your business organisation, sales model, cost structure etc.

Let’s have a look at 3 quick examples to illustrate this:

• 80% of all accidents are caused by 20% of drivers
• 20% of a company’s products account for 80% of the sales
• 80% of all results in a company are driven by 20% of its employees

The 80/20 rule will be a very good guide line in real engagements as well as case interviews, as it will essentially point to the easiest and most straightforward way of doing things. Let’s say one of the questions in a case is asking you to come up with an approach to understand the appeal of a new beard trimmer. Obviously you can’t interview the whole male population so you might think about setting up a webpage and asking people to comment their thoughts. But what you would get would be a laundry list of difficult to sift through data.

Using an 80/20 approach you would segment the population based on critical factors (age groups, grooming habits etc.) and then approach a significant sample size of each (e.g. 20), analysing the data and reaching a conclusion.

5.4.3 The Pyramid Principle

This principle refers to organising your communication in a top-down , efficient manner. While this is generally applicable, the pyramid principle will most often be employed when delivering the final recommendation to your client. This means - as is implicit in the name - that you would organise your recommendation (and communication in general) as a pyramid, stating the conclusion or most important element at the top then go down the pyramid listing 3 supporting arguments and then further (ideally also 3) supporting arguments for those supporting arguments.

Let’s look at this in practice in a case interview context: your client is a German air-conditioning unit manufacturer who was looking to expand into the French market. However, after your analysis you’ve determined that the market share they were looking to capture would not be feasible. A final recommendation using the Pyramid Principle would sound something like this: ‘I recommend that we do not enter the German market for the following three reasons. Firstly, the market is too small for our ambitions of $50 million. Secondly the market is heavily concentrated, being controlled by three major players and our 5 year goal would amount to controlling 25% of the market, a share larger than that of any of the players. Thirdly, the alternative of going into the corporate market would not be feasible, as it has high barriers to entry.Then, if needed, we could delve deeper into each of our categories

6. Case examples or building blocks?

As we mentioned before, in your case interview preparation you will undoubtedly find preparation resources that claim that there are several standard types of cases and that there is a general framework that can be applied to each type of case. While there are indeed cases that are straightforward at least in appearance and seemingly invite the application of such frameworks, the reality is never that simple and cases often involve multiple or more complicated components that cannot be fitted into a simple framework.

At MCC we don’t want you to get into the habit of trying to identify which case type you’re dealing with and pull out a framework, but we do recognize that there are recurring elements in frameworks that are useful - such as the profitability of a venture (with its revenues and costs), the valuation of a business, estimating and segmenting a market and pricing a product.

We call these building blocks because they can be used to build case frameworks but are not a framework in and of themselves, and they can be shuffled around and rearranged in any way necessary to be tailored to our case. Hence, our approach is not to make you think in terms of case types but work from first principles and use these building blocks to build your own framework. Let’s take two case prompts to illustrate our point.

The first is from the Bain website, where the candidate is asked whether they think it’s a good idea for their friend to open a coffee shop in Cambridge UK (see the case here ). The answer framework provided here is a very straightforward profitability analysis framework, examining the potential revenues and potential costs of the venture:

While this is a good point to start for your case interview (especially taken together with the clarifying questions), we will notice that this approach will need more tailoring to the case - for example the quantity of coffee will be determined by the market for coffee drinkers in Cambridge, which we have to determine based on preference. We are in England so a lot of people will be drinking tea but we are in a university town so perhaps more people than average are drinking coffee as it provides a better boost when studying. All these are some much needed case-tailored hypotheses that we can make based on the initial approach.

Just by looking at this case we might be tempted to say that we can just take a profitability case and apply it without any issues. However, this generic framework is just a starting point and in reality we would need to tailor it much further in the way we had started to do in order to get to a satisfactory answer. For example, the framework for this specific case interview doesn’t cover aspects such as the customer’s expertise: does the friend have any knowledge of the coffee business, such as where to source coffee and how to prepare it? Also, we could argue there may be some legal factors to consider here, such as any approvals that they might need from the city council to run a coffee shop on site, or some specific trade licences that are not really covered in the basic profitability framework.

Let’s take a different case , however, from the McKinsey website. In this scenario, the candidate is being asked to identify some factors in order to choose where to focus the client’s conservation efforts. Immediately we can realise that this case doesn’t lend itself to any pre-packaged framework and we will need to come up with something from scratch - and take a look at McKinsey’s answer of the areas to focus on:

We notice immediately that this framework is 100% tailored to the case - of course there are elements which we encounter in other cases, such as costs and risks but again these are applied in an organic way. It’s pretty clear that while no standard framework would work in this case, the aforementioned concepts - costs and risks - and the way to approach them (a.k.a building blocks ) are fundamentally similar throughout cases (with the obvious specificities of each case).

In what follows, we’ll give a brief description of each building block starting from the Bain example discussed previously, in order to give you a general idea of what they are and their adaptability, but you should make sure to follow the link to the in-depth articles to learn all their ins and outs.

6.1 Estimates and segmentation

This building block will come into play mostly when you’re thinking about the market for a certain product (but make sure to read the full article for more details). Let’s take our Bain Cambridge coffee example. As we mentioned under the quantity bucket we need to understand what the market size for coffee in Cambridge would be - so we can make an estimation based on segmentation .

The key to a good estimation is the ability to logically break down the problem into more manageable pieces. This will generally mean segmenting a wider population to find a particular target group. We can start off with the population of Cambridge - which we estimate at 100.000. In reality the population is closer to 150.000 but that doesn’t matter - the estimation has to be reasonable and not accurate , so unless the interviewer gives you a reason to reconsider you can follow your instinct. We can divide that into people who do and don’t drink coffee. Given our arguments before, we can conclude that 80% of those, so 80.000 drink coffee. Then we can further segment into those who drink regularly - let’s say every day - and those who drink occasionally - let’s say once a week. Based on the assumptions before about the student population needing coffee to function, and with Cambridge having a high student population, we can assume that 80% of those drinking coffee are regular drinkers, so that would be 64.000 regular drinkers and 16.000 occasional drinkers. We can then decide whom we want to target what our strategy needs to be:

This type of estimation and segmentation can be applied to any case specifics - hence why it is a building block.

6.2 Profitability

We had several looks at this building block so far (see an in-depth look here ) as it will show up in most case interivew scenarios, since profit is a key element in any company’s strategy. As we have seen, the starting point to this analysis is to consider both the costs and revenues of a company, and try to determine whether revenues need to be improved or whether costs need to be lowered. In the coffee example, the revenues are dictated by the average price per coffe x the number of coffees sold , whereas costs can be split into fixed and variable .

Some examples of fixed costs would be the rent for the stores and the cost of the personnel and utilities, while the most obvious variable costs would be the coffee beans used and the takeaway containers (when needed). We may further split revenues in this case into Main revenues - i.e. the sales of coffee - and Ancillary revenues , which can be divided into Sales of food products (sales of pastries, sandwiches etc., each with the same price x quantity schema) and Revenues from events - i.e renting out the coffee shop to events and catering for the events themselves. Bear in mind that revenues will be heavily influenced by the penetration rate , i.e. the share of the market which we can capture.

6.3 Pricing

Helping a company determine how much they should charge for their goods or services is another theme that comes up frequently in cases. While it may seem less complicated than the other building blocks, we assure you it’s not - you will have to understand and consider several factors, such as the costs a company is incurring, their general strategic positioning, availability, market trends as well as the customers’ willingness to pay (or WTP in short) - so make sure to check out our in-depth guide here .

In our example, we may determine that the cost per cup (coffee beans, staff, rent) is £1. We want to be student friendly so we should consider how much students would want to pay for a coffee as well as how much are competitors are charging. Based on those factors, it would be reasonable to charge on average £2 per cup of coffee. It’s true that our competitors are charging £3 but they are targeting mostly the adult market, whose willingness to pay is higher, so their pricing model takes that into account as well as the lower volume of customers in that demographic.

6.4. Valuation

A variant of the pricing building block, a valuation problem generally asks the candidate to determine how much a client should pay for a specific company (the target of an acquisition) as well as what other factors to consider. The two most important factors (but not the only ones - for a comprehensive review see our Valuation article ) to consider are the net present value (in consulting interviews usually in perpetuity) and the synergies .

In short, the net present value of a company is how much profit it currently brings in, divided by how much that cash flow will depreciate in the future and can be represented with the equation below:

The synergies refer to what could be achieved should the companies operate as one, and can be divided into cost and revenue synergies .

Let’s expand our coffee example a bit to understand these. Imagine that our friend manages to open a chain of coffee shops in Cambridge and in the future considers acquiring a chain of take-out restaurants. The most straightforward example of revenue synergies would be cross-selling, in this case selling coffee in the restaurants as well as in the dedicated stores, and thus getting an immediate boost in market share by using the existing customers of the restaurant chain. A cost synergy would be merging the delivery services of the two businesses to deliver both food and coffee, thus avoiding redundancies and reducing costs associated with twice the number of drivers and vehicles.

6.5. Competitive interaction

This component of cases deals with situations where the market in which a company is operating changes and the company must decide what to do. These changes often have to do with a new player entering the market (again for more details make sure to dive into the Competitive Interaction article ).

Let’s assume that our Cambridge coffee shop has now become a chain and has flagged up to other competitors that Cambridge is a blooming market for coffee. As such, Starbucks has decided to open a few stores in Cambridge themselves, to test this market. The question which might be posed to a candidate is what should our coffee chain do. One way (and a MECE one) to approach the problem is to decide between doing something and doing nothing . We might consider merging with another coffee chain and pooling our resources or playing to our strengths and repositioning ourselves as ‘your student-friendly, shop around the corner’. Just as easily we may just wait the situation out and see whether indeed Starbucks is cutting into our market share - after all, the advantages of our product and services might speak for themselves and Starbucks might end up tanking. Both of these are viable options if argued right and depending on the further specifics of the case.

6.6. Special cases

Most cases deal with private sectors, where the overarching objective entails profit in some form. However, as hinted before, there are cases which deal with other sectors where there are other KPIs in place . The former will usually contain one or several of these building blocks whereas the latter will very likely have neither. This latter category is arguably the one that will stretch your analytical and organisational skills to the limit, since there will be very little familiarity that you can fall back on (McKinsey famously employs such cases in their interview process).

So how do we tackle the structure for such cases? The short answer would be starting from first principles and using the problem driven structure outlined above, but let’s look at a quick example in the form of a McKinsey case :

The first question addressed to the candidate is the following:

This is in fact asking us to build a structure for the case. So what should we have in mind here? Most importantly, we should start with a structure that is MECE and we should remember to do that by considering all the stakeholders . They are on the one hand the government and affiliated institutions and on the other the population. We might then consider which issues might arise for each shareholder and what the benefits for them would be, as well as the risks. This approach is illustrated in the answer McKinsey provides as well:

More than anything, this type of case shows us how important it is to practise and build different types of structures, and think about MECE ways of segmenting the problem.

7. How Do I prepare for case interviews

In consulting fashion, the overall preparation can be structured into theoretical preparation and practical preparation , with each category then being subdivided into individual prep and prep with a partner .

As a general rule, the level and intensity of the preparation will differ based on your background - naturally if you have a business background (and have been part of a consulting club or something similar) your preparation will be less intensive than if you’re starting from scratch. The way we suggest you go about it is to start with theoretical preparation , which means learning about case interviews, business and basic consulting concepts (you can do this using free resources - such as the ones we provide - or if you want a more through preparation you can consider joining our Case Academy as well).

You can then move on to the practical preparation which should start with doing solo cases and focusing on areas of improvement, and then move on to preparation with a partner , which should be another candidate or - ideally - an ex-consultant.

Let’s go into more details with respect to each type of preparation.

7.1. Solo practice

The two most important areas of focus in sole preparation are:

• Mental math

As we mentioned briefly, the best use of your time is to focus on solving cases. You can start with cases listed on MBB sites since they are clearly stated and have worked solutions as well (e.g. Bain is a good place to start) and then move to more complex cases (our Case Library also offers a range of cases of different complexities). To build your confidence, start out on easier case questions, work through with the solutions, and don't worry about time. As you get better, you can move on to more difficult cases and try to get through them more quickly. You should practice around eight case studies on your own to build your confidence.

Another important area of practice is your mental mathematics as this skill will considerably increase your confidence and is neglected by many applicants - much to their immediate regret in the case interview. Find our mental math tool here or in our course, and practice at least ten minutes per day, from day one until the day before the interview.

7.2. Preparation with a partner

There are aspects of a case interview - such as asking clarifying questions - which you cannot do alone and this is why, after you feel comfortable, you should move on to practice with another person. There are two options here:

• Practicing with a peer
• Practicing with an ex-consultant

In theory they can be complementary - especially if you’re peer is also preparing for consulting interviews - and each have advantages and disadvantages. A peer is likely to practice with you for free for longer, however you may end up reinforcing some bad habits or unable to get actionable feedback. A consultant will be able to provide you the latter but having their help for the same number of hours as a peer will come at a higher cost. Let’s look at each option in more detail.

7.2.1. Peer preparation

Once you have worked through eight cases solo, you should be ready to simulate the case interview more closely and start working with another person.

Here, many candidates turn to peer practice - that is, doing mock case interviews with friends, classmates or others also applying to consulting. If you’re in university, and especially in business school, there will very likely be a consulting club for you to join and do lots of case practice with. If you don’t have anyone to practice, though, or if you just want to get a bit more volume in with others, our free meeting board lets you find fellow applicants from around the world with whom to practice. We recommend practicing around 10 to 15 ‘live’ cases to really get to a point where you feel comfortable.

7.2.2. Preparation with a consultant

You can do a lot practising by yourself and with peers. However, nothing will bring up your skills so quickly and profoundly as working with a real consultant.

Perhaps think about it like boxing. You can practice drills and work on punch bags all you want, but at some point you need to get into the ring and do some actual sparring if you ever want to be ready to fight.

Practicing with an ex consultant is essentialy a simulation of a case interview. Of course, it isn’t possible to secure the time of experienced top-tier consultants for free. However, when considering whether you should invest to boost your chances of success, it is worth considering the difference in your salary over even just a few years between getting into a top-tier firm versus a second-tier one. In the light of thousands in increased annual earnings (easily accumulating into millions over multiple years), it becomes clear that getting expert interview help really is one of the best investments you can make in your own future.

Should you decide to make this step, MyConsultingCoach can help, offering bespoke mentoring programmes , where you are paired with a 5+ year experienced, ex-MBB mentor of your choosing, who will then oversee your whole case interview preparation from start to finish - giving you your best possible chance of landing a job!

7.3. Practice for online interviews

Standard preparation for interview case studies will carry directly over to online cases.

However, if you want to do some more specific prep, you can work through cases solo to a timer and using a calculator and/or Excel (online cases generally allow calculators and second computers to help you, whilst these are banned in live case interviews).

Older PST-style questions also make great prep, but a particularly good simulation is the self-assessment tests included in our Case Academy course . These multiple choice business questions conducted with a strict time limit are great preparation for the current crop of online cases.

7.4. Fit interviews

As we’ve noted, even something billed as a case interview is very likely to contain a fit interview as a subset.

We have an article on fit interviews and also include a full set of lessons on how to answer fit questions properly as a subset of our comprehensive Case Academy course .

Here though, the important thing to convey is that you take preparing for fit questions every bit as seriously as you do case prep.

Since they sound the same as you might encounter when interviewing for other industries, the temptation is to regard these as “just normal interview questions”.

However, consulting firms take your answers to these questions a good deal more seriously than elsewhere.

This isn’t just for fluffy “corporate culture” reasons. The long hours and close teamwork, as well as the client-facing nature of management consulting, mean that your personality and ability to get on with others is going to be a big part of making you a tolerable and effective co-worker.

If you know you’ll have to spend 14+ hour working days with someone you hire and that your annual bonus depends on them not alienating clients, you better believe you’ll pay attention to their character in interview.

There are also hard-nosed financial reasons for the likes of McKinsey, Bain and BCG to drill down so hard on your answers.

In particular, top consultancies have huge issues with staff retention. The average management consultant only stays with these firms for around two years before they have moved on to a new industry.

In some cases, consultants bail out because they can’t keep up with the arduous consulting lifestyle of long hours and endless travel. In many instances, though, departing consultants are lured away by exit opportunities - such as the well trodden paths towards internal strategy roles, private equity or becoming a start-up founder.

Indeed, many individuals will intentionally use a two year stint in consulting as something like an MBA they are getting paid for - giving them accelerated exposure to the business world and letting them pivot into something new.

Consulting firms want to get a decent return on investment for training new recruits. Thus, they want hires who not only intend to stick with consulting longer-term, but also have a temperament that makes this feasible and an overall career trajectory where it just makes sense for them to stay put.

This should hammer home the point that, if you want to get an offer, you need to be fully prepared to answer fit questions - and to do so excellently - any time you have a case interview.

8. Interview day - what to expect, with tips

Of course, all this theory is well and good, but a lot of readers might be concerned about what exactly to expect in real life . It’s perfectly reasonable to want to get as clear a picture as possible here - we all want to know what we are going up against when we face a new challenge!

Indeed, it is important to think about your interview in more holistic terms, rather than just focusing on small aspects of analysis. Getting everything exactly correct is less important than the overall approach you take to reasoning and how you communicate - and candidates often lose sight of this fact.

In this section, then, we’ll run through the case interview experience from start to finish, directing you to resources with more details where appropriate. As a supplement to this, the following video from Bain is excellent. It portrays an abridged version of a case interview, but is very useful as a guide to what to expect - not just from Bain, but from McKinsey, BCG and any other high-level consulting firm.

8.1. Getting started

Though you might be shown through to the office by a staff member, usually your interviewer will come and collect you from a waiting area. Either way, when you first encounter them, you should greet your interviewer with a warm smile and a handshake (unless they do not offer their hand). Be confident without verging into arrogance. You will be asked to take a seat in the interviewer’s office, where the case interview can then begin.

8.1.1. First impressions

In reality, your assessment begins before you even sit down at your interviewer’s desk. Whether at a conscious level or not, the impression you make within the first few seconds of meeting your interviewer is likely to significantly inform the final hiring decision (again, whether consciously or not).

Your presentation and how you hold yourself and behave are all important . If this seems strange, consider that, if hired, you will be personally responsible for many clients’ impressions of the firm. These things are part of the job! Much of material on the fit interview is useful here, whilst we also cover first impressions and presentation generally in our article on what to wear to interview .

As we have noted above, your interview might start with a fit segment - that is, with the interviewer asking questions about your experiences, your soft skills, and motivation to want to join consulting generally and that firm in particular. In short, the kinds of things a case study can’t tell them about you. We have a fit interview article and course to get you up to speed here.

8.1.2. Down to business

Following an initial conversation, your interviewer will introduce your case study , providing a prompt for the question you have to answer. You will have a pen and paper in front of you and should (neatly) note down the salient pieces of information (keep this up throughout the interview).

It is crucial here that you don’t delve into analysis or calculations straight away . Case prompts can be tricky and easy to misunderstand, especially when you are under pressure. Rather, ask any questions you need to fully understand the case question and then validate that understanding with the interviewer before you kick off any analysis. Better to eliminate mistakes now than experience that sinking feeling of realising you have gotten the whole thing wrong halfway through your case!

This process is covered in our article on identifying the problem and in greater detail in our Case Academy lesson on that subject.

8.1.3. Analysis

Once you understand the problem, you should take a few seconds to set your thoughts in order and draw up an initial structure for how you want to proceed. You might benefit from utilising one or more of our building blocks here to make a strong start. Present this to your interviewer and get their approval before you get into the nuts and bolts of analysis.

We cover the mechanics of how to structure your problem and lead the analysis in our articles here and here and more thoroughly in the MCC Case Academy . What it is important to convey here, though, is that your case interview is supposed to be a conversation rather than a written exam . Your interviewer takes a role closer to a co-worker than an invigilator and you should be conversing with them throughout.

Indeed, how you communicate with your interviewer and explain your rationale is a crucial element of how you will be assessed. Case questions in general, are not posed to see if you can produce the correct answer, but rather to see how you think . Your interviewer wants to see you approach the case in a structured, rational fashion. The only way they are going to know your thought processes, though, is if you tell them!

To demonstrate this point, here is another excellent video from Bain, where candidates are compared.

Note that multiple different answers to each question are considered acceptable and that Bain is primarily concerned with the thought processes of the candidate’s exhibit .

Another reason why communication is absolutely essential to case interview success is the simple reason that you will not have all the facts you need to complete your analysis at the outset. Rather, you will usually have to ask the interviewer for additional data throughout the case to allow you to proceed .

NB: Don't be let down by your math!

Your ability to quickly and accurately interpret these charts and other figures under pressure is one of the skills that is being assessed. You will also need to make any calculations with the same speed and accuracy (without a calculator!). As such, be sure that you are up to speed on your consulting math .

8.1.4. Recommendation

Finally, you will be asked to present a recommendation. This should be delivered in a brief, top-down "elevator pitch" format , as if you are speaking to a time-pressured CEO. Again here, how you communicate will be just as important as the details of what you say, and you should aim to speak clearly and with confidence.

For more detail on how to give the perfect recommendation, take a look at our articles on the Pyramid Principle and providing recommendations , as well the relevant lesson within MCC Academy .

8.1.5. Wrapping up

After your case is complete, there might be a few more fit questions - including a chance for you to ask some questions of the interviewer . This is your opportunity to make a good parting impression.

We deal with the details in our fit interview resources. However, it is always worth bearing in mind just how many candidates your interviewers are going to see giving similar answers to the same questions in the same office. A pretty obvious pre-requisite to being considered for a job is that your interviewer remembers you in the first place. Whilst you shouldn't do something stupid just to be noticed, asking interesting parting questions is a good way to be remembered.

Now, with the interview wrapped up, it’s time to shake hands, thank the interviewer for their time and leave the room .

You might have other case interviews or tests that day or you might be heading home. Either way, if know that you did all you could to prepare, you can leave content in the knowledge that you have the best possible chance of receiving an email with a job offer. This is our mission at MCC - to provide all the resources you need to realise your full potential and land your dream consulting job!

8.2. Remote and one-way interview tips

Zoom case interviews and “one-way” automated fit interviews are becoming more common as selection processes are increasingly remote, with these new formats being accompanied by their own unique challenges.

Obviously you won’t have to worry about lobbies and shaking hands for a video interview. However, a lot remains the same. You still need to do the same prep in terms of getting good at case cracking and expressing your fit answers. The specific considerations around remote case interviews are, in effect, around making sure you come across as effectively as you would in person.

8.2.1. Connection

It sounds trivial, but a successful video case interview of any kind presupposes a functioning computer with a stable and sufficient internet connection.

Absolutely don’t forget to have your laptop plugged in, as your battery will definitely let you down mid-interview. Similarly, make sure any housemates or family know not to use the microwave, vacuum cleaner or anything else that makes wifi cut out (or makes a lot of noise, obviously)

If you have to connect on a platform you don’t use much (for example, if it’s on Teams and you’re used to Zoom), make sure you have the up to date version of the app in advance, rather than having to wait for an obligatory download and end up late to join. Whilst you’re at it, make sure you’re familiar with the controls etc. At the risk of being made fun of, don’t be afraid to have a practice call with a friend.

8.2.2. Dress

You might get guidance on a slightly more relaxed dress code for a Zoom interview. However, if in doubt, dress as you would for the real thing (see our article here ).

Either way, always remember that presentation is part of what you are being assessed on - the firm needs to know you can be presentable for clients. Taking this stuff seriously also shows respect for your interviewer and their time in interviewing you.

8.2.3. Lighting

An aspect of presentation that you have to devote some thought to for a Zoom case interview is your lighting.

Hopefully, you long ago nailed a lighting set-up during the Covid lockdowns. However, make sure to check your lighting in advance with your webcam - bearing in mind what time if day your case interview actually is. If your case interview is late afternoon, don’t just check in the morning. Make sure you aren’t going to be blinded from light coming in a window behind your screen, or that you end up with the weird shadow stripes from blinds all over your face.

Natural light is always best, but if there won’t be much of that during your interview, you’ll likely want to experiment with moving some lamps around.

8.2.4. Clarity

The actual stories you tell in an automated “one-way” fit interview will be the same as for a live equivalent. If anything, things should be easier, as you can rattle off a practised monologue without an interviewer interrupting you to ask for clarifications.

You can probably also assume that the algorithm assessing your performance is sufficiently capable that it will be observing you at much the same level as a human interviewer. However, it is probably still worth speaking as clearly as possible with these kinds of interviews and paying extra attention to your lighting to ensure that your face is clearly visible.

No doubt the AIs scoring these interviews are improving all the time, but you still want to make their job as easy as possible. Just think about the same things as you would with a live Zoom case interview, but more so.

9. How we can help

There are lots of great free resources on this site to get you started with preparation, from all our articles on case solving and consulting skills to our free case library and peer practice meeting board .

To step your preparation up a notch, though, our Case Academy course will give you everything you need to know to solve the most complex of cases - whether those are in live case interviews, with chatbots, written tests or any other format.

Whatever kind of case you end up facing, nothing will bring up your skillset faster than the kind of acute, actionable feedback you can get from a mock case interview a real, MBB consultant. Whilst it's possible to get by without this kind of coaching, it does tend to be the biggest single difference maker for successful candidates.

You can find out more on our coaching page:

Explore Coaching

Of course, for those looking for a truly comprehensive programme, with a 5+ year experienced MBB consultant overseeing their entire prep personally, from networking and applications right through to your offer, we have our mentoring programmes.

You can read more here:

Comprehensive Mentoring

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Case Interview: The Free Preparation Guide (2024)

The case interview is a challenging interview format that simulates the job of a management consultant , testing candidates across a wide range of problem-solving dimensions.

McKinsey, BCG and Bain – along with other top consulting firms – use the case interview because it’s a statistically proven predictor of how well a candidate will perform in the role. The format is not only used by management consulting firms. Other types of organizations – like tech companies, financial services institutions, and non-profits – often use case interviews to assess candidates who are interviewing for roles focused on shaping strategic initiatives.

