7 Tips For Acing Your Next Consulting Case Competition

Guide to Nailing Consulting Case Comp

Hi monkeys. No doubt many of you guys have at one point entered a case competition while in university, whether required for a course or trying to boost your resume. However especially among newer competitors, I’ve seen a lot of smart people make really basic mistakes that have hindered them from doing well. Fortunately I had a superstar mentor last year help me out and as a result got an internship at a local management consulting company after winning a case competition. I’d like to share some of the more important tips with you.

Pick Your Team Wisely in the Comp

Most consulting competitions are fairly open ended. A strong team will have competencies in at least finance (including light modelling), operations, international business and marketing. Having at least one person good with Excel for things like sensitivity analysis, graphs, and football fields will also pay dividends later.

Prepare Your Slide Deck Before the Competition Begins

Especially if you have less than a few days to prepare your solution, make sure to get a deck of at least a few dozen slides with the different combinations of fancy shapes and charts, all in the same colour scheme. Saving time on formatting, as well as reducing small mistakes is crucial, as most student groups are really bad at making crisp presentations. Added bonus: weaker teammates with no Powerpoint experience (hopefully) won't be sending you completely unformatted slides for you to fix.

Find What Actually Happened in the Case, Then Avoid It

Most case competitions are about a real situation a business faced within the past decade and ask you what the company should do. If you propose a very similar strategy to what actually happened, unless the judges are living under a rock, you risk getting dinged for a too-safe, 0-creativity strategy.

Balance Ideas That Are Too Safe Versus Very Extreme

Following up on #3, once you’ve brainstormed solutions, categorize them into “Safe”, “Moderate”, and “Risky” ideas, and aim to propose mostly Moderate strategies. Example: Don’t propose that Starbucks offer a slightly different coffee blend, or start offering dinner. Suggesting they offer more lunch choices would be a better balance of too boring and too crazy.

Tell a Clear, Convincing Story in Your Case

Put your key considerations and recommendations up on an executive slide at the beginning, then all the background analysis building to your solution and justifications. The “surprise solution” where you don't reveal your solution until halfway through will always seem underwhelming unless it really is brilliant. Another good technique is the ‘two and a half ideas’ format, where you propose 2 strong ideas, then a third potential riskier idea. This works well on longer open ended cases where you want to include a risky, but potentially impressive idea.

Cite the Sponsor or Judges Employer in Your Analysis

If you have time to do so, pull up relevant research on the industry or situation from the sponsor of the competition. Without being too kiss-ass, ideas using the company’s own research are usually less assailable and it can help with networking later if you’re memorable team.

Anticipate and Prepare for Questions

Try to think of what questions will be asked after your pitch, come up with well researched answers, and prepare for them in the appendix of your presentation. This alone can be a winning tip: by preparing solid answers beforehand, you finish strong and are able to burn time looking smart when you’re supposed to be getting grilled.

Please share your thoughts or experiences, hope this helps!

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Best Response

Some good pointers. I would echo and add to some of your comments.

Don't under-estimate the importance of point number 2. While it may seem trivial, having a polished deck is critical and it often takes much longer than expected to get the deck looking just right. If you been using powerpoint for a while, you understand how incredibly frustrating the program can be at times. Make sure to give this enough time.

Fully agree with point number 5. I would suggest having a clean and short deck up front. I know that for our client presentations, we often have two decks. The presentation deck is simple with the key and essential data points, often anywhere between 12-20 slides. The pre-read deck goes into the nitty gritty, and this deck can get quite substantial (upwards of 100 slides). Having the clear, short story up front, with easily accessible back up material for reference or elaboration in an appendix is the way to go.

The error of confirmation: we confirm our knowledge and scorn our ignorance.
 

Look at the archive for previous competitions and see what their presenations are like. Utilize charts to display data and to convey your recommendation. Then, network with the judges after and ask them some interesting questions.

Good luck!

