Case interviews involving an Excel component?

Hi fellow monkeys,

I recently got an invitation from a smaller boutique consulting firm for a final round interview. Two out of the three interviews are case interviews which involve an "Excel component". I haven't heard or experienced that before, what are these like? And, how can I best prepare for them?

4 Comments
 

Often, they will give some market industry data and firm specific data. They may have pre-specified calculations to perform in select cells, they may also guide the discussion with a series of questions like:

  • what % of the market share does company x have of the overall market? 
  • If the company has $0.5m to invest into one line of business for it to grow 10% in revenue, which line of business should the company pursue? 

Best preparation is to ensure you can navigate arithmetic math and logic functions. 

If you really want to prep, you can download three statements and ask yourself some questions to test how quickly and smoothly you can navigate raw data. 

 

I had this for FTI, they dropped me in a room for an hour with a laptop and a USB drive with a couple excel sheets of data, and a word doc with questions they wanted me to answer. I was alone in the room for an hour to work on the questions, then afterwards they came in and asked me to walk them through my solutions, thinking and process. Honestly, I preferred this as it seems closest to actual daily work. Actual excel was very very basic, legit more of how I approached problems and datasets then my actual excel proficiency

 

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