Always extremely nervous during mock case interviews. Tips?

I know this question is going to sound so generic, but I just don't get it. I like to consider myself an extrovert. I'm extremely friendly, never shy, and always confident. I do really well in mock case interviews, but as soon as I mess up once, I start to overthink it and it really hinders the rest of my case performance. 


I feel like someone just cut blood circulation for half of my brain as soon as I make a mistake. I don't know why. 


Secondly, does anyone have any tips on how to best self-study for case interviews? Reading these MBA case books can only do so much, and I don't have that many live partners I can reach out to.


I have a speed round (4 interviews in one day) for McK in two weeks. This is for an undergraduate internship at a selective office :/ Thank you so much!

 
Most Helpful

If I'm interpreting your question correctly, the place where you're really "getting off the train" so to speak is when you make a mistake somewhere within the case and you don't know how to get back on track. Is it possible you could clarify what part of the case you're making a mistake on? McKinsey cases are interviewer-led and so each question is to a certain extent compartmentalized, but you have to make sure you connect your insights from each "sub-question" in the case to your overall thoughts and make sure you don't forget information between sections. I digress, there's several parts I could foresee a mistake occurring, and certainly several parts I'm forgetting, but in general with any case there's always gonna be a frameworking portion, always the mental math/quantitative analysis, occasionally graph analysis, and occasionally brainstorming. 

When it comes to the first part, don't panic if the initial hypothesis you gave or directions you proposed are not where the interviewer decides to steer the case next. It's totally ok (at least in my opinion) and as long as you weren't too far off mark in aggregate you should just take it in stride and address the next question the interviewer asks you. Just make sure to keep a mental note in mind of the problem going forward. 

Regarding mental math, I have to say there's no way to get around this besides making sure you get your reps in and are very, very careful with your zeroes. Those tend to be the thing that screw up a lot of setups (and the problem structuring itself I may add). Just be cognizant and take the math more slowly if you need to; your interviewer will prefer you to be a bit slower and nail the math as opposed to fumbling thrice. 

With graph analysis, just be sure you learn how to discard irrelevant information - you'll get this after you do enough cases, but McKinsey cases are often flush with extraneous crap that is meant to confuse and make your head spin, or it might come in at a different part of the case. (The Great Burger case is an excellent case example: there's a lot of 2nd and 3rd level information you can pull from the exhibits, but only if it doesn't take away from your key points!) Make sure you're focused and honed in on what the "key insights" are and use that as a spike to drive your analysis.

Lastly, with brainstorming, you have to make sure that you aren't caught flat footed when you're trying to think of stuff on the fly. Practice practice practice of course, seeing enough of these kinds of problems really helps, but I found it was also useful to keep a few generalized frameworks in my back pocket for common brainstorming problems (like operational vs financial vs strategic concerns or external vs internal issues) and then adjust as needed. I've heard often times McKinsey likes to ask "what else" when trying to probe you on the brainstorming, make sure you have something to answer that question with. Even if you can't think of any new, meaningful components, you can always instead double back and say you want to really emphasize and drive deeper on a particular issue you mentioned previously. 

Hope this helps, and good luck on the power round! The time flies by a lot faster than you think, but the endurance portion can be brutal if you're not ready for it. 

 

The best way to overcome nerves is to practice! The only way to build confidence is to believe you know what you're doing. I suggest craftingcases.com. Their first course splits case prep into digestible sections, which will allow you to target the part of the interview you need to develop the most. I used their programs and landed an offer from McKinsey! The best part is that they give you a case and ask you to pause the video so you can solve it yourself before giving you the "correct" answer. I think this is extremely helpful if you don't have someone to case with.

Once you target the areas you should improve, drill yourself by isolating that part of the case. For example, if you need to work on frameworks, practice by building frameworks to five-ten cases before moving on. You can compare this with a rubric if given one. After a while, you'll build more confidence and will probably be ready to case with friends. 
I hope this helps!

 

Hi,

I don't think I can add more to what the other commenters have said about nerves. Practice will help, realising the interviewer is there to help you, and messing up a little is ok (I had about 1 small mistake in both of my MBB rounds, and I still got my offer in the end). I should say that otherwise, my interviews all went really well, barring those small errors (forgot frequency of purchase in a market sizing in my final round with a Partner, which I caught and corrected; and in my first round I started down a very lengthy path in another market sizing before realising there was a 2-step shortcut that would give me the answer immediately).

For your second question and self study. I also went through a few cases by myself, using casebooks at first. And of course watched about every video imaginable on YT about case interview. But in the end, since I also don't have anyone to practice with, I just registered on a site (I used CaseCoach, but others are equally as good, I'm sure). Signing up and practicing with people is free (although I think there may be a limit to how many sessions you can book or put out). My strategy there was simple: do 5-10 cases with people (people with experience and who I thought could give me good feedback), do 1 session with a coach to test and adjust as needed (that was pricey), do another 8-10 with other candidates to refine my skills and one last one with a coach to test myself (again pricey).

I also had a mock interview with an alumn from one of my unis. He volunteered for it. I sent about 12 messages on LinkedIn, received 3 replies, and 1 offered to do a mock, so that was quite productive I'd say.

Do use those online platforms, use multiple ones if you have to, for as long as they're free. Just avoid over preparing (I saw people with 80+ sessions, which I thought was overdoing it), because I feel like that either makes you too robotic and disengaged or can just make you even more nervous (if you are still working on basics after 20-30 cases, maybe you need better partners and more focus/constructive feedback). I do believe “testing" yourself with a good coach is helpful, it certainly helped with my self confidence.

Best of luck to you! I hope you get it!

PS: maybe one last piece of advice, being friendly, positive, and genuinely excited (I mean genuinely, it shouldn't be faked) will buy you some goodwill if you make a minor error. It'll still be counted as such, but they ll be more likely to let it go. I admit I have no hard data on that, but that's the feeling I got in my interviews.

 

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