Case Interview

Case Interview Questions

We’ve collected a large selection of case interview questions from various sources, please see below:

The Business Planning group at Universal Parks and Resorts, the theme park division of NBC Universal that is responsible for the operation and maintenance of Islands of Adventure, must recommend to its CEO whether she should sign-off on a request to build a new ride in the Islands of Adventure theme park. The new ride will need a capital investment of $400 million. Currently, the market cannot support a rise in the park admission ticket price as a means to cover the investment expense. Should Business Planning group recommend that the company’s CEO sign-off on the capital request? Why or why not?
How much time does it take to relocated an average size mountain 10 miles using an average size dump truck?
Your client is a $300 million a year copper mining company. This year it has lost $50 million. How do you turn it around?
How many gallons of gasoline does an average gas station in America sell on an average day?
The year is 2006. Your company Gillette has just been acquired by Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), a global consumer goods company that makes a wide range of products including pet foods, cleaning agents, personal care products, and shaving products. Most of Procter & Gamble’s brands are global products available on several continents.How would you recommend increasing the Gillette Company’s sales from $500 Million to $1 Billion in 2 years post acquisition?
Your client is Motorola. The year is 1980. They just invented the cellular phone 3 years ago. They want you to estimate the market demand for cell phones over the next 30 years and tell them if there is a market for this invention (and prove it).
Volvo claims it is the safest car in the world because fewer people die in a Volvo than in a car made by any other manufacturer in the world. What’s wrong with this conclusion?
Your nephew runs a lemonade stand. Yesterday was Monday and he was open from 2pm – 5pm, and sold 2 cups. What should he do differently tomorrow?
Estimate the Australian market for lightbulbs.
A very large rope is run around the Equator of the earth. lf you added 600m to it’s length, how high above the ground would it sit?
Costa’s Cafe is a small local coffee shop in the town of Hanover (with a population of 11,260 as of the 2010 census), New Hampshire. Costa’s Cafe serves only coffee and latte, and has been very profitably. Recently, it has seen declining profits: how can it return to profitability?
Our client Moldovan Coffins is a high-end coffin maker in the country of Moldova. Up until now, he has been in the business of building high-quality, handcrafted coffins largely by hand with a skilled labor force. Recently, however, he has become aware of a new technology that would allow him to build machine-made coffins with much less labor. Should he invest in this new technology? And should he even remain in the coffin-making business in the first place? Why or why not?
The CEO of 3M has hired BCG to help identify new opportunities for this business as well as understand the market dynamics. He wants to know whether he should divest the mining business or invest in an additional facility.
Your client is a ski resort. Global warming has made it such that natural snowfall has been reduced by 50%. They client is concerned. What should they do and why?
Your client is a gas station and the market is so competitive that they make no money on gasoline sales. All the profit is in convenience store sales. What is the profit maximizing way to layout the convenience store and why?
The client already operates two daily flights from Guangzhou, China to Sydney, Australia, offering connections to Perth, Sydney. The CEO of China Southern Airlines has hired your consulting firm to evaluate a new direct flight between Guangzhou and Perth. Should they create this new route from Guangzhou to Perth?
The Chinese Ministiry of Railroad is considering investing a large ammount of money to build a high speed railway between Beijing and Shanghai, the two largest cities and the two most important economic zones in China. You have been hired by the ministry to advise them on this major project. Should they go ahead with the investment? What issues must be considered before making a “go” or “no-go” decision?
Ghana’s capital city of Accra boasts about 500 internet cafes. Our client is Busy Internet, the largest internet cafe in Accra and in Ghana. Recently, Busy Internet is experiencing a decline in profit. The Managing Director of Busy Internet, Ms. Estelle Akofio-Sowah, has hired your consulting firm to asses the problems. In addition to identifying the cause of declining profits, you also need to give recommendations and assist them through the implementation process. How would you about this case?
Barbados is a sovereign island country in the Caribbean Sea. With a population of about 282,000, the country is not quite as rich or as technologically developed as the United States. Currently about 50% of the Barbadian population has cell phones, and that percentage is increasing quickly. As you look out your hotel room window the other day, you see a crew of workers from the Barbadian Telephone Company ripping out the pay phone on the street corner and replacing it with a new model. So, why are they replacing the pay phones?
InterContinental Hotels Group owns and operates 4,600 hotels (with over 670,000 rooms in total) across over 100 countries, as well as a separate timeshare business with 75 properties worldwide. Their hotel rooms are typically sold on a per night basis, whereas their timeshare properties are sold more like traditional homes via a mortgage which in turn gives the buyer the right to stay at a timeshare property for a set period of time each year. The year is 2011. The CEO of InterContinental Hotels Group has just approached you and has asked for guidance on whether or not they should spin off their timeshare business into a separate stand alone entity called Timeshare Co. What would you recommend?
The client H&M USA currently manufactures products in two plants, one in the U.S. (Ohio) and one in Guatemala. A third party vendor in China supplies the remainder of their demand. They are thinking of closing the U.S. plant and want us to determine if this is a good idea or not. If so, where should they move their operations to worldwide?

