47 case interview examples (from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc.)

Case interview examples - McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc.

One of the best ways to prepare for   case interviews  at firms like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain, is by studying case interview examples. 

There are a lot of free sample cases out there, but it's really hard to know where to start. So in this article, we have listed all the best free case examples available, in one place.

The below list of resources includes interactive case interview samples provided by consulting firms, video case interview demonstrations, case books, and materials developed by the team here at IGotAnOffer. Let's continue to the list.

  • McKinsey examples
  • BCG examples
  • Bain examples
  • Deloitte examples
  • Other firms' examples
  • Case books from consulting clubs
  • Case interview preparation

Click here to practise 1-on-1 with MBB ex-interviewers

1. mckinsey case interview examples.

  • Beautify case interview (McKinsey website)
  • Diconsa case interview (McKinsey website)
  • Electro-light case interview (McKinsey website)
  • GlobaPharm case interview (McKinsey website)
  • National Education case interview (McKinsey website)
  • Talbot Trucks case interview (McKinsey website)
  • Shops Corporation case interview (McKinsey website)
  • Conservation Forever case interview (McKinsey website)
  • McKinsey case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)
  • McKinsey live case interview extract (by IGotAnOffer) - See below

2. BCG case interview examples

  • Foods Inc and GenCo case samples  (BCG website)
  • Chateau Boomerang written case interview  (BCG website)
  • BCG case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)
  • Written cases guide (by IGotAnOffer)
  • BCG live case interview extract (by IGotAnOffer) - See below

3. Bain case interview examples

  • CoffeeCo practice case (Bain website)
  • FashionCo practice case (Bain website)
  • Associate Consultant mock interview video (Bain website)
  • Consultant mock interview video (Bain website)
  • Written case interview tips (Bain website)
  • Bain case interview guide   (by IGotAnOffer)
  • Bain case mock interview with ex-Bain manager (below)

4. Deloitte case interview examples

  • Engagement Strategy practice case (Deloitte website)
  • Recreation Unlimited practice case (Deloitte website)
  • Strategic Vision practice case (Deloitte website)
  • Retail Strategy practice case  (Deloitte website)
  • Finance Strategy practice case  (Deloitte website)
  • Talent Management practice case (Deloitte website)
  • Enterprise Resource Management practice case (Deloitte website)
  • Footloose written case  (by Deloitte)
  • Deloitte case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

5. Accenture case interview examples

  • Case interview workbook (by Accenture)
  • Accenture case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

6. OC&C case interview examples

  • Leisure Club case example (by OC&C)
  • Imported Spirits case example (by OC&C)

7. Oliver Wyman case interview examples

  • Wumbleworld case sample (Oliver Wyman website)
  • Aqualine case sample (Oliver Wyman website)
  • Oliver Wyman case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

8. A.T. Kearney case interview examples

  • Promotion planning case question (A.T. Kearney website)
  • Consulting case book and examples (by A.T. Kearney)
  • AT Kearney case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

9. Strategy& / PWC case interview examples

  • Presentation overview with sample questions (by Strategy& / PWC)
  • Strategy& / PWC case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

10. L.E.K. Consulting case interview examples

  • Case interview example video walkthrough   (L.E.K. website)
  • Market sizing case example video walkthrough  (L.E.K. website)

11. Roland Berger case interview examples

  • Transit oriented development case webinar part 1  (Roland Berger website)
  • Transit oriented development case webinar part 2   (Roland Berger website)
  • 3D printed hip implants case webinar part 1   (Roland Berger website)
  • 3D printed hip implants case webinar part 2   (Roland Berger website)
  • Roland Berger case interview guide   (by IGotAnOffer)

12. Capital One case interview examples

  • Case interview example video walkthrough  (Capital One website)
  • Capital One case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

13. Consulting clubs case interview examples

  • Berkeley case book (2006)
  • Columbia case book (2006)
  • Darden case book (2012)
  • Darden case book (2018)
  • Duke case book (2010)
  • Duke case book (2014)
  • ESADE case book (2011)
  • Goizueta case book (2006)
  • Illinois case book (2015)
  • LBS case book (2006)
  • MIT case book (2001)
  • Notre Dame case book (2017)
  • Ross case book (2010)
  • Wharton case book (2010)

Practice with experts

Using case interview examples is a key part of your interview preparation, but it isn’t enough.

At some point you’ll want to practise with friends or family who can give some useful feedback. However, if you really want the best possible preparation for your case interview, you'll also want to work with ex-consultants who have experience running interviews at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc.

If you know anyone who fits that description, fantastic! But for most of us, it's tough to find the right connections to make this happen. And it might also be difficult to practice multiple hours with that person unless you know them really well.

Here's the good news. We've already made the connections for you. We’ve created a coaching service where you can do mock case interviews 1-on-1 with ex-interviewers from MBB firms . Start scheduling sessions today!

The IGotAnOffer team

Interview coach and candidate conduct a video call

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HBS Case Selections

strategy consulting case studies

Innovation at Moog Inc.

  • Brian J. Hall
  • Ashley V. Whillans
  • Davis Heniford
  • Dominika Randle
  • Caroline Witten

Innovation at Google Ads: The Sales Acceleration and Innovation Labs (SAIL) (A)

  • Linda A. Hill
  • Emily Tedards

Juan Valdez: Innovation in Caffeination

  • Michael I. Norton
  • Jeremy Dann

UGG Steps into the Metaverse

  • Shunyuan Zhang
  • Sharon Joseph
  • Sunil Gupta
  • Julia Kelley

Metaverse Wars

  • David B. Yoffie
  • Matt Higgins

Roblox: Virtual Commerce in the Metaverse

  • Ayelet Israeli
  • Nicole Tempest Keller

Timnit Gebru: "SILENCED No More" on AI Bias and The Harms of Large Language Models

  • Tsedal Neeley
  • Stefani Ruper

Hugging Face: Serving AI on a Platform

  • Shane Greenstein
  • Kerry Herman
  • Sarah Gulick

SmartOne: Building an AI Data Business

  • Karim R. Lakhani
  • Pippa Tubman Armerding
  • Gamze Yucaoglu
  • Fares Khrais

Honeywell and the Great Recession (A)

  • Sandra J. Sucher
  • Susan Winterberg

Target: Responding to the Recession

  • Ranjay Gulati
  • Catherine Ross
  • Richard S. Ruback
  • Royce Yudkoff

Hometown Foods: Changing Price Amid Inflation

  • Julian De Freitas
  • Jeremy Yang
  • Das Narayandas

Elon Musk's Big Bets

  • Eric Baldwin

Elon Musk: Balancing Purpose and Risk

  • Shikhar Ghosh
  • Sarah Mehta

Tesla's CEO Compensation Plan

  • Krishna G. Palepu
  • John R. Wells
  • Gabriel Ellsworth

China Rapid Finance: The Collapse of China's P2P Lending Industry

  • William C. Kirby
  • Bonnie Yining Cao
  • John P. McHugh

Forbidden City: Launching a Craft Beer in China

  • Christopher A. Bartlett
  • Carole Carlson

Booking.com

  • Stefan Thomke
  • Daniela Beyersdorfer

Innovation at Uber: The Launch of Express POOL

  • Chiara Farronato
  • Alan MacCormack

Racial Discrimination on Airbnb (A)

  • Michael Luca
  • Scott Stern
  • Hyunjin Kim

GitLab and the Future of All-Remote Work (A)

  • Prithwiraj Choudhury
  • Emma Salomon

TCS: From Physical Offices to Borderless Work

Creating a virtual internship at goldman sachs.

  • Iavor Bojinov

Unilever's Response to the Future of Work

  • William R. Kerr
  • Emilie Billaud
  • Mette Fuglsang Hjortshoej

AT&T, Retraining, and the Workforce of Tomorrow

  • Joseph B. Fuller
  • Carl Kreitzberg

Leading Change in Talent at L'Oreal

  • Lakshmi Ramarajan
  • Vincent Dessain
  • Emer Moloney
  • William W. George
  • Andrew N. McLean

Eve Hall: The African American Investment Fund in Milwaukee

  • Steven S. Rogers
  • Alterrell Mills

United Housing - Otis Gates

  • Mercer Cook

The Home Depot: Leadership in Crisis Management

  • Herman B. Leonard
  • Marc J. Epstein
  • Melissa Tritter

The Great East Japan Earthquake (B): Fast Retailing Group's Response

  • Hirotaka Takeuchi
  • Kenichi Nonomura
  • Dena Neuenschwander
  • Meghan Ricci
  • Kate Schoch
  • Sergey Vartanov

Insurer of Last Resort?: The Federal Financial Response to September 11

  • David A. Moss
  • Sarah Brennan

Under Armour

  • Rory McDonald
  • Clayton M. Christensen
  • Daniel West
  • Jonathan E. Palmer
  • Tonia Junker

Hunley, Inc.: Casting for Growth

  • John A. Quelch
  • James T. Kindley

Bitfury: Blockchain for Government

  • Mitchell B. Weiss
  • Elena Corsi

Deutsche Bank: Pursuing Blockchain Opportunities (A)

  • Lynda M. Applegate
  • Christoph Muller-Bloch

Maersk: Betting on Blockchain

  • Scott Johnson

Yum! Brands

  • Jordan Siegel
  • Christopher Poliquin

Bharti Airtel in Africa

  • Tanya Bijlani

Li & Fung 2012

  • F. Warren McFarlan
  • Michael Shih-ta Chen
  • Keith Chi-ho Wong

Sony and the JK Wedding Dance

  • John Deighton
  • Leora Kornfeld

United Breaks Guitars

David dao on united airlines.

  • Benjamin Edelman
  • Jenny Sanford

Marketing Reading: Digital Marketing

  • Joseph Davin

Social Strategy at Nike

  • Mikolaj Jan Piskorski
  • Ryan Johnson

The Tate's Digital Transformation

Social strategy at american express, mellon financial and the bank of new york.

  • Carliss Y. Baldwin
  • Ryan D. Taliaferro

The Walt Disney Company and Pixar, Inc.: To Acquire or Not to Acquire?

  • Juan Alcacer
  • David J. Collis

Dow's Bid for Rohm and Haas

  • Benjamin C. Esty

Finance Reading: The Mergers and Acquisitions Process

  • John Coates

Apple: Privacy vs. Safety? (A)

  • Henry W. McGee
  • Nien-he Hsieh
  • Sarah McAra

Sidewalk Labs: Privacy in a City Built from the Internet Up

  • Leslie K. John

Data Breach at Equifax

  • Suraj Srinivasan
  • Quinn Pitcher
  • Jonah S. Goldberg

Apple's Core

  • Noam Wasserman

Design Thinking and Innovation at Apple

  • Barbara Feinberg

Apple Inc. in 2012

  • Penelope Rossano

Iz-Lynn Chan at Far East Organization (Abridged)

  • Anthony J. Mayo
  • Dana M. Teppert

Barbara Norris: Leading Change in the General Surgery Unit

  • Boris Groysberg
  • Nitin Nohria
  • Deborah Bell

Adobe Systems: Working Towards a "Suite" Release (A)

  • David A. Thomas
  • Lauren Barley
  • Jan W. Rivkin

Starbucks Coffee Company: Transformation and Renewal

  • Nancy F. Koehn
  • Kelly McNamara
  • Nora N. Khan
  • Elizabeth Legris

JCPenney: Back in Business

  • K. Shelette Stewart
  • Christine Snively

Home Nursing of North Carolina

Castronics, llc, gemini investors, angie's list: ratings pioneer turns 20.

  • Robert J. Dolan

Basecamp: Pricing

  • Frank V. Cespedes
  • Robb Fitzsimmons

J.C. Penney's "Fair and Square" Pricing Strategy

J.c. penney's 'fair and square' strategy (c): back to the future.

  • Jose B. Alvarez

Osaro: Picking the best path

  • James Palano
  • Bastiane Huang

HubSpot and Motion AI: Chatbot-Enabled CRM

  • Thomas Steenburgh

GROW: Using Artificial Intelligence to Screen Human Intelligence

  • Ethan S. Bernstein
  • Paul D. McKinnon
  • Paul Yarabe

strategy consulting case studies

Arup: Building the Water Cube

  • Robert G. Eccles
  • Amy C. Edmondson
  • Dilyana Karadzhova

(Re)Building a Global Team: Tariq Khan at Tek

Managing a global team: greg james at sun microsystems, inc. (a).

  • Thomas J. DeLong

Organizational Behavior Reading: Leading Global Teams

Ron ventura at mitchell memorial hospital.

  • Heide Abelli

Anthony Starks at InSiL Therapeutics (A)

  • Gary P. Pisano
  • Vicki L. Sato

Wolfgang Keller at Konigsbrau-TAK (A)

  • John J. Gabarro

The 2010 Chilean Mining Rescue (A)

  • Faaiza Rashid

IDEO: Human-Centered Service Design

  • Ryan W. Buell
  • Andrew Otazo
  • Benjamin Jones
  • Alexis Brownell

strategy consulting case studies

David Neeleman: Flight Path of a Servant Leader (A)

  • Matthew D. Breitfelder

Coach Hurley at St. Anthony High School

  • Scott A. Snook
  • Bradley C. Lawrence

Shapiro Global

  • Michael Brookshire
  • Monica Haugen
  • Michelle Kravetz
  • Sarah Sommer

Kathryn McNeil (A)

  • Joseph L. Badaracco Jr.
  • Jerry Useem

Carol Fishman Cohen: Professional Career Reentry (A)

  • Myra M. Hart
  • Robin J. Ely
  • Susan Wojewoda

Alex Montana at ESH Manufacturing Co.

