揭秘咨询面试成功策略：框架应用与求职者视角

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Ace Your Case® : Consulting Interviews

WETFEET INSIDER GUIDE

CHAPTER 1

AT A GLANCE

CHAPTER 3

THE WETFEET WAY

CHAPTER 4

CASE

INTERVIEW PREP

CHAPTER 5

THE RECRUITER’S

PERSPECTIVE

CHAPTER 6

CASE EXAMPLES

CHAPTER 7

ADDITIONAL

RESOURCES

CHAPTER 2

CASE INTERVIEW

PRIMER

WHAT’S A CASE

INTERVIEW?

› A POPULAR sports manufacturing company has

maintained its position as the number-two maker of

automobile bike racks for the past ten years. But recently,

sales have fallen even further behind those of its main

competitor, even though the company’s products are

priced lower and it maintains strong brand loyalty

through its creative and oﬀbeat marketing campaigns.

What’s going on?

Faced with this question in an interview, would you

know how to respond? How are you supposed to answer

a question like this in a one-hour interview? Don’t

consultants spend months solving problems like these?

Is the interviewer crazy?

No, the interviewer is not crazy. And, yes, consultants

do spend months getting to the bottom of business

puzzles like these. Still, you’ll be expected to address similar

questions if you plan to interview for a job in consulting.

is style of questioning is called the case interview, and if

you plan to advance as a likely candidate for a consulting

ﬁrm, you’d better get comfortable ﬁelding case questions.

No matter how stellar your educational credentials or

impressive your professional experience, a weak answer

on a case interview will sink your consulting career before

it gets started.

Simply put, a case question is a hypothetical business

problem. rough the course of addressing the problem,

you’ll be expected to identify factors causing the problem

and propose a plausible solution as well—all in the space

of that one-hour interview. Sound like a challenge? It is.

BUT, WHY?

Consulting ﬁrms use the case interview as a direct

test of a candidate’s suitability for the job. Your ability

to navigate a case question during the pressure of a

job interview tells the recruiter a lot about you: Do

you understand business principles? Are you poised

under pressure? Can you communicate well? Are you

analytical, but also creative? Can you present well

to clients or colleagues? ese are the primary skills

required by consultants to do their work.

If the case interview takes place in the ﬁrst round,

you must do well to be invited back for a second

interview—which will probably include more cases.

Some hiring ﬁrms even give the candidates case questions

in advance—not so they can study, but so they can

prepare presentations to give to a hiring committee.

You’ll have to exhibit mastery over each case

presented to you before getting an oﬀer (and that’s if

you’ve also impressed throughout the interview process

that you’re a hard worker with valid experience and a

great personality).

But don’t worry. By reading this guide, you’re taking

the ﬁrst step to mastering the case interview. It’s a speciﬁc

skill that can be learned—and we’re here to teach you.

WHAT DO I NEED TO KNOW?

Lesson one: You can’t fake your way through a case

interview. You need to know your stuﬀ, starting with

a basic understanding of business fundamentals and

analytical skills. If those are ﬁrmly in place, you’re ready

to jump in. If not, take some time to review those

subjects so you don’t get lost as you move through this

guide. After all, mastering case questions is all about

the process, not the details, so that’s what you need to be

focusing on while you learn these skills.

Lesson two: You don’t actually need to provide the

correct answer. Whether the question is about golf balls,

light bulbs, or manhole covers, the goal is to come up

with a realistic answer based on reasonable assumptions

and a methodology that shows you understand some key

drivers behind the problem and how they might relate to

a client’s future business situation.

TIP

Mastering case questions is all about the ana-

lytical process, not necessarily providing the

correct answer.

CHAPTER 1

AT A GLANCE

WETFEET INSIDER GUIDE

CHAPTER 3

THE WETFEET WAY

CHAPTER 4

CASE

INTERVIEW PREP

CHAPTER 5

THE RECRUITER’S

PERSPECTIVE

CHAPTER 6

CASE EXAMPLES

CHAPTER 7

ADDITIONAL

RESOURCES

CHAPTER 2

CASE INTERVIEW

PRIMER

By asking you case questions, consulting ﬁrms are

really trying to see if you have the ability to structure a

problem and methodically work through it. e beneﬁt

to you in this situation is that you get a real taste of what

consulting work is like, so that you can evaluate whether

you really want to do this kind of work.

HOW DO I USE THIS BOOK?

e process of answering a case question is really a

dialogue between you and the interviewer. To truly get it

right, you’ll be asking the interviewer a series of follow-up

questions to get more information or clarify murky points.

To get you prepared to face a case scenario, we’ve

developed a dialogue-based teaching model that will

walk you through sample cases in a realistic way.