Sources: http://www.consultingcase101.com/ & http://www.caseinterview.com/

Rating: 9.0/10 (1 vote cast)

When you apply at a strategy consultant such as McKinsey, Bain, or BCG you will not only have your resume tested or be asked to participate in written cases: you will also get case interview rounds. Though previous rounds are already pretty selective (for example: some 66% of applicants fail the McKinsey PST), the case interview rounds are even worse. Only one out of 10 candidates is selected in each round (and many firms have two rounds, some include a final round with a partner) and that makes the case study interview one of the most selective types of interviews.

How does the Case Study Interview work?

Once you’ve made it to the case interview rounds, you can already count yourself as one of the happy few. But what’s next? The case study interview will typically feature a “business case” in which you and the interviewer sit down to “crack” a difficult business situation. For example: a firm might want to expand into new territory or launch a new product, or an imaginary CEO asks you to cut costs at his company.

Many of these cases are drawn from the real life experience of the (senior) consultant or partner sitting across the table and they mirror typical questions you might face as a consultant as well. Because you’re suddenly confronted with an unfamiliar question in a line of business you know nothing about, with significant pressure to perform: only when you ask the right questions will you be able to solve the case on time and demonstrate you are a born consultant.

The fact that this situation (unfamiliar business, high pressure to perform) is quite similar to consulting work, makes your performance during a case study interview quite predictive for your day-to-day consulting work. If you perform well during the case interview, then you’ll perform well while working as consultant for the firm. That is the hypothesis at least…

How can I ace the case study interview?

When you want to make it to the next round and make sure you get an offer at the end of the process, you’ll have to make sure you practice the skills relevant for consulting. You’ll have to show that your case interview success is repeatable, and that you did not guess the right answer or worked purely from a gut feeling. It’s these repeatable skills that are both relevant “in the field” as a real consultan, as during the case study interview that the interviewer is looking for and we’ll walk trough these skills below.

Be hypothesis driven

Even though the world of business is a mess and far away from the scientific work being done in labs and on universities, it does help to approach problems with the scientific method. Always start your analysis with an hypothesis, that you set out to prove or disprove by gathering data. For example: you receive a case study during your interview about a company with falling profits and you think the problem of a companies’ profit lies with it’s high costs (opposed to low revenues). You start by asking questions and gathering data that (dis)prove your hypothesis:

“I know that profits are calculated by taking revenue and subtracting costs. This company has falling profits and my hypothesis is that this is caused by rising costs. Do you have any information on how their costs developed over the years?”

There are three things that you should take away from this example.

Make the thought process explicit: state the framework or structure that you are using and the approach you take. This helps the interviewer in following your thoughts and shows you are using repeatable skills, not random guessing.
State your hypothesis: you can do it as bluntly as in the example above (“my hypothesis is…”) but other ways are fine as well. Just make sure you work hypothesis-driven and make it explicit that you do.
Ask for the data: try to gather the data that you need to disprove your hypothesis and ask for the data you need from the interviewer.