If you’re preparing to face a case interview, you may be feeling a little apprehensive. The format is notoriously demanding and unlike any other type of recruitment assessment you may have experienced before. However, with the right preparation and investment of time and effort, it is possible to master.

In this guide, we break down everything you need to know about the case interview, outlining exactly what you need to do to prepare effectively and ace the case.

Key takeaways

• The classic case interview format follows the same steps that a management consultant would encounter on a client project. The interview is a little like a role-play where the interviewer plays the role of a client and the candidate plays the part of the consultant hired to solve the problem.
• Some firms occasionally deviate from the classic case interview format. Popular alternatives include written case studies – which require candidates to review paper documents and then prepare and deliver a presentation – and market sizing case interviews, which require candidates to estimate a number.
• Case interviews test candidates against a set of six problem-solving dimensions: structuring, math, judgment and insights, creativity, synthesis, and case leadership. The interviewer uses a scorecard to assess the candidate’s performance in each of these areas.
• Case interview questions can be about almost any type of challenge or opportunity. However, our research indicates that there are 10 types of questions that are asked most frequently at top consulting firms. These include questions on profit improvement, revenue growth, and market entry.
• To do well in a case interview, it’s vital to create custom interview structures that meet the conditions of the ‘AIM’ test. It helps to have a good working knowledge of key case interview frameworks, but this alone is not sufficient.
• A strong grasp of case math is also crucial when it comes to case interview performance. While only high-school level math skills are required, it’s an aspect of the case interview that many candidates find challenging.
• Successful candidates are able to summarize their findings effectively. They also demonstrate strong case leadership by progressing through the case proactively and remaining focused on its overarching objectives.
• To prepare for a case interview, it’s essential to learn every problem-solving skill that will be assessed. We teach all of these skills in our Interview Prep Course , which contains all the video lectures, sample interviews, case material, and practice tools you’ll need to ace any case interview.
• Most candidates who go on to receive an offer from a top consulting firm like McKinsey, BCG or Bain complete at least 25 live practice sessions with a partner before their interview. You’ll find over 100 high-quality cases in our Case Library and a diverse community of candidates available for practice in our Practice Room .
• Some candidates choose to supplement their preparation by working with a coach who has been an interviewer at a top consulting firm. Here at CaseCoach, our coaches have all been handpicked from the alumni of top firms such as McKinsey, BCG and Bain.
• Although the world’s top consulting firms all test candidates using similar methods, none of them approach the interview process in exactly the same way. If you’re preparing to interview at a top consulting firm, it’s important to do your research and find out what you can expect.

An introduction to the case interview

The case interview format, the classic case interview.

The vast majority of case interviews follow the same steps that management consultants encounter on real client projects.

• Brief: The interviewer gives the candidate a brief for the case. They explain the context in which the client is operating, and outline the challenge they’re facing.
• Clarification: The candidate then has the chance to ask clarifying questions. They might do this to ensure they’ve understood the context of the problem correctly or to confirm the client’s goals.
• Reflection: The candidate takes 60 to 90 seconds or so to reflect and lay out a structured approach to solving the case.
• Analysis: The candidate and interviewer then work through the case together, carrying out analyses and moving toward a recommendation. This is the part of the case where you’ll be handling numerical questions, reviewing exhibits, coming up with creative ideas, and so on. It comprises the vast majority of the time you’ll spend on the case.
• Synthesis: The case concludes with the candidate synthesizing their findings and making an overall recommendation to the client.

So what does this unique interview format look and feel like? In reality, a consulting case interview is a little like a role-play. The interviewer plays the role of a manager or client, and the candidate plays the part of the consultant hired to solve the problem. However, a case interview shouldn’t feel like a performance. The most successful candidates treat it as a natural conversation between two professional people.

In the video below you can see an example of exceptional case interview performance in action. The candidate and interviewer in the video are both former McKinsey interviewers.

Interviewer-led vs candidate-led cases

Although the classic case interview has an established format and assesses a specific set of skills, cases can be delivered in different ways. Some are more candidate-led, while others are more interviewer-led

In a candidate-led case, the candidate is in the driver’s seat and is free to explore different aspects of the problem. Interviewers don’t tell candidates what to focus on next. Instead, they provide additional information – like an exhibit or a new fact – when asked. The candidate then analyzes the information and suggests next steps to get to the answer.

In an interviewer-led case, the interviewer may interrupt the candidate and ask them to either perform a specific investigation or focus on a different aspect of the problem. This doesn’t mean the interview is going badly; the interviewer is simply following a script. As a result, in an interviewer-led case, candidates are less likely to take the wrong path.

It’s difficult to predict which style of case you’ll receive. Some firms are known for using one style of interview more frequently than another. However, in practice, most interviews fall somewhere between the two extremes, depending on the style of the interviewer and the case material they’re using. You should therefore always be ready to suggest next steps and have a view about how to get to the answer.

Other case interview formats

While the classic case interview is most common, there are a couple of other interview formats that top consulting firms use from time to time:

The written case study

Some management consulting firms use written case studies to simulate the experience of carrying out consulting work even more accurately than the classic, verbal case interview. In some locations, BCG and Bain have been known to adopt this approach for a small minority of candidates.

In written cases, candidates review a series of paper documents and then structure the problem, run some numbers, generate ideas and, finally, deliver a short presentation. You can learn more in our article on how to crack written case studies .

Market sizing case interviews

Management consulting firms and other employers sometimes use market sizing questions – also known as estimation questions – as a standalone interview format to assess candidates on a wide range of problem-solving dimensions.

In a market sizing interview, you’ll be asked to estimate a number. This might be something like the revenue of a sandwich store or how many ATMs there are in a certain city. The ability to size a market is also a skill required for solving many case interview questions. You can learn more in our article on how to nail market sizing case interviews .

Some key differences to expect

While case interviews are highly codified, it’s important to remember that every interview is unique.

In the final round of interviews, for example, cases may feel less scripted than they did in the first stage. Partners – who are part of the interviewing group in the final round – often use the same case for years at a time. This means they can deliver it without a script and, as a result, tend to give candidates more room to take the lead. You can learn more in our article on the differences between a first and final-round interview at McKinsey, BCG and Bain .

In addition, each firm or office might bring their own nuance or style to the classic case interview format. It’s important to do your research and find out what you can expect from the interview experience at your target firm or office. You can learn more in our article on how the interviews at McKinsey, BCG and Bain differ .

The skills assessed in case interviews

Case interviews are primarily about testing a set of problem-solving skills. The interviewer uses a scorecard to assess a candidate’s performance in the following dimensions:

• Structuring: This is the ability to break problems down into logical drivers. It’s most obviously required at the beginning of a case, where you can pause and take a moment to come up with an approach. But it’s also tested each time you have to consider a new aspect of the problem.
• Math: Most cases contain a quantitative component, such as estimation questions, break-even questions, or other calculations. To do well in this dimension, you need to lay out a clear and efficient approach, run calculations quickly and accurately, and then state their implications for the case.
• Judgment and insights: This dimension is about extracting insights from data, usually by interpreting information in a chart. Performing well in this area involves processing new information quickly, prioritizing what’s important, and connecting your findings to develop sound recommendations.
• Creativity: Cases often have a creative thinking component. Sharing numerous, varied and sound ideas – ideally in a structured way – can help you succeed here.
• Synthesis: This is all about wrapping up the case with a clear and practical recommendation, and delivering it convincingly.
• Case leadership: This dimension is about progressing through the case efficiently and staying focused on its objectives. Case leadership involves gathering facts effectively and building on new findings to develop a recommendation. It’s a particularly important dimension in candidate-led cases.

Questions to expect

If you’re preparing to interview at a top management consulting firm like McKinsey, BCG or Bain, you’re probably curious about the kind of case interview questions you can expect to receive.

To identify the most common case interview questions , we surveyed CaseCoach users who interviewed at either McKinsey, BCG or Bain for a generalist role in 2023. We found that of the 260+ case interviews reported by respondents:

• 20% focused on profit improvement
• 15% focused on revenue growth
• 12% focused on market entry
• 10% focused on cost cutting
• 9% focused on process optimization

These topics align with the typical challenges and opportunities faced by CEOs. Because the job of a management consultant is to help CEOs find solutions to these problems, it’s vital for candidates to demonstrate that they understand the issues behind these questions.

However, while there are some recurring topics, the context and nuances of each individual case mean that no two case questions are the same. Increasingly, firms are testing candidates on questions that fall outside of these recurring topics. One way they’re doing this is by focusing on non-traditional areas, like the public sector. If you’re interviewing for a generalist management consulting role, it’s therefore important to be ready for almost any type of case question.

If you’re interviewing for a role that’s focused on a specific industry or function, like financial services , you’ll likely be given a case focused on that particular area.

How to ace the case

Case interviews require you to think on your feet to solve a complex problem that you’ve never seen before, while being assessed against a number of problem-solving dimensions. Here’s what you need to do to rise to the challenge and ace the case:

1. Create case interview structures that meet the AIM test

Of all the case interview assessment dimensions, structuring is perhaps the most challenging, particularly for those who are just starting out. It requires candidates to propose a prioritized and insightful approach to the case that’s composed of a comprehensive set of independent drivers. Structuring plays a foundational role in the interview, setting the course for the entire conversation.

So, what does good case structuring look like? An effective structure should meet the conditions of the ‘AIM’ test. ‘AIM’ stands for:

• Answer-focused: The structure should identify the client’s goal and the question to solve. It should also provide an approach to answering that question.
• Insightful: The structure should be tailored to the specifics of the client or to the problem in question. You shouldn’t be able to apply it to another case of the same type.
• MECE: This is a well-known acronym among consultants. It stands for ‘mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive’. In plain English, if a structure is ‘MECE’ it has been broken down into an exhaustive set of independent drivers.

2. Know key case interview frameworks

In a case interview, you’ll be asked to structure a variety of problems. There are a number of frameworks that can help you do this, whether the problem you’re structuring corresponds to a common case question or a different topic entirely:

Business frameworks

You can use established business frameworks to craft custom structures for the most common types of case questions. These include frameworks for mastering profitability questions , answering revenue growth questions and nailing market sizing questions .

Academic frameworks

For unusual case questions that don’t relate to an obvious business framework, it can be helpful to draw on an academic framework like supply and demand, ‘the three Cs’, or Porter’s Five Forces. You can learn more about all of these in our ultimate guide to case interview frameworks . The article includes other business and academic frameworks that you can use to craft custom structures for case questions.

Logical frameworks

Finally, logical frameworks can help you look at the big picture in order to structure your approach. These options can be particularly useful when you’re faced with an unusual case question that doesn’t lend itself to a business or academic framework. Some examples of logical frameworks include:

• Structuring with equations: This approach is most helpful for quantitative case questions. Listen out for introductions that focus on a number. These cases can often be broken down into an equation and then structured along its variables.
• Structuring based on hypotheses: This approach is most helpful for structuring qualitative cases. It involves laying out what you most need to believe in order to validate a specific recommendation. These beliefs form your set of key hypotheses, which you then test as you progress through the case.
• Structuring with root causes: This approach works well for structuring cases that require identifying the reasons for a problem. It involves laying out its potential causes in a way that is mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (i.e. MECE).

How to apply these frameworks

While business, academic, and logical frameworks can be helpful when it comes to structuring a problem, learning how to use them correctly is a skill in itself. Simply applying a framework to a case interview question in a ‘cookie-cutter’ fashion is not enough. To impress your interviewer and pass the AIM test, your structure will need to be heavily tailored to the situation at hand. In fact, many case questions can be best answered by combining different frameworks.

Ultimately, interviewers want to understand how your mind works and see you think on your feet. You’ll therefore need to demonstrate that you can propose a custom case interview structure to any question.

3. Be comfortable with simple math

Management consulting firms expect you to navigate mathematical problems confidently and reliably in case interviews. Regardless of your academic background or past experience, you’ll need to be able to set an approach to solve the problem, perform calculations quickly and accurately, and state the implications of your solution.

The good news is that you’ll only be required to demonstrate a high-school level of math skills in case interviews. However, with no calculators allowed and an interviewer looking over your shoulder, it’s natural to find this aspect of the experience a little intimidating.

So, what can you expect from case math? The problems you’ll be asked to solve may take the form of straight calculations, exhibits that require calculations, word problems, and estimation questions.

To do well in this part of the case interview, you’ll need to have a strong understanding of:

• The four operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division
• Key math concepts such as fractions, percentages, and weighted averages
• Business math concepts such as income statements, investments, and valuations

To stand out to your interviewer, you’ll also need to work through math problems confidently and efficiently. Here are our top tips for doing this:

• Keep track of zeros: Case questions often involve large numbers, sometimes in the millions or even billions. Keeping close track of your zeros is therefore crucial. We recommend either counting the zeros in your calculation, using scientific notation, or assigning letter units to zeros.
• Simplify your calculations: This will help you work through problems quickly and efficiently while reducing the potential for mistakes. One way of simplifying calculations is by rounding numbers up or down to make them more ‘friendly’.
• Memorize frequently-used fractions: Some fraction values are used so frequently in case math that knowing them – along with their percentage value and decimal conversions – can save you significant time. We recommend memorizing the fraction and corresponding percentage and decimal values of 1/2, 1/3, all the way through to 1/10.

You can learn more in our guide to mastering case interview math .

4. Summarize your findings

Synthesis is a key skill assessed by interviewers, predominantly at the end of a case interview. You need to provide a clear and sound recommendation that answers the overall question convincingly. You must also describe the key supporting points that informed your recommendation and then outline any further steps you would advise the client to take.

When it comes to concluding cases effectively, this four-step framework can be extremely helpful:

• Quickly play the case question back to your interviewer.
• Answer the question directly and briefly by distilling your response into a single sentence, if possible.
• List the points that support your conclusion.
• Outline the next steps that you recommend to the client.

You can learn more in our article on how to conclude a case study interview .

5. Bring it all together with strong case leadership

Case leadership, more than any other dimension, will give your interviewer an indication of how independently you could handle your workstream as a consultant. It’s a particularly important skill in candidate-led cases, where you’ll set the course of the discussion without the interviewer steering you in a particular direction.

Demonstrating strong case leadership means progressing the case efficiently and staying focused on its overarching objectives. Using a ‘tracker page’ to capture your structure and organize your notes throughout the case will help you in this regard.

Another aspect of case leadership is gathering facts effectively. This includes making reasonable assumptions, requesting missing information, and asking probing questions.

Finally, you’ll be expected to build on new findings to develop your recommendation, adapt your approach, and suggest next steps.

Effective case leadership is all about showing your interviewer that you have a strong command of the problem-solving process. After investigating each key driver in your structure, you need to be able to articulate where you are in your overall approach to solving the problem, and what the next steps should be.

To do this, we recommend using a five-step process to handle every kind of analysis you conduct during the case, whether you’re responding to a numerical question, the data in an exhibit, or something else.

Here’s what that five-step process looks like:

• Set your approach. Define what you’re going to do upfront. It’s particularly important to be explicit here, especially if the analysis is in any way complex or ambiguous.
• Conduct your analysis. Your approach here will vary according to the kind of question you’re working through.
• State your findings. You may also want to make a note of your findings on your tracker page.
• State the implications of your findings. Explain how they impact both your answer to the question and the client’s broader goal.
• Suggest next steps. Your findings will sometimes change how you want to approach the rest of the case. This may mean altering your initial structure and editing it on your tracker page.

6. Be your best on the day

When the day of your interview comes around, you’ll want to be at your very best. But what exactly does this mean?

First, you should present yourself in a professional manner. It goes without saying that you should arrive on time but, ideally, you should plan to arrive early. You should also come equipped with the right material: a pen, squared A4 or letter-size paper pad, and copies of your resume. It’s also vital to dress appropriately for the occasion. Usually, this means wearing formal business dress, but this means different attires in different locations. We recommend doing some research to find out what consultants wear at your target firm and office.

To be at your best on the day of your interview, you must be well rested. Sadly, tiredness is one of the most common reasons for underperformance in consulting interviews. The day before is not the time to cram in further preparation. Instead, aim to have a quiet day and to get plenty of sleep at night.

Ultimately, consulting firms want to hire people who can represent the firm and interact with clients at every level, from the shop floor to the C-suite. Successful candidates treat the case interview as an opportunity to play the role of a management consultant advising a client (i.e. the interviewer). This means exhibiting a great deal of confidence and credibility, together with effective communication and an engaging attitude. It’s vital to stay focused on the overall problem and to drive the resolution of the case while being receptive to the interviewer’s input.

There are a lot of balls to juggle in a case interview, with the added pressure of a potentially life-changing outcome, but successful candidates don’t let their nerves get the better of them. We’ve provided some helpful hints and tips in our article on handling the stress of consulting interviews .

Being your best on the day of your interview requires extensive preparation. It means mastering each dimension of the case interview scorecard to the extent that the skills become second nature to you. It also means completing sufficient case practice to be able to focus on the big picture of the case you’re solving, rather than on simply demonstrating a set of skills.

How to prepare for case interview success

Delivering a standard of performance worthy of an offer from a top firm requires extensive case interview prep. In our experience, most successful candidates invest around 60 hours – or 10 hours each week over a six-week period – in their preparation. Failing to put this effort in is among the most common reasons why many candidates are unsuccessful.

Here’s what effective case interview preparation involves:

Learning the skills

In a case interview, your performance is assessed against a set of common problem-solving dimensions. To recap, these are structuring, math, judgment and insights, creativity, synthesis, and case leadership. It’s important to:

• gain a precise understanding of the expectations on each of these skills
• learn the techniques that will allow you to meet these expectations
• practice until your performance meets the required standard

We teach all these skills in our Interview Prep Course . In our bite-sized video lectures, we map out each of the key skills assessed in a case, and explain what you need to know to demonstrate each skill. We also share our tips on how to improve in each dimension, going above and beyond the advice we’ve included in this article.

In addition, our Interview Prep Course includes many more sample interviews that show real candidates – who went on to join top consulting firms – solving cases. Former consulting interviewers explain what the candidates did well on each dimension and where they could have improved.

Math is a critical prerequisite to handling cases and is something you should be comfortable with before you begin practicing. Our Case Math Course – provided as part of the Interview Prep Course – will help you brush up your skills. It contains 21 video lectures that cover everything you need to know, including the four operations, key math concepts, our pro tips, and business math.

After watching all our Interview Prep and Case Math video lectures, we recommend heading to the ‘Drills’ area of CaseCoach, where you can start practicing specific skills. Drills are interactive exercises that pose rapid-fire questions and provide instant feedback. They help you build your skills and confidence in specific case dimensions quickly, allowing you to make the most of your live case practice with partners. Our Interview Prep Course includes a comprehensive set of drills in four key areas: structuring, calculation, case math and chart interpretation.

When it comes to succeeding in a case interview, nothing beats live practice with a partner. Most candidates who go on to receive an offer from a top consulting firm like McKinsey, BCG or Bain complete at least 25 live practice sessions before their interview.

To practice live cases with a partner, you’ll need access to both case material and practice partners. In our Case Library , you’ll find over 100 cases – complete with solutions – developed by former management consultants. You can download eight of these cases right away by creating a free CaseCoach account. You’ll find a diverse community of fellow candidates who are all available for case interview practice in our Practice Room , where we facilitate over 3,000 practice sessions a week.

You can learn more in our article on how to practice case interviews .

Working with a coach

Some candidates choose to supplement their preparations by working with a consulting interview coach who has been an interviewer at a top firm.

These coaches have the skills and experience to gauge your level of performance and help you identify your areas of strength and weakness. They can also provide you with accurate and helpful feedback on your case-solving skills. This insight can help you accelerate your preparation and improve your performance. Getting used to interviewing with a professional should also help to reduce the stress of the consulting interview experience.

Here at CaseCoach, our coaches are all former consultants and interviewers who have been handpicked from the alumni of top firms such as McKinsey, BCG and Bain.

Do your research

Although employers who use case interviews all test candidates using similar methods, none of them approach the interview process in exactly the same way.

For instance, if you expect to interview with McKinsey, Bain or BCG, it’s helpful to know that these firms all give cases of similar complexity. However, there are some key differences. For example:

• Bain has been known to use estimation questions, such as market sizing, in interviews for its most junior (i.e. Associate Consultant level) roles.
• BCG and Bain occasionally use written cases.
• When it comes to the ‘fit’ interview, McKinsey uses its Personal Experience Interview format, while most Bain offices now use a ‘behavioral interview’ . Only BCG consistently uses the classic fit interview format .

Other differences include the number of rounds of interviews each firm conducts, and their preference for using interviewer-led or candidate-led cases. Wherever you interview, it’s vital to do your research and find out what you might be able to expect.

When it comes to getting ready for the case interview, knowing what you will be assessed on, learning how to succeed, and having access to the best practice resources can all go a long way. Now, you need to put in the hard work and prepare! Good luck.

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What Is a Case Study?

What is a case study interview, how to prep for a case study interview, case study interview example questions, during the case study interview.

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Forage puts students first. Our blog articles are written independently by our editorial team. They have not been paid for or sponsored by our partners. See our full  editorial guidelines .

Table of Contents

A case study interview isn’t your average interview. While most interviews ask you to give examples of how you use your skills on the job, in a case study interview, you’ll use those skills in front of the interviewer to solve a real-life problem.

It’s like auditioning for the school play. But instead of showing you can sing and dance, you’re using a case interview to show how you provide innovative solutions to pressing business problems. Not sure how to get ready for this kind of interview? We’ve got you covered. This guide explains how to prep for a case study interview.

Case studies are used across a variety of industries — everything from business to medicine. They are an in-depth examination, analysis, and critique of a real-world scenario the company experienced. People discuss the situation and explore what they learned while forming new solutions to try when they face a similar situation in the future and hope to improve their performance.

For example, doctors and nurses use case studies to improve how they diagnose and treat patients. Using real patient information, the medical team analyzes the case to see what the team may have missed and why they missed it. Learning from these errors helps the team better prepare for similar cases in the future to improve patient care.

While many industries use case studies to iterate and improve their performance, not every company uses case study interviews. This type of interview is very common at consulting companies (no matter what kind of consulting it is). But it’s not unusual for companies outside of consulting to use case interviews for marketing or operations roles.

In a case study interview, you’re given a real-world situation the company has faced and are tasked with analyzing it and suggesting a course of action.

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Businesses use case study interviews to assess your abilities in real-time. While you’ll probably draw on a variety of skills, most case study interviews assess:

• Strategic thinking
• Analytical skills
• Common sense

The advantage of a case study interview is that the interviewer can evaluate your ability in each of these areas and see how you’ll actually use them on the job.

What Is a Fit Interview?

Some people use “case study interview” and “fit interview” interchangeably. While a fit interview and a case study interview both ask behavioral interview questions , they are not the same thing.

A case study interview assesses your ability to do the job. It primarily evaluates how you approach business problems and use your skills to solve them. A fit interview is about company culture fit. The interviewer asks questions that assess how well you’ll fit into the company, like asking you questions about what motivates you or how you lead .

Fit and case interviews are important parts of the evaluation process. Getting the job done is just as critical as getting along with coworkers and supporting the company’s mission. Depending on where you interview, you may have one fit interview and one case study interview, or the fit interview may be a smaller part of the case study interview.

What You’ll Learn in a Case Study Interview

A case study interview allows the hiring manager to see your skills in action and how you approach business challenges. But it also teaches you a lot about the company (even if you’re doing most of the talking).

In a sense, you’re behaving as an employee during a case study interview. This gives you a peek behind the curtain, allowing you to see the company’s inner workings, like how they approach business problems and what they expect from you and your performance.

For example, you may offer a novel approach to solving a problem during a case interview. How does the interviewer react to it? Are they impressed? Surprised? Is there a scowl or frown on their face? Their reaction gives you insights into how the company will likely receive your solutions.

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Depending on the specific company, you may have the case study interview questions in advance, but you may not. Whether you do or don’t, here’s how to prepare for a case study interview.

Conduct Deep Research

Good interview prep for any interview means researching the company. That includes things like learning more about the company’s mission and the challenges the industry faces. But when you’re preparing for a case study interview, your research needs to go deeper. 

When you answer a case study question, your answer has to be specific to the company’s clients or business objectives. For example, if you’re interviewing for a role in strategy consulting , your answer shouldn’t focus on aspects of human resources consulting (unless it’s particularly relevant).

Your research needs to include the kinds of clients the company works with and what types of problems the company solves. For example, the company may only consult for Fortune 100 companies that need accounting advice. Keep these facts in mind as you prepare for the interview.

Case Study Interview Formats

There are four types of case study interview formats:

• Candidate-led: The interviewer asks you a specific question (or gives you a prompt), and you walk the interviewer through a detailed answer.
• Employer-led: The interviewer leads you through a series of specific (and predetermined) prompts and questions, no matter your answers.
• Presentation: You’re given a problem in advance to create and present a detailed case study.
• Video: Similar to a presentation case study interview, you’ll create a video presentation of the case study.

Most companies will tell you in advance which style of case study interview you should prepare for. But if they don’t, reach out to your recruiter or check the company’s website. Many include the essential details you need to prepare for the case study interview.

Seek Out Company-Specific Tips

Speaking of companies and their websites, not only do many companies that use case study interviews tell you the format, they often include helpful tips and tricks to help candidates prepare. This includes what to expect, what the company is looking for skill-wise, and what kinds of responses they want. They may even have a few practice questions and videos you can use to help you prep.

Unlike other common interview questions , it’s not as easy to prepare an answer to case study interview questions. Even though you know it’s a case study interview, you don’t necessarily know the specifics of the case or what problems you’ll be asked to solve.

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That said, it’s likely your case study interview questions will cover one or several of these concepts:

• Entering new markets
• Increasing profits
• Cutting costs
• Turnarounds
• Mergers and acquisitions
• Pricing strategy
• Developing new products
• Industry analysis
• Competitive response

While there are many ways to answer case study interview questions, a few basic prep tips can help you get ready for every question.

