mit consulting club case tips

Case practice

Consulting Club at MIT

June 2011

Pierre-Olivier Lepage and Francisco Alonso, 2011

Consulting club at MIT

•Our Mission

–Facilitate a seamless transition from graduate school

to a successful consulting career

•Events

–We put on more than 20 consulting related events

throughout the year

•People

–10 executive members

–300 student members

•www.consultingclubatmit.com


http://www.consultingclubatmit.com/

Why do firms conduct case interviews?

• They are looking for 4 skills

– Client readiness

– Problem solving capabilities

– Business creativity

– Team work abilities/ team work


The case interview process

• The case will generally start with a very broad question

– The clients’ business doesn’t work, go and fix it

• The reason for this is that consulting firms want to know

if you can ask relevant clarifying questions and make

reasonable assumption


How to approach a case -

Starting a case1. Ask clarification questions

You want to make sure you understand the terms correctly; that you

got the data right; etc…

2. Restate the question

The last thing you want to do is to answer the wrong question. Make

sure you understand the question and figure out what “type” of

case you are solving. You are going to have a very different

solving approach depending on the case type.

Are we interested in profit? Do we want to come up with a growth

strategy?



Structuring a case3. Take a break and structure your thoughts

This is a critical step. You want to have a clear plan on how you will

approach the case. You can find information about different

frameworks on www.caseinterview.com or in books (e.g. “Case

in point” p. 33)

Profit

Revenue Cost

# of unit sold $ per unit Fixed cost Var. cost

-

* +


http://www.caseinterview.com/


Digging in4. This is an iterative hypothesis driven process for each

element of your framework

1. State initial hypothesis clearly (e.g. Profit decrease

is driven in part by internal revenue decrease)

2. Gather relevant data to test your hypothesis

3. Analyze the data to conclude whether or not your

hypothesis is true

4. State your conclusion on this hypothesis clearly

5. Go back to step 1



Evaluate possible solutions5. For each identified problems/areas of improvement

1. List possible solutions (be creative – this is a way of

differencing yourself from other applicants)

2. How would you prioritize the different solutions

3. Organize the assessment of each solution: what

would you have to consider in the implementation

of each solution.



Closing a case

6. The conclusion should be concise and well structured

1. State the initial problem you were trying to solve

2. State your recommendation(s): support them with

facts/conclusions from your analysis


Tips

1. Smile and make eye contact

2. Enjoy the process and be interested

if the interviewer feels that you don’t enjoy the case solving process, he will

think that you won’t like the job (and he’s probably right)

3. Structure, structure, structure

4. Consider the interviewer as a partner – ask clarification

questions and don’t be afraid to ask for help

5. Bring paper and pen


Tips (cont’d)

6. Think out loud in a structured manner

1. My hypothesis is X (Say it!)

2. I would need this first piece of data and this second piece of data (Say it!)

3. By multiplying them together I would get Y and I could compare it to Z

(Say it!)

4. If Y>Z then conclusion A; otherwise B (Say it!)

5. Do the math

6. We can see that Y>Z. Therefore, conclusion A (Say it!)


mit consulting club case tips

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