Break it down

One of the hardest things to do during a case study interview is to remain calm enough to take a step backwards and look at the problem from a distance. This will allow you to break down these problems in their component parts: what are the drivers for each problem you see? Breaking down (or segmenting) markets/industries/company departments might also reveal information that would otherwise have remained hidden. For example:

Company Profits: might look normal (“Company X makes $5 mln profit a year”), but when you segment the profits per business unit, you might see that Business Unit A is making a profit of $ 10 mln and B & C a loss of $ 2.5 mln each.
Markets: might seem to be shrinking overall, but maybe one market segment is declining rapidly and others are growing
Customers: it might seem that every customer wants the same, but you might want to segment them down to determine individual wishes and find a niche for your company

Ace the math

One of the things you’ll be doing a lot as consultant is analysis and quick judgement calls based on numbers. Not being able to handle big numbers well or not being able to calculate from the top of your head quickly and correctly might disqualify you during the case interview. Why focus on math when calculators and spreadsheets are abundant? First of all: they are slow and now always available. Secondly: being able to calculate quickly will prevent mistakes during board meetings or presentations (when you get a question from the audience) and allow you to spot the mistakes of yourself and others (“is the result I’m seeing the number I expect?”). Read up on our tips and practice material on case interview math in our dedicated article.

Practice the case study interview

One of the best ways to make sure you ace the case study interview is by practicing them, a lot. The best way to do this is by finding a partner and going through cases together: you can find plenty of cases on the internet for free. Another way to practice is to read up on case interview skills and check the book we published:

Cracking The Case: the best way to prepare for your case study interview, with sample techniques and frameworks you can use during the case interview itself. Includes 2 fully explained cases made by candidates, annotated with expert tips on what went well and what went wrong.

Rating: 9.0/10 (1 vote cast)

The McKinsey Case Interview

by Stephan Spijkers 5 Comments

The final post in our McKinsey Week series: the McKinsey Case Interview. In this special week, we’ve focused on the most well-known strategic consultant we all love (and hate): McKinsey & Company. We’ve explored the long history of McKinsey, both the company’s roots and more recent developments. This weekend, we featured a post on the McKinsey PST: the first ‘hurdle’ every aspiring McKinsey consultant or intern will face.

Today we will focus on the steps that come after the resume selection and the Problem Solving Test. For if you were lucky, smart or prepared enough to make it to the interviews, you’d better get ready for the case interview. The case interview is the selection method of choice in the strategic consulting industry and has recently found its way to the other (more general) management consulting firms as well.

In this article you can find information on the specific way McKinsey handles the case interview, but the basics are similar across firms. You will face a (senior) consultant or engagement leader in the first rounds and a principals and partners in the final rounds in a one-on-one conversation. They might start with some general questions on your background and resume, but quickly move on to the case. The business cases you’ll be asked to solve will be as varied as consulting life itself, as they are often taken from the personal experience of the interviewer. Click if you would like to learn how to confidently solve a case interview.

McKinsey case interviews require the same approach as any case interview, but they differ on some specific parts. The first difference is not even in the way the case is handled, but during what is often called the ‘experience interview’ or ‘airport test’ part of the interview: the first minutes in which the interviewer will ask questions about your background. McKinsey is a leading company looking for future leaders. A question you’re sure to be asked, especially during the first rounds, is:

Tell me about a time you exhibited real leadership”

Be prepared for these kind of questions! It’s something I also elaborate on in my book: consulting firms such as McKinsey are not just looking for the smartest people, they want the smartest guys and gals with people skills. You can expect this question during interviews at any other firm as well, but McKinsey focuses more on leadership than other firms, so be prepared.

Another difference is that the McKinsey case interview is more often interviewer-led than other firms. What does this mean? An interviewer-led case interview will be structured by the interviewer, who will ask you to solve a specific part of the case (on a qualitative or quantitative way) and after you present a solution, he or she will walk you to the next specific issue. For example:

What would influence the demand of replacement car tires in the USA?”

[you think of the four to six most important factors and answer the question]

Very well, given those factors, what would be the yearly market for replacement car tires in the state of New York?

[you structure the question using the factors you mentioned and calculate the market size]

Ok, so the CEO of a national car maintenance chain has asked you to investigate whether it’ll be a good idea to acquire a local car tire manufacturer, what would be the advantages and disadvantages, you think?”

