If I could do it over again, I would:

1.  Watch the first five videos on the free CaseInterview.com while folding laundry.
2. Schedule 3 mock interviews / week with former consultants in the 3 weeks prior to the actual interviews (so – 9 interviews total).
3. The weekend before, skim a few real cases from a consulting club case book (not Case in Point). 

That’s it!  You really don’t need to do much more than that.  Memorizing frameworks?  Useless.  Attending case prep lectures and sessions?  Equally wasteful.  If you truly feel behind, I’d say that the time would be much better spent receiving (or giving) a mock interview than learning techniques that can only be effectively applied 5% of the time. 

That said, here are my top 10 tips for case interviews:

1. Listen carefully.  Information isn’t typically given without a purpose.
2.  Start with the basic metrics: industry size, market share, growth, margins.
3. Framework #1: Revenues – Costs = Profits
4. Framework #2: Client/Product, Customers/Market, Competitors, Risks
5. Don’t try to explore a laundry list of ideas.  Categorize and group.
6.  In contrast, segment everything they give!  Averages hide the truth.
7. Drive the interview forward with probing questions.
8. Hypothesize constantly!  Let this drive your search and analysis.
9.  Structure your answers: “I think about this in three ways…”.
10. Conclude holistically and succinctly.  Answer the original question.

That’s it!  Good luck…

I’ve spent most of this weekend trying to catch up on case interview prep.  Over the last few weeks, I’ve only taken the time to do about 4 mock case interviews.  The first one was an absolute catastrophe.  The second one was only a mild disaster.  During the last two I started to feel vaguely competent.  I was probably able to run through another few this weekend, building the total up to around 10 (of varying quality).  Nothing spectacular, but I feel modestly prepared.  I would feel a lot better if I were like some of my classmates… some have done 30-40!  That’s incredible. 

Although, I do wonder if some of the preparation that goes on defeats the entire purpose of the interview.  At what point does it become more of a memorized response to typical business scenarios rather than a measure of cognitive speed and clarity?  Hard to say…

It’s called the “case interview”.  Firms like this didn’t recruit at my undergrad, but it seems to be something a bit more common at Ivy-class colleges.  Instead of just checking out the cut of your suit, developing rapport, and listening to your prepared stories, case method interviews try to figure out how quickly & effectively you can think.  The recruiter spends 30 second laying out a situation, kind of like this: 

Our client is a private equity firm that has recently acquired a struggling shoe manufacturer.  They design and manufacture shoes for the US market and have recently been experiencing declining profits.  They would like to increase profitability while tripling the size of the business.  How would you diagnose the declining profitability and what growth strategies would you recommend they pursue?

Then they stare at you.  And you’re supposed to spend the next 45 minutes trying to figure out how to setup the problem, what questions to ask, and what recommendations you’d give.  The interviewer often has charts and data available, but you have to ask the right questions to be given them.

In the end, I really think it’s just about being smart and thinking quickly, but there are DOZENS of courses over the next week that try to familiarize you with the process, help you memorize frameworks, etc… 

I think there’s definite value in practicing (after all, there are only so many business problems that you can talk about and diagnose in 45 minutes), but I just haven’t had the drive to prepare lately.  It’s intimidating to know that some of my peers have been preparing 3 cases / day for months now!  That’s a crazy level of preparation, but what else do you expect from HBS kids?  I have a few practice case interviews set up this week (with the Big 3 firms & classmates), but it won’t get me anywhere near the level of some people!

Maybe I should just skip this stressful mess and stick with industry?