  • Michael Kernish

Michelle Levene (A)

  • Tiziana Casciaro
  • Victoria W. Winston

John and Andrea Rice: Entrepreneurship and Life

  • Howard H. Stevenson
  • Janet Kraus
  • Shirley M. Spence

Partner Center

35 Case Interviews Examples from MBB / Big Four Firms

Studying case interview examples is one of the first steps in preparing for the  management consulting  recruitment process. If you don’t want to spend hours searching the web, this article presents a comprehensive and convenient list for you – with 35 example cases, 16 case books, along with a case video accompanied by detailed feedback on tips and techniques.

A clear understanding of “what is a case interview” is essential for effective use of these examples. I suggest reading our  Case Interview 101  guide, if you haven’t done so.

McKinsey case interview examples

Mckinsey practice cases.

  • Diconsa Case
  • Electro-Light Case
  • GlobaPharm Case
  • National Education Case

What should I know about McKinsey Case interviews?

At McKinsey, case interviews often follow the interviewer-led format , where the interviewer asks you multiple questions for you to answer with short pitches.

How do you nail these cases? Since the questions can be grouped into predictable types, an efficient approach is to master each question type. However, do that after you’ve mastered the case interview fundamentals!

For a detailed guide on interviewer-led cases, check out our article on McKinsey Case Interview .

BCG & Bain case interview examples

Bcg practice cases.

  • BCG – Written Case – Chateau Boomerang

Bain practice cases

  • Bain – Coffee Shop Co.
  • Bain – Fashion Co.
  • Bain – Mock Interview – Associate Consultant
  • Bain – Mock Interview – Consultant

What should I know about BCG & Bain case interviews?

Unlike McKinsey, BCG and Bain case interviews typically follow the candidate-led format – which is the opposite of interviewer-led, with the candidate driving the case progress by actively breaking down problems in their own way.

The key to acing candidate-led cases is to master the case interview fundamental concepts as well as the frameworks.

Some BCG and Bain offices also utilize written case interviews – you have to go through a pile of data slides, select the most relevant ones to answer a set of interviewer questions, then deliver those answers in a presentation.

For a detailed guide on candidate-led cases, check out our article on BCG & Bain Case Interview .

Deloitte case interview examples

Deloitte practice cases.

Undergrad Cases

  • Human Capital – Technology Institute
  • Human Capital – Agency V
  • Strategy – Federal Benefits Provider
  • Strategy – Extreme Athletes
  • Technology – Green Apron
  • Technology – Big Bucks Bank
  • Technology – Top Engine
  • Technology – Finance Agency

Advanced Cases

  • Human Capital – Civil Cargo Bureau
  • Human Capital – Capital Airlines
  • Strategy – Club Co
  • Strategy – Health Agency
  • Technology – Waste Management
  • Technology – Bank of Zurich
  • Technology – Galaxy Fitness

What should I know about Deloitte case interviews?

Case interviews at Deloitte also lean towards the candidate-led format like BCG and Bain.

The Deloitte consultant recruitment process also features group case interviews , which not only test analytical skills but also place a great deal on interpersonal handling.

Accenture case interview examples

Accenture divides its cases into three types with very cool-sounding names.

Sorted in descending order of popularity, they are:

These are similar to candidate-led cases at Bain and BCG. albeit shorter – the key is to develop a suitable framework and ask the right questions to extract data from the interviewer.

These are similar to the market-sizing and guesstimate questions asked in interviewer-led cases – demonstrate your calculations in structured, clear-cut, logical steps and you’ll nail the case.

These cases have you sort through a deluge of data to draw solutions; however, this type of case is rare.

Capital One case interview examples

Capital One is the odd one on this list – it is a bank-holding company. Nonetheless, this being one of the biggest banks in America, it’s interesting to see how its cases differ from the consulting ones.

Having gone through Capital One’s guide to its cases, I can’t help but notice the less-MECE structure of the sample answers. Additionally, there seems to be a greater focus on the numbers.

Nonetheless, having a solid knowledge of the basics of case interviews will not hurt you – if anything, your presentation will be much more in-depth, comprehensive, and understandable!

See Capital One Business Analyst Case Interview for an example case and answers.

Other firms case interview examples

Besides the leading ones, we have some examples from other major consulting firms as well.

  • Oliver Wyman – Wumbleworld
  • Oliver Wyman – Aqualine
  • LEK – Cinema
  • LEK – Market Sizing
  • Kearney – Promotional Planning
  • OC&C – Imported Spirits
  • OC&C – Leisure Clubs

Consulting clubs case books

In addition to official cases, here are a few case books you can use as learning materials.

Do keep in mind: don’t base your study on frameworks and individual case types, but master the fundamentals so you can tackle any kind of case.

  • Wharton Consulting Club Case Book
  • Tuck Consulting Club Case Book
  • MIT Sloan Consulting Club Case Book
  • LBS Consulting Club Case Book
  • Kellogg Consulting Club Case Book
  • INSEAD Consulting Club Case Book
  • Harvard Consulting Club Case Book
  • ESADE Consulting Club Case Book
  • Darden Consulting Club Case Book
  • Berkeley Consulting Club Case Book
  • Notre-Dame Consulting Club Case Book
  • Illinois Consulting Club Case Book
  • Columbia Consulting Club Case Book
  • Duke Consulting Club Case Book
  • Ross Consulting Club Case Book
  • Kearney Case Book

strategy consulting case studies

Case interview example – Case video

The limitation of most official case interview examples is that they are either too short and vague, or in text format, or both.

To solve that problem for you, we’ve extracted a 30-minute-long, feedback-rich case sample from our Case Interview End-to-End Secrets Program .

This is a candidate-led, profitability case on an internet music broadcasting company called Pandora.

In 30 minutes, this candidate demonstrates the exact kind of shortcoming that most candidates suffer during real case interviews – they come in with sharp business senses, then hurt their own chances with inadequate techniques.

Here are seven notable areas where the candidate (and you) can improve:

Thanking Throughout the case, as especially in the opening, he should have shown more appreciation for the time the interviewer spent with him.

Structured opening The candidate’s opening of the case feels unstructured. He could have improved it by not mixing the playback and clarification parts. You can learn to nail the case in a 3-minute start through this video on How to Open Any Case Perfectly .

Explicitness A lot of the candidate’s thought process remains in his head; in a case interview, it’s better to be as explicit as possible – draw your issue tree out and point to it as you speak; state your hypothesis when you move into a branch; when you receive data, acknowledge it out loud.

Avoiding silence The silence in his case performance is too long, including his timeout and various gaps in his speech; either ask for timeout (and keep it as short as possible) or think out loud to fill those gaps.

Proactivity The candidate relies too much on the interviewer (e.g: asking for data when it can easily be calculated); you don’t want to appear lazy before your interviewer, so avoid this.

Avoiding repeating mistakes Making one mistake twice is a big no-no in consulting interviews; one key part of the consulting skill set is the ability to learn, and repeating your mistakes (especially if the interviewer has pointed it out) makes you look like someone who doesn’t learn.

Note-taking Given the mistakes this candidate makes, he’s probably not taking his notes well. I can show you how to get it right if you watch this video on Case Interview Note-Taking .

Nonetheless, there are three good points you can learn from the candidate:

The candidate sums up what he’s covered and announces his upcoming approach at the start and at key points in the case – this is a very good habit that gives you a sense of direction and shows that you’re an organized person.

The candidate performs a “reality check” on whether his actions match the issue tree; in a case interview it’s easy to lose track of what you’re doing, so remember to do this every once in a while.

The candidate prompts the interviewer to give out more data than he asked for; if anything, this actually matches a habit of real consultants, and if you’re lucky, your interviewer may actually give out important pieces you haven’t thought of.

These are only part of the “ninja tips” taught In our Case Interview E2E Secrets Program – besides the math and business intuition for long-term development, a key feature is the instant-result tips and techniques for case interviews.

Once you’ve mastered them, you can nail any case they throw at you!

For more “quality” practice, let’s have a mock case interview with former consultants from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, Oliver Wyman, Strategy& and many other consulting firms. They will help you identify your problem areas and give you actionable feedback, making your preparation much easier and faster.

Hi! This is Kim and welcome to another performance in the Tips & Techniques part of our amazing End-to-end program. You are about to hear a really interesting performance.

There is a common Myth that Profitability cases are easier. Well, for beginners, that’s may make sense, but I would argue that Profitability cases can be really tricky and candidates without good foundation will make about the same level of mistakes regardless of type of cases given.

The profitability case we are about to watch will show that. It’s a very unconventional

Profitability. It started out like a typical one but getting more and more tricky toward the end.

The candidate is fairly good in term of business intuition, but the Tips & Techniques aspect needs a lot of fine tune! Now let’s go ahead and get started! 

It’s actually a little better to playback the case information and ask clarifications. The candidate does not distinguish between the two and do both at a same time. Also, the candidate was asking these clarifications in an unorganized and unstructured fashion. This is not something terrible, but could have been better, especially when this is the very first part of the case, where the crucial first impression is being formed.

My pitch would sound like this:

“That’s a very interesting problem and I am happy to get the chance to solve it. First of all let me tell you my understanding of the case context and key objectives. Then I would like to ask a few clarifying questions regarding a few terminology and concepts. Both of these are to make sure that I will be solving the right problem.

So here is my understanding of the case: The client is ABC. Here are some DEF facts about the situation we just talked about. And the key case question is XYZ.

Does that correctly and adequately summarize the case?”

Once the interviewer confirms, I would move to the clarification part as follows: “Now I would like to ask a few clarification questions. There are three of them: No 1, … No 2, … and No 3, …”

You may see above pitch as obvious but that’s a perfect example of how you should open any cases. Every details matters. We will point out those details in just a second. But before we do that, it’s actually very helpful if you can go back, listen carefully to the above pitch, and try to point out the great components yourselves. Only after that, go back to this point and learn it all together.

Alright, let’s break down the perfect opening.

First of all, you hear me say: “That’s a very interesting problem and I am happy to get a chance to solve it”. This seems trivial but very beneficial in multiple ways:

1. I bought myself a couple of seconds to calm down and get focused. 2. By nature, we as human unconsciously like those who give us compliments. Nothing better than opening the case with a modest compliment to the interviewer.

And (c) I showed my great attitude towards the case, which the interviewer would assume is the same for real future consulting business problems.

You should do that in your interviews too. Say it and accompany it with the best smile you can give. It shows that you are not afraid of any problems. In fact, you love them and you are always ready for them.

Secondly, I did what I refer to as the “map habit”, which is to always say what you are about to do and then do it. Just like somebody in the car showing the drivers the route before cruising on the road. The driver would love it. This is where I said: “Let me tell you my understanding of the case context and key objectives. Then ABC…”.

Third, right at the beginning of the case, I try to be crystal clear and easy to follow. I don’t let the interviewer confused between playing the case vs. asking clarification questions. I distinguish between the two really carefully. This habit probably doesn’t change the outcome of how the case goes that much, but it certainly significantly changes the impression the interviewer has of me.

Fourth, in playing back the case, each person would have a different way to re-phrase. But there are three buckets to always include:

1. Who is the client 2. The facts regarding the client and the situation and (c) The key question and the objective of the case.

Fifth, after playing the case context and objectives, I pause for a second and ALIGN with the interviewer: “Does it correctly and adequately summarize the case?”. This is a habit that every consulting manager loves for young consultants to do. Nobody wants first-year folks to spend weeks of passion and hard-work building an excel model that the team can’t use. This habit is extensively taught at McKinsey, Bain and BCG, so therefore interviewers would love somebody that exhibits this habit often in case interview.

Lastly, when asking clarification questions, you hear me number them very carefully to create the strong impression that I am very organized and structured. I said I have three clarifying questions. Then I number them as I go through each. No.1, No.2, and No.3.

Sometimes, during interviews it’s hard to know exactly how many items you are going to get. One way is to take timeout often to carefully plan your pitch. If this is not possible in certain situations, you may skip telling how many items you have; but you should definitely still number your question: No.1, No.2; and so on. 

Just a moment ago, the candidate actually exhibited a good habit. After going through his clarification questions, the candidate ended by asking the “is there anything else” question. In this case, I actually give out an important piece of data.

Though this is not very common as not every interviewer is that generous in giving out data. But this is a habit management consultants have to have every day when talking to experts, clients, or key stakeholders. The key is to get the most data and insights out of every interview and this is the type of open-ended question every consultant asks several times a day.

To show of this habit in a case interview is very good!