And so on, and so on. The interviewee-led case interview will put your problem structuring skills more to the test, as you’ll have to structure the whole case on your own, making sure your structure is completely MECE. You will be the one forming hypotheses and then gathering data to prove or disprove them, with help of assumptions or information from the interviewer. These structures should follow the Minto Pyramid Principle, if possible. We will delve deeper into how to solve case interview questions in my book.

Don’t forget that regional differences also influence the kind of questions you will get, since cases are often based on real consultant work. So you can expect more financial cases when applying to the New York office, more oil/energy when applying to the Houston office and more tech/IT oriented questions when applying to the Chennai (India) office of McKinsey.

Standing out above the rest of the candidates is all about preparation. All applicants are smart. All applicants come from top schools. All applicants have good grades. But not all candidates are as prepared as you can be. So know everything there is to know, read up on news in the sectors you can expect questions from. And above all: practice cases with a friend, read all the info available on the web and this website, read my book.

If you have comments, questions or stories to share: comment below and I’ll share my thoughts or improve this article. Trouble practicing for the McKinsey PST? Also applying to other firms? Check out our Company Profiles page! If not, good luck with your McKinsey Case Interviews!

Rating: 8.9/10 (16 votes cast)

BCG Case Interview

by Stephan Spijkers Leave a Comment

In our last post, we looked at the history of BCG. And following CaseInterviewHQ tradition, we will now continue with the specifics of the Boston Consulting Group (Case) Interview process, as we did with the McKinsey Case Interview. The basic structure of the case interview is the same, so I really recommend reading the McKinsey post (again).

About 75% of the interviewing process overlaps between firms, and within firms there is about 90% overlap. That means there are differences between firms but there are also subtle differences between offices. The latter is caused by specialization: New York offices focus more on finance, Detroit offices focus more on manufacturing. So what makes the Boston Consulting Group different from the rest?

The Interview Process

Normally, the process would be six case interviews with consultants in ascending seniority. So while you might meet a senior consultant in your first rounds, your final rounds will almost always be with partners. There could also be five case interviews, with the first interview being a telephone interview with recruitment, or an ‘experience interview’ (focused on your resume and motivation) at the office, also with recruitment. We’ll come back to the case interview later, first a closer look at some recent developments in the BCG recruitment process: the computer test and the written case interview.

Computer Test

A pretty recent development, currently only employed in Western Europe, is the computer test. While I have no personal experience with it, I have been told that it is comparable to the McKinsey PST, but focuses more on the quantitative part. To me, it looks like an intelligence test adapted specifically to the consulting practice. It’s a first round selection tool and probably features a cut-off score: if you beat it, you can expect an invitation to the case interviews, otherwise it’s over.

The Written Case

At BCG, you can expect two kinds of case interviews. Aside from the normal ‘conversational style’ interview where you ask questions to the interviewer and solve a case together, some BCG offices feature a written case. In a written case interview, you’re asked to solve a specific question for a hypothetical client and you’ll be handed a pack of paper with analyses. You’re then given one hour to analyse the data and present your findings after one hour. Since there is too much data to read and investigate everything (just as in real consultant life), you need to structure your analysis and focus on what’s important. Start with a hypothesis (“Company X can improve profit by reducing costs”) and set out to (dis)prove this hypothesis using the data you’ve been given: basically the same method as used during real case interviews.

There are good and bad ways to structure your analysis and we discussed the consultant’s method of choice a few weeks ago: the Minto Pyramid Principle. Using the above example (“Company X can improve profit by reducing costs”), you will want to split the analysis in MECE categories. In this case, Revenue and Cost would be interesting area’s of investigation and MECE (Mutually Exclusive and Collectively Exhaustive): there are no other factors influencing profit. Since your hypothesis is that reducing cost will improve profits, you then break down costs into MECE-categories, for example Fixed and Variable, but you could also segment cost per product line or country. If there are indeed huge potential cost savings, you have proven your hypothesis and can start working on recommendations. If not, you change your hypothesis and start looking at the other branch of your analysis: Profit. You then continue to dig down until you’ve found the problem and it’s solution. But always let a hypothesis guide your analysis, an important thing to keep in mind even during normal case interviews. A great way to practice written cases is the Interactive Case on the BCG website.