In addition to what you usually bring to a job interview , make sure you bring a notepad and pen or pencil to a case study interview. Taking notes will help you better understand the questions and formulate your answers. It also gives you a place to calculate numbers and figures if you need to. Not every case study interview allows calculators, so you’ll need to be ready to do your calculations manually.

Ask Specific Questions

As you’re working through the case study, you can and should ask any clarifying questions you need. The interviewer wants to hear specific, detailed answers that solve the problem. So, whenever you’re unclear, ask a follow-up question to not only get what you need but to give the interviewer what they need. 

That said, your question(s) should be very specific. You need to verify exactly what the interview is asking so you can create an appropriate answer. Say the interviewer gives you a broad question: The client’s revenue is falling. How do you help them increase it? You can follow up with a very specific question or two to make sure you understand what the interviewer is asking:

You’re asking how I would help the client raise revenue, correct? Are you also asking how I would help them increase their profit and cut costs?

>>Related: 5 Top Questions to Ask in an Interview (and Why You Should Ask Them)

Talk Them Through It

A big part of the case study interview is seeing you in action. However, in this case, “see” really means “how you think.” Since the interviewer can’t hear your inner monologue, you’ll need to practice thinking out loud.

While the interviewer wants to hear your solution, they also want to hear how you got there. That means talking through your entire thought process. Instead of saying, “I’d do X,” you have to explain how you arrived at your decision while you’re getting there.

Because not everyone thinks out loud, it may feel unnatural to you, and you likely won’t be expected to do it on the job. But it’s crucial to practice this skill — and it is a skill — because the interviewer is expecting you to do it in a case study interview.

Want to give a case study a shot? Try out a Forage consulting virtual simulation program and gain the skills you’ll need to ace a case study interview.

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• May 13, 2020

A Quick Guide to Preparing for a Case Study Interview

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Reviewed by Chris Leitch

Invited to participate in a case study interview but not sure about the best ways to get ready for it?

As you always want to be at your very best when interviewing with a company, the case study interview requires a bit more preparation than recognising some of the common types of job interviews .

While you’ll still need to impress a prospective employer with strong research, confident interview responses and a professional appearance , the case study interview tests your knowledge and abilities through a spontaneous, analytical exercise. It examines how you approach problem-solving with the pressure of handling a situation without previous knowledge of any details or context.

Although the consulting industry utilises it as an essential part of the hiring process, the case study interview can be also found in many other environments, including startups, government and corporate organisations. It measures a candidate’s analytical, logic reasoning and communication abilities while under pressure.

In this guide, we will cover what you need to know to successfully prepare for a case study interview.

Case Study Interviews Explained

Even if you’ve never participated in one, it’s likely you’ve heard stories about the case study interview format. The case study puts you, the candidate, on the spot to solve a business problem posed by the interviewers.

Case study interview questions cover a wide range of topics and do not look for a single ‘right’ answer. Instead, the format gives the interviewers a look at how you respond spontaneously while applying problem-solving skills to create a solution to the business challenge presented.

For example, an exercise might ask what the potential market size is for a vegan food company within a prospective city and if setting up shop within the region would be worth it. The case study may not share all the details to help you reach an answer, but it should prompt you to ask questions that help you structure your thought process.

What to Expect in a Case Study Interview

The ways by which a case study interview is conducted will vary by company. However, this format bears unique characteristics:

• You’ll receive an introduction to the business problem, its relevant details and other information that lend to setting context. Some companies may choose to share a briefing document for you to read, while others may prefer to communicate the scenario in conversation.
• Information about the business problem will be, to some degree, vague. While the problem may cover complex business concepts, expect that the information will provide a high-level description of the scenario – not detailed reports with specific facts and figures. Case study interviews present such information in general terms for a reason. They’re meant to provide just enough information so that you can choose how to approach your line of questioning to solve the problem.
• The discussion about the business problem will be led by either the interviewer or the candidate. You need to be prepared for both situations. Who leads the conversation about the business problem is important, as it reveals the direction the discussion will take.

In interviewer-led sessions, the interviewer seeks to gauge the quality of your approach as it relates to a specific part of the business problem. They control the dialogue, focusing on a series of tough questions unlike those considered to be difficult in other interview formats . The interviewer sticks to a line of questioning that refers to details and themes relevant to the business problem, and evaluates how you comprehend, interpret and recommend actions within this specific domain.

On the hand, candidate-led conversations evaluate your ability to understand a business problem comprehensively, and from multiple points of view. Consultants play different roles on projects. Their actions cover various levels of activity, from analysing the business facts and data, creating the solutions and communicating directly with the clients on the overall strategy and approach. You’ll need to show strong methodology to guide others in your process.

Candidate-led sessions are challenging because they give you the freedom to explain your best approach to tackle the entire problem, but without receiving the input or comments of others to help guide a conversation along.

How to Prepare for a Case Study Interview

As you might find these interviews to be difficult, intense and downright nerve-wracking , you can succeed in a case study interview through thoughtful preparation. Here are five tips to help you ace the interview:

1. Demonstrate Your Analytical, Reasoning and Communication Skills

While recapping key details of the business problem is important, the case study interview measures much more than your ability to recall the facts. It showcases how you think on your feet as you seek out information to determine your course of action.

While you might be comfortable sketching out a framework or a mathematical formula that helps you identify the way you wish to solve the problem, this interview format also tests your ability to explain the reasoning in a clear and believable manner to others.

To be successful in a case study interview, you must demonstrate the skill to process information quantitatively, as well as speak about your rationale and decisions convincingly.

2. Get Ready to Play an Active Role in the Discussion

Case study interviews require a high level of engagement. While other interviews might have you responding to questions with rehearsed answers, the case study interview presents a situation that is dynamic and unpredictable.

You’ll want to approach the session with an active disposition. This typically includes taking notes, documenting your observations and ideas, sketching out diagrams and charts, and asking follow-up questions throughout the interview .

3. Identify the Type of Problem Posed to You

Jobseekers may find that there are common themes that appear when covering the type of business problems found in case study interviews. Eight of the most common exercises explore these questions:

• Maths – eg: ‘How many more units do we need to sell to double the profit?’
• Market size – eg: ‘How big is the market size within the US for smart wearable devices?’
• Framework/Issue tree - eg: ‘Identify the factors you would consider in addressing the problem.’
• Data-chart insights – eg: ‘What story do the numbers tell about the operations of this business?’
• Value proposition – eg: ‘What factors do customers look for in choosing a mobile phone carrier?’
• Business valuation – eg: ‘Just how much is this company worth today, and would it change if acquired by our competitor?’
• Hypothesis – eg: ‘What are some possible reasons that explain this trend?’
• Brain teaser – eg: ‘How many tennis balls can you fit in an area that is twice the size of a football field?’

There is not a single approach that solves all business problems. By identifying the type of problem you’re encountering, you’ll be able to quickly determine the most appropriate method to apply.

For example, you might discover that a maths problem will rely on the knowledge of specific formulas and expressions, while a hypothesis question calls for a closer look at the root causes behind an issue.

4. Organise a Framework that Helps You Solve the Problem

Having a good framework to apply to a problem is the key to doing well in a case study interview. You want to show that you understand a business issue well enough to formulate recommendations or insights that address the problem. As there isn’t one right answer to such a problem, your interviewer will be interested to hear about the thought process you applied to arrive at your decisions.

The process may involve a range of problem-solving skills and methods, including the use of mathematical formulas, first-hand knowledge about an industry and decision-tree flowcharts that guide through questions you’ve applied to the issue.

It’s helpful to write down your framework and refer to it as needed. By having the steps outlined, you’ll be able to explain your recommendations in a clear and confident manner so that the rationale used in your analysis appears sound.

5. Practise, Practise, Practise!

Prepare for the case study interview by engaging in mock practice sessions before the big day. While it’s important to spend time putting together the methods you’ll use to analyse a business problem, enlisting the help of a friend or two familiar with this interview format is essential.

You’ll want to find case study examples online and share your selections with those helping you practise. Your friends should read the materials before the practice sessions and play the role of the interviewer.

By conducting a practice session as if it were the real thing, your friends will help you work through the awkwardness and spontaneity of the case study interview and develop the confidence to perform successfully.

By following these tips, you’ll be ready to show off your analytical, communication and problem-solving skills, all important to the case study interview. However, don’t limit your preparation only to the guidance given for this specific style; rather, you’ll want to make sure you continue the things that served you well for other interview formats, including making a good first impression and avoiding interview faux pas .

By combining those behaviours with the preparation, mindset and practice needed to solve business problems on your feet, you’ll put yourself in a great position to succeed at a case study interview.

Have you ever found yourself in a case study interview? What advice do you have to give? Let us know in the comments section below!

Interview Preparation

Finding a Job

Interview Formats

Secrets to a successful case-study interview

January 9, 2023

Prepping for (and maybe fretting) the case-study interview?

While this kind of interview may appear intimidating, consider this: The interviewer really wants you to do well.

So, shake off the nerves, relax and have fun.

Tips for standing out in the case-study interview: 

• Take your time; don't rush it.  Talk through the problem. If you can't make sense of it, take a moment and allow yourself some time to process what you've been missing. If you get stuck, get creative. Don't let yourself get bogged down; rely on your ingenuity. 
• Ask questions.  You can always ask your interviewer to define an acronym or to repeat or confirm details. If the interviewer asks, “How do we achieve success?”, don’t be afraid to ask, “What does ‘success’ mean to you? Is it turning a profit? Raising the company’s profile?” When you work on a client project, you need to ask questions to figure out what the problems might be, and the same applies here. The interviewer is your biggest asset in the room. They have the information you need to “solve the case” successfully. Use them wisely!
• Be flexible.  The focus of a case-study interview may vary. So, be prepared to participate in whatever discussion the interviewer has in mind. They may spend the first half of the interview asking about your previous experience, or they may dive right into the case study at the start. The bottom line: Be flexible, and be ready to discuss the work you do and how you do it.
• Use visual aids.  Don’t be afraid to use pen and paper, sketch out your thoughts, and talk through the problem at hand if it helps you get your ideas across. What matters most is demonstrating that you can solve problems.
• Focus on impact.  Inventory the information you have, and then dive in where you can have the most impact. Don’t forget to discuss your thought process and explain your assumptions.
• Tell a story.  Your experience has helped you progress in your career and education; use that experience. For example, in a business case study, you could bring your experience as a traveler to a case about a hypothetical airline. Your individuality is important. Your unique insights will serve you well when you’re interviewing.
• Pay attention to cues.  If the interviewer says something, it probably means something. Don’t dismiss seemingly extraneous details. For example, the interviewer might say, “The case is about a retailer who wants to increase the value of a company it purchased, and the owner loved the brand when growing up.” The purpose of that detail is to indicate that turning around and selling the asset is not an option for making it profitable, because the owner is attached to it.

Preparing for the job you want can take time, but it’s a worthwhile investment—especially when you receive an offer.

Your ideas, ingenuity and determination make a difference. 

Find your fit  with Accenture. 

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Anaam Zamorano

RECRUITING ASSOCIATE MANAGER, HOUSTON, TEXAS

Career in Consulting

Case interview prep: The definitive guide

This is the complete guide to boosting your case interview prep in 2023.

In this in-depth guide, you’ll learn:

• How to effectively prepare for case interviews
• How to turn your case interviews into job offers
• How to avoid the mistakes that lead to rejection
• And lots more

So, if you want to secure offers at McKinsey, BCG, or Bain & Company, this guide is for you.

Let’s dive right in.

Table of Contents

Case interview fundamentals.

In this section, you’ll get a handle on the fundamentals.

Whether you are new to case interviews or want to ensure you are on the right track, you’ll love this section.

Then, in later sections, we’ll cover advanced tips, techniques, and strategies to ace your management consulting interviews.

But first, let’s cover the basics of case interview prep.

What is a case interview?

A case interview is a job interview technique.

A case interview – or case study – is a job interview technique to assess a candidate’s potential to become a successful consultant.

To do so, management consulting firms ask candidates to solve real-life problems their clients face .

Hence, this perfectly simulates the job you must do as a Consultant.

For instance, here are two sample case questions from Bain & Company’s website .

And here are more examples from the McKinsey & Company website .

A case interview is a problem-solving test

To solve these real-life problems, you must go through a certain number of steps, such as identifying the key drivers of the problem, asking the right questions to walk your way through the case, analyzing data, and presenting a solution to the problem.

But don’t worry: I’ll detail these steps later in this guide.

The problems you have to solve in a case interview are diverse both in terms of industry (Hospitality, Transportation, Chemical, Banking, Oil & Gas, Private Equity, etc.) and business situation (improving sales or profits, decreasing costs, rethinking an organization, acquiring a company, etc.)

And they are usually taken from real-life projects done by the interviewers .

Another important rule in a case interview:

There is no right answer (but plenty of wrong answers).

Hence, what’s important for your interviews is your reasoning.

And this means they are more interested in your thinking process than a solution for the problem.

Here is an example from Bain’s website:

What is NOT a case interview?

I’ve been coaching candidates for over a decade.

And I’ve seen this misunderstanding too many times:

A case interview is NOT an exam .

Case interviewers are NOT testing your KNOWLEDGE or your memory.

They are testing your COGNITIVE SKILLS .

Which means:

Your ability to effectively use and adapt your knowledge to solve complex problems.

That’s why memorizing frameworks or formulas is useless… and often counterproductive.

There is no shortcut to ace a case interview.

Instead, you must develop your problem-solving and communication skills.

Remember this:

A case interview should be a conversation between 2 consultants solving a business problem.

This is far from being a student answering exam questions on a piece of paper alone.

Who uses case interviews and why?

All top management consulting firms use case interviews to assess a candidate’s problem-solving skills.

So, why do consulting firms use case interviews in their interview process?

You must understand this:

Management Consultants consider themselves professional problem solvers.

And during the case interview process, they want to see if you are one of them .

They want to see if you think and speak like them.

Here is a non-exhaustive list of consulting firms using case interviews in their interview process:

McKinsey & Company

Boston Consulting Group

Bain & Company

Oliver Wyman

Roland Berger

Strategy&

Monitor Deloitte

Note: This list is by no means exhaustive. Lots – if not all – boutique consulting firms use case interviews as well as part of their interview process.

The formats of case interviews differ from one firm to another.

And that’s what we are going to discuss in the next paragraph.

What are the different types of case interview formats?

Now, it’s time to discuss the two formats of case interviews:

Candidate-led case interviews

Interviewer-led case interviews

More specifically, you’ll learn what are the differences between a candidate-led and an interviewer-led case interview.

Also, you’ll learn what are the implications of these formats for your case interview preparation.

The first case interview format: Candidate-led case interviews

Most firms use a candidate-led format.

What does candidate-led mean?

In candidate-led interviews, the candidate is expected to drive the case from start to finish.

This means they are responsible for structuring the problem, asking the right questions, and leading the discussion towards a solution.

In other words, the candidate is in the driver’s seat.

They must proactively identify issues, prioritize them, and decide on the next steps.

Therefore, there’s often more room for creativity and exploration.

If the candidate decides to explore a particular area of the case in-depth, they have the freedom to do so.

The second case interview format: Interviewer-led case interviews

McKinsey uses interviewer-led interviews (so do – sometimes – Oliver Wyman and Strategy&).

In interviewer-led cases, the interviewers are more active in guiding the discussion.

After the candidates present the key topics to be analyzed to solve the business problem, the interviewers lead the direction on where to start diving into the analysis. 

While the candidate must still showcase their problem-solving skills, the interviewer largely determines the case’s direction.

The interviewer might direct the candidate to specific areas they want to test, making the case feel more structured and segmented.

The implications of the case interview format for your case interview prep

For Candidate-led Interviews, you need to be comfortable with taking the lead.

This means you should practice deciding which areas to probe further and which to deprioritize.

And I’ve created a free consulting case interview preparation course to show you how to do it:

Get 4 Complete Case Interview Courses For Free

You need 4 skills to be successful in all case interviews: Case Structuring, Case Leadership, Case Analytics, and Communication. Join this free training and learn how to ace ANY case questions.

For Interviewer-led Interviews, you must be quick, adapt to new information, and change your approach as needed.

Therefore, active listening is crucial to ensure that you’re addressing the issues raised.

However, while there are distinct differences between candidate-led and interviewer-led case interviews, the core skills being tested are consistent across both formats .

What to expect in case interviews?

Most candidates hear “case interviews” for the first time when they decide to apply for consulting jobs.

And for most candidates, this is the biggest obstacle between them and their dream job.

So, in this section, we will go through the 5 steps of a case interview.

All interviewers from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or other top consulting firms expect you to follow these 5 steps.

Note : The techniques and strategies to ace these steps will be discussed in the section “How to ace your case interviews.” later in this guide.

Open the case

A case interview starts with the interviewer sharing the case prompt with you.

In the case prompt?

The interviewer shares a client’s situation and the problem they are trying to solve.

While the interviewer speaks, you must take notes.

You must write down all the critical information and keywords of the case prompt on a piece of paper.

Don’t worry:

This guide will address how to recognize the “critical information and keywords” of a case prompt.

And after the interviewer finishes sharing the case question, it’s your turn to speak…

Clarify the problem

You can assume that all the case prompts will be ambiguous.

Some critical information will be missing.

Or some keywords will be ambiguous.

And it’s your first job to remove any ambiguity.

An example?

Imagine this case prompt:

Your client manufactures cars. They have been experiencing declining sales and are asking for your help .

In the above case prompt, you should clarify what types of cars they manufacture.

A mass-market model like a Toyota Corolla?

or a luxury model like a Ferrari Spider 488?

The case’s direction will be very different whether we discuss one model or another.

Consequently:

You must ask clarifying questions to understand precisely the situation and goal.

Also, if you don’t understand a word, ask your interviewer to define it.

Develop a tailored framework

For most candidates, this is the scariest part.

During this step?

You must develop a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive (known by its acronym: MECE ) issue tree.

An issue tree can also be called a case interview framework (or case interview structure ).

Now, let’s address the following questions:

What is a case interview framework?

Why is this important?

What are the characteristics of a good case interview framework?

First, let’s define what a case interview framework is.

A case interview framework is your plan to solve the problem.

In other words:

This is your roadmap to move from the problem to the solution.

And during the case, you’ll walk your interviewer through this roadmap.

This roadmap must include all the factors that influence the behavior of the problem.

For instance: volume and price influence the behavior of sales.

And these factors must be organized by following certain principles (the infamous MECE principle ).

All these factors must be organized in a mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive way to ensure that there is no gap (no important factor is missing) and no overlap (no factor is counted twice).

Now, what makes a great case interview framework?

Watch this video detailing the three characteristics of a superior case interview framework:

MECE (mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive)

Logic-driven

Solve the problem

After you’ve presented your roadmap, you must ask relevant and insightful questions to the interviewer.

Get data and information to solve the case.

Your interviewer can provide you with data in three forms:

Then your job is to interpret these data.

You must turn these data into business insights.

Note: an insight is the meaning of the data in the context of the problem (more detail on that later).

This is called the “so-what” in top consulting firms.

At this stage, your interviewers mainly test your analytical skills and business judgment.

For instance, they ask themselves:

Can you connect the dots between different sets of data?

And can you derive conclusions from these sets of data?

Besides, interviewers also test your quantitative skills.

They might ask you to perform quick mental calculations (also known as case interview math).

And when you have formed many conclusions from the data analysis, you can derive a recommendation.

Now, it’s time to move to the next step.

Close the case with a solid recommendation

The final step consists of delivering your recommendation to your client.

This is when you tell your client what to do, why they should do it, and why it’s important.

This is when you shift from an “analysis mode” to a “presentation mode.”

You are now talking to your client’s CEO.

To deliver your recommendation, you must follow the top-down communication principles popularized by Barbara Minto in her book “ The Pyramid Principle ” (a must-read if you want to have a successful business career).

Hence, you must:

Start with your recommendation (or your answer to the client’s question).

Provide supporting arguments, usually taken from the analyses you performed during the case.

Discuss the next steps your client must take.

At this stage, your interviewers mainly test your communication skills.

But they also test your business judgment.

For instance, by asking themselves if your recommendation is actionable or not.

And… that’s it!

You are now done with your case interview.

Or at least you have an overview of the different steps of a case interview.

Now, you can watch this video where I present the 5 steps in detail:

What do case interviewers look for?

In this section, you will understand how you’ll be evaluated .

There is no secret: You must understand the rules of the game to have a chance to win.

And most consultancies – if not all – use the same criteria to assess a candidate’s case interview performance.

But let’s be clear:

In a competitive sector like Consulting, you must be in the top 1% of candidates across all these criteria to land an offer .

So, if you’ve ever wondered what it takes to be in the top 1%, you’ll learn a lot from this section.

Hard skills: the 4Cs and business acumen

During the screening phase, HR professionals check your resume and cover letter to establish if you have the potential to be a good candidate.

And during the case interview process, Consultants test this potential to establish if you’ll become a best-in-class consultant.

Consultants want to see if you have the skill set to become this best-in-class consultant.

Case structuring

Interviewers assess your ability to identify all the relevant components of a problem, to organize these components in a MECE way , and to explain clearly how each of these components helps solve the overall problem.

Case leadership

Interviewers assess your ability to prioritize the issues to analyze. You must demonstrate your 80/20 thinking (your ability to identify the 20% of issues that will solve 80% of the problem).

Case analytics

Interviewers assess your ability to transform data into insights. If data is the “what,” then the insight should be the “so what.” In other words, your ability to say what the implications of data are.

Communication skills

Interviewers assess your ability to communicate your ideas clearly and keep the interviewer engaged and aligned with your thinking process during the entire case discussion.

Also, clear and concise communication shows your interviewers that you are client-ready.

Business acumen

Business acumen – or business sense skills- is the top 1% factor.

This is how:

An issue tree is more tailored to the problem to solve

Only the most impactful issues are addressed

The interpretations of data are more insightful

In short, this is your ability to understand what moves the needle in problem solving.

Soft skills: personal characteristics

Besides the above hard skills, consulting firms check if you have the personal characteristics demonstrated by the best-in-class consultants.

Coachability

Feedback is a significant part of the culture in consulting.

Consultants receive formal feedback every 3 months (after each project) and informal feedback throughout the project.

So, interviewers check how you react to feedback.

Do you listen well, understand, and implement feedback?

Or do you defend your opinion at all costs?

And be careful: lack of coachability is a red flag for many interviewers.

Are you excited about working on a new project (in a new industry) every 3 months?

If the answer is yes, consulting can be a good career option for you.

A curious mind (or “growth mindset”) is an important characteristic of being a successful consultant.

Therefore, your answers in fit interviews or your attitude during case interviews should showcase your burning desire to learn new things.

Comfort with ambiguity

In management consulting, you’ll have to solve tough business problems while having incomplete information.

So, your case interviewers test how you deal with ambiguity.

And a consulting case interview is full of ambiguities!

Check this article to learn how to clarify a case prompt .

Confidence & maturity

Consulting is a client-facing job.

And top consulting firm clients – corporations or public organizations – pay tons of money for their services.

So, interviewers ask themselves, “Do I feel comfortable putting this person in front of my client?”.

Important note : Since I sometimes get the question, you’ll have your chance regardless of your personality (introvert or extrovert).

Case interview examples from different consulting firms

I will share two in-depth case interview examples with you in this chapter.

That way, you can see the strategies and techniques from this guide in action.

Specifically, we will discuss the two types of case interviews used by top consulting firms:

Business cases

Market sizing questions

And for each type of case interview, I’ll share examples with you.

Note: per my experience, top consulting firms do not use brainteaser questions .

Therefore, this guide will not discuss this type of question.

However, I encourage you to check if your target company uses such questions (other consulting firms might still use brainteasers in their hiring process).

Business problem examples

Business cases are the most common questions you can have in a case interview.

You are asked to solve a business problem for a fictional client.

Similar to real consulting engagements, business cases are typically organized by industry and functional category.

The industries you might encounter in a case interview are:

Agriculture,

Automotive & Mobility,

Consumer Goods,

Electronics,

Energy (Oil, Gas, Power),

Financial Services,

Healthcare & Life Science,

Industrial,

Infrastructure,

Metals and Mining,

Paper and Packaging,

Pharmaceuticals,

Private Equity,

Public and Social Sector,

Real Estate,

Semiconductors,

Technology & Telecommunication,

Transportation,

Travel and Tourism

Utilities & renewables.

The functions you might encounter in a case interview are:

Corporate Finance,

Digital & Technology,

Manufacturing,

Mergers and Acquisitions,

Operations,

People and Organizational Performance,

Recovery and Transformation,

Risk and Resilience,

Sales & Marketing,

ESG & Sustainability.

The following topics, which are not MECE , could be covered in case interviews depending on the function and the industry:

Growth strategies

Market entry

Cost optimization

Organization optimization

Product launch

Profitability case interview

Here is a first McKinsey case interview example:

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/interviewing/diconsa

Another example?

Here is another McKinsey case interview example:

Source: https://www.mckinsey.com/careers/interviewing/talbot-trucks

And here is a BCG case interview example:

Source: https://careers.bcg.com/case-interview-preparation .

Finally, over 250 case interview examples (with answers) are found on this page .

Sample market sizing questions

A market sizing question is a case interview where you have to estimate the size of something with no (or little) data available .

Market sizing questions can be embedded in business cases or can be asked as standalone questions.

For instance, here are some sample market sizing questions:

How many coffee cups does Starbucks sell in a year?

What volumes of beer are sold during an LA Lakers basketball game?

How many iPhones are currently being used in China?

What is the monthly profit of an average hair salon in the UK?

Market sizing questions are a very popular type of case interview at top consulting firms.

So let me be clear:

You can NOT land an offer at McKinsey, BCG, or Bain if you don’t know how to solve market sizing questions.

That’s why I’ve written a comprehensive step-by-step guide on market sizing questions here .

In this guide, you’ll learn my best strategies to solve the 3 types of market sizing questions .

