Here at Coppett Hill, we’ve been busy preparing for the upcoming graduate recruitment season. Over the next month, we will be attending careers fairs across the country – we’re looking for smart, motivated, problem solvers with some technical or analytical skills. If it sounds like this could be you, keep an eye out – we’re always keen to chat to ambitious, talented graduates.
Working on our graduate recruitment process has given me the opportunity to reflect on my own experience interviewing for graduate consulting roles.
Consulting interview processes are formulaic. I have no problem admitting now that the first few stages gave me sweaty palms – but they were broadly in line with what I understood an interview process to be like.
‘Don’t compare yourself to Lord Sugar. Don’t compare yourself ever to him.’
I distinctly remember the one stage which deviated from that understanding being the ‘case study interview’. If you’re looking to secure a graduate role in consulting, you’re going to have to tackle one of these at some point.
Essentially, you’re given a brief on a business problem and asked to present a solution back to your interviewer. It is the closest that you can come to getting a flavour of the work which you might do in consulting without actually doing the job – think of it like a trial shift.
There are, generally speaking, three types of these. You might (a) get the brief well in advance, or (b) get preparation time on the day, or (c) it might be totally ‘cold’ (for the purposes of this article we will be framing our advice around an interview where you have the brief well in advance, although this is of course transferrable to the other types). Whether you know the content or not, you can still prepare for the interview – you can be sure that your competitors will have done.
Luckily, the Coppett Hill team are here to give you an edge on your competition with a series of top tips which I wish I had access to before tackling my first case study interview. We’ve also included a set of things to be wary of – these aren’t always obvious and can arguably be even more useful.
1) Upon receiving the case study
Let’s set the scene – after submitting countless CVs and cover letters, completing some frankly bizarre online games and reasoning tests, navigating tricky skills & competency-based interviews, finally, some success! You’ve been invited to attend a final stage interview – you skim over the email and read that this stage will be run in a case study format, and see the accompanying brief and some data to analyse. That is all the information you have to go off – time to start preparing right?
Not quite.
You could be leaving valuable information on the table.
There’s significant value in asking questions before the case study, as our founder, Dave, mentions in his top tip:
DK TOP TIP: “If you get offered the chance to ask questions before the case study, do it, if it isn’t offered then still ask. You can check your understanding of the brief, work out what a ‘great’ answer will look like and also demonstrate your keenness”
Working on the basis of limited information is inevitably going to put a ceiling on your performance. Don’t put yourself on the back foot from the get-go.
It’s worthwhile also to ask some questions from a time management perspective – getting an expectation of how long you are expected to spend on the task could help you triangulate whether you are taking the right approach later on when you are carrying out your analysis.
If there is something about the case study which looks unfamiliar, it is perfectly acceptable at this stage to flag it. Normally, if there is a specific technical skill which you might be missing, there is a way to accommodate this – remember, graduate employers are well aware of the fact that they are not hiring the finished article. Worst case, if it really isn’t going to work out, you avoid the potential of wasting both yours and your interviewer’s time.
DK WATCH OUT: “If the case study asks for a technical skill you aren’t confident in, be up front about it and discuss with the hiring manager. There will often be a way to accommodate this. Don’t try to ChatGPT your way through it and be caught out with on-the-spot questions”
2) Understanding the question & structuring your analysis
You’ve taken advantage of the opportunity to ask questions, made some pleasant small talk with your interviewer, and you are ready to crack on with the task at hand.
With the wealth of resources out there, it is easy to come up with an idea of how you would like to present your answer to the question structure wise – the risk comes when this takes precedence over the question itself – missing this is an error which is difficult to recover from. It’s no poor reflection on yourself to clarify the question – Harry and Simone, both Project Leaders at Coppett Hill, touch on this in their top tips:
SG TOP TIP: “Fully engage in listening so you can understand and address the question being asked, rather than going into a standard generic approach”
HvB TOP TIP: “Make sure you are really clear about what’s being asked - ask questions to clarify, re-read the question, etc. Then work backwards from that”
You’ve got a clear idea of what it is you are actually trying to achieve – now, it’s time to get stuck into some analysis.
There are loads of great resources out there on how to structure your analysis – we’re not going to spend time going over very much covered ground in this article. There is one thing I think is commonly missed here however, and I’d like to offer my two cents on this point. It’s all well and good being able to stitch together a dataset and extract some compelling insights – one thing which never fails to be undervalued is common sense. For example, if you are drawing insight off the fact that one figure is consistently 12x the size of another, you are most likely looking at monthly/annual presentations of the same thing.
JJ TOP TIP: “Never undervalue a common-sense review. Being very methodical in applying these is sure to serve you well, and hopefully avoid any embarrassing moments”
If you have worked on a complicated piece of analysis as part of your case study, when preparing to present this, the temptation may be there to dive head-first into the detail – whilst it may seem as though this would be a way to impress your interviewer, there is a danger that it could go the other way. A key consulting competency is the ability to adapt your communication style depending on your audience – be careful that you are not including more detail than necessary. Remember, the analysis enables the strategic recommendation (which is what people pay for) rather than the other way round.
JJ WATCH OUT: “Don’t unnecessarily bamboozle your interviewer – make sure you’re tailoring your communication style to the audience”
3) Presenting your solution – or – answering the question
Excellent. You’ve followed all of our tips so far, and your interviewer is impressed. You’ve made a good impression by clarifying the structure of the interview in advance, understood the question, analysed the problem with a common-sense lens and the only thing left to do is tie it all together.
Somewhere in this step, many great candidates fall down for one simple reason – they don’t directly answer the question!
Make sure to explicitly answer the exam question – without doing this, however clear your communication style, however much confidence you exude, however simply you are able to explain mind-bendingly complex analysis, you are going to struggle. Harry articulates this in his ‘watch out’ point:
HvB WATCH OUT: “Answer the question! Don’t answer the question you want, but the one that the interviewer has asked. Even if your answer is wrong, if you’ve shown a structured and logical way of getting there (and even better, been able to identify where in the logic your assumptions might be wrong) then that’s better than just ignoring the exam question all together”
It’s also worth touching on the dynamic between interviewer and interviewee. This is obviously highly dependent on the interview you happen to find yourself in – but Simone emphasises the value of being dynamic and nimble in her ‘watch out’:
SG WATCH OUT: “Most interviewers are trying to help you, if they are nudging you a certain way or questioning your answers, don't just blindly carry on down your original path”
At the end of it all, it is always worth having some reflections ready to share – what did you find easy/hard, how would you adapt your approach if you were to take on the same task again? You will almost certainly be asked, and assessed on your response.
So, there we have it – the benefit of decades of collective interview experience, successes and failures. If you’re reading this article in preparation for a consulting case study interview – best of luck!
Once again, if you’re a graduate looking to start their career in consulting, we’re always open to conversations with ambitious and talented people – check out our careers page.