Where BCG differs

Apart from the regional differences and the ‘new’ case interview methods discussed above, the Boston Consulting Company is a pretty selective bunch. They’ll be looking for candidates that ace their case interviews (so don’t screw up your math) and are passionate and enthusiastic about consulting at the same time. Try not to underestimate that ‘soft’ part of the interview, as it really does influence your chances a great deal.

BCG is also more qualitative in their cases then competitors, McKinsey in particular (another reason to polish up your math). BCG case interviews are also far more often ‘interviewee-led’, so don’t expect much from the consultant on the other end of the table, again different from the McKinsey case interview which is more often led by the interviewer.

Other than that, I can only say that practice does help, giving you the self-confidence necessary to appear relaxed and pleasant. More info on the consulting interview process (from cover letter to case interview), can be found in my book and on the Company Profiles page. Good Luck!

Rating: 8.6/10 (19 votes cast)

Case Interview Basics

by Stephan Spijkers Leave a Comment

At the very beginning of CaseInterviewHQ.com, we already introduced basic guides on case interview math and the McKinsey PST. After looking at the specifics of the McKinsey and BCG case interview, we now ‘take a step back’ and return to the basics of case interviews in a specific page.

Click to learn more on the basics of case interviews.

Rating: 9.0/10 (4 votes cast)

The Minto Pyramid Principle Explained

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Earlier we discussed the MECE-principle, which states that every grouping (of arguments, information, data, etc.) should be mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive. I’ll assume that you’ve read it, so if you didn’t: read up before continuing with this post on the Minto Pyramid Principle.

Barbara Minto was the first female consultant at McKinsey and was tasked with improving communications in the USA and later in the newly opened international offices in Europe. She discovered that all consultants suffered from the same problem: communicating effectively. It triggered her to develop the Minto Pyramid Principle.

Minto’s Pyramid Princple is one way to structure information in an effective manner. Instead of reasoning bottom-up, you should reason top-down, in a pyramidical fashion. By following the pyramid principle, you structure the information up-front before presenting it, which gives the listener a framework to interpret your info and prevents him from forming his own (wrong) framework. Take for example the following text, which does not follow the Minto Pyramid Principle:

Linda does not speak French, though she speaks some German next to her native English because of some charity work in Berlin. She loves snow and hiking in the nature, and is fed up with the busy city-life in New York. She wants to move to Canada to make a fresh start. Therefore she should move to Toronto instead of Quebec.”

This example provides the listener (or in this case, the reader) with a lot of data, followed by the interpretation in a conclusion. This presentation of information does not follow the Minto Pyramid Principle: it is not top down. If you would present your data followed by your conclusion like this, the listener might come to a different conclusion than you. He might for example think that Linda should move to a city on the west coast of Canada. To prevent this from happening, you should follow Minto’s Pyramid Principle:

Linda should move from New York to a Toronto suburb:

Toronto is in Canada

A Toronto suburb is closer to natural beauty than New York

In Toronto, people speak English (instead of French as in other parts of Canada, such as Quebec)

The Minto Pyramid Principle can also be used in business situations, for example during case interviews. The following text does not follow the Minto Pyramid Principle:

When we look at the company sales data, we see that there has been a decline over the years. We also face increased competition, even though we introduced new features two years ago and relaunched the product. These new features required a new factory to be built, which also increased costs. We have to increase market share to attain an economy of scale”

Now, with the Minto Pyramid Principle applied:

To regain profitability we have to improve market share by cutting prices:

Lower prices will increase sales

Lower prices vis-a-vis competitors will increase our market share

Increased volume helps us create economies of scale

The “key line”, the top of the pyramid has to be actionable and must be supported by the arguments following it. These could be key lines themselves and be broken down into sub-arguments (who all should be MECE). Since the Minto Pyramid Principle is used by all consultants, using it during your own case interview is a big plus. The Minto Pyramid Principle is difficult to grasp though. For a more thorough treatment of the Minto Pyramid Principle and how to effectively apply it during your case interviews I recommend buying my book or taking a look at the book by Minto: The Pyramid Principle: logic in writing and thinking.