Also, you’ll find plenty of examples to see how these strategies work.

Old vs. New cases (2021 - present)

For the past few years, case interviews have changed.

Until a few years ago, case questions looked like this:

Declining sales

Declining profits

In short, the types of questions you can find in books like “ case in point” or “ case interview secrets.”

Less than 40% of case interviews are questions from the above list.

The other 60%?

Non-traditional case questions.

For instance, McKinsey recently asked this question:

Your client is a fictional country. They want to develop a plan to fight climate change. How would you help them with this question?

So, why have consulting firms decided to use this new type of question?

Because the goal of case interviews is to understand how you think.

And more precisely:

How you think outside your comfort zone.

Have you learned all the well-known business frameworks?

👉 They test your ability to solve business problems where these frameworks are irrelevant.

Do you have an Engineering degree?

👉 They will give you a case involving lots of business concepts.

Don’t have quantitative experience?

👉 They will give you a case with lots of math, charts, and numbers.

And it makes a lot of sense.

Because it mimics the day-to-day job of a consultant:

Consultants are constantly outside their comfort zone.

And they are constantly exposed to new topics.

Now, the implications for you are very important.

You can’t only rely on well-known frameworks.

Instead: you must learn how to build your own tailored frameworks.

You must learn how to think with First Principles and top-down logic.

You must learn how to organize your ideas in a MECE way .

Even for non-traditional case questions.

And I’ve created 4 free consulting case courses to learn just that:

How to ace your case interviews

In this section, I’ll show you how to turn your case interviews into offers.

In fact, the strategies in this section have helped over 350 candidates land job offers at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, or any boutique consulting firms.

And the strategies I share here can be used in all types of cases: market entry, profitability case interview, M&A, etc.

Let’s start with how to open a case like a pro!

Acing the opening: remove ambiguities

There is a lot of misleading information online about how to open a case:

Paraphrase the case prompt (aka repeat information your interviewers already know).

Ask a maximum of 3 clarifying questions.

End by asking if there is any other objective you should know.

But there is a better way to open a case:

Add business colors.

Take the lead.

Ask clarifying questions (as much as necessary).

Do a smart recap.

Here’s the truth:

How you open a case sets the tone for the entire case.

Start poorly, and your interviewer won’t guide you much during the case.

On the other hand:

Give a strong first impression, and your interviewer will see you as one of them from the first seconds of the case.

And that can be a game changer in your performance and chances to land an offer.

Therefore, this must-read guide will show you how to start your case interview correctly.

Acing the case structuring: create the perfect issue trees

We discussed this before:

An issue tree is the strategic framework that guides your analyses and helps you answer the client’s question effectively.

Before we dive into the nitty-gritty, let’s revisit the three essential characteristics of a robust case structure:

1. MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive): Your structure should cover all possible areas without any overlaps.

2. Logic-Driven: The structure should follow a logical flow, making the logical connection between the different areas and the problem clear.

3. Tailored: Your framework should be customized to the specific problem at hand, not a one-size-fits-all template.

It shows that you can think strategically, organize your thoughts, and approach problems methodically—all essential skills in consulting.

Take Your Case Structuring Skills to the Next Level

Ready to master the art of case structuring?

Sign up for our free 4-hour video case interview training course .

This comprehensive course will walk you through the intricacies of developing a winning case structure, complete with real-world examples and actionable tips.

Acing quantitative questions: conquering numbers!

The mere mention of case interview math questions can send shivers down the spines of candidates with weaker quantitative backgrounds.

But hold on!

These questions aren’t just about doing quick mental calculations.

In fact, interviewers are looking for three crucial elements:

Structured Approach : Can you systematically break down the problem?

Numerical Comfort : Are you at ease with numbers and capable of swift mental calculations?

Business Sense : Can you interpret the results in a way that makes business sense for the client?

In the realm of case interviews, math questions often serve to calculate data that fills in the gaps in a given problem.

For example, you might be tasked with:

Market Sizing : For instance, estimating the potential size of a market.

Financial Metrics : For instance, calculating performance indicators like Payback Period or ROI.

Solution Impact : For instance, assessing the potential cost savings or productivity gains from a particular initiative.

The Truth About Mental Math

The world of mental calculations in case interviews is fraught with myths.

Let’s debunk some:

Reality : Calculators are a no-go. You’re on your own.

Reality : A significant math mistake is often a one-way ticket to rejection.

Reality : While some may tell you it’s okay to round numbers, most interviewers would disagree.

The rules can vary depending on who’s sitting across the table from you, so always be prepared for the strictest guidelines.

Follow This 4-Step Approach to Ace Quantitative Questions

Step 1: Define an Arithmetic Equation

The first step is to translate the business problem into an arithmetic equation.

This is where your structured approach comes into play.

Step 2: Do the Math

The data needed to solve the equation are usually provided by the interviewer.

If not, don’t hesitate to ask.

Occasionally, you’ll need to make educated estimates.

When calculating, remember: accuracy trumps speed.

Step 2bis: Do a Sanity Check

Before you share your answer, do a quick sanity check.

Does the result make sense in the context of the problem?

If something feels off, revisit your calculations.

Step 3: Share Your Insights

This is where your business sense shines.

Interpret the numbers and discuss their implications for the client’s situation.

Step 4: Lead the Case

Based on your calculations and insights, guide the conversation toward actionable recommendations.

Here is an example:

Interviewer : “How many units does a car manufacturer need to sell to break even?”

Candidate : “To find the breakeven volume, we can use the equation: Fixed Costs / (Selling Price – Variable Costs). Given that the fixed costs are $10 million, the selling price per unit is $20,000, and the variable costs are $15,000, the breakeven volume would be 1,000 units.”

How to Practice Math Questions

To sharpen Your Skills:

Mock GMAT Tests : These tests are excellent for practicing a wide range of quantitative problems.

Case Interviews : Simulate the real experience by going through case interviews that include math questions.

But don’t limit yourself to traditional methods.

Various online platforms and apps are designed to help you practice mental calculations and case-specific math problems.

By mastering case interview math, you’re not just showcasing your ability to crunch numbers.

You’re proving that you can think critically, make data-driven decisions, and lead a case to its logical conclusion.

Acing chart interpretation questions

Knowing how to interpret charts should be part of your consulting toolbox.

And to crack the case, you’ll have to analyze data presented in the form of charts or data tables.

While it looks straightforward, the challenges are numerous:

The quantity of data presented can be huge, and your time to analyze these data is limited. And some firms – like BCG – like to present charts with lots of irrelevant data…

Charts can come in many forms: bar charts, line charts, pie charts, scatter plots, etc. You must know how to decode each type of chart.

The game you’re playing here is not to read the data correctly but to turn these data into insights (the “so-what”). Your business judgment will make the difference here.

You sometimes need to use data presented 5 minutes ago in another chart to complete the actual analysis.

Understand the different types of charts

A chart is an immensely powerful way of presenting numerical data. All the information is summarised in one go in a way that the eye can readily absorb.

Trends, proportions, and other relationships are revealed at a glance.

If you are unfamiliar with the different types of charts, I recommend reading the book: “Say It with Charts” by Gene Zelazny.

This book is a masterpiece when it comes to explaining why a type of chart is used to convey a certain type of message.

But if you don’t have time to read these books, remember just this:

Each chart has one (and one only) objective.

The main objective a chart can have is:

Identifying a trend (line charts or column charts)

Showing the relative contribution of different categories to a whole (pie charts)

Comparing different items against a metric (bar charts)

Identifying the correlation between 2 data sets (scatter plots)

So, the next time you see a chart, ask yourself:

What’s the chart type (pie chart, line chart, etc.)

What’s the objective of this chart (showing a trend, comparing items, etc.)

What do data say?

Let’s discuss how to master the exhibit reading.

Follow this 5-step approach to ace chart interpretation questions

Here is a 5-step approach to ensure you’ll never miss any insightful information from a chart:

Step 1: Understand the data represented.

Take the time to read the information about the chart (titles, labels, X-axis, Y-axis, units, footnotes, etc.)

And clarify any word or information that is not clear. Asking questions is part of the consultant’s job!

Per my experience, 80% of the chart interpretation mistakes come from misunderstanding the data represented.

Step 2: Ask for time to structure your thoughts.

It’s okay to ask for 30 seconds to 1 minute to structure your thoughts.

Don’t be afraid of the silence… your interviewer prefers to have a structured and insightful conversation rather than rambling.

Step 3: Define your goal (top-down vs. bottom-up approach)

This is the biggest mistake I see:

Candidates use a bottom-up approach instead of a top-down approach.

The difference?

With a bottom-up approach, candidates jump into the data and hope to find something insightful.

In other words, they start their analysis without a plan.

Candidates with a top-down approach start with a plan before jumping into the data presented in the chart.

Their plan?

They start with the issue they were analyzing.

And list the data they need to solve this issue.

Finally, search for these data in the chart presented.

With this top-down approach, you will be able to sort the relevant data from the irrelevant information easily.

Step 4: Communicate your key insights and implications.

During this step, you tell your interviewer what the data means regarding the client’s problem.

Do NOT say obvious observations!

“This data is going down…”

“The value of <any metric> has been stable for the past 2 years…”

These are not insights… but obvious observations.

Your job is to interpret the data.

Here are some questions to ask yourself:

What do these data mean for the client? 👉 Insights

What does the client should do? 👉 Implications

  Step 5: Lead the case.

Regardless of the format of the case interview (interviewer-led or interviewee-led), I recommend proactively saying what the next steps are.

Discuss, based on your findings, what you want to discuss next.

How to practice chart interpretation questions?

First, you can practice with GMAT tests.

Here are some examples .

Besides, visit websites full of charts like The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, etc.

Find charts, draw conclusions from these charts, and read the article to check if your conclusions make sense.

Also, practice with the case examples you can find in these case books .

Acing market sizing questions

Do you struggle with market sizing questions?

This can include: How to start the case? Which clarifying questions to ask? How to organize my thoughts and build an issue tree? Which assumptions to make? Do I have to check if my estimate makes sense? If yes, how?

Answering a market sizing question can be very SIMPLE.

Actually, it is very simple: there is a PROVEN FORMULA for solving market sizing questions.

This PROVEN FORMULA is like a comprehensive guide: if you follow each step, you’ll QUICKLY answer ANY market sizing questions SUCCESSFULLY.

In this guide, I’ll reveal my PROVEN FORMULA to answer market sizing questions and show how to use it with two full examples (with answers).

You can find this comprehensive guide here .

Acing the closing: The Art of giving a Winning Recommendation to the CEO

You’ve analyzed the data, solved complex problems, and navigated through the case interview.

Now, it’s time to wrap it up with a compelling recommendation for the client’s CEO.

Your closing remarks can make or break your chances of landing that coveted consulting role.

Here’s how to avoid common mistakes and structure an impactful recommendation.

Mistake #1 When Closing the Case: Repeating the Analyses You've Done

You’re now speaking to the CEO, not a fellow analyst.

The CEO doesn’t care about the number of Excel models you’ve built or interviews you’ve conducted.

They want a clear, actionable solution to their problem.

So, skip the methodology and get straight to the point.

Mistake #2 When Closing the Case: Not Being Assertive

This is not the time for ambiguity or hedging.

CEOs seek decisive, confident recommendations.

If you’re not assertive in your closing, you risk losing the CEO’s trust and, consequently, the case.

Mistake #3 When Closing the Case: Not Having a Clear Recommendation

If the CEO is left wondering, “Okay, but what should I do?” after your presentation, that’s a red flag.

Your recommendation must be crystal clear, leaving no room for interpretation or doubt.

How to Close the Case: The Structure of an Amazing Recommendation

To craft a recommendation that hits the mark, follow this structure:

Step 1: Initial Question Asked

Begin with a one-sentence summary of the question you’re answering.

For example, “You asked us to determine whether you should launch this new shampoo?”

Step 2: Your Recommendation

Provide a straightforward answer to the initial question.

For instance, “You should launch this new shampoo.”

Step 3: The Supporting Arguments

List all the logical reasons that back your recommendation.

For example, “This new shampoo will add $10 million in profits and doesn’t require significant investment in R&D or new production equipment.”

Step 4 (Optional): The Next Steps

If applicable, outline the immediate actions the CEO should take to implement your recommendation.

The Role of Risk in Your Recommendation

While some coaches advise discussing risks separately, I believe risks should be integrated into your supporting arguments.

If you can’t mitigate the risks, your recommendation loses its value.

The Timeframe for Impact

Lastly, ensure your recommendation can deliver impact within the CEO’s tenure—typically less than five years.

A great recommendation is not just insightful but also timely.

Where to start: A comprehensive case interview preparation plan

Are you feeling overwhelmed by the thought of case interviews?

You’re not alone.

With all the resources available online, knowing what’s relevant and how to separate the wheat from the chaff is difficult.

But with the right preparation plan, you can make it!

This 3-step plan takes you from discovery to mastery, ensuring you’re well-prepared for your case interviews:

Step #1: Discovery

Step #2: Practice

Step #3: Mastery

Bonus step: Mastery+

Step 1: Discovery

The first step is all about understanding the landscape. You need to know what you’re up against before conquering it.

Key Activities

Research different types of case interviews and consulting firms.

Identify the skills commonly tested.

Conduct informational interviews with current consultants (this can also be an opportunity to validate whether consulting is a good fit for you).

Major Pitfalls to Avoid

Don’t assume all case interviews are the same.

Avoid neglecting the importance of networking early on.

Don’t underestimate the emotional job; build your confidence from the start.

Step 2: Practice

You’ve done your homework; now it’s time to get your hands dirty. Practicing case interviews is where you turn knowledge into skill.

Work on mock case interviews with peers or mentors.

Use case interview prep books and online resources to practice cases.

Track your performance to identify areas for improvement.

Don’t practice going through the motions; make each session count.

Avoid practicing only with friends who might not give honest feedback.

Don’t ignore your weaknesses; confront them head-on.

Step 3: Mastery

This is the final stretch. Mastery is where you develop and fine-tune your skills to become a top 1% candidate.

Think using first principles .

Seek feedback from industry professionals.

Develop your business acumen:: while you are not expected to have an in-depth knowledge of an industry, a high-level understanding will help to generate better ideas and insights.

Practice with a diverse set of cases (different situations and industries).

Practice with recent cases (read the section Old vs. New cases).

Conduct mock interviews under timed conditions.

Do you know the Dunning-Kruger effect?

If not, read this article because it can be what you need to land offers in consulting.- Don’t get complacent; always look for ways to improve.

Therefore, avoid the trap of overconfidence; humility can be your greatest asset.

Step 3bis: Mastery+

Think you’re ready?

Mastery+ is your chance to test your skills in a lower-stakes environment by practicing with Plan-B firms.

Yes, you read me well: practice case interviews with Plan-B firms.

Apply to consulting firms that are not your first choice.

Go through their interview process as if they were your top choice.

Use the experience to identify any remaining gaps in your preparation.

Don’t treat these interviews as mere practice; give them your all.

Avoid burning bridges; you never know when a Plan B could become a Plan A.

Don’t ignore feedback; even a rejection can be a valuable learning experience.

From Discovery to Mastery+, each step is a building block towards your ultimate goal: acing that case interview and landing your dream consulting job.

Many candidates without business or consulting experience did it, and so can you.

So, are you ready to embark on this transformative journey?

Start by learning how to solve case interviews and get tips to help you navigate this exciting path.

Finally, watch this video about how to prepare for case study interviews on the BCG website :

Frequently Asked Questions

How much time is needed to prepare for case interviews.

This is a tricky question.

Because it depends on factors such as:

Your strengths and weaknesses

The time you can dedicate to your preparation

Your learning pace

However, there is an important rule:

Start as soon as you can.

It takes time to be ready.

A case interview is NOT an exam: you can’t cram your consulting interview preparation in a week or two.

What are the most common case interview mistakes?

Check this article to find out what are the 16 case interview mistakes to avoid at all costs.

What are the differences between Round 1 (R1) and Round 2 (R2) cases?

Here are the main differences between first round interview and second round interview:

The seniority of your interviewers : R2 case interviewers are often Directors or Partners, while R1 case interviewers are Senior Consultants or Managers

Stress : Second-round interviews are usually more stressful. The reasons are numerous: the offer is getting closer and closer, interviewing with a Partner from a prestigious firm, etc.

Competitiveness : R2 candidates are competing with other R2 candidates. This tautology means that all the candidates who have made it so far are good, and the selection will be made on details.

The weight on assessment criteria : R2 assessment criteria are the same as R1 criteria (see the section “What do case interviewers look for?”). However, the importance of these criteria differs. Partners tend to value more criteria such as communication, confidence, leadership, and maturity.

Focus on your weaknesses : after an R1 case interview, the consulting firm lists your strengths and weaknesses. Therefore, an R2 case interview includes questions to validate (or invalidate) any doubt about your capacity to be a world-class consultant. For instance, if your quantitative performance was not positive, you can expect an R2 case interview with many quantitative questions.

However, I believe these differences should NOT influence your interview prep.

And, as discussed in this article, your goal is to be in the top 1% across the 4 main performance assessment criteria.

Finally, since we are talking about R2 interviews:

I can not stress enough the importance of fit interviews.

Your answers to questions such as “ Why consulting? ” or “ Why McKinsey? ” greatly influence the final decision.

Will my case interview be in person or via Zoom?

Check with your HR contact to validate this point.

Besides, you can read this McKinsey guide about virtual interviews.

Do you recommend practicing with a coach?

Being a coach myself, I’m obviously biased.

But I tried to give you a fair answer to help you decide what’s best for you.

First, let’s define what a good coach is.

A coach is someone with an extensive experience in consulting and in helping others land offers.

For instance, your friend who just got an offer at McKinsey is NOT a coach.

Receiving an offer and explaining to others how to receive offers are two different things.

Therefore, the first criterion to decide if a coach can help you is to look at how much time they spend in:

Consulting,

Supporting candidates.

That being said, I recommend using coaching services if you can afford it.

Because this is the best way to get qualitative feedback.

You’ll know PRECISELY:

What is the distance between your performance and the performance of the top 1% of candidates.

How to quickly reduce this distance and become a top 1% candidate yourself.

At careerinconsulting.com, we have a unique coaching model:

We coach and support our clients until they receive an offer.

Interested?

If yes, check this page .

What are the basic business concepts to know?

I’ve written an article discussing some basic business concepts that might be helpful in acing your case interviews.

Any final tips?

Check these 16 case interview tips to move your skills to the next level.

For instance, you’ll learn the mistakes to avoid when developing an issue tree.

Also, check these case interview examples by clicking here .

How to get a case interview?

You get it:

Acing case interviews require a ton of hard work.

And you don’t want to put all this hard work into the trash by not being invited for interviews .

Unfortunately, the odds are against you: less than 30% of applicants are invited for interviews.

And don’t fool yourself:

Your prestigious college name and high GPA are insufficient.

Consulting firms look at a combination of factors to select the applicants invited for interviews.

So, how to pass the screening phase and be invited for interviews ?

But don’t worry, I’ve written comprehensive guides that tell you how to do it.

Write a consulting resume

How to make your resume stand out?

By writing EPIC bullet points!

So, check this step-by-step guide to turn your resume into an outstanding resume.

In this comprehensive guide, you’ll learn:

What matters the most to recruiters in consulting

How to stand out from the hordes of other applicants

What are the most common mistakes that lead to rejection (and how to avoid them)

Also, you can download templates for McKinsey, BCG, and Bain & Company.

And here is the best part:

You’ll get an exhaustive checklist to assess the readiness of your CV.

Write a consulting cover letter

At the beginning of the interview process, recruiters from top consulting firms want to know you better.

They want to know who the person is beyond the amazing achievements on your CV.

So, if you wonder how to express your motivation to join a firm, this step-by-step guide is for you.

Also, you can download winning cover letter examples that passed the screening phase at top consulting firms.

See you there !

Beyond case interview prep: Fit interview questions

Your case interview performance counts for 50% of the interviewer’s decision.

The other 50%?

Your fit interview (aka personal experience interview) performance.

So, you can’t overlook your personal experience interview preparation.

Are you in one of the following situations?

I’ve just been accepted at [fancy MBA program]. So, I know how to present myself.

I’ve just been accepted at [fancy non-consulting company]. So, I know how to present myself.

I’ve had lots of job interviews in the past. This is not new to me. Instead, I prefer to spend my time on case interview preparation because case interview is new to me.

Your preparation must be aligned with the specific requirements of consulting firms.

In other words, even if some questions are typical job interview questions (e.g., “Tell me about yourself”), their expectations are different.

For instance, consulting firms assess your strategic thinking skills even in fit interviews.

Besides, they want to understand why you are genuinely interested in pursuing a career in consulting.

Thus, here is a series of articles to help stand out during your fit interviews:

How to answer the “ Tell me about yourself ” question

How to answer the “ Why consulting ” question

How to answer the “ Why Mckinsey or BCG or Bain ” question

How to answer behavioral interview questions using the STAR framework

Read these articles, and you’ll be covered for the main personal experience interview questions.

Case interviews mimic what consultants do: solving business problems.

And often, there is no right answer.

What’s important is to show how you think.

So, I hope this guide will help ace your consulting interviews and start your career in management consulting at Boston Consulting Group or any top consulting firm.

I’d love to hear from you: What’s your biggest challenge in case interview prep?

Let me know by leaving a quick comment below right now.

-Want to know all the secrets of the consulting interview process?

👉 Check this article about the McKinsey recruitment process .

👉 Also, check this article about the Boston Consulting Group recruitment process .

Want more case interview examples? Or start to practice cases?

👉 Check this page: https://careerinconsulting.com/case-interview-examples/

You’ll find plenty of Bain case interview examples, for instance.

Finally, want to ace personal experience interview questions?

👉 Check this page: https://careerinconsulting.com/mckinsey-pei/

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Hi Sebastien, thank you for your informative article. I do struggle to assign 7 McKinsey cases into the above-provided groups, they seem to get a bit more creative every year! Do you mind commenting or advising on those?

Case/Type: 1) Case: Beautify, Potential Type: Take a strategic decision 2) Case: Diconsa, Potential Type: Take a strategic decision 3) Case: Eletro-Light, Potential Type: Take a strategic decision) 4) Case: National Education System, Potential Type: ? 5) Case: Talbot Trucks, Potential Type: Take a strategic decision 6) Case: Shops Corporation, Potential Type: ? 7) Case: Conservation Forever, Potential Type: ?

Hi. thank you for your message. Where can I find the above cases?

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50+ Case Interview Questions and Examples From Top Firms

Discover over 50 case interview questions and examples from top consulting firms. Prepare effectively for your next interview with expert insights and tips!

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Table of Contents

Let’s face it, consulting interviews can be intimidating, especially with their complex case questions. These questions are designed to assess your problem-solving skills, analytical ability, and strategic thinking, crucial competencies for success in the consulting world. Recognizing the types of case interview questions and mastering them can significantly elevate your chances of landing your dream job in prestigious firms like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain.

This article serves as a comprehensive guide to mastering case interview questions, providing insights into the most common consulting case interview questions and detailed case interview examples from top consulting firms. From McKinsey case interview questions to unique challenges posed by firms like Deloitte and Accenture, we've got you covered. We will also share tips on how to ace your case interview and how to prepare for different types of case interview questions effectively.

By the end of this article, you'll have a well-rounded understanding of what to expect and how to showcase your problem-solving prowess when it matters most. Let’s begin!

List of Case Interview Questions, Practice Cases, and Examples

In preparing for your consulting interviews, it's crucial to familiarize yourself with the most common types of case interview questions. On this list, we will provide sample questions from the top consulting firms.

McKinsey Case Interview Examples

To excel in McKinsey case interviews , it's crucial to practice with specific examples that mirror the real challenges you might face. Here are some detailed scenarios from McKinsey to guide your preparation:

1. Beautify Case

Sample Question #1 : Beautify is excited to support its current staff of beauty consultants on the journey to becoming virtual social media-beauty advisors. Consultants would still lead the way in terms of direct consumer engagement and would be expected to maintain and grow a group of clients. They would sell products through their own pages on beautify.com, make appearances at major retail outlets, and be active on all social media platforms.

What possible factors should Beautify consider when shifting this group of employees toward a new set of responsibilities?

Sample Question #2 : One of the key areas that Beautify wants to understand is the reaction of current and potential new customers to the virtual social media-beauty advisors.

Imagine you are a current Beautify customer and you mostly shop at your local department store because you enjoy the high-touch service offered by in-store consultants. What features would make you consider switching to a mostly virtual sales experience?

See more questions here .

2. Diconsa Case

Sample Question #1 : What should the team investigate to determine whether the Diconsa network could and should be leveraged to provide a range of basic financial services to Mexico’s rural population?

Sample Question #2: The team has estimated that it currently costs a family 50 pesos per month in transportation and food to make the journey to collect benefit payments. The team also estimates that if benefits were available for collection at local Diconsa stores, the cost would be reduced by 30 percent.

Twenty percent of Mexico’s population is rural, and of that number, half currently receive state benefits.

You can assume that Mexico has a population of 100 million.

You can also assume that families in Mexico have an average four members, and that this does not vary by region.

If every family could collect state benefits at their local Diconsa stores, how much in total per year would be saved across all Mexican rural families receiving state benefits?

3. Electro-Light Case

Sample Question #1: What key factors should SuperSoda consider when deciding whether or not to launch Electro-Light?

Sample Question #2: SuperSoda executives believe that the company's position as a top-three beverage company gives it strategic impetus toward achieving the desired market share. However, they ask the team to outline what would be needed to achieve the target 12.5 percent share of the electrolyte-drinks market. What would SuperSoda need to do to gain the required market share for Electro-Light following its launch?

4. National Education System Transformation

Sample Question #1: What issues would you want to investigate in diagnosing the current state of the Loravian school system?