There are three things I would like you to pay attention to:

First, it took the candidate up to 72 seconds to “gather his thoughts”. This is a little too long in a case interview. I intentionally leave the 72 seconds of silence in the recording so you get an idea of how long that is in real situations. But it’s worth-noting here is not only that. While in some very complicated and weird cases, it’s ok to take that long to really think and gather ideas. In this case, the approach as proposed by the candidate is very simple. For this very approach, I think no more than 15 to 20 seconds should be used.

No.2, with that said, I have told I really like the fact that this candidate exhibits the “map” habit. Before going straight to the approach he draws the overall approach first.

No.3. You also see here that the candidate tried to align the approach with me by asking my thoughts on it. As I just said on the previous comment, this is a great habit to have. Not only does it help reduce chance of going into the wrong direction in case interviews, but it also creates a good impression. Consulting interviewers love people doing it often!

Here we see a not-really-bad response that for sure could be much better. The candidate was going into the first branch of the analysis which is Revenue. I would fix this in 3 aspects:

First, even though we just talked about the overall approach, it’s still better to briefly set up the issue tree first then clearly note that you are going into one branch.

Second, this is not a must, but I always try to make my hypothesis as explicitly clear as possible. Here the candidate just implicitly made a hypothesis that the problem is on the revenue side. The best way to show our hypothesis-driven mindset is to explicitly say it.

Third, you hear this a ton of times in our End-to-End program but I am going to repeat it again and again. It is better to show the habit of aligning here too. Don’t just go into revenue, before doing that, give the interviewer a chance to agree or to actually guide you to Cost.

So, summarizing the above insights, my pitch would sound something like this:

“So as we just discussed, a profit problem is either caused by revenue or by cost. Unless you would like to go into cost first, let’s hypothesize that the problem is on revenue side. I would like to look deeper into Revenue. Do we have any data on the revenue?”

And while saying this, you should literally draw an issue tree and point to each as you speak.

There is an interesting case interview tip I want to point out here. Notice how the candidate responds after receiving two data points from me. He went straight into the next question without at least acknowledging the data received and also without briefly analyzing it.

I am glad that the candidate makes this mistakes… well, not glad for him but for the greater audience of this program. I would like to introduce to you the perfect habit of what you should react and do every time you have any piece of data during case interviews. So three things you need to do:

Step 1: Say … that’s an interesting piece of data. This helps the interviewer acknowledge that you have received and understand the data. This also buys you a little time. And furthermore, it’s always a good thing to give out modest compliments to the interviewer.

Step 2: Describe the data, how it looks, is there any special noteworthy trend? In this case, we should point out that revenue actually grew by more than 50%.

Also notice here that I immediately quantified the difference in specific quantitative measurement (in this case, percentage). Saying revenue went up is good, but it’s great to be able to say revenue went up by more than 50%.

Step 3: Link the trend identified back to the original case question and the hypothesis you have. Does it prove, disprove, or open up new investigation to really test the hypothesis? In this case, this data piece actually opened up new investigating areas to test the hypothesis that the bottleneck is within revenue.

My sample pitch for this step 3 would sound like this: “It’s interesting that revenue went up quite a bit. However, to be able to fully reject our hypothesis on the revenue, I would like to compare our revenue to that of the competitors as well.”

Then only at this point, after going through 3 steps above, I ask for the competitors’ revenue like the candidate did.

Notice here that I ended up asking the same question the candidate did. This shows that the candidate does have a good intuition and thought process. It’s just that he did all of these implicitly on his head.

In consulting case interview, it’s always good to do everything as explicitly as possible. Not only is it easier to follow but it helps show your great thought process.

… the rest of the transcript is available in our End To End Case Interview

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Preparing for case interviews is a hard task when you only have 1 week, so the first part you need to learn during this time is fundamentals of case interview

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A case interview is where candidates is asked to solve a business problem. They are used by consulting firms to evaluate problem-solving skill & soft skills

The PwC Case Interview (Including Strategy&) – A Complete Guide

  • Last Updated January, 2024

PwC is an accounting firm with a huge consulting arm. Its consulting business is as large as those of Bain, BCG, and McKinsey combined. If you’re interested in landing a job in the consulting industry, it’s a great firm to apply to because its business combines strategy consulting (Strategy&) as well as business transformation/implementation (PwC).

If you want to know more about PwC consulting and Strategy&, you’re in the right place! In this article, we’ll discuss:

  • An overview of PwC Consulting and Strategy&.
  • The PwC recruitment process.
  • The PwC case interview.
  • The behavioral/fit interview.
  • The PwC group case.
  • The PwC individual presentation.
  • Our 5 tips for preparing for PwC and Strategy& interviews.

Let’s get started!

PwC Consulting and Strategy& - An Overview

The pwc group case, the pwc recruitment process, the pwc individual presentation, the pwc case interview (including strategy&).

5 Tips for Preparing for PwC and Strategy& Interview

The PwC Behavioral Interview

PwC Consulting and Strategy & - An Overview

5 Tips for Preparing for PwC and Strategy & Interview

PwC employs over a quarter of a million people in 155 countries worldwide. Its operations are divided into two parts: Trust Solutions and Consulting Solutions. Trust Solutions focuses on its accounting and tax services. PwC Consulting Solutions help a broad spectrum of clients navigate complex business issues by leveraging PwC’s significant experience and range of capabilities.

Client case studies include:

  • helping TransRe adopt an enterprise resource planning system to collect and manage data, offering insight and improved decision-making.
  • supporting Chipotle to implement a loyalty program to improve customer relationships, build loyalty, and drive business growth.
  • providing pro bono consulting to charity The Trevor Project to strengthen its technological capabilities and optimize its volunteer recruitment process.

How does PwC Consulting differ from Strategy&?

In 2014, PwC acquired Booz & Co., the commercial arm of consulting firm Booz Allen Hamilton, and renamed it Strategy&. While PwC Consulting focuses on typical management consulting cases and implementation projects, Strategy& specializes in strategy consulting.

Set up by PwC to attempt to compete with McKinsey, Bain, and BCG, Strategy& has over 3,000 consultants helping businesses shape their future strategies. Strategy& focuses on creating competitive advantage by “developing corporate and business unit strategies and building differentiating capabilities that outperform the competition.” ( Source: PwC )

Implementation of those strategies is handed over to PwC consulting teams. If you join PwC’s management consulting team you will, “help clients translate strategy into execution, closing the gap between ideas and outcomes, to transform the organization and achieve tangible business results.” (Source: PwC)

Like most other Big 4 firms (EY, Deloitte, and KPMG), the PwC recruitment process has multiple stages:

Stage 1: The PwC Application

For entry-level recruitment, the first stage of the PwC process is to submit an application form for the particular roles you’re interested in. You can search for your school’s application deadline on PwC’s interactive campus map. If you can’t find your school or have recently graduated, you should submit by their September deadline. You’ll be asked to pick your top 2 preferred office locations and you’ll need to submit a resume.

To learn more about how to write a stellar consulting resume, read Consulting Resume: Everything You Need to Know .

Stage 2: The PwC Online Test

A few hours after you’ve submitted your application, PwC will send you an assessment to complete via email. You have to complete the online test within 3 calendar days so it’s worth thinking about that when applying. The PwC online test is a series of games-based assessments to measure cognitive ability, behavioral preferences, and verbal and numerical reasoning.

Learn more by reading PwC Online Test .

Stage 3: The PwC Interview

If you successfully pass the online test, PwC will invite you to a series of interviews. These will include a case interview and behavioral interview and may include a group case and an individual presentation. The first of these interviews is sometimes conducted as a video interview where you’ll record your answers to a range of questions and case studies. Group interviews have traditionally been part of the recruiting process for sophomore consulting internship candidates and select other groups. It’s a good idea to clarify with your recruiting contact what types of interviews you’ll have.

In the past, the bulk of the remaining interviews, group, or individual activities took place during an assessment day. However, for 2021-22 recruitment, PwC US is moving to virtual interviewing. For Consulting Services, you’ll face two virtual, live interviews back-to-back. If you move forward in the process, there may be a final additional  interview.

Nail the case & fit interview with strategies from former MBB Interviewers that have helped 89.6% of our clients pass the case interview.

The case interview process is similar for both PwC Consulting Services and Strategy&. The case interviews are both candidate-led, which means you’ll be responsible for deciding what analysis you want to do and what the approach should be.

The PwC case interviews for Consulting Services applicants typically focus on profit optimization, cost optimization, and market sizing. For example, a recent candidate was asked to “Run me through a market sizing estimate of the iPhone market in Asia.”

For a breakdown of precisely what each of these types is, read Case Interview Types: Master Common Ones Before Your Interview .

The PwC Strategy& case interview includes more strategy-focused cases (such as make-vs-buy decisions, new product introduction, M&A, etc.), but how you tackle a case interview is the same no matter which area you’re applying for.

Following this 4-step model gives you the best chance for success:

  • Understand the question . Make sure you understand what it is you’re being asked to do. Repeat back to the interviewing team what exactly you think the task is so they can correct you if necessary.
  • Create a structured approach to the problem . Analyze what data you’ve been given and identify areas where you need more information about the client’s problem. Use a business framework to explore the case further or, better yet, create one of your own that’s specific to the issues in your case.
  • Ask relevant questions and analyze the problem . Begin to share the assumptions you’re making about the case and ask the interviewing team questions about areas where you’re uncertain or need more data to inform your judgments.
  • Effectively communicate your recommendation . Walk the interviewing team through your recommendation(s), explaining how you used the data provided to back up your recommendations. Make sure you call out any assumptions made or any risks associated with the action you’re proposing.

The fit or behavioral interview is a way for interviewers to figure out how well candidates would work within the firm’s culture and how they’d be in front of clients. Interviewers want to feel that they could work well with you if you were part of their team and that you’d represent the firm effectively on client projects.

While the exact questions will differ between firms, here are ten common questions asked in behavioral interviews:

PwC's Core Values

PwC has 5 core values that define its culture and approach:     

  • Act with integrity
  • Make a difference
  • Work together
  • Reimagine the possible

It’s important to ensure that when answering interview questions, you keep these values in mind. For example, if the interviewer asks you to tell them more about yourself or what you do for fun, pick stories that show where you’ve made a difference, challenged the status quo, or tried something new.

If you’re interviewing for several different firms, it’s important to tailor your responses to each individual firm. Try not to rely on stock answers about why management consulting is the role for you. Many other candidates will also be waxing lyrical about working with the best people, on the most interesting projects, for the most exciting clients.

Try researching cases the firm has recently been involved in and explain why they’re interesting to you. Or look into work the firm does regarding corporate social responsibility and talk about how it aligns with your values.

The Best Answers to PwC Behavioral Interview Questions Are Stories

Frame your examples as stories. Stories engage interviewers even after a long day interviewing dozens of candidates. While you want to remain professional, it’s ok to talk with emotion as you share your stories. Interviewers want to see humans, not robots! One of PwC’s core values is ‘Care’ so interviewers want to know what’s important to you and more about the things that make you you.

Make sure you also reflect on your own learning from the examples you want to share in your interview. You’ll likely be asked about how you work in a team, how you handle conflict, and how you overcome failure. Using a model like the ASTAR(E) framework helps you remember to share the effect that going through that experience had on you and how it’s changed how you would approach things in the future.

For the Strategy& interview specifically, it’s worth noting that you may face more behavioral questions than you expect. PwC is keen to check that you’re not just using Strategy& as an MBB backup and wants to make sure you’re a great fit for the firm.

To learn more about acing the behavioral interview, read The Consulting Fit Interview: What to Say, What NOT to Say .

PwC has traditionally used a group case as part of its recruiting process during the assessment day for some applicants (most frequently, undergraduate sophomores applying for internships). A typical group case experience involves you working within a small group to solve a business case.

Interviewers assess both analytical and behavioral competencies as you work in your team to solve the case. This means you have 2 roles during a group case. First, you need to contribute to solving the case — providing analysis, making logical assumptions and judgments, and offering insight to shape the overall recommendation you present to the client.

Secondly, you need to showcase how well you can work within a team — offering an opinion, demonstrating active listening, summarizing and building on others’ points of view, and leading the team towards consensus.

Recent interviewees have not had a group case as part of their PwC interview process. This is likely due to Covid restrictions, so make sure you are ready for a group case in the event PwC reintroduces them. If you want more help on preparing for a group case interview, read This Is What You Need to Know to Pass Your Group Case Interview .

As part of the recruitment process, you may be asked to prepare an individual presentation. This comes in the form of a written case presentation. Unlike other firms, PwC releases the information you’ll need to prepare your recommendation 48 hours in advance of the interview.

Using the information provided, you’ll have to prepare a PowerPoint presentation showing your analysis of the data, explaining any assumptions you’ve made, and detailing your client recommendations.

On the day of the interview, you’ll spend 15–30 minutes presenting your findings and then 15–30 minutes taking questions on them from the interviewing team.

Bain and BCG commonly request a written case, so this may feel familiar if you’ve interviewed for them. For more information on preparing for a written case interview, check out Written Case Interviews – Everything You Need To Know .

5 Tips for Preparing for PwC and Strategy& Interviews

Now you’re clear on the different elements that make up the PwC interviews, here are our top 5 tips for acing them:

1. Research

Make sure you do your research before your PwC or Strategy& interview. Understand what it is about the firm that appeals to you, what type of case work they’re involved in, and how else they get involved in the community.