Each of the seven sample case questions includes

follow-up dialogue between the candidate and the

recruiter, along with some narrator commentary to

provide background information and details. For

additional practice, consult WetFeet’s companion to

this book, Ace Your Case® II: Mastering the Case

Interview. For even more practice on speciﬁc types

of case questions, follow up with Ace Your Case® III:

Market-Sizing Questions, Ace Your Case® IV: Business

Strategy Questions, and Ace Your Case® V: Business

Operations Questions.

But before diving into the sample case questions,

we’ll teach you our particular method for thoroughly

working through a case problem—it’s called the

WetFeet Way. We’ll also walk you through the

various frameworks for answering case questions;

they’re essentially oﬀ-the-shelf organizational tools to

help you get started in addressing a messy business

problem.

You’ll get the most beneﬁt from this book if you

attempt to answer each of the sample case questions

on your own before moving ahead to read the answer.

at way, you can correct your own answers and

identify which particular areas you need to focus on

to master the case question. Keep a notebook handy

so you can get into the habit of taking notes and

jotting down your thought process. Using a notebook

to write down thoughts or do equations is perfectly

acceptable during a case interview.

In addition to your private practice, it’s crucial that

you get accustomed to voicing your thought process

out loud. Try partnering with a friend or colleague

to run through the sample cases orally before reading

through the answers.

Practice the methods we’ll be teaching you in as

many diﬀerent ways as you can before facing the

actual interview. By then, you will have truly mastered

the case interview. Good luck!

THE BOTTOM LINE

› LIKE IT OR not, if you’re planning to get a job in

consulting, you’ll have to learn how to handle the case

interview. Although approaches to the case question

diﬀer by ﬁrm and interviewer, all of them use it as

an important tool in selecting and screening out job

candidates. Indeed, you may have to clobber ten or

more cases on the way to landing a job with a major

management consulting organization. Fortunately,

by studying the case process and honing your case

interview skills through practice, you’ll soon be able to

amaze friends and family with your frameworks and

graph-drawing skills. Even better, when that dreaded

moment arrives and the interviewer pops the ques-

tion, you’ll be more than up for it.

THE CASE

INTERVIEW

PROCESS

› SUCCEEDING IN a consulting case interview

involves more than just providing a good answer to

the case question. Some ﬁrms may not even serve

you a case question until the second or third round of

interviews. So let’s spend some time getting acquainted

with the overall consulting interview process and what

Ace Your Case® : Consulting Interviews

WETFEET INSIDER GUIDE

CHAPTER 1

AT A GLANCE

CHAPTER 3

THE WETFEET WAY

CHAPTER 4

CASE

INTERVIEW PREP

CHAPTER 5

THE RECRUITER’S

PERSPECTIVE

CHAPTER 6

CASE EXAMPLES

CHAPTER 7

ADDITIONAL

RESOURCES

CHAPTER 2

CASE INTERVIEW

PRIMER

organizations and need the social graces to match that

situation. Can you maintain your end of a conversation?

Can you make interesting small talk at a party as you

mingle with potential clients? e other side of the coin

is that consultants almost always work in teams, and,

even if you ace the case portion of the interview, you still

need to come across as a good personality ﬁt for the ﬁrm.

Your fellow consultants have to like you. Personality ﬁt

may seem insigniﬁcant now, but once you’re slogging

through an 80-hour week to ﬁnish an important client

presentation, you’ll understand.

If you’re alive—and seem interested, energetic, and

excited about the opportunity to interview with Big

Consulting Firm—then this is your chance to develop

a rapport with your interviewer. Typical questions here

may involve the weather, why you decided to attend

[ﬁll in your school name], how classes are going,

how the job search is progressing, what’s up with the

49ers, and so on. Your goal here should be to show the

interviewer that you have an engaging personality, are

fun to be around, and would be a valuable addition to

the team.

Remedial Interviewing for

Would-Be Consultants

Here are a few insider tips about points at which

candidates have fallen oﬀ a cliﬀ. Take note—you don’t

want to be the next statistic!

• Show enthusiasm for the company. How psyched

will your Booz recruiter be if he suspects you’re

thinking, “Well, I’d really rather get an oﬀer from

McKinsey, but they already dinged me.” Yeah, make

that two. Ding!

• Practice saying, “I really want to be a consultant—

and here are three reasons why…” Oh, and you’d

better mean it, too. If you don’t, about 300 other

candidates are lined up right behind you, and there’s

an excellent chance many of them truly want a spot

in the consulting leagues.

consulting recruiters are looking for beyond your

analytical abilities.

e typical management consulting interview

consists of several parts. At a minimum, these include

an introductory “get to know you” conversation,

a resume review/prove-to-me-that-you’re-qualiﬁed

Q&A, a case interview question, and a follow-up “what

do you want to know about us?” discussion.

