How long do you guys need to prepare for case interviews?
How long do you guys need, I did a good deal of practice about a year ago, but been rusty since, have an interview in two weeks, already started some prep, but I'm going to be moving within those two weeks, so I'm thinking to see if I can get some extra time. Do you think it would be reasonable? I will obviously use some other reason though...
Time to prep for consulting case interviews (Originally Posted: 11/18/2013)
So I'm a junior at an ibanking target school applying to most of the BB's, some middle market banks, and a few hometown boutique banks too. Since day 1 of my first year, I've been prepping for a career in IBD/PE. However, I just realized a few weeks ago that a hometown connection of mine is a director at a major McKinsey office, so I'm applying to McK just because of this. I've heard that I can't prepare for a consulting case interview over the span of Xmas/New Year break. Is that true? I would imagine that some applicants have been prepping since high school, but still, what do you think?
It depends. I also went to banking target (consulting non-target) and I personally spent my summer in banking and was in the same boat as an incoming senior. I applied to MBB as a backup and was ultimately surprised to get the interview, and had only 3 days of preparation. In the end, I actually feel banking interviews take a lot more time to prep. In banking, you actually have to know stuff, and the behaviorals tend to be more important as well. Since I was on a limited time basis, I didn't have time to read the books or watch Victor Cheng's videos. I went straight to the chase with practice cases. My first practice was uncomfortable, if not a bit awkward, but the format for casing is quite easy to learn.
Over the 3 days I probably went through 6 cases with 4 different people, and also read the case solutions on the website. I received an offer with only a few hiccups along the way. There is no rocket science involved, but here are the things I learned.
A lot of casing is natural intuition and ability. You can build that over time, but it's also possible that you already have it, especially if you've done banking or a finance oriented education.
I was told my quantitative skills were top notch. In reality, my mental math is mediocre - I actually just wrote out all the multiplication, did it like how i was taught in 3rd grade, and made sure I didn't make any mistakes (crossed out the zeroes one by one for example). No one seemed bothered by this.
I didn't know the frameworks, so I didn't follow any. I approached every interview in a very minimalist way. How do you improve profits? Just ask about cost drivers and revenue drivers, and try to reduce one while increasing the other. Honestly, none of my solutions were particularly creative. As I was mocking, I saw a lot of my classmates drawing out frameworks, and "crossing off the boxes" - thus asking a lot of unnecessary questions. I finished my cases with plenty of time leftover and always had time to chat with interviewers.
Solid post, SBd and congrats on the offer
It can be done but depends on the person and his/her motivation. Since you applied, I'd start hitting the books now.
As with anything, the more you practice, the more prepared you'll be. I've never heard of anyone prepping for cases straight out of high school, but it wouldn't surprise me if some crazies out there did. I started prepping for cases second semester of Junior year but ended up doing a Master's, so I was pretty prepared for full-time recruiting. But on the other hand, I do know of people who crammed in a bunch of cases right before full-time recruiting senior year without any prior experience and got offers. Wouldn't recommend that route, but it's doable.
I would definitely practice as much as you reasonably can without burning yourself out over the next few weeks. If it's only your junior year, you'll at least be able to get a great head start on prepping for full-time recruiting next year.
Well the thing is that my GPA is around 3.1-3.2 (though from a school known for very rigorous academics like Princeton, MIT, Chicago, etc.) . If I didn't know this director, then I would imagine that I would have absolutely no shot at a first-round interview. Also, looking at my resume, it's pretty obvious that I'm aiming for investment banking. I don't really have anything to show for consulting either.
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