It can sometimes be helpful to figure out what a company isn’t as much as what it is. So compare PwC to other firms and note the differences and why PwC still appeals. Learn their core values and what a typical day would involve as an analyst, or the specific role you’re applying for.

Ensure you also know as much as possible about the format for the interview. Are you expected to complete several tasks or just one? How much time will you have? Will you have a single interviewer or multiple? Company websites often describe the people they’re looking for to join their team — those will be the attributes you’ll be assessed against, so make sure you’re clear on what they are.

2. Prepare and Practice

Once you’ve done all your research, start your preparation. Use case interview examples to practice your casing skills. The linked page includes several PwC case examples as well as ones from other consulting firms. Make sure you feel confident in your case interview math skills too.

For your behavioral interview, make sure you’ve prepared answers to typical questions such as “Tell me about yourself” and “How would you manage a challenging team member?” Make sure your answers follow the ASTAR(E) framework and that you’ve tailored them to show off how you meet the PwC core values. You can practice answering these questions with a friend or coach until you feel confident in your responses.

3. Follow a Structure

Consulting firms are looking for structured thinkers who can solve a wide variety of business problems. Show your structured problem-solving skills by creating a framework that identifies the key issues you want to address in the case and use this framework to keep your progress in the case on track. Building your answers around a framework can help ensure you cover all the important points succinctly and confidently.

4. Explain Your Approach and Any Assumptions

Remember your math teacher always used to tell you to show your work? Well, it’s the same during consulting interviews. If you’re using data or solving math problems during your PwC case interview and you end up with an incorrect answer, it’s important to gain as much credit as possible.

Maybe you just made a small error in your calculation but your assumptions and approach were sound. The interviewer will never know that unless you walk them through the steps you take as you’re solving the case. Make sure you talk aloud as you’re putting together the pieces of the case and ensure you clearly state any assumptions you’ve made as you present your final recommendation. By making your assumptions clear, you‘ll allow your interviewer to guide you if you get off-track.

5. Communicate Confidently

In the PwC case interview, once you’ve decided on a recommendation, make sure you communicate your thoughts confidently. While interviewers are obviously interested in your analytical skills, business acumen, and logical approach, they also care about how you’re going to appear in front of clients. They need you to be able to effectively communicate your thoughts and respond appropriately to questions and feedback.

This is also true of the behavioral interview, where your interviewers also care about how you’ll fit within their team and what it’d be like to work long hours on a project with you. They’ll expect you to talk with passion about things you care about, offer thoughtful or interesting stories in response to questions, and seem friendly, competent, and approachable.

– – – – –

In this article, we’ve covered:

  • The difference between PwC Consulting and Strategy&.
  • The stages of the PwC recruiting process.
  • What you need to know about the PwC case interview, behavioral interview, group interview, and individual presentation.
  • 5 tips for success in PwC interviews.

Still have questions?

  • Our Ultimate Guide to Case Interview Prep .
  • PwC Psychometric Assessment .
  • The Big 4: How Do They Fit Into the Consulting Industry
  • Group Case Interview .
  • Written Case Interview .

Help with Case Study Interview Prep

Thanks for turning to My Consulting Offer for advice on PwC case interviews. My Consulting Offer has helped almost 85% of the people we’ve worked with to get a job in management consulting. We want you to be successful in your consulting interviews too. For example, here is how Alex was able to get his offer from Strategy&.

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  • Case Interview: A comprehensive guide
  • Pyramid Principle
  • Hypothesis driven structure
  • Fit Interview
  • Consulting math
  • The key to landing your consulting job
  • What is a case interview?
  • What do I need to learn to solve cases?
  • How do I practice for case interviews?
  • Fit interviews
  • Interview day - what to expect, with tips
  • How we can help

1. The key to landing your consulting job.

Case interviews - where you are asked to solve a business case study under scrutiny - are the core of the selection process right across McKinsey, Bain and BCG (the “MBB” firms). This interview format is also used pretty much universally across other high-end consultancies; including LEK, Kearney, Oliver Wyman and the consulting wings of the “Big Four”.

If you want to land a job at any of these firms, you will have to ace multiple case interviews.

It is increasingly likely that you will also have to solve online cases given by chatbots etc. You might need to pass these before making it to interview or be asked to sit them alongside first round interviews.

Importantly, case studies aren’t something you can just wing . Firms explicitly expect you to have thoroughly prepared and many of your competitors on interview day will have been prepping for months.

Don’t worry though - MCC is here to help!

This article will take you through a full overview of everything you’ll need to know to do well, linking to more detailed articles and resources at each stage to let you really drill down into the details.

As well as traditional case interviews, we’ll also attend to the new formats in which cases are being delivered and otherwise make sure you’re up to speed with recent trends in this overall part of consulting recruitment.

Before we can figure out how to prepare for a case interview, though, we will first have to properly understand in detail what exactly you are up against. What format does a standard consulting case interview take? What is expected of you? How will you be assessed?

Let's dive right in and find out!

Professional help

Before going further, if this sounds like a lot to get your head around on your own, don't worry - help is available!

Our Case Academy course gives you everything you need to know to crack cases like a pro:

Case Academy Course

To put what you learn into practice (and secure some savings in the process) you can add mock interview coaching sessions with expereinced MBB consultants:

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And, if you just want an experienced consultant to take charge of the whole selection process for you, you can check out our comprehensive mentoring programmes:

Explore mentoring

Now, back to the article!

2. What is a case interview?

Before we can hope to tackle a case interview, we have to understand what one is.

In short, a case interview simulates real consulting work by having you solve a business case study in conversation with your interviewer.

This case study will be a business problem where you have to advise a client - that is, an imaginary business or similar organisation in need of guidance.

You must help this client solve a problem and/or make a decision. This requires you to analyse the information you are given about that client organisation and figure out a final recommendation for what they should do next.

Business problems in general obviously vary in difficulty. Some are quite straightforward and can be addressed with fairly standard solutions. However, consulting firms exist precisely to solve the tough issues that businesses have failed to deal with internally - and so consultants will typically work on complex, idiosyncratic problems requiring novel solutions.

Some examples of case study questions might be:

  • How much would you pay for a banking licence in Ghana?
  • Estimate the potential value of the electric vehicle market in Germany
  • How much gas storage capacity should a UK domestic energy supplier build?

Consulting firms need the brightest minds they can find to put to work on these important, difficult projects. You can expect the case studies you have to solve in interview, then, to echo the unique, complicated problems consultancies deal with every day. As we’ll explain here, this means that you need to be ready to think outside the box to figure out genuinely novel solutions.

2.1. What skills do case interviews assess?

Reliably impressing your interviewers means knowing what they are looking for. This means understanding the skills you are being assessed against in some detail.

Overall, it’s important always to remember that, with case studies, there are no strict right or wrong answers. What really matters is how you think problems through, how confident you are with your conclusions and how quick you are with the back of the envelope arithmetic.

The objective of this kind of interview isn’t to get to one particular solution, but to assess your skillset. This is even true of modern online cases, where sophisticated AI algorithms score how you work as well as the solutions you generate.

If you visit McKinsey , Bain and BCG web pages on case interviews, you will find that the three firms look for very similar traits, and the same will be true of other top consultancies.

Broadly speaking, your interviewer will be evaluating you across five key areas:

2.1.1.One: Probing mind

Showing intellectual curiosity by asking relevant and insightful questions that demonstrate critical thinking and a proactive nature. For instance, if we are told that revenues for a leading supermarket chain have been declining over the last ten years, a successful candidate would ask:

“ We know revenues have declined. This could be due to price or volume. Do we know how they changed over the same period? ”

This is as opposed to a laundry list of questions like:

  • Did customers change their preferences?
  • Which segment has shown the decline in volume?
  • Is there a price war in the industry?

2.1.2. Two: Structure

Structure in this context means structuring a problem. This, in turn, means creating a framework - that is, a series of clear, sequential steps in order to get to a solution.

As with the case interview in general, the focus with case study structures isn’t on reaching a solution, but on how you get there.

This is the trickiest part of the case interview and the single most common reason candidates fail.

We discuss how to properly structure a case in more detail in section three. In terms of what your interviewer is looking for at high level, though, key pieces of your structure should be:

  • Proper understanding of the objective of the case - Ask yourself: "What is the single crucial piece of advice that the client absolutely needs?"
  • Identification of the drivers - Ask yourself: "What are the key forces that play a role in defining the outcome?"

Our Problem Driven Structure method, discussed in section three, bakes this approach in at a fundamental level. This is as opposed to the framework-based approach you will find in older case-solving

Focus on going through memorised sequences of steps too-often means failing to develop a full understanding of the case and the real key drivers.

At this link, we run through a case to illustrate the difference between a standard framework-based approach and our Problem Driven Structure method.

2.1.3. Three: Problem Solving

You’ll be tested on your ability to identify problems and drivers, isolate causes and effects, demonstrate creativity and prioritise issues. In particular, the interviewer will look for the following skills:

  • Prioritisation - Can you distinguish relevant and irrelevant facts?
  • Connecting the dots - Can you connect new facts and evidence to the big picture?
  • Establishing conclusions - Can you establish correct conclusions without rushing to inferences not supported by evidence?

2.1.4. Four: Numerical Agility

In case interviews, you are expected to be quick and confident with both precise and approximated numbers. This translates to:

  • Performing simple calculations quickly - Essential to solve cases quickly and impress clients with quick estimates and preliminary conclusions.
  • Analysing data - Extract data from graphs and charts, elaborate and draw insightful conclusions.
  • Solving business problems - Translate a real world case to a mathematical problem and solve it.

Our article on consulting math is a great resource here, though the extensive math content in our MCC Academy is the best and most comprehensive material available.

2.1.5. Five: Communication

Real consulting work isn’t just about the raw analysis to come up with a recommendation - this then needs to be sold to the client as the right course of action.

Similarly, in a case interview, you must be able to turn your answer into a compelling recommendation. This is just as essential to impressing your interviewer as your structure and analysis.

Consultants already comment on how difficult it is to find candidates with the right communication skills. Add to this the current direction of travel, where AI will be able to automate more and more of the routine analytic side of consulting, and communication becomes a bigger and bigger part of what consultants are being paid for.

So, how do you make sure that your recommendations are relevant, smart, and engaging? The answer is to master what is known as CEO-level communication .

This art of speaking like a CEO can be quite challenging, as it often involves presenting information in effectively the opposite way to how you might normally.

To get it right, there are three key areas to focus on in your communications:

  • Top down : A CEO wants to hear the key message first. They will only ask for more details if they think that will actually be useful. Always consider what is absolutely critical for the CEO to know, and start with that. You can read more in our article on the Pyramid Principle .
  • Concise : This is not the time for "boiling the ocean" or listing an endless number possible solutions. CEOs, and thus consultants, want a structured, quick and concise recommendation for their business problem, that they can implement immediately.
  • Fact-based : Consultants share CEOs' hatred of opinions based on gut feel rather than facts. They want recommendations based on facts to make sure they are actually in control. Always go on to back up your conclusions with the relevant facts.

For more detail on all this, check out our full article on delivering recommendations .

Prep the right way

2.2. where are case interviews in the consulting selection process.

Not everyone who applies to a consulting firm will have a case interview - far from it!

In fact, case interviews are pretty expensive and inconvenient for firms to host, requiring them to take consultants off active projects and even fly them back to the office from location for in-person interviews. Ideally, firms want to cut costs and save time by narrowing down the candidate pool as much as possible before any live interviews.

As such, there are some hoops to jump through before you make it to interview rounds.

Firms will typically eliminate as much as 80% of the applicant pool before interviews start. For most firms, 50%+ of applicants might be cut based on resumes, before a similar cut is made on those remaining based on aptitude tests. McKinsey currently gives their Solve assessment to most applicants, but will use their resulting test scores alongside resumes to cut 70%+ of the candidate pool before interviews.

You'll need to be on top of your game to get as far as an interview with a top firm. Getting through the resume screen and any aptitude tests is an achievement in itself!

For readers not yet embroiled in the selection process themselves, let’s put case interviews in context and take a quick look at each stage in turn. Importantly, note that you might also be asked to solve case studies outside interviews as well…

2.2.1. Application screen

It’s sometimes easy to forget that such a large cut is made at the application stage. At larger firms, this will mean your resume and cover letter is looked at by some combination of AI tools, recruitment staff and junior consulting staff (often someone from your own university).

Only the best applications will be passed to later stages, so make sure to check out our free resume and cover letter guides, and potentially get help with editing , to give yourself the best chance possible.

2.2.2. Aptitude tests and online cases

This part of the selection process has been changing quickly in recent years and is increasingly beginning to blur into the traditionally separate case interview rounds.

In the past, GMAT or PST style tests were the norm. Firms then used increasingly sophisticated and often gamified aptitude tests, like the Pymetrics test currently used by several firms, including BCG and Bain, and the original version of McKinsey’s Solve assessment (then branded as the Problem Solving Game).