Sample Question #2: One of the clients at Loravian’s educational department mentions neighbor country “C” as an example, because it’s outperforming all of Loravia's economic peers and neighbors in the international assessment. She believes that the more concentrated school structure in this country is a big reason for better outcomes in the international assessment. She suggests that having larger, less fragmented schools allows for more effective teacher selection and training, leading to improved education outcomes for students. Finally, she shares that 15 percent of Loravia's population is currently attending school.

What would be the reduction in the total number of schools in Loravia if it were to achieve the same average school size as neighbor country C?

5. Talbot Trucks Case

Sample Question #1: What information would you want to collect to understand the attractiveness for Talbot Trucks in producing and selling eTrucks in Europe?

Sample Question #2: After running focus groups with Talbot Trucks’ customers, the team concluded that the total cost of an eTruck needs to be the same as a diesel truck to be considered attractive to customers. Currently, a Talbot Trucks diesel truck costs €100,000.

Assuming that the figures above do not change, what is the maximum price Talbot Trucks can charge for its eTruck so that the total cost of ownership is equal to that of a diesel truck?

6. Shops Corporation Case

Sample Question #1: What types of factors would you want to explore to understand how Shops Corporation might improve its diversity within senior leadership?

7. Conservation Forever Case

Sample Question #1: What factors could the team consider when choosing one of the three specific geographies on which to focus the conservation efforts?

Sample Question #2: The director of CF likes these initial projections, but is not convinced that the assumptions are realistic. They tell the team, “According to your model, there are three levers we need to focus on to generate revenue from ecotourism in Peru: number of visitors, length of stay, and spending amount. What are your best ideas for how to maximize each lever? And how about some ideas outside of the constraints of this model?”

Your team is meeting in ten minutes to generate ideas in preparation for a workshop with leaders from several coastal communities, and you are jotting down some notes.

What ideas do you have to generate revenue linked to ecotourism?

McKinsey offers case interview examples that cover various industries and problem-solving scenarios, helping you prepare for any interview question. Engaging with these cases will not only boost your confidence but also enhance your ability to approach complex business problems with innovative solutions.

BCG Case Interview Examples

At BCG , the case interview process is designed to simulate the real-world problems that client teams face, allowing you to demonstrate your problem-solving abilities and specialized skills relevant to the role. Embracing the challenge with enthusiasm will not only make the experience rewarding but also provide a true taste of consulting life at BCG. Here are some of their case interview examples:

Here are a few examples of common case questions:

• Should a company enter a new market?
• Should a company pursue a new product line?
• How can a company improve its profitability?
• How can a company reduce costs?
• How can a company improve its customer satisfaction?

Read: How to Prepare for Boston Consulting Group Management Consulting Case Interviews?

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Bain Case Interview Examples

During your preparation for Bain case interviews, it's essential to delve into specific examples that reflect the real challenges you may encounter. Here's are five examples of practice cases and mock interview tips provided by Bain to guide your preparation:

• Coffee Shop Co. Practice Case
• FashionCo. Practice Case
• Associate Consultant Mock Interview
• Consultant Mock Interview
• Written Case Interview Tips

Read : Bain Case Interviews: A Comprehensive Preparation Guide

Deloitte Case Interview Examples

Deloitte provides a rich array of materials and interactive case studies designed to prepare you for the rigors of their case interviews. These examples reflect real client engagements, offering insights into the complex problems you may face and the analytical, creative, and strategic thinking required to solve them.

Deloitte Case Examples

Footloose Case Study sample questions:

• How big is the work boot market (expressed in euros)? Does Duraflex get more of its revenue from work boots or casual boots?
• Explain why Badger is outperforming Duraflex in the work boot market.
• What changes would you recommend to Duraflex’s work boot strategy? Why? Would you recommend they introduce a sub- branded boot line?

Engagement Strategy: Federal Agency V sample questions:

• To begin an engagement strategy, how might you establish a baseline to measure employee engagement against?
• What characteristics would you look for in external organizations to use as potential benchmarks?
• What are the various populations of the workforce and how would you engage them?
• How will you use Deloitte’s relationship with, and institutional knowledge, of Agency V to develop your deliverables?

Recreation Unlimited sample questions :

• What are potential reasons for Recreation Unlimited's poor eCommerce performance relative to competitors?
• In order to win digital customers, Recreation Unlimited wants to find ways to improve and differentiate their digital customer experience. What are some potential ways to improve the customer experience and how does improving customer experience create value for the customer and value for the business?
• As part of the digital strategy that Recreation Unlimited is considering, they are debating whether to improve the website experience or increase digital marketing. Since they are not sure they will have the budget for both, they want you to help them decide. How would you approach this question?

Strategic Vision: Federal Benefits Provider sample questions :

• What steps should the Deloitte team take to develop a 10-year strategic roadmap for the Agency?
• What are the components or metrics of a business case that should be considered to justify the development of a 10-year strategic roadmap?
• In building the 10-year strategic road map, the Deloitte team realizes there are several key challenges that pose impediments to implementing the Agency’s vision. What is the cost of each challenge to the Agency?
• Leaders in the various departments remain skeptical that the 10-year vision can positively impact their unique operations, while employees are largely unaware of the 10-year vision initiative. How might Deloitte develop an impactful change management strategy to institutionalize the goals of the 10-year vision and ensure buy-in across the Agency’s diverse workforce?

Talent Management: Federal Civil Cargo Protection Bureau sample questions:

• What data would you want to have to be able to move forward?
• What immediate steps would you take to review screening processes and training procedures?
• How would you incorporate things like job descriptions and competencies in your review in order to build a new human capital strategy?
• How will you engage and develop leadership given the Chief Administrator is new to the role and has a different background?

Click here to practice a consulting case interview.

Read : Best 30 Free Resources to Get into Management Consulting

Accenture Case Interview Examples

Accenture's case interviews serve as the final hurdle to becoming a consultant at the firm. These interviews are uniquely structured to assess a candidate's ability to solve complex business problems. The format includes both interviewer-led and candidate-led cases, providing a comprehensive evaluation of your problem-solving capabilities.

Learn more about Accenture’s Case Interview Workbook here .

OC&C Case Interview Examples

OC&C , a globally recognized but relatively smaller strategy consulting firm, is known for its rigorous case interviews that reflect real-life client challenges. These interviews are designed to assess a wide range of skills, from analytical thinking to business acumen, tailored to the firm's focus on private equity clients and seven key industries.

1. Leisure Clubs Case sample questions:

• What factors might you analyze to determine what is going to happen to demand for leisure clubs?
• What is likely to happen to demand for leisure clubs?
• What is the critical issue for our client?

2. Important Whisky in an Emerging Market Case sample questions:

• What information would you require to help explain the slowing down of growth?
• What is driving profitability down?
• What are the potential strategic options?

Oliver Wyman Case Interview Examples

Oliver Wyman's case interviews are designed to uncover how you approach unstructured challenges and evaluate data to build comprehensive solutions. The firm encourages candidates to think critically and creatively, using logical components to break down complex problems.

See how Oliver Wyman can help you with interview preparation by explaining conversational and case interviews, as well as sharing interview tips and explaining what the role of the case interview is.

A.T. Kearney Case Interview Examples

A.T. Kearney's interview process is notably rigorous, tailored to assess a wide range of abilities from analytical thinking to strategic problem-solving. Take a look at A.T. Kearney’s case example and case book to help you how to prepare effectively:

• Promotional Planning Case example
• Consulting Case Book and Tips for Interviewing

Strategy& / PWC Case Interview Examples

Strategy& / PWC focuses on executive-level strategic issues, such as capability identification, market positioning, and operational efficiency. This branch's case interviews are designed to simulate real business challenges, helping to prepare candidates for the demands of strategic consulting roles. Here's a closer look at the types of questions you might encounter:

Sample Question 1: Market sizing

• Estimate the size (by value) of the UK grocery retail market

Sample Question 2: Market sizing

• Estimate the size (by value) of the UK retail cooking sauces market

Sample Question 3: Interpreting information and drawing conclusions

• Look at the chart on the following slide
• Interpret the meaning of the chart
• How are things changing? Who's winning and who's losing?
• Given your knowledge of the UK grocery market, why might this be?

Learn more about case interview preparation by reading through Strategy& / PWC’s presentation .

L.E.K. Consulting Case Interview Examples

The case interview process at L.E.K. Consulting is rigorous – designed to evaluate a candidate's ability to solve complex business problems. The interviews are structured across multiple rounds, each focusing on different aspects of your analytical and strategic thinking abilities. Here's what you need to know to prepare effectively:

• Interview Preparation
• Market Sizing Case Example Video Walkthrough

Roland Berger Case Interview Examples

The case interviews at Roland Berger are designed to evaluate your ability to display key personality traits, with a notable preference for candidates who have international experience, as this is explicitly stated by the firm. Roland Berger has provided two case webinars on their website. Each example provides a case scenario, problem, and tips on how to answer the questions.

• 3D Printed Hip Implants Case / 3D Printed Hip Implants Case 2 sample questions:
• Based upon the explanation process: Which are the most important costs to consider?
• Is additive manufacturing of the hip implant – based upon the given information – lucrative?
• Which measures could increase the economic feasibility of the product?
• Transit Oriented Development Case / Transit Oriented Development Case 2 sample questions:
• How would you split the 416 stations between little, medium, and large revenue potential?
• How can the public transport operator of Munich increase its revenue through focusing on its existing rail stations?

Capital One Case Interview Examples

The structure of a Capital One case interview typically involves three key sections: outlining the business situation and framework, tackling quantitative questions, and formulating a recommendation based on your calculations. Expect scenarios that might not strictly adhere to the MECE principle (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive), which is often a staple in consulting case interviews. This approach reflects the real-world ambiguity you might face in business situations, requiring a flexible and adaptive problem-solving strategy. Here's a video walkthrough on everything there is need to know about Capital One case interview:

• Strategy Analyst - Case Study Guide

EY Parthenon Case Interview Examples

EY-Parthenon case interviews are designed to mimic real-life challenges, providing a glimpse into the practical work of a consultant. The interviews are candidate-led, similar to styles seen at BCG or Bain, and focus on several key areas including analytical thinking, structured problem-solving, and effective communication. The EY-Parthenon behavioral interview questions are comparable to those you would encounter in interviews for other top-tier management consulting firms. Be prepared to answer the following questions:

EY-Parthenon Case Interview Behavioral/FIT Questions

• Tell me about yourself.
• Why are you interested in consulting, and why specifically EY-Parthenon?
• Describe a time when you worked on a team project. What was your role, and how did you contribute to the team’s success?
• Can you provide an example of a challenging problem you faced at work and how you solved it?
• How do you handle tight deadlines and pressure? Can you give an example?
• Tell me about a time when you had to influence someone to achieve a goal.
• How do you prioritize tasks when you have multiple projects to manage?
• Describe a situation where you had to deal with a difficult team member. How did you handle it?
• What is your greatest professional achievement so far?
• Give an example of a time when you had to learn something new quickly.
• Why do you think you would be a good fit for EY-Parthenon’s culture?
• Tell me about a time you failed or made a mistake. How did you handle it?
• Can you provide an example of a project where you demonstrated leadership?
• How do you handle feedback and criticism?
• Are there any questions that you have for me?
• Your answer for this question must be a resounding “YES”. The more you have questions for them, the better because that shows that you’ve researched the company. You may ask about a particular previous project they did or something in particular to their operations.

Online Case Interview Examples from Consulting Clubs

Mastering the case interview is essential in consulting, and consulting clubs are key in this preparation. NYU, Duke, and Kellogg Consulting Club, for instance, provide free various interview cases, both individual and group, that mimic real consulting challenges.

• NYU Stern MCA 2020-2021 Casebook
• Columbia Business School 2021 Casebook
• The Duke MBA Consulting Club Casebook 2021-2022
• UCLA Case Book 2019 – 2020
• Darden School Of Business 2021-2022 Casebook
• Kellogg Consulting Club 2020 Casebook
• Cornell MBA Johnson Consulting Club Casebook 2020-2021
• Notre Dame Casebook 2022
• FMS Consulting Casebook 2021-22
• INSEAD Consulting Club Casebook 2021
• IIMC Consulting Casebook 2021-22
• IIM Lucknow Casebook 2022
• Harvard Business School Management Consulting Club Case Interview Examples
• Berkeley Haas School of Business Consulting Club Interview Preparation Guide and Case Interview Examples 2019

How to Ace Your Case Interview

To excel in your case interview, it's crucial to demonstrate a blend of problem-solving skills, analytical ability, strategic and logical thinking, and comfort with ambiguity. These elements are essential as they reflect real client projects that you might handle at firms like Deloitte Consulting LLP.

Read : The 15 Most Common Consulting Interview Questions — With Answers

Step-by-Step Approach to Case Interviews

• Understand the Issue : Start by clarifying the case question. Ensure you fully grasp the problem before proceeding.
• Develop a Framework : Articulate a framework and initial hypothesis to explore. This helps in structuring your response and guides your analysis.
• Analytical Execution : Engage in logical storytelling. Walk the interviewer through your thought process and explain your assumptions. Take notes and structure your analysis clearly.
• Recommendation and Next Steps : Conclude with a strong recommendation based on your findings. Outline the next steps and expected results or impacts.

Read : Mastering Consulting Cases: A Step-by-Step Approach

Tips on How to Prepare For Your Case Interview

To excel in your case interview preparation, it's essential to engage in extensive practice with a variety of case types. Successful candidates often practice with dozens of case interview scenarios, treating the preparation process with the same rigor as studying for finals or the GMAT. Here are key steps to enhance your preparation:

• Diverse Practice Cases : Ensure the practice cases you use cover a broad spectrum of problems, including profitability, market sizing, and business expansion scenarios. This variety prepares you for any curveballs and helps develop flexibility in applying different frameworks.
• Quality of Practice Materials : Select high-quality practice cases from trusted sources. The content and structure of these cases should closely mimic the types of cases presented in actual interviews at top consulting firms.
• Framework Mastery : Rather than memorizing frameworks, focus on understanding and adapting them to fit different case scenarios. This approach helps in crafting tailored solutions during your actual interview.
• Time Management : Practice managing your time effectively during mock interviews. Top consulting firms like Bain appreciate candidates who can efficiently organize and analyze information under time constraints.
• Engage with Realistic Simulations : Participate in mock interviews and case sessions that simulate the actual interview environment. This practice helps you refine your problem-solving approach and improve your communication skills under pressure.
• Continuous Learning and Adaptation : Stay informed about new trends and changes in the consulting interview landscape. Engage with resources that provide updates and insights into evolving interview formats.

Personalized Coaching : Consider working with an experienced coach who can provide personalized feedback and guidance. Coaching can significantly enhance your performance by focusing on areas that need improvement.

Practice with Experts from Leland

Through an extensive exploration of the various aspects of case interviews across prestigious consulting firms like McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Deloitte, Accenture, and others, it's evident that thorough preparation and an adaptable mindset are critical for success.

Leland offers comprehensive case study interview preparation tailored to help you excel in consulting case interviews. Our experienced consultants provide personalized coaching, realistic case simulations, and strategic feedback to enhance your problem-solving skills and boost your confidence. With our expert guidance, you'll be well-prepared to tackle any case interview challenge and make a lasting impression.

What questions should you consider asking during a case study interview?

• In your case study interview, it's crucial to ask insightful questions to understand the context fully. Consider asking about how the interviewee discovered your company, the timeline of their engagement, their initial experiences with your company, the challenges they aimed to address, and whether they considered any competitors or alternative solutions.

What strategies can enhance your performance in a case interview?

• To excel in a case interview, start by taking a moment to organize your thoughts before responding. Structure your response logically, guiding the interviewer through your thought process and clarifying any assumptions you make. Maintain composure and treat the interview as a professional conversation, which can help alleviate pressure.

How can you excel in a case study interview?

• To perform well in a case study interview, make sure to take detailed notes throughout. Even if you are not familiar with the industry, focus on demonstrating your analytical skills and how you approach problem-solving. Communicate clearly and ensure you have a thorough understanding of the problem you're asked to analyze.

What types of questions are typically asked in case interviews?

• Case interviews generally include questions from nine key categories, such as framework or issue tree questions, market-sizing and guesstimate questions, valuation inquiries, brain teasers, chart interpretation, value proposition analysis, informational queries, and mathematical problems.

Preparing for consulting recruiting and/or case interviews? Here are some additional resources to help:

• Top 3 Tactics to Ace Your Case Interview
• A Comprehensive Guide to McKinsey & Co., Bain & Co., and Boston Consulting Group
• From No Offers to Multiple Offers - How to Take Your Casing to the Next Level
• Soft Skills for Consulting: Why They Matter and How to Develop Them
• Five Tips to Break Into Management Consulting

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Case Interview Preparation

Perform at your best during your case interview., bcgers share their case study interview tips., follow these dos and don ’ ts to ace your case prep:, test your case interview skills with these interactive quizzes., set out a climate strategy for a client., restore client satisfaction at a digital bank..

35 Case Interviews Examples from MBB / Big Four Firms

Studying case interview examples is one of the first steps in preparing for the  management consulting  recruitment process. If you don’t want to spend hours searching the web, this article presents a comprehensive and convenient list for you – with 35 example cases, 16 case books, along with a case video accompanied by detailed feedback on tips and techniques.

A clear understanding of “what is a case interview” is essential for effective use of these examples. I suggest reading our  Case Interview 101  guide, if you haven’t done so.

McKinsey case interview examples

Mckinsey practice cases.

• Diconsa Case
• Electro-Light Case
• GlobaPharm Case
• National Education Case

What should I know about McKinsey Case interviews?

At McKinsey, case interviews often follow the interviewer-led format , where the interviewer asks you multiple questions for you to answer with short pitches.

How do you nail these cases? Since the questions can be grouped into predictable types, an efficient approach is to master each question type. However, do that after you’ve mastered the case interview fundamentals!

For a detailed guide on interviewer-led cases, check out our article on McKinsey Case Interview .

BCG & Bain case interview examples

Bcg practice cases.

• BCG – Written Case – Chateau Boomerang

Bain practice cases

• Bain – Coffee Shop Co.
• Bain – Fashion Co.
• Bain – Mock Interview – Associate Consultant
• Bain – Mock Interview – Consultant

What should I know about BCG & Bain case interviews?

Unlike McKinsey, BCG and Bain case interviews typically follow the candidate-led format – which is the opposite of interviewer-led, with the candidate driving the case progress by actively breaking down problems in their own way.

The key to acing candidate-led cases is to master the case interview fundamental concepts as well as the frameworks.

Some BCG and Bain offices also utilize written case interviews – you have to go through a pile of data slides, select the most relevant ones to answer a set of interviewer questions, then deliver those answers in a presentation.

For a detailed guide on candidate-led cases, check out our article on BCG & Bain Case Interview .

Deloitte case interview examples

Deloitte practice cases.

Undergrad Cases

• Human Capital – Technology Institute
• Human Capital – Agency V
• Strategy – Federal Benefits Provider
• Strategy – Extreme Athletes
• Technology – Green Apron
• Technology – Big Bucks Bank
• Technology – Top Engine
• Technology – Finance Agency

Advanced Cases

• Human Capital – Civil Cargo Bureau
• Human Capital – Capital Airlines
• Strategy – Club Co
• Strategy – Health Agency
• Technology – Waste Management
• Technology – Bank of Zurich
• Technology – Galaxy Fitness

What should I know about Deloitte case interviews?

Case interviews at Deloitte also lean towards the candidate-led format like BCG and Bain.

The Deloitte consultant recruitment process also features group case interviews , which not only test analytical skills but also place a great deal on interpersonal handling.

Accenture case interview examples

Accenture divides its cases into three types with very cool-sounding names.

Sorted in descending order of popularity, they are:

These are similar to candidate-led cases at Bain and BCG. albeit shorter – the key is to develop a suitable framework and ask the right questions to extract data from the interviewer.

These are similar to the market-sizing and guesstimate questions asked in interviewer-led cases – demonstrate your calculations in structured, clear-cut, logical steps and you’ll nail the case.

These cases have you sort through a deluge of data to draw solutions; however, this type of case is rare.

Capital One case interview examples

Capital One is the odd one on this list – it is a bank-holding company. Nonetheless, this being one of the biggest banks in America, it’s interesting to see how its cases differ from the consulting ones.

Having gone through Capital One’s guide to its cases, I can’t help but notice the less-MECE structure of the sample answers. Additionally, there seems to be a greater focus on the numbers.

Nonetheless, having a solid knowledge of the basics of case interviews will not hurt you – if anything, your presentation will be much more in-depth, comprehensive, and understandable!

See Capital One Business Analyst Case Interview for an example case and answers.

Other firms case interview examples

Besides the leading ones, we have some examples from other major consulting firms as well.

• Oliver Wyman – Wumbleworld
• Oliver Wyman – Aqualine
• LEK – Cinema
• LEK – Market Sizing
• Kearney – Promotional Planning
• OC&C – Imported Spirits
• OC&C – Leisure Clubs

Consulting clubs case books

In addition to official cases, here are a few case books you can use as learning materials.

Do keep in mind: don’t base your study on frameworks and individual case types, but master the fundamentals so you can tackle any kind of case.

• Wharton Consulting Club Case Book
• Tuck Consulting Club Case Book
• MIT Sloan Consulting Club Case Book
• LBS Consulting Club Case Book
• Kellogg Consulting Club Case Book
• INSEAD Consulting Club Case Book
• Harvard Consulting Club Case Book
• ESADE Consulting Club Case Book
• Darden Consulting Club Case Book
• Berkeley Consulting Club Case Book
• Notre-Dame Consulting Club Case Book
• Illinois Consulting Club Case Book
• Columbia Consulting Club Case Book
• Duke Consulting Club Case Book
• Ross Consulting Club Case Book
• Kearney Case Book

Case interview example – Case video

The limitation of most official case interview examples is that they are either too short and vague, or in text format, or both.

To solve that problem for you, we’ve extracted a 30-minute-long, feedback-rich case sample from our Case Interview End-to-End Secrets Program .

This is a candidate-led, profitability case on an internet music broadcasting company called Pandora.

In 30 minutes, this candidate demonstrates the exact kind of shortcoming that most candidates suffer during real case interviews – they come in with sharp business senses, then hurt their own chances with inadequate techniques.

Here are seven notable areas where the candidate (and you) can improve:

Thanking Throughout the case, as especially in the opening, he should have shown more appreciation for the time the interviewer spent with him.

Structured opening The candidate’s opening of the case feels unstructured. He could have improved it by not mixing the playback and clarification parts. You can learn to nail the case in a 3-minute start through this video on How to Open Any Case Perfectly .

Explicitness A lot of the candidate’s thought process remains in his head; in a case interview, it’s better to be as explicit as possible – draw your issue tree out and point to it as you speak; state your hypothesis when you move into a branch; when you receive data, acknowledge it out loud.

Avoiding silence The silence in his case performance is too long, including his timeout and various gaps in his speech; either ask for timeout (and keep it as short as possible) or think out loud to fill those gaps.

Proactivity The candidate relies too much on the interviewer (e.g: asking for data when it can easily be calculated); you don’t want to appear lazy before your interviewer, so avoid this.

Avoiding repeating mistakes Making one mistake twice is a big no-no in consulting interviews; one key part of the consulting skill set is the ability to learn, and repeating your mistakes (especially if the interviewer has pointed it out) makes you look like someone who doesn’t learn.

Note-taking Given the mistakes this candidate makes, he’s probably not taking his notes well. I can show you how to get it right if you watch this video on Case Interview Note-Taking .

Nonetheless, there are three good points you can learn from the candidate:

The candidate sums up what he’s covered and announces his upcoming approach at the start and at key points in the case – this is a very good habit that gives you a sense of direction and shows that you’re an organized person.

The candidate performs a “reality check” on whether his actions match the issue tree; in a case interview it’s easy to lose track of what you’re doing, so remember to do this every once in a while.

The candidate prompts the interviewer to give out more data than he asked for; if anything, this actually matches a habit of real consultants, and if you’re lucky, your interviewer may actually give out important pieces you haven’t thought of.

These are only part of the “ninja tips” taught In our Case Interview E2E Secrets Program – besides the math and business intuition for long-term development, a key feature is the instant-result tips and techniques for case interviews.

Once you’ve mastered them, you can nail any case they throw at you!

For more “quality” practice, let’s have a mock case interview with former consultants from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Oliver Wyman, Strategy& and many other consulting firms. They will help you identify your problem areas and give you actionable feedback, making your preparation much easier and faster.

Hi! This is Kim and welcome to another performance in the Tips & Techniques part of our amazing End-to-end program. You are about to hear a really interesting performance.

There is a common Myth that Profitability cases are easier. Well, for beginners, that’s may make sense, but I would argue that Profitability cases can be really tricky and candidates without good foundation will make about the same level of mistakes regardless of type of cases given.

The profitability case we are about to watch will show that. It’s a very unconventional

Profitability. It started out like a typical one but getting more and more tricky toward the end.

The candidate is fairly good in term of business intuition, but the Tips & Techniques aspect needs a lot of fine tune! Now let’s go ahead and get started! 

It’s actually a little better to playback the case information and ask clarifications. The candidate does not distinguish between the two and do both at a same time. Also, the candidate was asking these clarifications in an unorganized and unstructured fashion. This is not something terrible, but could have been better, especially when this is the very first part of the case, where the crucial first impression is being formed.

My pitch would sound like this:

“That’s a very interesting problem and I am happy to get the chance to solve it. First of all let me tell you my understanding of the case context and key objectives. Then I would like to ask a few clarifying questions regarding a few terminology and concepts. Both of these are to make sure that I will be solving the right problem.

So here is my understanding of the case: The client is ABC. Here are some DEF facts about the situation we just talked about. And the key case question is XYZ.

Does that correctly and adequately summarize the case?”

Once the interviewer confirms, I would move to the clarification part as follows: “Now I would like to ask a few clarification questions. There are three of them: No 1, … No 2, … and No 3, …”

You may see above pitch as obvious but that’s a perfect example of how you should open any cases. Every details matters. We will point out those details in just a second. But before we do that, it’s actually very helpful if you can go back, listen carefully to the above pitch, and try to point out the great components yourselves. Only after that, go back to this point and learn it all together.