Also, feel free to comment if you have questions!

Rating: 8.5/10 (20 votes cast)

MECE categories: Pyramid Principle

by Stephan Spijkers Leave a Comment

Before I’ll explain the Minto Principle later this week, I’ll explore the term MECE (pronunciation: me see) with you, as it’s an important term in the Minto Principle, case interviews and consulting in general. MECE stands for ‘Mutually Exclusive, Collectively Exhaustive’ and is the consulting way of representing complex information in an easy way. Let’s look at both components separately.

Mutually Exclusive

If you are categorizing data, the MECE-principle dictates that the categories should be mutually exclusive. This means that it should not be possible for a member of group A to be a member of group B. To make it less abstract, an example of categorization that is not mutually exclusive:

Grouping of people according to their color of clothes worn, as people can wear clothing with different colors, and others can wear these colors as well.
Grouping of people according to their hobbies, since people can have multiple hobbies and two people can do the same hobby.
Grouping companies according to their products, as they can sell multiple products at the same time.

You get the picture, I guess. So mutually exclusive categories are, for example: age, sex, nationality (often, at least). We got the ME- part, what about the other two letters?

Collectively Exhaustive

Besides being mutually exclusive, the categories you pick should also be collectively exhaustive: all options/all information should be included in the categories you pick. This way you can be sure that there’s nothing you missed in your analysis. For example, the decision of a firm to acquire a competitor can be based on both financial and non-financial factors. These factors should then be broken down into new factors who are also (ME)CE. Another example is the profitability framework (example from my book below): it’s collectively exhaustive, as profit can be broken down into revenues and costs. No other factors influence profit.

In addition, the profitability framework is also mutually exclusive, as revenues can never be costs and vice versa. These factors can also be broken down into new MECE-factors. Revenues can be broken down into numbers of sales and the price: the revenue per sale.

Practice

During your case interviews, you should strive to be as MECE as possible when structuring your case. Don’t get bogged down while striving for perfection though, as you’ll only have limited time. But how to make sure you get it right the first time? As with most things: practice makes perfect. Apply the pyramid principle and MECE-thinking in real life: when choosing a vacation destination, while choosing between dinner options or when picking a new car.

More info on case interviews and the pyramid principle in a new post later this week. Also check out my book and the official Pyramid Principle book by Minto.

Rating: 8.7/10 (12 votes cast)

The Bain Case Interview

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The Bain case interview

After a short break, we are continuing our company profile series with the Bain case interview. We’ve already looked into the history of Bain, giving you an idea of what sets Bain apart from the other MBB (McKinsey, BCG, Bain) firms and we will now investigate how these differences effect their case interviews.

Case Interview basics

In short, a case interview is a 3-month consulting engagement distilled into one hour. Instead of a team of consultants it’s just you trying to answer the client’s question, though you can ask the interviewer for information. The basic approach is to formulate a hypothesis as to why the client is losing money/should acquire another firm/enter a foreign market and then you gather information in an attempt to (dis)prove your hypothesis. If you do this in a well-structured manner, you’ll be able to quickly drive down to where the problem lies and give actionable advice to the “client”: the interviewer sitting in front of you.

The Bain Case Interview

As with other consulting firms, Bain takes its cases from what it sees in practice. With some common sense, you can predict that it’s very likely to get a private equity case in one of the New York offices, while you are certain to expect an automotive case in the Detroit office.

Asking around during recruitment events also pays off. This will help you get a feel for what kind of people work at your local Bain office and what kind of business cases you’ll get. But more importantly is that often, the people you meet during these events are also active in other parts of the recruitment process. A previous (positive) social encounter can offset a less than perfect resume or a rushed cover letter during the first selection rounds.

Even though Bain & Company (the consulting firm) and Bain Capital (Mitt Romney’s private equity firm) are split entities, their work is alike. Bain & Company is often asked to perform due diligence and performs a wide array of private equity services, aside from its consulting practice.

At Bain, there’s also a great emphasis on the quantitative part of the case. Expect number crunching, and a lot of it. All of this math is done without the help of a calculator: so make sure your math is up to par. You don’t want to make mistakes in front of the interviewer, even if he allows you to make one or two mistakes. Math mistakes are especially painful, and I’ve seen many qualified candidates screw up the rest of a case because a math mistake flustered them.