Now, though, there is a move towards delivering relatively sophisticated case studies online. For example, McKinsey has replaced half the old Solve assessment with an online case. BCG’s Casey chatbot case now directly replaces a live first round case interview, and in the new era of AI chatbots, we expect these online cases to quickly become more realistic and increasingly start to relieve firms of some of the costs of live interviews.

Our consultants collectively reckon that, over time, 50% of case interviews are likely to be replaced with these kinds of cases. We give some specific advice for online cases in section four. However, the important thing to note is that these are still just simulations of traditional case interviews - you still need to learn how to solve cases in precisely the same way, and your prep will largely remain the same.

2.2.3. Rounds of Interviews

Now, let’s not go overboard with talk of AI. Even in the long term, the client facing nature of consulting means that firms will have live case interviews for as long as they are hiring anyone. And in the immediate term, case interviews are still absolutely the core of consulting selection.

Before landing an offer at McKinsey, Bain, BCG or any similar firm, you won’t just have one case interview, but will have to complete four to six case interviews, usually divided into two rounds, with each interview lasting approximately 50-60 minutes .

Being invited to first round usually means two or three case interviews. As noted above, you might also be asked to complete an online case or similar alongside your first round interviews.

If you ace first round, you will be invited to second round to face the same again, but more gruelling. Only then - after up to six case interviews in total, can you hope to receive an offer.

2.3. Typical case interview format

Before we dive in to the nuts and bolts of case cracking, we should give you a bit more detail on what exactly you’ll be up against on interview day.

Case interviews come in very similar formats across the various consultancies where they are used.

The standard case interview can be thought of as splitting into two standalone sub-interviews. Thus “case interviews” can be divided into the case study itself and a “fit interview” section, where culture fit questions are asked.

This can lead to a bit of confusion, as the actual case interview component might take up as little as half of your scheduled “case interview”. You need to make sure you are ready for both aspects.

To illustrate, here is the typical case interview timeline:

  • First 15-30 minutes: Fit Interview - with questions assessing your motivation to be a consultant in that specific firm and your traits around leadership and teamwork. Learn more about the fit interview in our in-depth article here .
  • Next 30-40 minutes: Case Interview - solving a case study
  • Last 5 minutes: Fit Interview again - this time focussing on your questions for your interviewer.

Both the Case and Fit interviews play crucial roles in the finial hiring decision. There is no “average” taken between case and fit interviews: if your performance is not up to scratch in either of the two, you will not be able to move on to the next interview round or get an offer.

NB: No case without fit

Note that, even if you have only been told you are having a case interview or otherwise are just doing a case study, always be prepared to answer fit questions. At most firms, it is standard practice to include some fit questions in all case interviews, even if there are also separate explicit fit interviews, and interviewers will almost invariably include some of these questions around your case. This is perfectly natural - imagine how odd and artificial it would be to show up to an interview, simply do a case and leave again, without talking about anything else with the interviewer before or after.

2.4. Differences between first and second round interviews

Despite interviews in the first and second round following the same format, second/final round interviews will be significantly more intense. The seniority of the interviewer, time pressure (with up to three interviews back-to-back), and the sheer value of the job at stake will likely make a second round consulting case interview one of the most challenging moments of your professional life.

There are three key differences between the two rounds:

  • Time Pressure : Final round case interviews test your ability to perform under pressure, with as many as three interviews in a row and often only very small breaks between them.
  • Focus : Since second round interviewers tend to be more senior (usually partners with 12+ years experience) and will be more interested in your personality and ability to handle challenges independently. Some partners will drill down into your experiences and achievements to the extreme. They want to understand how you react to challenges and your ability to identify and learn from past mistakes.
  • Psychological Pressure: While case interviews in the first round are usually more focused on you simply cracking the case, second round interviewers often employ a "bad cop" strategy to test the way you react to challenges and uncertainty.

2.5. Differences between firms

For the most part, a case interview is a case interview. However, firms will have some differences in the particular ways they like to do things in terms of both the case study and the fit component.

As we’ll see, these differences aren’t hugely impactful in terms of how you prepare. That said, it's always good to know as much as possible about what you will be going up against.

2.5.1. Candidate led vs interviewer led case formats

Most consulting case interview questions test your ability to crack a broad problem, with a case prompt often going something like:

" How much would you pay to secure the rights to run a restaurant in the British Museum? "

You, as a candidate, are then expected to identify your path to solve the case (that is, provide a structure), leveraging your interviewer to collect the data and test your assumptions.

This is known as a “candidate-led” case interview and is used by Bain, BCG and other firms.

However, a McKinsey case interview - especially in the first round - is slightly different, with the interviewer controlling the pace and direction of the conversation much more than with other case interviews.

At McKinsey, your interviewer will ask you a set of pre-determined questions, regardless of your initial structure. For each question, you will have to understand the problem, come up with a mini structure, ask for additional data (if necessary) and come to the conclusion that answers the question.

McKinsey’s cases are thus referred to as “interviewer-led”. This more structured format of case also shows up in online cases by other firms - notably including BCG’s Casey chatbot (with the amusing result that practising McKinsey-style cases can be a great addition when prepping for BCG).

Essentially, these interviewer-led case studies are large cases made up of lots of mini-cases. You still use basically the same method as you would for standard (or candidate-led) cases - the main difference is simply that, instead of using that method to solve one big case, you are solving several mini-cases sequentially.

2.5.2. The McKinsey PEI

McKinsey brands its fit aspect of interviews as the Personal Experience Interview or PEI. Despite the different name, this is really much the same interview you will be going up against in Bain, BCG and any similar firms.

McKinsey does have a reputation for pushing candidates a little harder with fit or PEI questions, focusing on one story per interview and drilling down further into the specific details each time. We discuss this tendency more in our fit interview article. However, no top end firm is going to go easy on you and you should absolutely be ready for the same level of grilling at Bain, BCG and others. Thus any difference isn’t hugely salient in terms of prep.

2.6. How are things changing in 2023?

For the foreseeable future, you are going to have to go through multiple live case interviews to secure any decent consulting job. These might increasingly happen via Zoom rather than in person, but they should remain largely the same otherwise.

However, things are changing and the rise of AI in recent months seems pretty much guaranteed to accelerate existing trends.

Even before the explosive development of AI chatbots like ChatGPT we have seen in recent months, automation was already starting to change the recruitment process.

As we mentioned, case interviews are expensive and inconvenient for firms to run. Ideally, then, firms will try to reduce the number of interviews required for recruitment as far as possible. For many years, tests of various kinds served to cut down the applicant pool and thus the number of interviews. However, these tests had a limited capacity to assess candidates against the full consulting skillset in the way that case interviews do so well.

More recently, though, the development of online testing has allowed for more and more advanced assessments. Top consulting firms have been leveraging screening tests that better and better capture the same skillset as case interviews. Eventually this is converging on automated case studies. We see this very clearly with the addition of the Redrock case to McKinsey’s Solve assessment.

As these digital cases become closer to the real thing, the line between test and interview blurs. Online cases don’t just reduce the number of candidates to interview, but start directly replacing interviews.

Case in point here is BCG’s Casey chatbot . Previously, BCG had deployed less advanced online cases and similar tests to weed out some candidates before live case interviews began. Now, though, Casey actually replaces one first round case interview.

Casey, at time of writing, is still a relatively “dumb” chatbot, basically running through a pre-set script. The Whatsapp-like interface does a lot of work to make it feel like one is chatting to a “real person” - the chatbot itself, though, cannot provide feedback or nudges to candidates as would a human interviewer.

We fully expect that, as soon as BCG and other firms can train a truer AI, these online cases will become more widespread and start replacing more live interviews.

We discuss the likely impacts of advanced AI on consulting recruitment and the industry more broadly in our blog.

Here, though, the real message is that you should expect to run into digital cases as well as traditional case interviews.

Luckily, despite any changes in specific format, you will still need to master the same fundamental skills and prepare in much the same way.

We’ll cover a few ways to help prepare for chatbot cases in section four. Ultimately, though, firms are looking for the same problem solving ability and mindset as a real interviewer. Especially as chatbots get better at mimicking a real interviewer, candidates who are well prepared for case cracking in general should have no problem with AI administered cases.

2.6.1. Automated fit interviews

Analogous to online cases, in recent years there has been a trend towards automated, “one way” fit interviews, with these typically being administered for consultancies by specialist contractors like HireVue or SparkHire.

These are kind of like Zoom interviews, but if the interviewer didn’t show up. Instead you will be given fit questions to answer and must record your answer in your computer webcam. Your response will then go on to be assessed by an algorithm, scoring both what you say and how you say it.

Again, with advances in AI, it is easy to imagine these automated interviews going from fully scripted interactions, where all candidates are asked the same list of questions, to a more interactive experience. Thus, we might soon arrive at a point where you are being grilled on the details of your stories - McKinsey PEI style - but by a bot rather than a human.

We include some tips on this kind of “one way” fit interview in section six here.

3. What do I need to learn to solve cases?

If you’re new to case cracking. You might feel a bit hopeless when you see a difficult case question, not having any idea where to start.

In fact though, cracking cases is much like playing chess. The rules you need to know to get started are actually pretty simple. What will make you really proficient is time and practice.

In this section, we’ll run through a high level overview of everything you need to know, linking to more detailed resources at every step.

3.1. Business fundamentals

Obviously, you are going to need to be familiar with basic business concepts in order to understand the case studies you are given in the first instance.

If you are coming from a business undergrad, an MBA or are an experienced hire, you might well have this covered already.

However, many consultants will be entering from engineering or similar backgrounds and the major consulting firms are hiring more and more PhDs and non-MBA master's graduates from all subjects. These individuals will need to get up to speed on business fundamentals.

Luckily, you don’t need a degree-level understanding of business to crack interview cases, and a lot of the information you will pick up by osmosis as you read through articles like this and go through cases.

However, some things you will just need to sit down and learn. We cover everything you need to know in some detail in our Case Academy course. However, some examples here of things you need to learn are:

  • Basic accounting (particularly how to understand all the elements of a balance sheet)
  • Basic economics
  • Basic marketing
  • Basic strategy

Note, though, that learning the very basics of business is the beginning rather than the end of your journey.

Once you are able to “speak business” at a rudimentary level, you should try to “become fluent” and immerse yourself in reading/viewing/listening to as wide a variety of business material as possible, getting a feel for all kinds of companies and industries - and especially the kinds of problems that can come up in each context and how they are solved.

The material put out by the consulting firms themselves is a great place to start, but you should also follow the business news and find out about different companies and sectors as much as possible between now and interviews. Remember, if you’re going to be a consultant, this should be fun rather than a chore!

3.2. How to solve cases like a real consultant

This is the really important bit.

If you look around online for material on how to solve case studies, a lot of what you find will set out framework-based approaches. However, as we have mentioned, these frameworks tend to break down with more complex, unique cases - with these being exactly the kind of tough case studies you can expect to be given in your interviews.

To address this problem, the MyConsultingCoach team has developed a new, proprietary approach to case cracking that replicates how top management consultants approach actual engagements.

MyConsultingCoach’s Problem Driven Structure approach is a universal problem solving method that can be applied to any business problem , irrespective of its nature.

As opposed to just selecting a generic framework for each case, the Problem Driven Structure approach works by generating a bespoke structure for each individual question and is a simplified version of the roadmap McKinsey consultants use when working on engagements.

The canonical seven steps from McKinsey on real projects are simplified to four for case interview questions, as the analysis required for a six-month engagement is somewhat less than that needed for a 45-minute case study. However, the underlying flow is the same.

This video has more information on how frameworks can be unreliable and how we address this problem:

Otherwise, let's zoom in to see how our method actually works in more detail:

3.2.1. Identify the problem

Identifying the problem means properly understanding the prompt/question you are given, so you get to the actual point of the case.

This might sound simple, but cases are often very tricky, and many candidates irretrievably mess things up within the first few minutes of starting. Often, they won’t notice this has happened until they are getting to the end of their analysis. Then, they suddenly realise that they have misunderstood the case prompt - and have effectively been answering the wrong question all along!

With no time to go back and start again, there is nothing to do. Even if there were time, making such a silly mistake early on will make a terrible impression on their interviewer, who might well have written them off already. The interview is scuppered and all the candidate’s preparation has been for nothing.

This error is so galling as it is so readily avoidable.

Our method prevents this problem by placing huge emphasis on a full understanding of the case prompt. This lays the foundations for success as, once we have identified the fundamental, underlying problem our client is facing, we focus our whole analysis around finding solutions to this specific issue.

Now, some case interview prompts are easy to digest. For example, “Our client, a supermarket, has seen a decline in profits. How can we bring them up?”. However, many of the prompts given in interviews for top firms are much more difficult and might refer to unfamiliar business areas or industries. For example, “How much would you pay for a banking license in Ghana?” or “What would be your key areas of concern be when setting up an NGO?”

Don’t worry if you have no idea how you might go about tackling some of these prompts!

In our article on identifying the problem and in our full lesson on the subject in our MCC Academy course, we teach a systematic, four step approach to identifying the problem , as well as running through common errors to ensure you start off on the right foot every time!

This is summarised here:

Four Steps to Identify the Problem

Following this method lets you excel where your competitors mess up and get off to a great start in impressing your interviewer!