Alright, let’s break down the perfect opening.

First of all, you hear me say: “That’s a very interesting problem and I am happy to get a chance to solve it”. This seems trivial but very beneficial in multiple ways:

1. I bought myself a couple of seconds to calm down and get focused. 2. By nature, we as human unconsciously like those who give us compliments. Nothing better than opening the case with a modest compliment to the interviewer.

And (c) I showed my great attitude towards the case, which the interviewer would assume is the same for real future consulting business problems.

You should do that in your interviews too. Say it and accompany it with the best smile you can give. It shows that you are not afraid of any problems. In fact, you love them and you are always ready for them.

Secondly, I did what I refer to as the “map habit”, which is to always say what you are about to do and then do it. Just like somebody in the car showing the drivers the route before cruising on the road. The driver would love it. This is where I said: “Let me tell you my understanding of the case context and key objectives. Then ABC…”.

Third, right at the beginning of the case, I try to be crystal clear and easy to follow. I don’t let the interviewer confused between playing the case vs. asking clarification questions. I distinguish between the two really carefully. This habit probably doesn’t change the outcome of how the case goes that much, but it certainly significantly changes the impression the interviewer has of me.

Fourth, in playing back the case, each person would have a different way to re-phrase. But there are three buckets to always include:

1. Who is the client 2. The facts regarding the client and the situation and (c) The key question and the objective of the case.

Fifth, after playing the case context and objectives, I pause for a second and ALIGN with the interviewer: “Does it correctly and adequately summarize the case?”. This is a habit that every consulting manager loves for young consultants to do. Nobody wants first-year folks to spend weeks of passion and hard-work building an excel model that the team can’t use. This habit is extensively taught at McKinsey, Bain and BCG, so therefore interviewers would love somebody that exhibits this habit often in case interview.

Lastly, when asking clarification questions, you hear me number them very carefully to create the strong impression that I am very organized and structured. I said I have three clarifying questions. Then I number them as I go through each. No.1, No.2, and No.3.

Sometimes, during interviews it’s hard to know exactly how many items you are going to get. One way is to take timeout often to carefully plan your pitch. If this is not possible in certain situations, you may skip telling how many items you have; but you should definitely still number your question: No.1, No.2; and so on. 

Just a moment ago, the candidate actually exhibited a good habit. After going through his clarification questions, the candidate ended by asking the “is there anything else” question. In this case, I actually give out an important piece of data.

Though this is not very common as not every interviewer is that generous in giving out data. But this is a habit management consultants have to have every day when talking to experts, clients, or key stakeholders. The key is to get the most data and insights out of every interview and this is the type of open-ended question every consultant asks several times a day.

To show of this habit in a case interview is very good!

There are three things I would like you to pay attention to:

First, it took the candidate up to 72 seconds to “gather his thoughts”. This is a little too long in a case interview. I intentionally leave the 72 seconds of silence in the recording so you get an idea of how long that is in real situations. But it’s worth-noting here is not only that. While in some very complicated and weird cases, it’s ok to take that long to really think and gather ideas. In this case, the approach as proposed by the candidate is very simple. For this very approach, I think no more than 15 to 20 seconds should be used.

No.2, with that said, I have told I really like the fact that this candidate exhibits the “map” habit. Before going straight to the approach he draws the overall approach first.

No.3. You also see here that the candidate tried to align the approach with me by asking my thoughts on it. As I just said on the previous comment, this is a great habit to have. Not only does it help reduce chance of going into the wrong direction in case interviews, but it also creates a good impression. Consulting interviewers love people doing it often!

Here we see a not-really-bad response that for sure could be much better. The candidate was going into the first branch of the analysis which is Revenue. I would fix this in 3 aspects:

First, even though we just talked about the overall approach, it’s still better to briefly set up the issue tree first then clearly note that you are going into one branch.

Second, this is not a must, but I always try to make my hypothesis as explicitly clear as possible. Here the candidate just implicitly made a hypothesis that the problem is on the revenue side. The best way to show our hypothesis-driven mindset is to explicitly say it.

Third, you hear this a ton of times in our End-to-End program but I am going to repeat it again and again. It is better to show the habit of aligning here too. Don’t just go into revenue, before doing that, give the interviewer a chance to agree or to actually guide you to Cost.

So, summarizing the above insights, my pitch would sound something like this:

“So as we just discussed, a profit problem is either caused by revenue or by cost. Unless you would like to go into cost first, let’s hypothesize that the problem is on revenue side. I would like to look deeper into Revenue. Do we have any data on the revenue?”

And while saying this, you should literally draw an issue tree and point to each as you speak.

There is an interesting case interview tip I want to point out here. Notice how the candidate responds after receiving two data points from me. He went straight into the next question without at least acknowledging the data received and also without briefly analyzing it.

I am glad that the candidate makes this mistakes… well, not glad for him but for the greater audience of this program. I would like to introduce to you the perfect habit of what you should react and do every time you have any piece of data during case interviews. So three things you need to do:

Step 1: Say … that’s an interesting piece of data. This helps the interviewer acknowledge that you have received and understand the data. This also buys you a little time. And furthermore, it’s always a good thing to give out modest compliments to the interviewer.

Step 2: Describe the data, how it looks, is there any special noteworthy trend? In this case, we should point out that revenue actually grew by more than 50%.

Also notice here that I immediately quantified the difference in specific quantitative measurement (in this case, percentage). Saying revenue went up is good, but it’s great to be able to say revenue went up by more than 50%.

Step 3: Link the trend identified back to the original case question and the hypothesis you have. Does it prove, disprove, or open up new investigation to really test the hypothesis? In this case, this data piece actually opened up new investigating areas to test the hypothesis that the bottleneck is within revenue.

My sample pitch for this step 3 would sound like this: “It’s interesting that revenue went up quite a bit. However, to be able to fully reject our hypothesis on the revenue, I would like to compare our revenue to that of the competitors as well.”

Then only at this point, after going through 3 steps above, I ask for the competitors’ revenue like the candidate did.

Notice here that I ended up asking the same question the candidate did. This shows that the candidate does have a good intuition and thought process. It’s just that he did all of these implicitly on his head.

In consulting case interview, it’s always good to do everything as explicitly as possible. Not only is it easier to follow but it helps show your great thought process.

… the rest of the transcript is available in our End To End Case Interview

Learn the Secrets to Case Interview!

Join countless other successful candidates around the world with our Case Interview End-to-End Secrets Program ! 10 example cases with 100+ real-time feedbacks on tips and techniques, 50+ exercises on business intuition and 1300+ questions for math practice!

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Case Interview End-to-End Secrets Program

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Preparing for case interviews is a hard task when you only have 1 week, so the first part you need to learn during this time is fundamentals of case interview

Case interview in consulting is difficult with the passing rate is around 10%. This is because big consulting firms keep an extremely high recruitment standard

A case interview is where candidates is asked to solve a business problem. They are used by consulting firms to evaluate problem-solving skill & soft skills

Case Interview Types: Master Common Ones Before Your Interview

• Last Updated January, 2024

Rebecca Smith-Allen

Former McKinsey Engagement Manager

On Case Study Preparation , we described what a case interview question is and how you should approach answering one. You can think about that page as your Consulting Case Interview 101 course.

But if we could tell you how to ace your consulting case interview in just one page, Bain, BCG, McKinsey, and other top consulting firms would give out a lot more offers than they do every year.

On this page, we discuss the most common types of case study interview questions . We’ll take your understanding of how to answer these to the next level by outlining the key issues to consider when structuring your answer.

Let’s get started!

Here are the types of cases you might come across during your case interview :

• Profitability Cases 1.1 Profit Optimization 1.2 Revenue Growth 1.3 Pricing Optimization 1.4 Market Entry 1.5 M&A 1.6 Cost Optimization 1.7 Startup / Early-Stage Venture
• Non-Profitability Cases 2.1   Lives Affected 2.2 Retention 2.3 Industry Landscape and Competitive Dynamics
• Market Sizing Questions (also called dinner conversation cases)
• Case Interview Math (also known as consulting math) 4.1 Consulting Math Example 4.2 Summary of Key Things to Remember on Consulting Math Questions

How To Make the Most of Case Interview Practice Time

Help with case study interview preparation.

Nail the case & fit interview with strategies from former MBB Interviewers that have helped 89.6% of our clients pass the case interview.

Profitability Cases

On this page , we discussed case interview  frameworks   that can help you structure your answers to case study interview questions, we introduced the profitability equation. It’s 1 of 2 basic business frameworks you can use to answer any type of case question. 

This formula can help ensure you address all the key aspects of straightforward profitability cases like the following:

A sports apparel retailer has experienced declining sales in its stores over the past year and declining profits. How would you recommend they address their profitability problem?

A cell phone manufacturer is experiencing declining profitability despite strong sales. What should they do to improve their bottom line?

For more detail on the components in this formula and an example of how to use it to solve a case interview question, see our  Case Interview Frameworks  page . Below, we’ll discuss types of profitability problems that go beyond the basics.

Profit Optimization

Perhaps a company is profitable… just not profitable enough . 

Maybe its margins are lower than those of an industry rival. 

Maybe they’ve dipped below its own prior-year performance. 

Perhaps management sees an opportunity to launch a new product, leapfrogging the competition, but needs to generate more cash to invest in development. 

Any of these can be reasons to improve the performance of an already profitable company. 

Sample questions:

A nationwide fast-food chain failed to meet Wall Street expectations on its latest investor call and as a result, its stock price fell significantly. Management wants help identifying opportunities to improve the bottom line.

The CEO of a regional hospital chain is concerned that his company’s profitability is half that of the market leader. How can the company grow its net income?

Use the Profitability Equation

In structuring your analysis of a profit optimization case, you should touch on all 4 components of the profitability equation to understand what the company is doing well and where things have taken a turn for the worse. 

But the underlying problem in this type of case may be more subtle than in a basic profitability question. 

Instead of a big jump in costs or the loss of a large customer wiping out a significant chunk of revenue, the company may be experiencing a couple of small problems that add up to bad news for the bottom line. 

Benchmark Relative to Competition of Past Performance

For example, if our client is a TV manufacturer and we find out that our cost of producing a TV has increased overtime while our prices have remained the same, we can see that rising costs is the reason for our profits declining. 

To turn around the situation, we could look into what the competition is doing to reduce costs. For example, if a competitor is sourcing the same materials as us but from a cheaper supplier, we want to see if we can lower our cost by sourcing from the same supplier.

Benchmark One Business Segment to Another

Another way consultants benchmark performance on revenue and cost levers is by comparing the performance in one business segment or type of end-customer to another . 

Continuing with our TV manufacturing example, we might find that the client has seen costs rise on components in its high-end models but remain constant for its low-end models. 

We can look into what is being done differently in the low-end product group: low-cost sourcing, process improvement, etc. to find opportunities to improve the cost position in the high-end segment.

Use Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

The company may also need more disciplined business processes and a system for measuring key performance indicators . 

Our TV manufacturer might institute a system for measuring cost per unit on a weekly or monthly basis in order to ensure they have an early warning system to monitor if costs are getting out of line.

To go with these KPIs, a regular process for reviewing the costs and taking necessary action could be instituted. Disciplined processes and performance indicators will help to fine-tune operations over time, taking them from good to best-in-class.

Key concepts to consider when addressing a profit optimization case:

The profitability equation including all its components,

• Benchmarks of cost and/or revenue relative to best-in-class competition and prior year performance.  
• Benchmark the company’s performance segmented by product or type of customer .
• Opportunities for business process improvement and key performance indicators that will allow management to monitor profitability more closely. 

Revenue Growth

Revenue growth case questions focus on companies that, while already profitable, still want to grow. 

They can do this by increasing market share, by selling their existing products to new markets, by selling new products to their existing customers, or by pursuing a combination of these opportunities. 

They can also capture more revenue by increasing prices.

A national chain of fitness centers wants to leverage its brand equity by selling additional products and services to its client base. What incremental products and services can profitably grow revenue?

The president of a printer and ink manufacturer thinks there is an opportunity to provide after-sale service to its customer base. What might be the impact on revenue from entering this market?

Capture Additional Market Share

As its name suggests, this type of case study focuses on the first half of the profitability equation — revenue = price x quantity of units sold. in examining units sold, you should consider the company’s ability to capture additional market share for existing products in the markets it already serves. , what is the company’s current share of the market that of its largest competitor what would it take to capture additional share product improvements a shift in marketing and promotion.

If a chain of fitness centers was our client, for example, we’d look at whether the primary competition was 1 or 2 large chains or a number of small, single-location gyms and tailor our strategy to increase market share accordingly. 

If the competition was single-location gyms, we could promote flexibility for members to use our facilities in multiple locations to bring in new customers. We could also leverage the client’s greater size to outspend the small gyms on advertising.

Branch into New Products or Markets

Also, consider the new products and/or markets the company could branch into . What products do competitors sell that the company doesn’t? Does the company have capabilities that would help them  succeed in other markets?

Our fitness center client could consider selling new products like fitness apparel or vitamins. They could expand into new markets, such as towns and cities adjacent to ones currently served.

Offer Services to Existing Customers

In addition, consider  services that can be sold to existing customers . Post-sales support for equipment, for example. Or consumables used with their products, like ink for a printer manufacturer. Our fitness center client could look into providing personal fitness coaching services to members.

Review Pricing

Lastly, consider the company’s  flexibility to raise prices . Where do their prices stand relative to competitive products or services? Do their products or services have higher quality or value-added capabilities that would command a higher price?

For more examples of revenue growth case interviews, see our  Revenue Growth Case article. 

Pricing Optimization

A company must have a solid product or service offering to be able to take a price increase without seeing a significant loss of sales to competitors. 

If their products or services are strong, then optimizing price can be an important lever to grow revenue.

A manufacturer of kitchen knives sells a range of products, from low-end to professional, to customers at different price points. They’ve developed a new line of knives in collaboration with a celebrity chef and would like help setting the prices for these products.

The airline industry has experienced significant changes in its pricing model over the past few years, with some airlines charging separately for checked baggage, meals, and beverages. A global carrier has asked us to help optimize the pricing of the additional services it provides to customers who fly with them.

Elasticity of Demand

When prices rise, demand for a product goes down and when prices fall, demand rises. You’ll remember this from Economics 101, or perhaps just from common sense. Pricing optimization is all about how much . 

If you can raise prices with demand going down just a little, you can improve a company’s revenues by raising price. If a change in price has a big impact on demand, then raising price could be a big mistake.

The term for this is Price Elasticity of Demand . If demand for a product or service changes a lot in response to a change in price, it’s said to have price elasticity. Products with many substitutes or ones that consumers can easily do without are the most sensitive to price changes. 

For example, if McDonald’s raised the price of the Big Mac, more customers might go to Burger King, Taco Bell, or just eat lunch at home. McDonald’s hamburger sales would fall dramatically.

Substitutes

For some products, demand is relatively insensitive to changes in price. This can be the case for luxury goods, for products that have few substitutes , or for when there are large switching costs. When the cost of home heating oil rises, some customers consider switching to natural gas to heat their homes. But if doing so will require buying a new furnace to run on gas or paying for pipes from their house to the gas distribution network, they won’t make the change unless the change in price is dramatic and/or expected to persist for a number of years. 

3 Methods for Setting Prices

Competitive-based pricing — Setting prices based on the prices of other similar products in the market. This is the simplest method for setting prices. Companies who use competitive-based pricing are price takers.

Cost-based pricing —Setting prices as a function of the cost to provide a good or service plus a profit margin. Cost alone can’t be used to set pricing because if a company’s costs are out of line with its competitors, it may price itself out of the market.

Value-based pricing — Setting prices based on the value provided to customers. Luxury goods are priced well above the cost of their production because customers of these products value association with the prestigious image the product conveys. Products that provide significant value to customers in terms of saving time or providing features not found in other products can be priced higher because they are worth more to customers.

Value-based pricing the best pricing method but it can only be used for products and services that are sufficiently differentiated in the eyes of the customer that they will not change their buying behavior in response to higher prices.

Market Entry

Significant start-up costs will be incurred to develop and manufacture a new product, to launch the marketing campaign, or to build the sales force needed to find customers. 

To ensure that spending money on start-up costs are worthwhile, due diligence needs to be done to estimate the size of the market being considered and the cost of successfully entering it.

A teen fashion retailer has seen its sales boom in the North American market for the past 5 years. They’re considering expansion into international markets. They’d like help identifying which markets provide the best opportunities for their line of clothing.

A not-for-profit organization has been successful at hiring the long-term unemployed to manufacturer furniture made from pallets and other recycled items. They’ve not only designed and created beautiful pieces of indoor and outdoor furniture, but also helped to improve the lives of individuals in one city. They’d like to expand to other products and potentially to other cities and have asked for our help in assessing their options.

There are  4 parts to any market entry case : market size, market attractiveness, costs of entry and capabilities required. Let’s look at each.

Market size

Market sizing is sometimes used as a case interview question on its own. See below for more details . It’s also usually the first part of a market entry case. It addresses how large a market is in terms of annual revenue, number of units sold, or both. The underlying issue is whether there is enough opportunity in a market to make it worth the up-front cost.

To determine whether the amount of sales revenue or unit volume is “enough,” estimate the size of the market based on the information provided by your interviewer or by using factors you can reasonably estimate about the market. You can then consider profit margins and what portion of the market the company must capture to break even.

Market attractiveness

The market a company is thinking about entering may be huge, but it can still be unattractive. Key questions include: What is the profit margin for companies already in the market?  What does the competition in the market look like? Large firms with huge marketing budgets or small companies? 

Costs of entry

Will new technology, equipment, sales staff, or something else be required to succeed in the new market? If so, what will it cost? The greater the investment required to enter a market, the more difficult it will be to recoup the initial investment.

Capabilities

Does the firm being discussed have what it takes to succeed in the new market? In some markets, the key to success is marketing expertise and distribution. In others, it’s low costs and disciplined business processes. Identify the key attributes of success in the market and whether the company possesses those attributes.

To learn how you can structure and break down a case such as these, visit the  Case Interview Frameworks  page can help you think through important factors in this type of consulting case interview question.

Above, we looked at how to analyze a market entry case. 

If a market is attractive but the client does not have all the capabilities required to succeed in it, it may decide to buy the right capabilities through a merger or acquisition (M&A). 

They could also consider M&A opportunities if they need to enter the market fast rather than build capabilities over time.

The number 3 competitor in the cellular phone services market is at a disadvantage relative to its larger competitors. Providing cellular phone service has high fixed costs—for the equipment that transmits calls, the retail stores that sell phones and provide in-person customer support, and the marketing spend that is key to customer attraction and retention. The CEO is considering acquiring a smaller competitor in order to gain market share. He would like our help thinking through this decision.

The president of a national drug-store chain is considering acquiring a large, national health insurance provider. The merger would combine one company’s network of pharmacies and pharmacy management business with the health insurance operations of the other, vertically integrating the companies. He would like our help analyzing the potential benefits to customers and shareholders.

When you get this type of case, ask your interviewer why the company is considering the merger or acquisition. They may provide key information on the size and attractiveness of the market the target company is in. Assuming the target company is in a large, attractive market and has the critical capabilities required to succeed in that market, then you should consider whether it is better to build the new business internally or undertake a merger or acquisition. 

If two companies are considering a merger, they still have to persuade their shareholders that the 2 companies would be more valuable working together than on their own. The value the companies can create by working together is called  synergy .

Synergies from a merger or acquisition can be on the cost side, the revenue side, or both. Cost synergies include leveraging fixed costs across more business or cutting costs duplicated in both firms’ operations. Revenue side synergies include selling a broader range of products through the existing sales force or distribution channel. 

The synergies created by the merger or acquisition must be greater than the premium that must be paid to secure the deal in order for the transaction to make sense.

Integration

Mergers and acquisitions are large and complicated transactions. They require  integrating  the talent, systems, policies, and processes of the 2 organizations. Synergies that look good on PowerPoint slides do not always accrue in real life. In addition, key employees may quit during the disruption and uncertainty the M&A activity causes. Even if substantial synergies are identified, a company should consider whether it can successfully undertake the integration.

Regulatory Approval

Lastly, mergers of large companies in regulated markets (financial services, telecommunications) and concentrated markets (ones with only a few large competitors) can require government approval . The possibility of the government blocking the merger or acquisition should be considered in this type of case.

Cost Optimization

A top-3 home improvement retailer has seen price increases from several of its vendors, squeezing its bottom line. The company wants to know how it can cut costs to restore its margins to their previous levels.

The head of an automobile manufacturer has seen its production costs rise over the last several years. She wants your help in turning around this trend.

The most important thing to understand when addressing this type of case is what is going on with fixed costs and variable costs . The costs can be broken down and compared to competitors’ costs or costs in prior years to identify opportunities for improvement.

As a reminder, here are the definitions of fixed and variable costs:

Fixed Costs

Costs that you incur just because you are in business regardless of how many units you sell. Examples: factory rent, equipment depreciation, compensation for salaried employees, and property taxes. A way to think about fixed costs is that a cost that does not change over the short-term, even if a business experiences increases or decreases in its sales volume.

Variable Costs

Costs that only incur when you begin to produce units (if you sell nothing you have no variable costs). Examples: sales commissions, credit card transaction costs, and sales taxes. A way to think about variable costs is that a cost that does change over the short-term. More sales volume will mean more variable costs.

Startup / Early-Stage Venture

Startup and early-stage venture cases have some similarities to market entry cases. 

Ensuring that the market the company is going after is big enough and has high enough margins to be attractive is important, as is understanding their competition. 

Startups are small, nimble companies with only a handful of key employees and limited access to cash. These factors need to be taken into account.

A student from Iceland studying in the U.S. has determined there’s a big opportunity to bring Icelandic-style yogurt to this market. How would you recommend he proceed?

A software company has developed video technology that can be used to quickly and easily create short videos that can be sent to a colleague in place of typing a long email. This disruptive technology will take advantage of the cameras built into cell phones and laptops as well as consumers’ preference for watching a video rather than reading text. The company has a small number of beta customers and is looking for advice on how to ramp up their product to attract a wider audience.

When answering this type of case, focus on the key things that help these small, fast-growth ventures move with agility as they search for the product and business model that will attract customers and investors. 

The Right People

They need the right people —ones with product savvy, marketing savvy and investor savvy to make it. 

A Minimum Viable Product

They need a minimum viable product . This is an initial version of their product offering that will attract paying customers, allowing them earn money and to collect feedback that can be used to improve the product. It will also serve as a proof-of-concept to investors. 

A Business Plan

Start-up and early stage venture also need an initial business plan addressing how they will bring their product to market.

Non-Profitability Cases

Some might focus on charitable organization. Others might focus on businesses issues that don’t relate directly to profits, such as employee retention or understanding the competitive dynamics in an industry. 

An overview of how to approach non-profitability cases is found on this page .

This section focuses on key concepts to address in a few common types of non-profitability cases.

Lives Affected

Government agencies and charitable organizations don’t aim to maximize profits. Nonetheless, they do important work that affects many lives. 

They might hire a consulting company to help them improve their effectiveness, or a consulting firm might take on an important project for a charitable organization on a pro-bono basis. 

The state agency that administers the free summer lunch program for children of families under a certain income threshold wants to increase the reach of its program. How would you advise they approach this? 

Malaria is a devastating disease, affecting hundreds of millions of individuals each year. It’s transferred to humans by mosquitoes, with most of the cases occurring in South Asia and Sub-Saharan Africa. Though drugs to treat the disease exist, many in the affected regions don’t have access to or can’t afford these drugs. The disease is a strain on the economies of several nations, perpetuating the cycle of poverty. What can be done to alleviate this disease and its adverse economic effects?

Key Performance Indicators (KPIs)

A detailed example of how to approach a lives affected case is provided  here .  As discussed in that case, the key to answering this type of question is to find the key performance indicator (KPI) the organization is trying to improve. In the case of the first sample question above, this is the number of free lunches served to needy children. 

Benchmarking

Once you’ve established the KPI, the case can be answered in the same way you’d answer any case question on business improvement. You can benchmark the organization’s performance by looking at trends in the KPI over time or comparing the growth of the organization’s KPI to that of other organizations serving the same target population to assess whether the agency is doing a good job meeting their mandate or falling behind. If they are falling behind, drill down into the factors that might be causing them to do so.

Cases focused on employee retention are not directly about profits, though the loss of key skills when employees depart and the cost of training new hires require hurts the profitability of organizations with high turnover. 

A fast-food chain is experiencing an increase in the already-high rate of employee turnover typical in its industry. It’s also experiencing trouble attracting qualified new employees. What would you suggest?

The school system in a middle-class suburban town is experiencing higher-than-normal rates of teacher attrition. With a tight budget, they are unable to simply raise salaries to hold onto experienced teachers. What options does the school system have for increasing teacher retention?

Conducting retention interviews —interviews with departing employees to find out why they’re leaving the organization—is a standard practice in most organizations. Because of this, there should be data available on what employees like about their jobs, don’t like about their jobs, why they looked for new opportunities and what new job they’re taking. Ask your interviewer for this information, as well as survey data on the job satisfaction of all employees. It can be used to develop a multi-pronged approach to improving employee retention.

• Look for opportunities to enhance aspects of the job that appeal to employees and change the negative aspects of working for the organization. For instance: What about the job is appealing? 
• Do employees see the work of the organization positively impacting the broader community? 
• Do employees like their colleagues, recognition they receive from management, the financial package provided? 

Industry Landscape and Competitive Dynamics

Cases focused on the landscape of an industry and its competitive dynamics are about the big-picture strategic issues that must be taken into account to compete effectively in that industry.

The traditional newspaper industry is facing heavy pressure from free online news organizations that don’t face the cost of printing a traditional newspaper and are able to leverage Internet ads as a source of revenue. The publisher of an award-winning regional paper would like your help in assessing and responding to this new threat.