Although the case question inspires the most terror,

the other portions of the interview are every bit as

important. Insiders tell us that many candidates, even

at the best schools, have already bombed the interview

long before the case question slaps them in the face.

e next few sections should help you navigate the

overall consulting interview process and start to impress

your interviewer before you show oﬀ your smarts with

the case question.

PART 1: GETTING TO KNOW YOU

“Hey! How’re you doing? What a great day for a

consulting interview!” It may sound like meaningless

banter, but there’s method to it. e interviewer is

checking you out. First question in the recruiter’s mind:

Is this candidate alive? If not, the interview is likely to

drag. Furthermore, there’s a lot more to a consulting

career than analytical skills and evaluating business

problems. Consultants face big executives in large

e case question inspires the

most terror, but the rest of the

interview is just as important.

Many candidates, even at

the best schools, bomb the

interview long before the case

question slaps them in the face.

CHAPTER 1

AT A GLANCE

WETFEET INSIDER GUIDE

CHAPTER 3

THE WETFEET WAY

CHAPTER 4

CASE

INTERVIEW PREP

CHAPTER 5

THE RECRUITER’S

PERSPECTIVE

CHAPTER 6

CASE EXAMPLES

CHAPTER 7

ADDITIONAL

RESOURCES

CHAPTER 2

CASE INTERVIEW

PRIMER

• Don’t talk about yourself in a negative manner. You

have as much right to be in that interview as any

of your classmates, and make sure the interviewer

understands that. Self-deprecation won’t get you

anywhere in consulting. Nor will kowtowing. If you

don’t think you can tell a 30-year veteran at Kraft a

thing or two about the cheese market, maybe you

shouldn’t sign up for an interview with Kraft when it

comes to campus.

• Demonstrate that you’re a fun person. Would you

want to go out for beers with a cold ﬁsh (even a

smart cold ﬁsh), much less spend months working

together in Indianapolis?

• Be high-energy! Smile! Be excited! Sixty hours per

week may not sound so bad right now. But wait

until you’ve been at the client site from 7:00 a.m.

until 9:00 p.m. every day for the past two weeks,

and you have to catch a plane to do it all over again

for a diﬀerent client next week. e interviewer

wants people who have the stamina and the desire

to put in long, tough hours while living out of a

suitcase—and still come up shouting, “Yes, sir! May

I have another spreadsheet, please?”

PART 2: PROVE YOURSELF TO ME

You’ve had a clever chat about the weather; you’ve

told a good story about why you love your alma mater

more than your own mother; and now it’s time for

the recruiter to pull out your resume. “So, tell me

about the work you did for ….” What’s going through

the recruiter’s mind is something along the lines of,

“What’s this guy done that shows he’s smart enough

to handle consulting work?” To keep sailing straight

toward that case question, you’ll need to demonstrate

that you’ve had signiﬁcant work experience (or

a reasonable facsimile), can work well with others, have

the aspiration to lead, and have the intellectual

horsepower to do the heavy lifting required of

consultants.

What, exactly, impresses the hard-nosed consulting

recruiter who has seen it all—and likely, done it

all—before (or at least advised a client on how to

do it)? Here are several tips gleaned from WetFeet’s

conversations with management consulting insiders.

One word of caution: You’ll want to walk that ﬁne line

between providing evidence of your capabilities and

seeming like an overbearing braggart.

• Talk about situations in which you assumed a sig-

niﬁcant leadership role. You might mention the

challenges you faced and how you overcame them,

or what you learned about yourself as a result of

your experience. Just make sure you don’t whine

about how your team members didn’t work hard

enough to make you look good.

• Your goal should be to demonstrate, with well-

articulated examples, that you have the leadership

skills of Winston Churchill, the intelligence of

Stephen Hawking, and the no-nonsense, high-

energy style of a preschool teacher.

• ink of several examples of projects at school, at

work, or in an extracurricular setting in which you

were challenged and survived with ﬂying colors—

dating stories don’t count!

• Prepare for the questions you know are coming. In

particular, have a solid, concise explanation of why

you want to be a consultant and why you speciﬁ-

cally want to work for ﬁrm XYZ.

• Be prepared to be asked about anything on your

resume. Consultants have a nose for rooting into

obscure facts that can turn up pungent informa-

tion. One of their favorite tricks is to take an item

and turn it into a case question (“So, I see you

started out in the auto business. Do you think

Cerberus can turn around Chrysler?”). Our advice:

ink ahead about how each bullet point on your

resume can be turned into a compelling (short)

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