3.2.2. Build your problem driven structure

After you have properly understood the problem, the next step is to successfully crack a case is to draw up a bespoke structure that captures all the unique features of the case.

This is what will guide your analysis through the rest of the case study and is precisely the same method used by real consultants working on real engagements.

Of course, it might be easier here to simply roll out one an old-fashioned framework, and a lot of candidates will do so. This is likely to be faster at this stage and requires a lot less thought than our problem-driven structure approach.

However, whilst our problem driven structure approach requires more work from you, our method has the advantage of actually working in the kind of complex case studies where generic frameworks fail - that is exactly the kind of cases you can expect at an MBB interview .

Since we effectively start from first principles every time, we can tackle any case with the same overarching method. Simple or complex, every case is the same to you and you don’t have to gamble a job on whether a framework will actually work

In practice, structuring a problem with our method means drawing up either an issue tree or an hypothesis tree , depending on how you are trying to address the problem.

These trees break down the overall problem into a set of smaller problems that you can then solve individually. Representing this on a diagram also makes it easy for both you and your interviewer to keep track of your analysis.

To see how this is done, let’s look at the issue tree below breaking down the revenues of an airline:

Frame the Airline Case Study

These revenues can be segmented as the number of customers multiplied by the average ticket price. The number of customers can be further broken down into a number of flights multiplied by the number of seats, times average occupancy rate. The node corresponding to the average ticket price can then be segmented further.

It is worth noting that the same problem can be structured in multiple valid ways by choosing different means to segment the key issues.

That said, not all valid structures are equally useful in solving the underlying problem. A good structure fulfils several requirements - including MECE-ness , level consistency, materiality, simplicity, and actionability. It’s important to put in the time to master segmentation, so you can choose a scheme isn’t only valid, but actually useful in addressing the problem.

After taking the effort to identify the problem properly, an advantage of our method is that it will help ensure you stay focused on that same fundamental problem throughout. This might not sound like much, but many candidates end up getting lost in their own analysis, veering off on huge tangents and returning with an answer to a question they weren’t asked.

Another frequent issue - particularly with certain frameworks - is that candidates finish their analysis and, even if they have successfully stuck to the initial question, they have not actually reached a definite solution. Instead, they might simply have generated a laundry list of pros and cons, with no clear single recommendation for action.

Clients employ consultants for actionable answers, and this is what is expected in the case interview. The problem driven structure excels in ensuring that everything you do is clearly related back to the key question in a way that will generate a definitive answer. Thus, the problem driven structure builds in the hypothesis driven approach so characteristic of real consulting practice.

You can learn how to set out your own problem driven structures in our article here and in our full lesson in the MCC Academy course.

Join thousands of other candidates cracking cases like pros

3.2.3. lead the analysis.

A problem driven structure might ensure we reach a proper solution eventually, but how do we actually get there?

We call this step " leading the analysis ", and it is the process whereby you systematically navigate through your structure, identifying the key factors driving the issue you are addressing.

Generally, this will mean continuing to grow your tree diagram, further segmenting what you identify as the most salient end nodes and thus drilling down into the most crucial factors causing the client’s central problem.

Once you have gotten right down into the detail of what is actually causing the company’s issues, solutions can then be generated quite straightforwardly.

To see this process in action, we can return to our airline revenue example:

Lead the analysis for the Airline Case Study

Let’s say we discover the average ticket price to be a key issue in the airline’s problems. Looking closer at the drivers of average ticket price, we find that the problem lies with economy class ticket prices. We can then further segment that price into the base fare and additional items such as food.

Having broken down the issue to such a fine-grained level, solutions occur quite naturally. In this case, we can suggest incentivising the crew to increase onboard sales, improving assortment in the plane, or offering discounts for online purchases.

Our article on leading the analysis is a great primer on the subject, with our video lesson in the MCC Academy providing the most comprehensive guide available.

3.2.4. Provide recommendations

So you have a solution - but you aren’t finished yet!

Now, you need to deliver your solution as a final recommendation.

This should be done as if you are briefing a busy CEO and thus should be a one minute, top-down, concise, structured, clear, and fact-based account of your findings.

The brevity of the final recommendation belies its importance. In real life consulting, the recommendation is what the client has potentially paid millions for - from their point of view, it is the only thing that matters.

In an interview, your performance in this final summing up of your case is going to significantly colour your interviewer’s parting impression of you - and thus your chances of getting hired!

So, how do we do it right?

Barbara Minto's Pyramid Principle elegantly sums up almost everything required for a perfect recommendation. The answer comes first , as this is what is most important. This is then supported by a few key arguments , which are in turn buttressed by supporting facts .

Across the whole recommendation, the goal isn’t to just summarise what you have done. Instead, you are aiming to synthesize your findings to extract the key "so what?" insight that is useful to the client going forward.

All this might seem like common sense, but it is actually the opposite of how we relay results in academia and other fields. There, we typically move from data, through arguments and eventually to conclusions. As such, making good recommendations is a skill that takes practice to master.

We can see the Pyramid Principle illustrated in the diagram below:

The Pyramid principle often used in consulting

To supplement the basic Pyramid Principle scheme, we suggest candidates add a few brief remarks on potential risks and suggested next steps . This helps demonstrate the ability for critical self-reflection and lets your interviewer see you going the extra mile.

The combination of logical rigour and communication skills that is so definitive of consulting is particularly on display in the final recommendation.

Despite it only lasting 60 seconds, you will need to leverage a full set of key consulting skills to deliver a really excellent recommendation and leave your interviewer with a good final impression of your case solving abilities.

Our specific article on final recommendations and the specific video lesson on the same topic within our MCC Academy are great, comprehensive resources. Beyond those, our lesson on consulting thinking and our articles on MECE and the Pyramid Principle are also very useful.

3.3. Common case types and the building blocks to solve them

You should tackle each new case on its own merits. However, that’s not to say there aren’t recurring themes that come up fairly reliably in cases - there absolutely are. Business is business and case studies will often feature issues like profitability, competition etc.

Old fashioned framework approaches would have you simply select a defined framework for each kind of case and, in effect, just run the algorithm and wait for a solution to fall out.

We’ve already explained how frameworks can let you down. In this context, too many candidates will fall into the trap of selecting a framework for that case type that simply won’t work for their specific case.

The counterpoint in favour of frameworks, though, is that they are at least fast and prevent you having to start from the ground up with a common kind of case.

Ideally, you should have the best of both worlds - and this is why, in our articles on this site and in our MCC Academy course, we have developed a set of “building bocks” for common case themes.

As they name suggests, building blocks give you modular components for different kinds of case to help build out your own custom structures faster. These then allow you to leverage the symmetries between cases without inheriting the inflexibility of frameworks.

Let’s take a look at five different case types and get a brief idea of how our building block approach helps you with each. You can find more detail on each in the full length articles linked, as well as in the full-length video lessons in our MCC Academy course.

3.3.1. Estimation

Consultants need to push forward to provide definitive recommendations to clients in a timely manner despite typically not having access to full information on a problem. Estimation of important quantities is therefore at the heart of real life consulting work.

Estimation is thus just as fundamental to case cracking.

A case interview might centre on an estimation question, and this might be quite common for a first round interview. However, estimation is also very likely to be a crucial part of pretty well any other kind of case question you receive is likely to include estimation as a crucial component of your analysis.

The kinds of estimation you might be asked to make in a case interview can be very daunting:

  • How many bank branches are there in Italy?
  • How many cars are sold in Berlin in one year?
  • How many people will buy the latest high-tech smartphone on the market?

You might have no idea where to begin with these examples. However, tempting as it might be, your answer cannot ever be a simple guess .

A decent estimation does have a guessed element - though this should really be an educated guess based on some pre-existing knowledge. However, this guessed element is always then combined with a rigorous quantitative method to arrive at a reasonable estimation.

In context of a case interview, it’s important to realise that your interviewer doesn’t really care about the right answer (they don’t need to ask you to find out, after all). What’s important is showing the rational process by which you get to your answer.

A guess that was somehow exactly correct is no good compared to a “wrong” answer that was reached by a very sensible, intelligent process of estimation. In cases, this method will often be a matter of segmentation.

So, where would we start in working out how many cars are sold in Berlin, for example?

The key to estimation case questions is the ability to logically break down the problem into more manageable pieces. In consulting case studies, this will generally mean segmenting a wider population to find a particular target group. For example, starting from the total population of Berlin and narrowing down to the cohort of individuals who will buy a car that year.

There are usually many ways to segment the same starting population, and several different segmentation schemes might be equally valid. However, it is crucial to choose the specific method best suited to the goal in answering the question and allowing you to best leverage the data you have available.

Segmentation must be allied with assumptions in order to arrive at an estimation. These assumptions are the “guessed” element of estimations we mentioned above. Assumptions cannot just be plucked from thin air, but must always be reasonable .

The example below showcases both the segmentation and assumptions made in an estimation of the size of the wedding planning market in London:

Estimation Example Structure

Our articles on estimation and the MECE concept are great starting points in getting to grips with consulting estimation. However, the best place to learn how to make estimations is with the dedicated building block video lesson in our MCC Academy course.

Those of you from physics or engineering backgrounds will probably see a lot in common with Fermi questions . We have plenty of estimation cases for you to work through in our free case library. However, Fermi questions are a great way of getting a little extra practice and you can find a lifetime’s supply online.

3.3.2. Profitability

The fundamental goal of any normal business is to maximise profits - nobody is getting up and going to work to lose money. Even Silicon Valley tech start-ups are supposed to be profitable some day!

Profitability problems are thus bread and butter issues for management consultants.

Clients often tell consultants broadly the same story. The business was doing in well in recent years, with strong profits. However, some recent turn of events has upset the status quo and led to concerns around profit levels. Consultants are brought in as businesses are often sufficiently complex that it can be difficult to figure out precisely where and why the company is losing money - let alone how to then reverse the situation and restore healthy profits.

Despite steady growth in customer flow, the Walfort supermarket chain has seen falling profits in the past year. What is the reason for this decline?

Understanding profitability ultimately means understanding the various components that determine a company’s profit. You will need to learn to decompose profit first into revenues and costs (profit being the synthesis of these two factors). Crucially, you then need to segment further, distinguishing different specific revenue streams and separating various fixed and variable costs.

To take an example, just examining the revenue side of profit, the incoming revenues for an insurance firm might be broken down as follows:

Insurance Revenues

Improving profitability will inherently mean increasing revenues and/or decreasing costs. To solve profitability problems, we thus have to understand the ways we can minimise different costs, as well as ways to drive sales and/or optimise pricing to increase revenue. Importantly, you must be able to judge which of these options is best suited to address specific scenarios.

The key to tackling the complex kind of profitability questions given by MBB-level consultancies lies in this proper segmentation.

By contrast, old-fashioned case interview frameworks will simply have you look at aggregate cost and revenue data before recommending generic cost-cutting or revenue-driving measures. However, this will often lead to negative outcomes in more involved cases, making matters worse for the client.

For example, it might well be that a company actually makes a loss when it serves a certain cohort of customers. An airline, for instance, might lose money on economy class customers but make a healthy profit on each business class customer. Attempts to boost revenue by increasing sales across the board might actually reduce profit further by increasing the number of economy class customers. What is required is targeted measures to increase focus on business class and/or mitigate economy class losses.

You can start learning to segment these kinds of cases properly in our article on profitability , whilst the best way to really master profitability questions is our full lesson on the subject in the Building Blocks section of our MCC Academy course.

3.3.3. Pricing

For a company to be profitable at all, it is a pre-requisite that it charges the right price for whatever it sells. However, establishing what price to charge for any one product - or indeed a whole suite of related products - can be a highly complex business.

Consultants are often engaged to negotiate the many variables, with all their complex interdependencies, at play in pricing. Correspondingly, then, pricing is a common theme in case interviews.

  • A company launches a new smartphone with a significantly improved camera. How much should they charge?
  • A doughnut chain wants to start selling coffee in their shops. How much should they charge per cup?

Clearly, lot of different factors can influence the answers to these questions, and it can be difficult to know where to start. To get a handle on all this complexity, you will need to take a methodical, structured approach.

To really understand pricing, you must begin from fundamentals like the customer’s willingness to pay, the value captured by the company, and the value created for the customer. These basics are shown in the diagram below:

Pricing Basics

This might seem simple enough, but the exact level at which prices are ultimately set is determined by a whole host of factors, including product availability, market trends, and the need to maintain a competitive position within the market. In particular, if we are changing the price of an existing product, we must consider how the price elasticity of demand might cause sales to fluctuate.

Our four-step method for pricing starts from establishing the customer’s next best alternative, calculating the value added by our own product, and working from there. A summary of this method is given, along with an overview of pricing in general, in our article on the subject . However, the most complete resource is our pricing lesson in the MCC Academy .

3.3.4. Valuation

Valuation is fundamental to any kind of investment. Before allocating capital towards a particular opportunity, an investor must understand precisely what value it holds and how this compares to the other available options.

In short, valuation tells us how much we should be willing to pay to acquire a company or an asset.

There are many ways to value an asset - indeed the finer points are still subject to research in both the academic and private sectors.

