Please respond interview tomorrow

I have a phone interview for an equity research internship. It will actually be consulting-type interview-and this is my first one ever. HR sent me an email saying this:

"Our interviews focus on core cognitive skills and tend to involve problem-solving questions similar to case study questions borrowed from the consulting world. Below are two websites I generally direct candidates to in order to prepare for the case study question. An example of this type of question is, "How many tennis rackets are there in Spain?""
She then linked me to the McKinsey and BCG Practice Case Websites.

My question is this: If this is a 30-45 minute phone interview, could I get a full case?

I am not ready for a full case but am cramming with Case In Point as I type this up.

What should I expect in this 30-45 minutes?

I am prepping for

1) PEI (personal experiences interview-this is straightforward from anything IB)
2) Market Sizing Questions
3) IDK what else I need to know exactly. some type of case, but what? Could it be a full blown one?

Please just tell me wtf I should do right now lols. the more specific you can be the better. What could a phone interview for this be like? what is likely to be asked? will there just be one question that we work through the whole time? the more specific your answer the more helpful it would be. thanks yo

7 Comments
 

This certainly isn't ideal but you can probably make it work anyway. I'm not sure whether she'll actually give you a pure market sizing question like the one she mentioned, however I can tell you that in all the MBB interviews I went through, there was a case with a market sizing question embedded. Example: case was about whether to bring a new music product to market, market sizing component asked how many people might be interested in the service. I can also tell you that 30-45 minutes is easily enough time to do a full case.

In terms of what the phone interview will be like, it will depend on whether you get several pure market sizing questions or one large case question. I think it's more likely you'll get one large case question, in which case you need to go to caseinterview.com and watch victor cheng's 6 hours of case prep. Then you need to practice a couple cases, preferably with a friend.

 

I had a case interview with deloitte that was 30 min behavioral, and 30 min case. It dealt was a profit case, basically a company has sean its profits decreased in recent yrs, and doesnt know why, so you broke it down by focusing on revnues and then cost. It was pretty simple. If you have basic understanding of accounting you'r fine, the mental aspct of it is tough if you're not accustom to cases.

Seeing how yours is 30-45 min total, I'd imagine your getting a market sizing.

Hugo
 

What did the interview end up being like? I am interviewing at Alliance Bernstein tomorrow and they sent me the same exact email. I've never done a case before, let alone a market sizing question, so I'm kind of freaking out. Please let me know!

 

Most important point is showing thought process in these questions.

Technically, how many baseballs can fit in a stadium (or whatever) there is a "correct" answer, but its more about the reasoning. Don't just say "1 million", walk them through it; baseball diameter is this, average stadium size is this, subtract out the seating, baseballs don't tessallate (connection when stacking). The whole thing in ER is you can be wrong, but you need to have reasons backing your value and analysis.

A good practice question is walk me through how to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich or example an computer to an old person. Where do you start, where do you end (put each on bread put them together, or find a knife, open the jelly jar, spread evenly on the bread...)

 
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