Consulting Case Interview Preparation Guide Part 1

In general, the case interview is very common in discussions with consulting firms, interviewer to measure a candidate's attitude towards risk and complete logical analysis skills with some cases, to see if a candidate is flexible and can adapt rapidly.

There are two phases of the interview the case: the preparation phase and during the formal talks case. During the preparation phase, you may need to occur. Then answer the interviewer's question about your resume and some issues in a broad sense on personal considerations.

The next step is the event of a formal interview. Interview the case is to draw a conclusion on some business issues with the analysis. Unlike other types of interviews, case interview is an interactive process. You'll get some problems working interviewer and they are required to provide analysis and advice on these issues. Your task is to propose some logical questions to the interviewer, so that you could have the most comprehensive and detailed implementation of these themes, and finally to a conclusion through a systematic analysis.

Please keep in mind there are no absolutely correct answers in an interview if interviewer worried about your analytical skills and creativity on display during the interview, but not the answer.

The purpose of the interview if

Consultant will spend a lot of time with their clients and colleagues at the end of intercommunion, and were required to have special qualities to succeed in consulting projects. These features include the ability to remain calm under pressure, the ability to rapidly set up a premise based on project details, and make a conclusion strongly depends on the ability of logical analysis and so on. Therefore, the interview cases that are highly interactive and narrow limits to the practical need for skills and a strong analysis would allow the interviewer to assess the quality of candidates effectively.

What qualities are essential if the interview?

Guide

Consultant must be able to work independently and lead a team focused on achieving common goals. Therefore, the leadership is very important for a consultant. During the interview situation, you must seize the initiative and ask questions with confidence target in order to embody your potential for leadership.

Capacity Analysis

Analysis is the core competence in the field of counseling. In an case, your task is to put forward as the assumed facts, the understanding of the meaning of the data, and thus constitute a set of analytical framework, reached the conclusions and recommendations, finally. During the interview situation, you must ask effective questions and purpose, in order to embody your analytical skills.

Expression capabilities

Once the consultant has performed a detailed analysis of the project and develop the best strategy, he needs to demonstrate solutions and recommend to the consulting team and discuss it with customers. Therefore, the ability of expression is also very important for a consultant. For this reason, in an interview if you should always spend some 'time to think before you speak, rather than slow down a bit' of stuttering.

Energetic

Consulting firms want their adviser still have enough energy when I wait for them before customers even after 12 hours of aircraft time. So, give your interviewer a handshake, a genuine smile with confidence in themselves and the clean look the interviewer will leave a good impression and get a good start if the interview.

Calm

In the case interviews, the interviewer sometimes deliberately create a very tense, for example, ask questions, always aggressive and always denied. This does not mean that I have come the wrong way, because they want to see if you can remain calm under pressure. You should know that when a counselor face to face with customers, the quality is very important to think deeply under pressure and solve problems calmly.

Types of interviews of cases

There are three general types of interview situations: guesstimates, business cases and puzzles. We discuss in detail:

Guesstimates

These types of questions are always referred to as the market valuation, it is necessary to estimate the size of a market, although details are not available, for example, you may be asked to estimate the elevation of the rocky mountain.

Same interviews other cases, it is very important to get a correct answer, but the method that decomposes a large project into several smaller scale projects and solve each respectively is really the most important, as it should have the good sense to respond to this type of question.

Case Studies

For interviews, case studies, the most common case is that the interviewer asks you how to analyze a project according to the description of project background, such as market entry, the decrease in profit, industry analysis, lower sales and so on. The interviewer does not always provide enough detail, so you must continue to ask targeted questions in order to obtain the most useful information.

Brainteasers

Riddles are often very hard and very difficult questions that include question and numerical estimates mystery question. The purpose of these questions is to check your creativity and ability to analyze and solve problems under pressure.

In general, we understand conversation case, a long time business case, or two cases a short time: it should be almost inevitably guesstimates and the other can be brainteasers or a short-time business cases.