Standard ways to assign value include asset-based valuations (notably the Net Asset Value or NAV) and the various multiples so widely used by market traders.

However, in consulting case interviews, you will only usually need to be familiar with Net Present Value (NPV) . This means you need to learn and master the NPV equation:

NPV Equation

CF = Cash Flow r = Discount Rate

Whilst this is a pretty simple equation on the face of it, in order to make proper use of it, you will also need to develop a feel for interest/discount rates appropriate to different cases. This will be essential, as you will often have to estimate rational values for these rates for different investments before plugging those values into the NPV equation. Our Case Academy course has more detail here.

Note, though, that NPV is only really half the story.

NPV provides a kind of “absolute” value for an asset. However, the fact is that the worth of any asset will be different for different buyers , depending largely upon what the buyer already owns. In just the same way a spare clutch for a 1975 Ford will be a lot less valuable to a cyclist than to someone restoring the relevant classic car, so a courier business will be more valuable to an online retailer than to an airline.

As such, what we call the Total Enterprise Value (TEV) of an asset is calculated as a function of that asset’s NPV and of the potential cost and revenue synergies resulting from an acquisition. This is shown in the useful structure below:

TEV

You can learn more about all aspects of valuation in our article here , as well as in our dedicated video lesson in MCC Academy . These include guides to the kind of interest rates typically required to finance different kinds of investment.

3.3.5. Competitive Interactions

Most of what we’ve discussed so far in terms of case themes and our building block approach to them will all depend upon the prevailing competitive landscape our client exists within. Product prices, profit levels and ultimately valuations can all change over time in response to competition.

What is more, the zero sum dynamics of competitive interactions mean that these things can change quickly .

Companies enjoying near monopolies for years or even decades can quickly see their values go to zero, or near enough, in the face of some innovation by a competitor coming onto the market.

Nokia and Kodak thoroughly dominated the mobile phone and photography markets respectively - until new companies with new products pulled the rug out from under them and led to precipitous collapses.

New market entrants or old competitors with new ideas can throw a company’s whole business model up in the air overnight . Complex decisions about profound changes need to be made yesterday. Firms trying to save themselves will often slash prices in attempts to maintain sales - though this can actually make things worse and result in a corporate death-spiral. Consultants are then frequently called in to help companies survive - with this type of engagement carrying over to inform case interview questions.

You are running an airline and a low-cost competitor, like Ryanair, decides to start operating on your routes. You are rapidly losing customers to their lower fares. How do you respond?

Your eventual solutions to competitive interaction problems will likely need to be novel and unique to the situation. However, the process by which we understand competitive interactions and move towards those solutions is usually very methodical, moving through the limited dimensions in which a company can take action.

The following structure neatly encodes the general options open to responding to new sources of competition:

Competitive Interaction Structure

Of course, we would never suggest that you blanket-apply any strict, inflexible methodology to a whole swathe of case questions – this is precisely the approach that causes so much trouble for candidates using old-fashioned frameworks.

This structure is only a starting point - a shortcut to a bespoke framework specific to the case question in hand. You might well have to alter the details of the structure shown and you will almost certainly have to expand it as you lead the analysis . How you build out your structure and the solutions you provide are necessarily going to depend upon the specific details of the case question.

Thus, in order to deal with competitive interactions, you will need to put in the time to understand how the different strategies available function - as well as how competitors might then react to implementing such strategies. With enough practice, though, soon you won’t be fazed by even the most complex cases of competition between firms.

You can learn more in our article here and in our dedicated video lesson on competitive interaction in the MCC Academy case interview course.

3.4. Mental mathematics

Almost every interview case study will feature some mental mathematics and this is an area where many many candidates let themselves down.

As such, it makes sense to out in the time and make sure you are fully proficient.

Nothing beyond high school level is required, but you probably don’t do much mental arithmetic day to day and will likely need to practice quite a lot to get good enough to reliably perform at pace, under pressure.

We give a high-level overview of what you need to know in our consulting math article , but devote a whole section of our MCC Academy course to a deep dive on consulting math, with plenty of practice material to get you up to scratch.

4. How do I practice for case interviews?

As we said above - case interviews are much like chess. The rules are relatively quick to learn, but you need to practice a lot to get good.

If you’re working through our MCC Academy course, we recommend getting through the core Problem Driven Structure section. After that, you should be practising alongside working through the remainder of the course and beyond. However you do things, you need to get up to speed with the fundamentals before practice is going to do much more than confuse you.

Of course, if you’re enrolled in one of our mentoring programmes , your mentor will let you know precisely when and how you should be scheduling practice, as well as tracking your progress throughout.

4.1. Solo Practice

For solitary preparation, one of the best uses of your time is to work on your mental mathematics . This skill is neglected by many applicants - much to their immediate regret in the case interview. Find our mental math tool here or in our course, and practice at least ten minutes per day, from day one until the day before the interview.

Once you've covered our Building Blocks section, you should then start working through the cases in My Consulting Coach's case bank alongside your work on the course. This is a large library of case interview questions and answers in different formats and difficulties.

To build your confidence, start out on easier case questions, work through with the solutions, and don't worry about time. As you get better, you can move on to more difficult cases and try to get through them more quickly. You should practice around eight case studies on your own to build your confidence.

4.2. Peer practice

One you have worked through eight cases solo, you should be ready to simulate the interview more closely and start working with another person.

Here, many candidates turn to peer practice - that is, doing mock case interviews with friends, classmates or others also applying to consulting.

If you’re in university, and especially in business school, there will very likely be a consulting club for you to join and do lots of case practice with. If you don’t have anyone to practice, though, or if you just want to get a bit more volume in with others, our free meeting board lets you find fellow applicants from around the world with whom to practice.

4.3. Professional practice

You can do a lot practising by yourself and with peers. However, nothing will bring up your skills so quickly and profoundly as working with a real consultant.

Perhaps think about it like boxing. You can practice drills and work on punch bags all you want, but at some point you need to get into the ring and do some actual sparring if you ever want to be ready to fight.

Of course, it isn’t possible to secure the time of experienced top-tier consultants for free. However, when considering whether you should invest to boost your chances of success, it is worth considering the difference in your salary over even a just few years between getting into a top-tier firm versus a second-tier one. In the light of thousands in increased annual earnings (easily accumulating into millions over multiple years), it becomes clear that getting expert interview help really is one of the best investments you can make in your own future.

Should you decide to make this step, MyConsultingCoach can help, offering the highest quality case interview coaching service available . Each MCC case coach is selected as an MBB consultant with two or more years of experience and strong coaching expertise.

Case interview coaching is hugely beneficial in itself. However, for those who want to genuinely maximise their chances of securing a job offer - and especially for time-poor, busy professionals or hard-pressed students who want to take the guesswork and wasted time out of their case interview prep - we also offer a much more comprehensive service .

With one of our bespoke mentoring programmes , you are paired with a 5+ year experienced, ex-MBB mentor of your choosing, who will then oversee your whole case interview preparation from start to finish - giving you your best possible chance of landing a job!

4.4. Practice for online cases

Standard preparation for interview case studies will carry directly over to online cases.

However, if you want to do some more specific prep, you can work through cases solo to a timer and using a calculator and/or Excel (online cases generally allow calculators and second computers to help you, whilst these are banned in live case interviews).

Older PST-style questions also make great prep, but a particularly good simulation is the self-assessment tests included in our Case Academy course . These multiple choice business questions conducted with a strict time limit are great preparation for the current crop of online cases.

5. Fit interviews

As we’ve noted, even something billed as a case interview is very likely to contain a fit interview as a subset.

We have an article on fit interviews and also include a full set of lessons on how to answer fit questions properly as a subset of our comprehensive Case Academy course .

Here though, the important thing to convey is that you take preparing for fit questions every bit as seriously as you do case prep.

Since they sound the same as you might encounter when interviewing for other industries, the temptation is to regard these as “just normal interview questions”.

However, consulting firms take your answers to these questions a good deal more seriously than elsewhere.

This isn’t just for fluffy “corporate culture” reasons. The long hours and close teamwork, as well as the client-facing nature of management consulting, mean that your personality and ability to get on with others is going to be a big part of making you a tolerable and effective co-worker.

If you know you’ll have to spend 14+ hour working days with someone you hire and that your annual bonus depends on them not alienating clients, you better believe you’ll pay attention to their character in interview.

There are also hard-nosed financial reasons for the likes of McKinsey, Bain and BCG to drill down so hard on your answers.

In particular, top consultancies have huge issues with staff retention. The average management consultant only stays with these firms for around two years before they have moved on to a new industry.

In some cases, consultants bail out because they can’t keep up with the arduous consulting lifestyle of long hours and endless travel. In many instances, though, departing consultants are lured away by exit opportunities - such as the well trodden paths towards internal strategy roles, private equity or becoming a start-up founder.

Indeed, many individuals will intentionally use a two year stint in consulting as something like an MBA they are getting paid for - giving them accelerated exposure to the business world and letting them pivot into something new.

Consulting firms want to get a decent return on investment for training new recruits. Thus, they want hires who not only intend to stick with consulting longer-term, but also have a temperament that makes this feasible and an overall career trajectory where it just makes sense for them to stay put.

This should hammer home the point that, if you want to get an offer, you need to be fully prepared to answer fit questions - and to do so excellently - any time you have a case interview.

6. Interview day - what to expect, with tips

Of course, all this theory is well and good, but a lot of readers might be concerned about what exactly to expect in real life . It’s perfectly reasonable to want to get as clear a picture as possible here - we all want to know what we are going up against when we face a new challenge!

Indeed, it is important to think about your interview in more holistic terms, rather than just focusing on small aspects of analysis. Getting everything exactly correct is less important than the overall approach you take to reasoning and how you communicate - and candidates often lose sight of this fact.

In this section, then, we’ll run through the case interview experience from start to finish, directing you to resources with more details where appropriate. As a supplement to this, the following video from Bain is excellent. It portrays an abridged version of a case interview, but is very useful as a guide to what to expect - not just from Bain, but from McKinsey, BCG and any other high-level consulting firm.

6.1. Getting started

Though you might be shown through to the office by a staff member, usually your interviewer will come and collect you from a waiting area. Either way, when you first encounter them, you should greet your interviewer with a warm smile and a handshake (unless they do not offer their hand). Be confident without verging into arrogance. You will be asked to take a seat in the interviewer’s office, where the interview can then begin.

6.1.1. First impressions

In reality, your assessment begins before you even sit down at your interviewer’s desk. Whether at a conscious level or not, the impression you make within the first few seconds of meeting your interviewer is likely to significantly inform the final hiring decision (again, whether consciously or not).

Your presentation and how you hold yourself and behave are all important. If this seems strange, consider that, if hired, you will be personally responsible for many clients’ impressions of the firm. These things are part of the job! Much of material on the fit interview is useful here, whilst we also cover first impressions and presentation generally in our article on what to wear to interview .

As we have noted above, your interview might start with a fit segment - that is, with the interviewer asking questions about your experiences, your soft skills, and motivation to want to join consulting generally and that firm in particular. In short, the kinds of things a case study can’t tell them about you. We have a fit interview article and course to get you up to speed here.

6.1.2. Down to business

Following an initial conversation, your interviewer will introduce your case study , providing a prompt for the question you have to answer. You will have a pen and paper in front of you and should (neatly) note down the salient pieces of information (keep this up throughout the interview).

It is crucial here that you don’t delve into analysis or calculations straight away . Case prompts can be tricky and easy to misunderstand, especially when you are under pressure. Rather, ask any questions you need to fully understand the case question and then validate that understanding with the interviewer before you kick off any analysis. Better to eliminate mistakes now than experience that sinking feeling of realising you have gotten the whole thing wrong halfway through your case!

This process is covered in our article on identifying the problem and in greater detail in our Case Academy lesson on that subject.

6.1.3. Analysis

Once you understand the problem, you should take a few seconds to set your thoughts in order and draw up an initial structure for how you want to proceed. You might benefit from utilising one or more of our building blocks here to make a strong start. Present this to your interviewer and get their approval before you get into the nuts and bolts of analysis.

We cover the mechanics of how to structure your problem and lead the analysis in our articles here and here and more thoroughly in the MCC Case Academy . What it is important to convey here, though, is that your case interview is supposed to be a conversation rather than a written exam . Your interviewer takes a role closer to a co-worker than an invigilator and you should be conversing with them throughout.

Indeed, how you communicate with your interviewer and explain your rationale is a crucial element of how you will be assessed. Case questions in general, are not posed to see if you can produce the correct answer, but rather to see how you think . Your interviewer wants to see you approach the case in a structured, rational fashion. The only way they are going to know your thought processes, though, is if you tell them!

To demonstrate this point, here is another excellent video from Bain, where candidates are compared.

Note that multiple different answers to each question are considered acceptable and that Bain is primarily concerned with the thought processes of the candidate’s exhibit .

Another reason why communication is absolutely essential to case interview success is the simple reason that you will not have all the facts you need to complete your analysis at the outset. Rather, you will usually have to ask the interviewer for additional data throughout the case to allow you to proceed .

NB: Don't be let down by your math!

