What is a Case Interview and How to Prepare For It
Case interviews are an essential part of the recruiting process in any consulting firm. These interviews will evaluate your communication, teamwork, creative and analytical skills, as well as your fit with the company. A case interview is usually composed of 3 parts:
Fit questions (10-15 mins):
Interviewers may give their personal background
Interviewers will ask you about your resume, qualifications and interests in consulting and the firm
Case (30-40 mins):
Interviewer will give you a business context and state the problem you need to solve – this prompt is usually given in the form of: one of our clients in the X industry is facing Y,Z. Our client contacts us to help him solve W.
You will plan your approach by defining a framework that exhaustively covers the aspects of the problem
You will probe for information following your plan in order to state and validate hypothesis for the problem – this may result in the interviewer giving you data for you to analyze and draw conclusions
You will be asked to wrap-up and assert your conclusions and recommendations
Questions for the interviewer (5-10 mins)
In order to prepare for this type of interviews we have compiled a set of resources that you are welcome to use.
If you are new to consulting and are not familiar with the case interviews, we recommend the following:
Watch Victor Cheng’s videos – Case interview intro
Listen to a couple of real live interviews look over my shoulder (LOMS) – For each case there is a good interview and a bad interview.
When you are familiarized with the case interview:
Practice cases – we have a big database of casebooks, and if you are interested in meeting fellow grads for practice let us know by email.
We will be hosting group sessions of peer-to-peer case practice sessions later each semester.
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