So do your research, visit those recruitment events, brush up your math and practice your cases. If you want some great frameworks with full explanation and “look over my shoulder” cases so you can learn from another person’s mistakes: get my book on case interviewing.

Good luck, and share this article with someone who’s also applying for Bain.

– Stephan

Rating: 8.4/10 (5 votes cast)

Even Starting Strategy Consultants Earn More

by Stephan Spijkers Leave a Comment

Considering a job at McKinsey, BCG, Bain or another strategy consultant? Good news for you, as you’ll be earning more than your peers:
Image source

On average, strategy consultants earned about 10% more than their peers in other consulting fields, with consultants in the Project Management and Business Process Improvement getting the least: a ‘mere’ £ 41,000 (~ € 48.000 / ~ $ 63.000) a year, including bonuses and benefits. Maybe a compensation for the many hours they put into their work?

Payment in the UK is still below that of US ( $ 72,000) and Europe (€ 55,000) averages, so if you are in for the money you should considering starting in those two areas. More info can be found in the full report (pdf), which also includes the salaries of senior level consultants up to partners.

Want to make sure you ace the interview and get the job at the firm you want? Keep updated on this site by signing up for the Feedburner newsletter and buy the book when it comes out!

Rating: 8.5/10 (2 votes cast)

Math can break your case interview and how to prevent it.

by Stephan Spijkers Leave a Comment

So, without using a calculator: what is 40 x 36? What is 12,5% of 160? What percentage is $ 2 million of $ 14 million? If we sell product A 5.000 times for $ 1,49 a piece, what is our revenue?

You should be prepared to answer questions like these during your case interviews, whether they are part of the case you’re solving or fired at you by the interviewer in an attempt to test your quantitative skills. All without the use of a calculator. So why is the interviewer looking for skills you probably have not used since elementary school and in a world with calculators in every mobile phone?

The importance of math

First of all, being able to calculate both fast and correctly in your head is of great value in the consulting world. You’ll deal with large sets of numbers on a daily basis and being able to calculate these numbers without cranking out a calculator every time just saves lots of time. It will also help you get a sense of the magnitude of these numbers:

I always want to know how an interviewee reacts to large numbers. Does he or she calculate them with ease? Does the candidate grasp the effects of a cost saving, for example? A cost saving of $ 0,56 per product might not look like much, but what if we produce 9,5 million each day? I want a future consultant to grasp the magnitude of these numbers, which is difficult at best if you need that calculator every time.

It helps finding mistakes in calculations, caused by a typo during a late-night spreadsheet marathon, for example. Is the total yearly market for running shoes in the US really only $ 2 million a year?

Secondly, being able to calculate quickly in your head looks good in front of the client and prevents embarrassing mistakes. The interviewer wants to know whether he can take you to that client presentation and rely on your performance if a client asks you what the effects would be if they increased prices by 15 %.

Getting your math skills up to par

So, you probably haven’t been calculating in your head since elementary school, but you do want that job in consulting: what to do? Unfortunately, there’s no easy way out: calculating in your head is a skill and the only way to improve it is by practicing it over and over again. You’ve probably ditched the old math books, but luckily there are plenty of great resources online. Below, we’ll go through some of them.

Kofprechnen Trainieren

A tool you can download and use offline, if you wish. Even though it’s in German, the software is pretty straightforward. A great way to practice that I’ve used myself and unlimited arithmetic fun!

SIKORE

A tool you can use both offline and online, doesn’t feature a time component, but if you’re on a Mac and can’t use Kopfrechnen, this is a great alternative.

Youtube: Math Tricks

This video series teaches you some handy math tricks and is worth a look. Changing the techniques you use for calculus might lead to confusion during the interview, so if you only have one week to prepare for the interview, I suggest sticking to your owntrusted methods. Secondly, this video links to a (paid) teaching method that I do not endorse.

[tube]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hLdKsKep1og [/tube]

Good luck with practicing!

– Stephan

Rating: 9.1/10 (18 votes cast)