The food and beverage industry faces disruption to their traditional brands as organic and small-batch products gain favor with consumers. How should companies in this industry respond to this new of competitive threat?

When analyzing this kind of case, first look for what is changing in the industry —consumer preferences, brand loyalty, barriers to entering the market, regulation, the industry’s cost structure, etc. Ensure you know what the source of change is before you begin to look for a strategy to help the client succeed in the new marketplace. 

For tips on structuring a case like these, visit the  Business Frameworks page . SWOT analysis and other frameworks include some factors to consider in this type of consulting case interview question.

Market Sizing Questions (Also Called Dinner Conversation Cases)

Market sizing cases are focused on establishing the size of a market in terms of annual revenue or the number of units sold rather than determining how to compete successfully in the market. 

Consulting firms often ask market sizing questions early in the consulting interview process or in interviews of undergraduate students who may not have a deep business background. 

They can also be one component of complicated, multi-step cases in later-round interviews. Market sizing questions focus on making logical estimates, showing creativity, and doing basic math.  

What is the size of the market for organic toothpaste in the United States?

How many golf balls would fit inside the Empire State building?

What Are Consulting Interviewers Looking for on Market Sizing Cases?

With case interview questions of this type, you’re not expected to know the answer, but instead to show a logical way of deducing it. Committing a few key facts to memory would serve you well. For example, knowing the population of the United States (or the country you live in) would give you a good place to start as you think through the size of the market for various retail goods. Gross domestic product can help with sizing industrial markets.

Key Statistics to Know for Market Sizing Case Questions:

The Population of the United States 2019 – 329 million according to the US Census Bureau .

World population in 2015 – 7.4 billion according to the United Nations DESA / Populations Division .

2018 Gross Domestic Product of the United States – $20.5 trillion according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis of the U.S. Department of Commerce .

Statistics like these give you a good foundation to start your market size analysis. For instance, you could begin estimating the size of the U.S. market for organic toothpaste with the US population. From there, make logical assumptions:

• How many times a day does the average American brushes their teeth?
• How many toothpaste applications are in the average tube of toothpaste?
• How much does the average tube of toothpaste cost?

These assumptions will allow you to calculate the size of the overall toothpaste market in terms of annual revenue. To get to the annual revenue of organic toothpaste you’ll also need to estimate:

• What portion of toothpaste consumers prefers organic toothpaste?

You can (and should) bring paper and a pen into consulting interviews. Use these to keep track of your assumptions as you work through them and to do the basic math required to come to a conclusion.

 Our Market Sizing Questions article has a list of the 7 steps to answering this type of question.

Key Things to Remember When Answering a Market Sizing Question:

• Ask clarifying questions. Does the interviewer want the market size in terms of dollars or units? For the United States, North America, the world?
• Use round numbers for simplicity. For instance, using $20 trillion for U.S. GDP rather than $20.5 would be fine.
• Creativity in your approach to approximating the market is important, but so is good sense. Don’t be so creative that your answer lacks credibility.
• Practice case math so you can do it quickly and correctly even under the stress of an interview.
• Give your answer a sniff-test at the end. Does it make sense? This will both show that you are careful in your analysis and give you the chance to fix an arithmetic mistake if you find you’re way off. 

Case Interview Math (also known as consulting math)

Management consulting interviewers screen candidates to ensure that they can do basic math. 

Don’t worry if you didn’t ace multivariate calculus, the math is usually basic arithmetic—addition, subtraction, multiplication, division and fractions/percentages. You may also be asked to extract data from charts and convert from one unit of measure to another.

As mentioned in the discussion of market-sizing case questions above, you can and should bring a paper and pen into the interview. It’s fine to write out your calculations.

Consulting Math Example

In each step, we’ll provide a sense of how we are making the estimate so that the interviewer knows we’re not just grabbing a number out of the air. We want our answer to be as grounded in fact as possible. 

The population of the United States: 329 million. We’ll round to 330 million for simplicity.

The number of times the average American brushes their teeth – 2 times per day. Some people brush at lunchtime too, but that’s probably offset by people who only brush once a day.

330 million people brushing 2x’s per day gives us 660 million toothpaste applications/day.

To get to an annual number of toothpaste applications, we need to multiply by 365. That’s 241 billion toothpaste applications. We’ll round to 240 billion for simplicity.

A tube of toothpaste usually lasts me about 2 months. That means we need to divide by 120 toothpaste applications per tube to come up with the number of tubes sold annually (2 months x 30 days/month x 2 applications/day). 240 billion toothpaste applications / 120 applications per tube = 2 billion tubes of toothpaste sold in the U.S. every year.

The cost of toothpaste ranges from $1 for inexpensive brands to $4 for expensive brands, but the average cost is probably about $2. This means the total revenue for toothpaste sold in the U.S. is 2 billion tubes x $2 or $4 billion.

The percent of the toothpaste market that’s organic is a little tricky to estimate. In the grocery store I shop in, there’s 1 aisle of organic goods in a store that has 20 aisles – that means organic products make up 5% of shelf space (and presumably also of sales). 

I think that people would be less likely to buy organic toothpaste than organic food, because you eat organic food, but you spit organic toothpaste out into the sink. Organic products always cost more and organic toothpaste doesn’t seem quite as important to your health. 

Conclusion: Based on that, I’ll say that 1% of the market for toothpaste is organic, so if $4 billion in toothpaste is sold in the U.S. every year, $40 million of it is organic toothpaste.

Is our answer right? 

Probably not exactly. There are different sizes of toothpaste tubes, a complication that we did not consider in this analysis. There might be some people who don’t brush their teeth every day. That would mean that we overestimated consumption. 

But our estimate of the market size for organic toothpaste is reasonable and grounded in logical assumptions. We could sniff-test our answer by comparing it to a market size we know, or to GDP, one of the facts we suggested having in your back pocket for market sizing case questions. 

U.S. GDP was about $20 trillion in 2018. Our estimations suggest that the overall toothpaste market is $4 billion. That means toothpaste is 1/5,000 of the U.S. economy, and the market for organic toothpaste is 1% of that. 

That sounds plausible. If your answer showed that the market for organic toothpaste was larger than U.S. GDP, it would be a clear indication that you made a mistake somewhere along the way.

For the 4 types of math problems you’ll be asked to compute as part of case studies, read Case Interview Math.

Above, we’ve provided you with 11 different types of case interview questions you might be asked during your consulting interviews. We’ve also told you that you need to get great at doing case math. 

Overwhelming? It can be.

But it doesn’t have to be.

The best way to prepare for your consulting case interviews is NOT to spend hundreds of hours reading every case study question and answer you can get your hands on. Instead, see our page on Case Interview Practice  to find out how to make the most of your interview prep time. In addition, check out this video where Davis Nguyen, Founder of My Consulting Offer, talks about how mastering the case interview is made easier when you focus on the most common types of cases. 

Here in an online workshop he conducted for  Columbia University, NYU, and Cornell students, you can see why this approach is so effective:

After studying the information on this page, you have an in-depth understanding of the types of cases you could be asked to analyze in consulting interviews. From Davis’s video, you know why this is so important to focus on the main types of cases. You’re well prepared to find a case study practice partner and begin practicing.

As you prepare for case interviews, you should use this page in conjunction with  Case Interview Examples , where you’ll find links to sample case study questions and their answers. Remember that while it is important to discuss all the appropriate aspects of a business case, it’s important to structure your analysis and your answer. Refer back to our page on  Case Interview Frameworks   to ensure that you’re not just practicing more cases, but doing them better.

If you still have questions, leave them in the comments below. We’ll ask our My Consulting Offer coaches and get back to you with answers.

• Market Sizing Questions
• Cost Reduction Case Interview
• Case Interview Workshop Video
• Written Case Interviews
• Market Sizing Cases
• M&A Case Study
• Revenue Growth Case Interview
• Pricing Case Interview
• Financial Services Cases
• The Healthcare Consulting Case Interview
• Supply Chain Cases
• The Social Impact Case Interview
• Case Interview Formulas

Thanks for turning to My Consulting Offer for advice on case study interview prep. My Consulting Offer has helped almost 89.6% of the people we’ve worked with get a job in management consulting.  For example, here is how Thomas was able to get a BCG offer with just a short time to prepare..

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3 Top Strategies to Master the Case Interview in Under a Week

We are sharing our powerful strategies to pass the case interview even if you have no business background, zero casing experience, or only have a week to prepare.

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Written case interviews: the ultimate guide

Many candidates think that if they are comfortable cracking regular case interviews they should also be able to succeed at written cases. But unfortunately, over the past few years we have worked with many candidates and noticed that this wasn't necessarily the case.

BCG and Bain written cases include 20+ pages of documents which you need to analyse to answer a few client questions. In addition, you need to summarise your answer to the case on 3 to 5 slides and present them to your interviewer.

The written case format therefore requires you to quickly find key pieces of information that are burried in pages of unimportant content. And to craft and deliver a high quality presentation and slides. These two skills are not tested by regular case interviews and mastering them requires some training.

Most candidates overlook this fact. As a consequence, if you prepare specifically for written case interviews you will have a significant advantage over other candidates. This guide summarises everything you need to know to get from "What's a written case interview?" to "I'm confident I can crack written cases and get an offer at BCG and Bain."

Click here to practise 1-on-1 with MBB ex-interviewers

Part 1: written cases: bcg vs. bain.

The first step to succeed in written case interviews is to understand why both BCG and Bain use them in their 2nd round. And to also get familiar with the characteristics of the written case format used by each firm.

1.1 Why do BCG and Bain use written cases?

In your daily life as a consultant, you will have to deal with a lot of data and transform it into insightful presentations to answer your clients' questions. BCG and Bain both use written cases in their 2nd round interviews to make sure you've got those skills before giving you an offer.

More specifically, Junior consultants spend a lot of time on the following three tasks when they start their career:

• Turning clients' questions into structured problems . At the beginning of your projects, you'll have a series of meetings with your clients to understand the issues they are facing. Your clients will be relatively senior and talk about the issues they are facing at a high level and sometimes in a relatively unstructured way. Part of your role will be to listen and play back the problem the company is facing in a more STRUCTURED way.
• Dealing with too many documents and not enough time . In addition, when you kick start a project you will usually receive a lot of different files from your client (e.g. Excel spreadsheet from the finance team, Power points from the strategy team, etc.) You'll always have too many documents and not enough time to read them. You will therefore have to manage your time very efficiently.
• Writing good slides and presenting them clearly . Finally, once you will have done the analysis to answer your clients' questions you will need to package your results in high quality Power Point presentations. And you will have to present your slides to your clients and convince them that your answer is the correct one.

Not surprisingly, the written cases BCG and Bain use test these three skills. First you will be given a series of questions to answer and will have to structure your approach to be as efficient as possible. Second, you will be given too many documents to analyse and will only have very limited time. And third, you will have to summarise your findings in slides and then present them to your interviewer.

If you do well at written cases it will be a clear indication for the firm that you can do well on one of their projects. These cases closely resemble the situation you will be in when you get hired and BCG and Bain's objective is really to recreate the job's conditions as closely as possible.

BCG and Bain don't systematically use written cases in their recruiting process. So far we've heard people having to take written cases in the countries listed below: US, UK, Russia, etc. In all instances, written cases were part of the second round of interviews, not the first one.

If your country is not on that list, and you would like to confirm if you will have to take the written case, ask your question in the Q&A section below and our team will get back to you with the best information we have got.

1.2 BCG written case interview characteristics

~3 questions on free slides

The first page of a BCG written cases is a printed email from a BCG Partner who asks for your help to put together a few slides for a client presentation. The printed email is actually quite realistic and looks a lot like what you could receive from a Partner on the job.

In the email, the Partner asks you to answer 3 or 4 questions about the client situation in a short presentation of 3 to 5 slides. Here are some examples of the type of questions the Partner could ask:

• "I believe the US should be the client's number one priority. Is this correct? What makes this country so attractive for them?"
• "Which products have the highest chance of being profitable and competitive in the US?"
• "What are the strengths that make Australian wines competitive in the US market vs. their main competitors?"

One important aspect of BCG written cases is that you will need to decide how many slides to write and what to put on them. The slides are completely free. This won't be the case at Bain for instance where you will get more guidance.

~40 pages, 2h prep

In addition to a Partner email, your BCG written case will also typically include ~40 pages of documents. These documents include a mix of tables, graphs and texts from industry and company reports as well as press articles.

Reading through that many documents in 2h is IMPOSSIBLE. The right approach is to look for specific information in these documents that will let you prove / disprove your hypothesis and write the 3 to 5 slides that the Partner has asked for.

The most common mistake candidates make in written cases is to missallocate their time between the different tasks that need to be completed. We will discuss how you can avoid this in more details below. 

40mins presentation + Q&A

Once you have written your 3 to 5 slides you will need to present and discuss them with your interview. Interviewers tend to give you ~20mins that to walk them through your slides. And the remaining ~20mins are used for Q&A.

You should be ready for that part of the written case to be very interactive. Your intereviewer will ask you questions and debate some of the points you make. This is normal and will feel a lot like a regular case interview.

Calculators allowed

Finally, one last important point about BCG written cases is that you will be allowed to use a calculator. But you won't be able to take notes on the documents you will be given. This is mainly because BCG reuses the same documents with multiple candidates.

Not being able to take notes on documents actually makes the written case even harder according to past candidates we worked with. It makes it harder to remember where key data points are located and is something you should try to get used to during your preparation.

Note: we also recommend reading the following guide if you are preparing for BCG interviews more broadly.

1.3 Bain written case interview characteristics

~5 pre-filled slides

In Bain written cases you will get a pack of ~5 pre-filled slides that you will need to complete by doing analysis. Some of the slides will only be pre-filled with a title and you will need to build the whole slide to support that title. Other slides will include graphs and tables that need to be filled with numbers you will calculate.

The fact that the slides are pre-filled means you that, unlike at BCG, you don't have to worry about the overall story for your presentation. You can focus on creating the content that will support the arguments made in the slide titles.

~20 pages, 1.5h prep

You will be given ~20 pages of documents to help you fill your different slides. These documents will include tables, graphs and text from industry and company reports. Only a SUBSET of these documents will be helpful to answer your questions. One of your objectives will be to find those as quickly as possible.

Bain written case interviews include less documents than BCG ones (~20 vs. ~40 pages). But you only have 1.5h to complete the work instead of the 2h you are given at BCG. Overall, the time pressure you will get is therefore quite similar.

30mins presentation + Q&A

Once you have completed the different slides, you will need to present them to an interviewer over a 30mins slot. The first half of the slot will mainly consist in you walking through the slides. And the second half will mainly be a discussion with your interviewer about your conclusions and some of the points you might have missed.

Calculators NOT allowed

Finally, you should note that unlinke at BCG, Bain does NOT allow candidates to use a calculator during written cases. You should therefore expect to have to do a number of calculations mentally to get to the right answer in your written case.

In addition, you will not be allowed to write on the documents Bain will provide you with (apart from the pre-filled slides). As mentioned above, this makes it harder to remember where key pieces of information are located in ~20 pages of documents. It is therefore something you should try to get used to during your preparation.

Part 2: Top 10 tips to crack written cases

Now that you know what to expect in BCG written cases and Bain written cases, let's turn our attention to what you need to do to succeed. We have listed our top tips below to help you become a written cases pro.

Tip #1 Manage your time

Written case interviews are designed to test your time management skills. As mentioned previously, you will be given TOO MANY documents and will have to QUICKLY the pieces of information that are actually useful. If you don't time-box the different steps of your case (e.g. reading questions, structuring, analysing, writing slides, etc.) you will most likely spend too much time looking at the data. Our recommendation is to use a schedule to work through the case and to stick to it.

Tip #2 Define the issue

If you don't understand the question you are trying to solve correctly you are almost certain to fail the case. Your first job at the beginning of the written case is therefore make sure you are 100% clear with the questions you are trying to answer.

This is what Partners do with senior clients at the beginning of projects. They make sure they perfectly understand the question the client wants their team to answer. This might sound very basic, but misunderstanding your client can be an extremely costly mistake. And you should avoid making that mistake in your written case. There's no point looking at the data until you know EXACTLY what you are looking for.

Tip #3 Use a framework / hypothesis

One of the first things you probably learned at the beginning of your case interview preparation is that you need to use a framework to structure your analysis , and a HYPOTHESIS to explore your framework. Consultants use these approaches on real projects to solve their client’s problem in a STRUCTURED way. One of the benefits of these techniques is that they force you to focus on the problem at hand and end up saving you a lot of time. This is why we strongly recommend that you use them in written case interviews too.

Tip #4 Test it with the data

The biggest mistake you can make in written case interviews is to dive in the large amount of data you have without a specific PURPOSE. Once you have a framework to run your analysis and a hypothesis about the root cause of the problem, you should look for SPECIFIC information in the data to help you prove or disprove your hypothesis. This will enable you to speed-read instead of trying to absorb all the information available in all the documents. It’s a HUGE time saver.

Tip #5 Crunch the numbers

You will very likely have to do a number of calculations to get to the “answer”. If you are trying to calculate the revenue decline rate for a company, it’s very unlikely that the documents will contain exactly that information. It is more likely that one of the exhibits will be the company’s revenues for the past 5 years. And that you’ll have to compute the percentage decline by yourself.

One mistake some candidates make is to forget that they can infer results from the raw data that’s available. In fact, your ability to do this is one the skills that’s being tested in the written case.

Tip #6 Build a storyline

Once you have found the answers to the questions you were asked you need to package that information in a story. This is the first thing you should do BEFORE starting to write any slides.

This is what good consultants do for their client meetings. But make no mistake, the storyline is NOT a summary of the analysis you have done. It is a summary of your FINDINGS and recommendations.

Note that tips #6 and #7 only apply to BCG written cases. In Bain's written cases the slides you will be given will already have titles which makes these points less relevant.

Tip #7 Give your recommendation first

The way you structure your presentation should be exactly like you structure a conclusion in a regular case interview. You should give your recommendation FIRST. If the conclusion of your analysis is that the company should NOT enter the Chinese market, then this is the first thing you need to say. This is because CEOs and clients in general don’t have a lot of time. They want to know your conclusion before knowing how you got to your conclusion. Your overall recommendation should therefore be the first slide of your presentation.

Tip #8 Back it up with supporting arguments

Once you have laid out your conclusion, you then need to support it with with three or more qualitative and quantitative arguments. So the outline of your presentation should feel something like this:

• Slide 1: My recommendation is X. Let me give you 3 reasons to support it
• Slide 2: This is Reason #1, and the charts / data that support it
• Slide 3: This is Reason #2, and the charts / data that support it
• Slide 4: This is Reason #3, and the charts / data that support it
• Slide 5: Let me recap everything I said

Tip #9 Present as confidently as possible

Once you have written all your slides you will then need to present them. The way you do this is important. This is by no means easy but you should try to come across as confident as possible. We’re all stressed when presenting. It’s ok to be stressed and it’s ok to not be very confident. But you should try to not let that be too visible to your interviewer. Make eye contact with them and walk them through your presentation as calmly and surely as you can.

Tip #10 Be ready to debate

Most of the time, there’s no single right answer in strategy projects. There are different ways of looking at the situation and of solving the problem at hand. It’s the same thing in written cases. As a consequence, you should be ready to debate your recommendations with your interviewer.

They’ll likely agree on some of the points you made. But they’ll also challenge some of your conclusions and introduce new ideas you hadn’t thought of to test how you react. You should not be surprised by this behaviour.

Part 3: Written case interview preparation plan

What's the best way to prepare for your written case interview? And how do you make sure you succeed? In our experience the following 3-step approach makes for a great preparation.

• First, develop fast maths and reading skills
• Second, learn to write presentations like a consultant
• Third, practice written case interviews

3.1 Develop fast maths and reading skills

The first thing you should do if you have not already done so is to take the free written cases made available by BCG and Bain (you can download them at the top of this page). When you do these cases you will probably realise that doing calculations efficiently and finding information quickly plays a HUGE part in completing the case on time.

Fortunately, these skills can be trained. If you are preparing for consulting interviews you are probably already working on improving your mental maths speed . You should continue doing this as it will also be helpful for written cases.

In addition, we also recommend investing some time thinking about how you can minimise the time you spend looking for information in the different documents you will be given. In our experience, focusing on the following two aspects brings the best results:

• First, as we mentioned in the tips section, you should browse the documents with SPECIFIC objective. Every time you look at the documents you should actually be looking for a precise piece of information. This approach will guarantee that you are not wasting time.
• Second, some of the candidates we work with also invest time in improving their intrinsic reading speed - i.e. the number of words they can read per minute. If you are interested in this topic you can read this article . If you don't have enough time to invest in this area, focusing on graph and table titles will actually go a long way in helping you identify the exhibits you need.

3.2 Learn to write presentations like a consultant

Once you are familiar with the BCG and Bain written cases format and have brushed up your maths and reading skills you need to improve your slide writing technique. Consultants write a LOT of slides. And there are some rules they follow to write them.

Here are the top 3 high-level rules you should be aware of:

• First, your slide title should be concise and conclusive. "Nestle's 2017 revenue were down 5%" is a poor slide title because it is not conclusive. It's only informational. A good slide title would be: "Nestle's 2017 revenue were down 5%, mainly driven by market share loss in Asia." This is a good slide title because it identifies the problem AND its root-cause.
• Second, all your slide titles should read like a story when put together. Here's an example: "Nestle's 2017 revenue were down 5%, mainly driven by market share loss in Asia. The launch of 3 new Unilever products in China was the biggest driver of market share loss in Asia. We estimate we can regain our market share within the next 18 months by decreasing prices and launching 4 new products lines. Etc." Each of these sentences should be a slide title summarising the story for your interviewer.
• Third, the content of each slide should SUPPORT its title by displaying data that helps you make your point. For instance, for the first slide we discussed above you could split your slide into two halves. Left-hand side: a chart showing Nestle's revenues decline year by year and highlighting the 5% decrease. Right-hand side: a chart showing the market share loss is in Asia.

You can train putting slides together in many different ways. One approach we suggest is to download a few reports written by BCG and Bain that you are interested it. These reports are usually 10+ pages long. We encourage you to summarise them in 3 to 5 slides using the tips above. A lot of these reports are also in Power Point format so you will both familiarise yourself with how consultancies write slides, and you will get used to writing your own.

3.3 Practice written cases

Finally, the last step of your preparation should be to practice on written cases. The difficult thing about this step is that there aren't many written cases available on the Internet.

The best alternative we have found so far are MBA case studies. They are very similar to actual written cases: they include a business situation with texts, graphs and tables.

When you do them, we would encourage you to treat them like regular written cases. You should identify the 3 or 4 questions you want to answer about the case using the guidelines provided. And you should then give yourself 1.5 to 2h to answer these questions in slide format. After you have done this you should train to walk someone through your slides orally.

The more your train in real conditions, the better you will perform on the day. In our experience successful candidates are really rigorous about this. And we encourage you to follow their example.

Most business schools charge for access to their case studies. But MIT makes a number of case studies available for free here . If you find other helpful MBA case studies available for free post them in the comment section below and we will add them to this article.

Related articles:

How to Write a Case Study: A Complete Guide with Templates

Writing compelling and insightful case studies is a marketer’s biggest job, yet most get frustrated with this content. The challenge? Figuring out how to write a case study that not only highlights the company’s strongest suit but engages new clients with strategic information. If you often struggle with making case studies as more than just dry facts and figures, you’re leading your efforts to missed opportunities.

How to Write a Case Study Step-by-Step 

• Craft a Compelling Headline: Highlight the main success with a clear, direct title.
• Start with a Strong Introduction: Provide a broad overview and hook the reader.
• Discuss Unique Client Challenges: Highlight specific industry-related challenges.
• Highlight the Solution: Showcase your strategies and key results.
• Present Quantifiable Results: Use data and visuals to demonstrate impact.
• Be Clear and Concise: Stick to the point and support claims with data.
• Treat Your Case Study Like a Story: Focus on the customer’s journey and success.
• Use Direct Quotes from the Client: Add authenticity with client testimonials.
• Make the Key Takeaway Clear: Reinforce your expertise and the solution’s value.
• Include a Call to Action (CTA): Guide the reader on what to do next.
• Make It Readable: Use simple language, short paragraphs, and bullet points.
• Finalize and Proofread: Review for errors and ensure a smooth flow.

In this blog, you’ll discover a step-by-step guide that simplifies the process, making it easier to create interesting case studies. From planning to writing, I’ve got you covered. So, let’s start with some basics. 

Table of Contents

What is the format of a case study.

• How to Plan a Case Study 

How to Write a Case Study

How to summarize a case study, how to cite a case study.

A well-structured case study isn’t just a collection of facts—it’s a powerful marketing tool that tells a compelling story. Using the right format for a case study ensures that your message is clear, engaging, and impactful. 

The proper format guides readers through the narrative with hierarchy and scannability, helping them connect with your brand on a deeper level. Most importantly, it empowers you as a marketer to set clear goals for presenting your case studies and ensures you deliver the correct information effectively!

Case studies format helps you to plan and write the case study for your clients. With this outline in mind, you can create steps to complete the process of writing and publishing your case study research. There are eight components of a case study that are essential for building a layout of information in the correct order that makes sense to the viewers. 

Start with a catchy “Title” that grabs attention and an “Overview” that sets the stage. Clearly define the “Problem” your client faced, and then showcase your “Solution” in detail. Highlight the success with “Results” that are measurable and impactful. Add authenticity with “Testimonials and Quotes” from satisfied clients. Wrap it up with a firm “Conclusion” and a compelling “Call to Action” in the “About Us” section that guides the reader on what to do next. 

By following this format, you create a case study design that resonates with your audience and effectively showcases your brand’s value.

Check out the marketing case study template I’ve included below—it has a clear outline that makes it easy to see how sticking to a format can help you plan and write the entire thing.

How to Plan a Case Study 

Now comes the big part! Understanding what to include in a case study outline is just the starting point for beginners. The real challenge lies in creating a step-by-step plan to craft that outline and filling it in with the right information!