I'm too drunk to taste this chicken -Late great Col. Sanders
 

Winning is pretty much a shoe in for getting an offer for the specific line/office that is hosting the case comp, and may even be able to leverage if you are interested in a different line/office. Use it a networking opp.

 

I won the Deloitte case competition at my school, and we competed in the national competition at Deloitte University. It was a great way to network with consultants, and you are typically assigned a Deloitte mentor who helps your team. I became really close with my mentor, and he helped me later with networking and the recruiting process. Even if you do not win, be a strong competitor and network with everyone you interact with and it will help you come recruiting time.

 
PF_25000:

Hey, Deloitte is hosting a case competition at my school in a few weeks, and I was wondering if anyone has had any experience with them.

I'm interested in hearing how recruiters look at these, from Deloitte and outside of it, how to do well, and any tips on networking for full time interviews for next fall through it. Thanks!

If you win the national championship, you generally get an instant offer.

 

Adding to #7

You can also lead your judges into asking you specific questions during your presentation. For example, you could emphasize the criteria you selected to evaluate alternatives so in the Q&A judges will be curious about how you determined the most important factors. That way you can try to manage what judges will ask you during the Q&A.

I'm too drunk to taste this chicken -Late great Col. Sanders
 
Winning Since 1776:

Adding to #7

You can also lead your judges into asking you specific questions during your presentation. For example, you could emphasize the criteria you selected to evaluate alternatives so in the Q&A judges will be curious about how you determined the most important factors. That way you can try to manage what judges will ask you during the Q&A.

THIS!

We called this "hooking" the judges. Throughout your presentation you bring up a few interesting items, but don't elaborate on them that much. You throw out the bait, and hope the judges bite. Combo this up with having basket slides (extra slides like an appendix that you didn't use), and you look amazing to the judges. You were so "prepared" that you "knew" what the judges were going to ask you and not only were you able to think on your feet, you even planned for it ahead of time and had a slide on that specific question.

 

Exactly! Hooking the judges is very effective. Tell them you did extensive research on a particular slide, but don't go into detail about it. Then they will definitely ask you more about that point in the Q&A haha. Just using screenshots from annual reports also saves a lot of time instead of creating charts for your appendix.

I'm too drunk to taste this chicken -Late great Col. Sanders
 
qwerty2012:
Are there any sample pages out there?

hey man, sorry, we don't...will try to get some made up though. No promises on timing...we are pretty jammed up at the moment.

There is a 100% money back guarantee on all guides so if you buy and dont like it for whatever reason we give you your $ back no questison asked except for feedback on how to improve (you get your $ back either way).

Thanks

 

Thanks for the quick reply man.

I've invested in quite a few resources for the upcoming season in the UK.. most of them are decent and collectively cover every possible angle that I can think of (with a lot of repetition).. So, I'm not sure if this will be adding any value.

I'll give it the benefit of doubt and purchase it for now. I'll be delighted if it proves me wrong! :D

Thanks once again for the reply, and more importantly for this forum. It is FREAKING awesome man. If this forum had a gender, I'd marry it and make babies.

 
qwerty2012:
Thanks for the quick reply man.

I've invested in quite a few resources for the upcoming season in the UK.. most of them are decent and collectively cover every possible angle that I can think of (with a lot of repetition).. So, I'm not sure if this will be adding any value.

I'll give it the benefit of doubt and purchase it for now. I'll be delighted if it proves me wrong! :D

Thanks once again for the reply, and more importantly for this forum. It is FREAKING awesome man. If this forum had a gender, I'd marry it and make babies.

haha, thanks for the kind words. If you want a refund after you purchase, no worries. I think our guide is great for having someone give you actual case mocks....and IMO, that is by far the best way to prep. What sets our guide apart is it prompts the interview how to guide you through a case depending if you get stuck on different parts, etc...so your mom could give you a mock case interview and it would actually be helpful (that may be a stretch). :-)

 

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i'm not smart enough to do everything, but dumb enough to try anything
 

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