1. Set Clear Goals for Your Case Study

Before diving into how to write a case study, defining your ultimate objective is essential. Think about it—what do you want your audience to take away from this case study? For example, your goal is to showcase how your SEO strategies boosted a client’s organic traffic by 150% in just six months. This clear goal will shape your entire narrative and ensure that your case study is laser-focused on demonstrating your expertise and the value you bring.

2. Select a Client that Highlights Your Strongest Suit

Choosing the right client or subject is vital while creating case studies. Imagine you’ve worked with a small e-commerce brand struggling to rank for competitive keywords. Your strategies helped them rank on the first page and increase conversions. This is the perfect client for your case study because their success story directly showcases your SEO prowess. 

By picking a client whose experience aligns with your goals, you’ll create a case study that resonates with your target audience.

3. Reach Out to Your Client for Collaboration

Now that you’ve identified the ideal client, it’s time to reach out. Let’s say you contact your client and explain how a case study can highlight their remarkable success story. It’s a great way to spotlight a mutual collaboration based on credibility. Their buy-in is crucial; their insights and data will authenticate your case study.

4. Gather Comprehensive Data and Insights

Data is the lifeblood of any compelling case study. For instance, in your SEO case study, you’ll need to gather data on key metrics like keyword rankings, organic traffic, and conversion rates before and after implementing your strategies. Let’s say your client saw a 50% increase in organic traffic within three months of optimizing their website. Collecting this data will help you build a robust, evidence-based narrative highlighting your impact.

It’s essential to monitor the before-and-after data to track the effectiveness of implementing your strategies. 

5. Prepare Insightful Questions and Conduct Interviews

It would be best to ask the right questions to get the most out of your client interviews. Imagine asking your client, “What specific challenges were you facing with your organic search rankings before we started working together?” or “How did our SEO strategies help you achieve your business goals?” These questions will lead to detailed responses that add depth to your case study, making it more than just numbers on a page.

Always ask questions that uncover the key challenges your clients face. This way, your prospects will know when to turn to you to navigate or overcome similar obstacles in their business.

Since I’m giving an example of an SEO case study in marketing, you can try these questions to interview your existing client. Obviously, you can modify the sentences according to your industry basics, but these types of questions are fundamental for collecting structured data from your clients. 

• What were your business’s main SEO challenges before we started working together?
• Can you describe your initial expectations for implementing our SEO strategies?
• What specific SEO tactics did we implement that you found most effective?
• How did you monitor and measure the impact of these strategies on your organic traffic?
• What were the key metrics or results that stood out to you after the first three months?

6. Ask Questions That Drive the Story Forward

Impactful questions are the backbone of a strong case study. They allow you to highlight the unique value you delivered to your clients. You can effortlessly showcase your USPs within the case study by asking the right questions. 

Focus on inquiring about the effectiveness of your services and strategies, their impact, and which aspects of the solution were most beneficial. This insight will be your key to demonstrating the tangible benefits you offer your clients. 

Consider asking questions like:

• Can you share a moment when you first noticed a significant improvement in your website’s organic traffic?
• How did the increase in organic traffic impact other business areas, such as lead generation or sales?
• What feedback did your team or customers receive regarding the changes in your site’s performance?
• Looking back, what do you believe was the most critical factor in achieving these results?
• How has this success with SEO influenced your overall marketing strategy moving forward?

These types of questions encourage clients to share their experiences in a way that paints a vivid picture for your readers, making the case study more relatable and engaging.

7. Draft a Clear and Organized Outline

With all the data and insights gathered, it’s time to create a well-structured case study outline. Let’s say you start with a brief overview of your client’s business and its challenges, followed by a detailed account of the SEO strategies you implemented. Then, you showcase the results with hard data and close with client testimonials and a solid call to action. 

As mentioned above, organizing your content in a logical, easy-to-follow format will help you write a case study that not only informs but also captivates your audience.

These steps are the cornerstones of designing a case study. Once you complete this checklist, you can proceed to the next step, which is writing a case study. Since I discussed planning an SEO case study extensively, here is a case study template that perfectly illustrates the process. 

You want to create an informative case study for your prospects. But how do you make sure it’s done right? Here’s a step-by-step guide on how to write a case study that drives results.

1. Craft a Compelling Headline  

Your headline is the first thing readers see, so make it count! It should grab attention and hint at the success story you’re about to share.

How to Write a Case Study Title:

1. Highlight the Result: Showcase the critical success, like “Increased Sales by 200%.”

2. Be Clear and Direct: Make sure the headline is straightforward to grasp.

3. Use Action Words: Start with strong verbs like “How We” or “Achieved.”

4. Mention Client or Industry: Include relevant details for specificity.

5. Keep It Short: Make it concise and attention-grabbing.

2. Start with a Strong Introduction  

Kick off your case study with a broad overview that sets the stage. Provide the big picture and construct a clear narrative that draws readers in, making them eager to learn more about how you solved a significant challenge.

Look at the consulting case study template , which includes a stunning overview description and precise instructions for writing a short and compelling introduction. You can add every little detail to hook the reader.

Get This Template and More

3. Discuss Specific Challenges of Your Client

This is where your prospect can truly connect. By highlighting unique yet specific challenges to their industry, you give them insight into issues they might not have encountered yet—or ones they’ve already faced. This way, they’ll know exactly who to turn to when similar challenges arise.

The following financial case study template provides a brief flow of the company’s common challenges in the financial analysis process. The template is almost ready to use with this domain-specific content, requiring minimal adjustments to design your case study.

4. Highlight the Solution  

Now, dive into the heart of the story. Highlight the solution you provided, and make sure to include a notable achievement or key result. This is your chance to shine!

Check out the format for presenting the implications of your service on your client’s business. The benefits should be well-written and data-driven to convince your upcoming clients. This graphic design case study format helps you understand the specific impacts a company seeks from a reputable graphic design firm.

5. Present Quantifiable Results  

When sharing the outcome, numbers speak louder than words. Present quantifiable results that clearly demonstrate the impact of your solution. Use graphs or charts to make the data easy to digest and visually appealing.

6. Be Clear and Concise  

Less is more. Stick to the point and offer just the right amount of detail to keep your readers engaged. Include data that supports your claims, but avoid overwhelming them with too much information.

Here’s a stunning sales consulting case study that uses a simple case study layout and details written in readable, plain language to gauge more utility. 

7. Treat Your Case Study Like a Story  

Focus on your customer’s journey. Think of your case study as a story in which your client is the hero, and your solution is the tool that helped them succeed. This approach will make your case study relatable and compelling.

8. Be as Specific as Possible  

Don’t be vague—details matter. Mention the specific company and its industry to let your audience know that the challenge and solution are relevant to them. The more precise you are, the more credible and trustworthy your case study will be.

Check out the sample case study below for payroll accounting. The details are clearly organized and grouped to emphasize the type of case study.

Also, the next case study template displays very specific problems that a company faces when it lacks digital marketing expertise. 

These templates make it a breeze to craft a case study that’s perfect for your niche.

9. Use Direct Quotes from the Client  

Quotes from your client add authenticity and credibility. They give readers insight into the client’s perspective and make your case study more relatable. Plus, a glowing testimonial is always a nice touch!

The following inbound marketing case study has a prominent client testimonial. With the brief instructions on this template, it’s easier for you to understand how to capture the golden words of your client and use them as a word-of-mouth strategy within the case study. 

10. Pick an Interesting Angle  

Find a unique angle that makes your case study stand out. Maybe it’s an unexpected challenge you overcame, or perhaps it’s a particularly innovative solution. Whatever it is, make it intriguing.

11. Make the Key Takeaway Crystal Clear  

Your readers should walk away with a clear understanding of the main point of your case study. This takeaway should reinforce your expertise and the value of your solution.

12. Include a Call to Action (CTA)  

Don’t leave your readers hanging—tell them what to do next! Include a compelling summary about your company, showcase your happy client base, and conclude the journey with a strong CTA, whether to contact you for a consultation, download a related resource, or learn more about your services on social media, like the following case study template design.

12. Format Professionally  

The design of the case study is just as important as the content. A well-formatted, visually appealing document makes a great impression and enhances readability. With ready-to-use niche-oriented templates, you can easily create a professional-looking case study that impresses and converts. Here is an eye-catching template for an AI assistant software case study that displays a sleek and well-navigated format.

13. Make It Readable  

Easy readability is key. Use simple language, short paragraphs, and bullet points where appropriate. Your case study should be easy to scan and digest. Follow the thirteen design principles to create a standout piece that enhances your marketing efforts.

To understand this, take a look at the following consulting case study template. 

14. Finalize and Proofread Your Case Study  

In order to excel in how to write case studies, give your case study a final review before you hit publish. Proofread carefully to catch any typos or errors, and make sure everything flows smoothly. A polished case study reflects your attention to detail and professionalism.

To effectively summarize a case study, start by completing all sections, including the introduction, challenges, solutions, and results. This approach helps marketers identify key points to highlight, making it easier to craft a succinct and engaging summary. 

One tricky thing is the length of the case study summary. So, how long should a case study summary be? 

The length of a case study summary can vary depending on the details you’re covering. Generally, it should be kept concise, usually spanning a couple of lines or up to a single page with several paragraphs. If you’re crafting a customer case study and want to flex your storytelling muscles, it’s perfectly fine for the summary to stretch to a full page.

If summarizing a case study seems daunting, try DocHipo’s advanced AI Writer tool, which effortlessly creates a crisp and concise summary.

Watch this short video to use it.

This is the last step in writing a case study analysis. Citation in a case study is the practice of giving proper credit to the sources you reference or use in your research. It helps validate your work, shows the depth of your research, and avoids plagiarism. Follow the below steps to cite a case study:

• Identify the Source: Gather details like the author, title, publication year, and where the case study was published.
• Choose a Citation Style: Follow the specific formatting style (APA, MLA, Chicago, etc.) required for your work.
• Format the Citation: Arrange the details according to the chosen citation style.
• Include In-Text Citations: Place citations within the text or paragraphs for the case study.
• Create a References List: At the end of your case study, compile all your sources in a bibliography or reference list.

For case studies, citations in APA and MLA styles are very common. If you are just beginning, then you might be confused about these case study citation formats.

Hence, take a look at the picture below, which easily comprehends the APA vs MLA citation features. 

Still feeling overwhelmed about case studies? Be stress-free with the most convenient case study maker, which saves time and allows you to present data in the most attention-grabbing way. 

Watch the video to create case studies in minutes with DocHipo’s case study maker. 

Conclusion 

To summarize, if you want to write a case study, start with a proper case study format, plan the case study, and finally write it with all the information in hand. Then, write a summary to provide an overview of your case study, and finally, add citations for reference. 

Meanwhile, if you want to design a case study, Try DocHipo templates. Sign up to explore all the case study templates. 

What is the structure of a case study?

A case study typically includes the following sections: Title, Introduction, Background, Problem Statement, Solutions, Results, and Conclusion. Each section serves to tell a comprehensive story of the business, from the issue at hand to the resolution and outcomes.

What are the 5 essential elements of a great case study?

The 5 essential elements are: 1) Clear Objective, 2) Detailed Background, 3) Specific Challenges, 4) Effective Solutions, and 5) Measurable Results. These components provide a compelling narrative that highlights the value delivered.

How to begin a case study?

Start a case study by defining the purpose and scope of the study. Introduce the subject, outline the problem, and provide background information to give readers context. This sets the stage for the detailed analysis that follows.

How to make an introduction in case study?

To craft a compelling introduction, briefly describe the subject, outline the problem they faced, and explain why the study is relevant. This section should grab the reader’s attention and make them interested in the rest of the study.

How to make a business case study?

A business case study should begin with a clear objective and background information. Identify the problem, explain the solutions implemented, and conclude with the results achieved. Use real data and quotes from stakeholders to enhance credibility.

How to write a case study step by step?

To write a case study step by step, start by identifying the case you want to explore and gathering relevant data on the subject. Outline the structure of your case study, then craft an engaging Introduction to set the context. Next, detail the Background and Challenges faced, followed by the Solutions applied. Share the Results and Conclusion to highlight the impact. Finally, edit and proofread your case study to ensure clarity and accuracy.

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Free Guide to Strategy& Consulting Case Interviews

You want to work at Strategy& and are now faced with the question of how to apply to this consulting company? Then you've come to the right place because in this article we will guide you through the entire application process at Strategy& , the requirements you need to meet, what to expect and what tips and tricks will help you get your job offer from Strategy&. 

1. About Strategy&

In the heart of Strategy&'s legacy is a rich tradition of innovation , dating back to the origins of Booz Allen Hamilton in 1914. Renowned for shaping management consulting and pioneering supply chain management, the firm's 2014 union with Booz & Company and PwC solidified its holistic "strategy-to-execution" approach. Seamlessly integrated into the PwC network, Strategy& leverages its comprehensive capabilities, steering clients through transformative journeys that include averting bankruptcy at Chrysler Corporation and supporting Deutsche Telekom's cloud-based transformation.

As a global leader in strategy consulting, Strategy& has a presence in 60 countries with a workforce exceeding 3000 professionals . Rooted in a storied history of contributing foundational concepts, including supply chain management, the firm aligns seamlessly with PwC's mission, offering comprehensive end-to-end consulting services. Serving as a talent hub, Strategy& is a major recruiter from prestigious business schools, placing emphasis on case interviews to highlight its commitment to analytical prowess and problem-solving skills .

In the dynamic business landscape, the firm's legacy of innovation, unwavering commitment to excellence, and strategic vision continue to shape the trajectory of global strategy consulting, solidifying its enduring influence in the industry. Ranked as the second-largest recruiter from Columbia Business School in the US and the t hird-largest from INSEAD in Europe , Strategy& places a spotlight on the case interview as the focal point of their rigorous selection process, ensuring a commitment to excellence and analytical acumen in their consultants.

2. What Strategy& are Looking for

As part of their rebranding, Strategy& was integrated with PwC and they have adopted a set of common values. They have five values that they look for in their candidates :

1. Act with integrity: 

• ​ Expectation: Candidates should demonstrate honesty, transparency, and ethical behavior in their professional interactions.
• Context: Given PwC's historical role as an accounting firm with a focus on financial transparency, integrity is considered a foundational value.

2. Make a difference:

• Expectation: Candidates are encouraged to prioritize actions that create a positive impact on colleagues, clients, and society.
• Context: This value emphasizes a focus on meaningful contributions that extend beyond commercial considerations, aligning with the firm's commitment to societal well-being.
• Expectation: Candidates should excel in case interviews, highlighting their analytical prowess and problem-solving skills.
• Context: Case interviews are a focal point in Strategy&'s selection process, underscoring the importance of analytical thinking in consulting roles.

4. Work together: 

• Expectation: Candidates should exhibit effective teamwork skills and collaborate efficiently in project teams.
• Context: Collaboration is critical in consulting, and the ability to work harmoniously towards common goals is essential for successful project outcomes.

5. Reimagine the possible:

• Expectation: Candidates are expected to think innovatively and identify new ways of working or innovative products.
• Context: In the face of a rapidly changing business world and emerging technologies, Strategy& values individuals who can envision and drive new possibilities for clients.

3. Strategy& Application Process

There are four stages to the Strategy& application process :

1. Resume and Cover Letter Submission:

Initiation: The process kicks off with candidates submitting their resumes and cover letters online, presenting an opportunity to showcase their academic achievements and relevant professional experiences.

Expectations: Beyond the academic and professional qualifications, Strategy& is keenly interested in applicants who embody the five core traits integral to the firm's values.

2.   Online Assessments:

Introduction: Adopting PwC's online assessment methodology, this stage involves a trilogy of evaluations: a numerical reasoning test, a games-based assessment, and a video interview.

Timeline: The assessments, spanning over 2 hours, are strategically spread across a 4-week period, offering a comprehensive evaluation of candidates' analytical abilities and suitability for consulting roles.

3. Super Day Style Interviews:

Format: Strategy& introduces a 'super day' style for interviews, streamlining the evaluation process.

First-Round Interviews (Morning): Led by junior consultants, the first round consists of two interviews. It commences with a 15-minute Personal Fit Interview, followed by a case interview question. Prompt feedback and decisions regarding the afternoon session are provided at the end of the morning.

Second-Round Interviews (Afternoon): Senior consultants, including partners and directors, conduct two interviews mirroring the first-round format.

Outcome: Post-second round interviews, candidates receive detailed feedback or, in the case of successful candidates, a coveted job offer.

​ 4.  Final Decisions:

Closure: The application process concludes with candidates receiving conclusive feedback or, for those who have demonstrated exceptional potential, a formal job offer from Strategy&.

In aligning its application process with PwC's online assessments, Strategy& emphasizes a holistic evaluation approach. The 'super day' structure not only expedites the interview process but also ensures candidates receive timely feedback, enhancing the transparency and efficiency of the recruitment journey. This multi-stage process underscores Strategy&'s commitment to identifying and nurturing top-tier talent to further solidify its position as a global leader in strategy consulting .

• 4. Types of Interviews

Strategy& has  two interview formats across their network:  experience/fit questions followed by a case interview question and experience/ fit questions followed by a structured case interview .

• 4.1 Case Interview (Question)

Real-life Scenarios: Strategy& structures its case interviews around real-life client examples. Interviewers often draw from their own client engagements, leveraging familiarity with data and context.

Attributes Assessed:

Approach and structure

Analytical and creative thinking

Application of data

Communication skills

Business acumen

Evaluation Criteria: Success in a case interview is gauged based on a candidate's proficiency across these attributes, determining their capability to fulfill the responsibilities of a Strategy& consultant.

• 4.2 Experience Interview

Preliminary Insights: Conducted prior to the case interview, experience questions delve into a candidate's motivations, past experiences, and decision-making skills.

​Sample Questions:

Why are you interested in Strategy&?

Why are you interested in consulting?

What experience are you most proud of?

What experience do you wish you could do over, and how would you do it differently?

What is a difficult decision you have made in the last year?

What is an example of a time when you showed initiative and leadership?

What aspects of your internship did you like less?

What do you most like to do in your free time?

What attributes would you bring to a case team?

Describe a role where you changed the direction of a team. How did you do it?

Key Strategy: Structuring responses to these questions is crucial, showcasing a thoughtful and strategic approach even when discussing non-business-related topics.

• 4.3 Case Interview (Structured)

Information Pack: In this structured case interview, candidates receive a 15-20 page information pack and 10 minutes to read it. They formulate three high-level questions they wish to address. The interviewer leaves during this reading period.

Evaluation Focus: Similar to traditional case interviews, the emphasis is on evaluating a candidate's decision-making process, considering trade-offs, and assessing the robustness of recommendations.

• 5. Case Interview

Structured Approach: Strategy& follows a well-defined structure for case interviews, reflecting the core elements of the consulting process.

• Situation and problem:   Understanding the context and defining the problem.

Hypothesis validation:  Offering an initial hypothesis and explaining the intention to validate it.

Framework development: Creating a structured framework for analysis.

Root cause analysis: Exploring the framework to identify the root cause of the issue.

Mathematical calculation (sometimes): If relevant, incorporating mathematical calculations.

Creativity test (sometimes): Demonstrating the ability to think creatively and propose alternatives.

Recommendation: Synthesizing findings and providing a clear and concise proposal.

The Strategy& interview process is a nuanced journey, designed to holistically evaluate candidates' analytical prowess, strategic acumen, and adaptability to the intricacies of strategy consulting. This multifaceted assessment requires candidates to navigate real-life scenarios, draw on experience-based insights, and showcase structured problem-solving abilities.

At the inception of the case interview, the scenario is unveiled by the interviewer, presenting a tangible challenge.

An example might be:

"A high street retailer seeks to reduce costs by 30% in response to the Covid-19 pandemic. How would you approach this?"

Candidates embark on this journey by formulating an initial hypothesis, articulating their intention to validate or refute it. Subsequently, a meticulously crafted framework is developed to guide the analysis, adhering to the MECE (Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive) principle. Successful exploration of the framework unveils the root cause of the client's issue, allowing for relevant calculations.

The creativity test introduces a layer of complexity, requiring candidates to propose alternatives when faced with client constraints.

For example:

"The client opposes store closures; suggest alternative cost-cutting measures."

This test is iterative, assessing the candidate's ability to think creatively and adapt solutions as per evolving constraints. Culminating the process, candidates synthesize their findings into a clear and concise recommendation, showcasing their ability to distill complex analyses into actionable proposals.

The Strategy& interview process is not merely a gauntlet; it's an opportunity for candidates to demonstrate their strategic thinking and problem-solving prowess in a simulated consulting environment.

• 6. Additional Tips
• 6.1 Fast Maths

Case interviews are pressurized situations where your anxiety levels are heightened and you don’t have the safety net of notes or the internet to fall back on.

For in-person interviews, it is common that one of the questions will have a mathematical element or be a market sizing question included. These require long maths calculations without a calculator . If you haven’t practiced long addition, multiplication, division, or subtraction recently then it is a good idea to do so. Being quick at maths shows your competent quantitative skills and reduces unnecessary pressure during the interview, increasing your overall performance.

• 6.2 Practice

As with maths, practicing case interviews is the best way to improve your performance . Through practice, you will begin to develop a robust approach that satisfies the structure and framework components of the case and you will recognize how to navigate the case successfully.

If you are applying to Strategy& then you are probably applying to other strategy consulting firms too, this practice will be relevant to all the firms you apply to as they all use case interviews in their application process.

• 6.3 Apply Structure to Everything

The key requirement of a candidate in a case interview is the application of structure , specifically with a MECE approach. As mentioned above, you can even apply structure to the FIT questions and it is recommended you do so.

An example answer to the question ‘walk me through your CV’ would be to segment your experience into: 1) Experience relevant to consulting 2) Experience not relevant to consulting and then briefly cover the experience you have in each bucket. This shows you understand what consulting is and what is relevant and also a key skill of a consultant – structured thinking.

If you can demonstrate robust structured thinking in your interview , you will score highly.

• 7. Conclusion

In conclusion, the Strategy& consulting case interview process is a well-structured journey emphasizing analytical skills, strategic thinking, and adaptability . The firm's integration with PwC brings a comprehensive evaluation approach, focusing on values like integrity and teamwork. The 'super day' style interviews efficiently assess candidates, led by both junior and senior consultants.

The case interview follows a defined structure, challenging candidates with real-world scenarios and time-pressured tasks . Success requires mastering fast maths, consistent case interview practice, and applying a structured approach.

Overall, it's not just a hurdle, but an opportunity for candidates to showcase their abilities in line with Strategy&'s commitment to excellence and innovation in global strategy consulting.

Continue to Learn

Free Guide to Kearney Consulting Case Interviews

Find out more about Kearney as an employer!

Free Guide to LEK Consulting Case Interviews

Find out more about LEK Consulting as an employer!

Free Guide to OC&C Consulting Case Interviews

Find out more about OC&C as an employer!

• 1. About Strategy&
• 2. What Strategy& are Looking for
• 3. Strategy& Application Process

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Between Ideals and Realities: Investigating Perspectives of Chinese Postgraduate Researchers with Experience and Expertise in Higher Education Internationalization

• Original Article
• Published: 24 August 2024

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• Hantian Wu   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0003-0904-8281 1 &
• Jie Zheng   ORCID: orcid.org/0000-0002-4155-2309 2  

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This study examines the perspectives and experiences of mainland Chinese postgraduate researchers regarding the internationalization of higher education in China. Using a partial ethnographic case study methodology, the research explores the situation at two case universities in China through interviews and observations. The findings highlight a macro-level shift from a neoliberal approach to an arrangement dominated by nationalist narratives and grand strategies, reflecting the complex interplay of domestic politics and geopolitical dynamics. This transformation raises concerns about the authenticity of internationalization efforts, described by participants as ‘fake internationalization’, due to a perceived lack of real global integration and reciprocal international interactions. Despite these challenges, the study reveals a cautious optimism among participants, who suggest that future internationalization could be sustained through regional collaborations and a reinvigorated focus on meaningful academic exchange and knowledge production.

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This study was supported by the National Social Science Fund of China (Education) [grant number CIA210277].

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Wu, H., Zheng, J. Between Ideals and Realities: Investigating Perspectives of Chinese Postgraduate Researchers with Experience and Expertise in Higher Education Internationalization. High Educ Policy (2024). https://doi.org/10.1057/s41307-024-00375-y

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A multi-objective optimization approach for solar farm site selection: case study in maputo, mozambique.

1. Introduction

2. literature review, 3. materials and methods, 3.1. study area and data preparation.

• Digital Elevation Models (DEMs): Detailed elevation data of the Earth’s surface at a resolution of about 30 m.
• Slope and Aspect Maps: Information on the steepness (slope) and orientation (aspect) of the land, extracted from the DEM data as shown in Figure 2 c,d.

3.2. Methodology

3.2.1. multi-objective optimization model.

• Maximizing the solar radiation

3.2.2. NSGA-II

4.1. pareto front analysis, 4.2. variability analysis, 4.3. optimal solution maps, 5. discussion, 5.1. running performance metrics, 5.2. performance tracking, 6. conclusions, author contributions, institutional review board statement, informed consent statement, data availability statement, conflicts of interest.

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Sicuaio, T.; Zhao, P.; Pilesjö, P.; Shindyapin, A.; Mansourian, A. A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for Solar Farm Site Selection: Case Study in Maputo, Mozambique. Sustainability 2024 , 16 , 7333. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177333

Sicuaio T, Zhao P, Pilesjö P, Shindyapin A, Mansourian A. A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for Solar Farm Site Selection: Case Study in Maputo, Mozambique. Sustainability . 2024; 16(17):7333. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177333

Sicuaio, Tomé, Pengxiang Zhao, Petter Pilesjö, Andrey Shindyapin, and Ali Mansourian. 2024. "A Multi-Objective Optimization Approach for Solar Farm Site Selection: Case Study in Maputo, Mozambique" Sustainability 16, no. 17: 7333. https://doi.org/10.3390/su16177333

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