Your ability to quickly and accurately interpret these charts and other figures under pressure is one of the skills that is being assessed. You will also need to make any calculations with the same speed and accuracy (without a calculator!). As such, be sure that you are up to speed on your consulting math .

6.1.4. Recommendation

Finally, you will be asked to present a recommendation. This should be delivered in a brief, top-down "elevator pitch" format , as if you are speaking to a time-pressured CEO. Again here, how you communicate will be just as important as the details of what you say, and you should aim to speak clearly and with confidence.

For more detail on how to give the perfect recommendation, take a look at our articles on the Pyramid Principle and providing recommendations , as well the relevant lesson within MCC Academy .

6.1.5. Wrapping up

After your case is complete, there might be a few more fit questions - including a chance for you to ask some questions of the interviewer . This is your opportunity to make a good parting impression.

We deal with the details in our fit interview resources. However, it is always worth bearing in mind just how many candidates your interviewers are going to see giving similar answers to the same questions in the same office. A pretty obvious pre-requisite to being considered for a job is that your interviewer remembers you in the first place. Whilst you shouldn't do something stupid just to be noticed, asking interesting parting questions is a good way to be remembered.

Now, with the interview wrapped up, it’s time to shake hands, thank the interviewer for their time and leave the room .

You might have other interviews or tests that day or you might be heading home. Either way, if know that you did all you could to prepare, you can leave content in the knowledge that you have the best possible chance of receiving an email with a job offer. This is our mission at MCC - to provide all the resources you need to realise your full potential and land your dream consulting job!

6.2. Remote and one-way interview tips

Zoom case interviews and “one-way” automated fit interviews are becoming more common as selection processes are increasingly remote, with these new formats being accompanied by their own unique challenges.

Obviously you won’t have to worry about lobbies and shaking hands for a video interview. However, a lot remains the same. You still need to do the same prep in terms of getting good at case cracking and expressing your fit answers. The specific considerations around remote interviews are, in effect, around making sure you come across as effectively as you would in person.

6.2.1. Connection

It sounds trivial, but a successful video interview of any kind presupposes a functioning computer with a stable and sufficient internet connection.

Absolutely don’t forget to have your laptop plugged in, as your battery will definitely let you down mid-interview. Similarly, make sure any housemates or family know not to use the microwave, vacuum cleaner or anything else that makes wifi cut out (or makes a lot of noise, obviously)

If you have to connect on a platform you don’t use much (for example, if it’s on Teams and you’re used to Zoom), make sure you have the up to date version of the app in advance, rather than having to wait for an obligatory download and end up late to join. Whilst you’re at it, make sure you’re familiar with the controls etc. At the risk of being made fun of, don’t be afraid to have a practice call with a friend.

6.2.2. Dress

You might get guidance on a slightly more relaxed dress code for a Zoom interview. However, if in doubt, dress as you would for the real thing (see our article here ).

Either way, always remember that presentation is part of what you are being assessed on - the firm needs to know you can be presentable for clients. Taking this stuff seriously also shows respect for your interviewer and their time in interviewing you.

6.2.3. Lighting

An aspect of presentation that you have to devote some thought to for a Zoom interview is your lighting.

Hopefully, you long ago nailed a lighting set-up during the Covid lockdowns. However, make sure to check your lighting in advance with your webcam - bearing in mind what time if day your interview actually is. If your interview is late afternoon, don’t just check in the morning. Make sure you aren’t going to be blinded from light coming in a window behind your screen, or that you end up with the weird shadow stripes from blinds all over your face.

Natural light is always best, but if there won’t be much of that during your interview, you’ll likely want to experiment with moving some lamps around.

6.2.4. Clarity

The actual stories you tell in an automated “one-way” fit interview will be the same as for a live equivalent. If anything, things should be easier, as you can rattle off a practised monologue without an interviewer interrupting you to ask for clarifications.

You can probably also assume that the algorithm assessing your performance is sufficiently capable that it will be observing you at much the same level as a human interviewer. However, it is probably still worth speaking as clearly as possible with these kinds of interviews and paying extra attention to your lighting to ensure that your face is clearly visible.

No doubt the AIs scoring these interviews are improving all the time, but you still want to make their job as easy as possible. Just think about the same things as you would with a live Zoom interview, but more so.

7. How we can help

There are lots of great free resources on this site to get you started with preparation, from all our articles on case solving and consulting skills to our free case library and peer practice meeting board .

To step your preparation up a notch, though, our Case Academy course will give you everything you need to know to solve the most complex of cases - whether those are in live interviews, with chatbots, written tests or any other format.

Whatever kind of case you end up facing, nothing will bring up your skillset faster than the kind of acute, actionable feedback you can get from a mock case interview a real, MBB consultant. Whilst it's possible to get by without this kind of coaching, it does tend to be the biggest single difference maker for successful candidates.

You can find out more on our coaching page:

Explore Coaching

Of course, for those looking for a truly comprehensive programme, with a 5+ year experienced MBB consultant overseeing their entire prep personally, from networking and applications right through to your offer, we have our mentoring programmes.

You can read more here:

Comprehensive Mentoring

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Consulting is intense. You will work long hours, travel a lot and be under stress. When they hire you, consulting firms want to make sure you have thought about what you are getting into. Hence, consulting firms, such as McKinsey, BCG & Bain use case interviews to assess candidates in their recruiting process. It’s very hard to succeed at case interviews without preparing for them properly. One of the best ways to prepare for case interviews at firms like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain, is by studying case interview examples. There are a lot of free case interview examples on the Internet & it’s hard to know where to start. In this article, you shall find the best case interview resources for your practice. These cover interactive case interview samples provided by consulting firms.

Practice makes perfect

Use the resources available in this blog to prepare for your case interviews. The case collection includes cases which have been used in actual case interviews in the past. Solving cases on your own can give you a first feeling for them. The best way to improve your case interview skills is to put yourself in a case interview situation. If you’re in a graduate school or an MBA program, practice cases on a regular basis, say 1 case per day. The more perspectives you can get, the better. Experience solving as many cases will help you improve your case interview skills.

You can practice with as many cases as you like, but if you do not learn from them, you will not improve your case performance. At the end of each case that you solve, note down your mistakes & what you learned. After a few days, redo the case & apply your learning to ensure that you are making progress. Keeping track of your improvements will keep you motivated & make sure that you don’t repeat the same mistakes. The more you practice, the more confident you will automatically feel.

McKinsey Case Interview Examples

  • Diconsa case study
  • Electro-light case study
  • GlobaPharm case study
  • National Education case study

BCG Case Interview Examples

  • GenCo case study
  • Foods Inc case study
  • Interactive case study

Bain case interview examples

  • CoffeeCo case study
  • FashionCo case study
  • Written case interview tips
  • Experience interview tips

Deloitte case interview examples

  • Footloose case question
  • Retail Strategy case question
  • Finance Strategy case question
  • Talent Management : Federal Civil Cargo Protection Bureau
  • Change Management : Capital Airlines
  • E-commerce Platform : Galaxy Fitness
  • Enterprise Resource Management Upgrade : Federal Quality Waste Management
  • Global Data Strategy : Bank of Zurich

OC&C case interview examples

  • Leisure Club case example
  • Imported Spirits case example
  • Online Luxury Fashion case example

Oliver Wyman case example

  • Wumbleworld case sample
  • Aqualine case sample

AT Kearney case interview examples

  • Promotion planning case question
  • Consulting case book & examples

Consulting clubs case interview examples

Most of these case study examples are based on case interviews used by consulting firms in real job interviews. As a result, you can have a good idea of the case study questions you can have when interviewing at these firms. Please download the complete archive here (password: thinkinsights.net )

  • Australian Graduate School of Management (2002)
  • Chicago business school (2004)
  • Columbia case book (2006)
  • Darden case book (2013)
  • Darden case book (2019)
  • Duke case book (2011)
  • Duke case book (2017)
  • ESADE case book (2011)
  • Haas case book (2006)
  • Harvard case book (2002)
  • INSEAD case book (2011)
  • Kellogg case book (2012)
  • LBS case book (2006)
  • MIT case book (2002)
  • MIT case book (2015)
  • NYC Stern case book (2018)
  • NYU Stern case book (2007)
  • Ross case book (2010)
  • Wharton case book (2010)
  • Wharton case book (2017)

Practice tips (Beginner level)

Stern case book: drinks gone flat (starting at page 24).

This is a good introduction to a very common type of case (profitability, or more specifically declining sales here). I liked the solution presented for this case, in particular how it started first by isolating the problem of declining sales (what range of products? Volumes or prices or both?).

Stern case book: Sport bar (starting at page 46)

This is an investment case (should you invest in a new bar). Even if the solution presented in this case book is not MECE, it covers the most common quantitative questions you might have in such a case. I recommend doing this case.

NYU Stern case book: MJ Wineries (starting at page 85)

This is a profitability case. I liked the solution presented in this case because it illustrates how specific good candidates should be. The case is talking about wine, so a good candidate should mention the quality of lands & grapes as important factors.

AGSM case book: Piano tuners (starting at page 57)

This is a typical market sizing question. How to answer this type of questions is a must-know before going to your interviews.

Darden case book: National Logistics (starting at page 49)

Again, this is a very common type of case (how to reduce costs). I liked the broad range of questions asked in this case, covering key skills assessed by consulting firms during case interviews: brainstorming skill (or creativity), quantitative skill & business sense.

Practice tips (Advanced level)

Stern: the pricing games (starting at page 55).

This case study asks you to help your client assess different business models. I liked this case because the range of issues to tackle is quite broad.

Wharton 2017: Engineer attrition at SLS Oil & Gas Services (starting at page 55)

I liked this case study because the case prompt is uncommon: your client has been facing a very high attrition rate among its population of Engineers. As a result, it’s very unlikely that your solution fits a well-known framework, & you’ll have to demonstrate your problem-solving skills by developing a specific solution.

Wharton 2017: Pharma Company Goes International, Outsources Benefits, Integrates New Technology (starting at page 95)

This case is about a client considering outsourcing a part of their activity. Even though I don’t know if this type of case study is very common, I had many case studies like this when I passed my interviews a few years ago. And I always found them difficult!

INSEAD: Gas retail case (starting at page 73)

The question asked in the problem statement is very broad, which makes this case difficult. So, only good candidates will be able to have a structured case discussion here.

Darden: Fire Proof (starting at page 84)

This is a market entry case. Try to solve it by developing a structure as MECE as possible.

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About the author: mithun sridharan.

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Consulting Case Interviews: A Comprehensive Guide

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Last Updated on February 16, 2024

The consulting case interview is the biggest hurdle for candidates before their McKinsey careers, BCG careers, or Bain careers can take off. Top-tier consulting firms are consistently ranked as the toughest firms to get in for applicants and the case interview plays a big part in the evaluation process, besides the Personal Fit Interview .

As former McKinsey consultants and interview experts, we have specialized in helping our candidates to effectively tackle this part of the consulting recruiting journey. We found that a lot of the information on the web, specifically on the case interviews, is often wrong, outdated, or assumed to be the same across all consulting firms, and presented by ‘experts’, who have never conducted an interview at MBB or even seen an MBB office from the inside.

As a consequence, the advice given can be detrimental to your recruiting success with top-tier consulting firms.

In this article, we want to help you understand the intricacies of the case interview as a first step of your consulting case interview prep by answering the following questions:

What is a consulting case interview?

  • What skills are assessed in the case interview?
  • What is the format of the case interview?
  • What are the questions in a typical case interview?

Is the McKinsey Problem Solving Interview a typical case interview?

  • How should you prepare for a case interview?

This article is part of our consulting case interview series. For the other articles, please click below:

  • Overview of case interviews: what is a consulting case interview? (this article)
  • How to create a case interview framework
  • How to ace case interview exhibit and chart interpretation
  • How to ace case interview math questions

The case interview is employed by most consulting firms to test the analytical capabilities and communication skills of applicants . It simulates a client situation, where you are tasked to solve a specific business problem that they are facing.

In a nutshell, you have to:

  • Understand a specific client situation
  • Create a framework you want to use to analyze the situation
  • Dig deep within your structure and elicit more information from your interviewer
  • Find the root causes of the problem
  • Provide recommendations to improve the situation

Within the interview, which is a dialogue between you and the interviewer, you need to structure problems, propose concrete ideas, gather information, spot insights in data and charts, solve quantitative problems, and communicate in a professional and calm manner.

The case is the hardest part for most candidates since it involves a number of different skills that need to be demonstrated consistently across all questions and across multiple cases in succession. Depending on the office, applicants need to go through four to six case interviews before receiving an offer. They need to convince the interviewers in all cases. Not an easy feat!

Hence you need to develop your skills so that you are able to demonstrate all skills, all the time. Consistency is key!

Why consulting firms use case interviews to select employees

Top-tier management consultancies employ multiple case interviews to evaluate their potential employees. In practice, you will have 3 to 6 interviews with different consultants of the firm who ask you to solve real-life business problems.

Beforehand, the company screens your vita to establish that you have the potential to be a good candidate.

In the interviews , they then want to test your aptitude and potential to develop into a world-class consultant. In the end, they have to put you in front of the client where you represent the heavy legacy of your firm from day one.

As a result, what the consulting interviewers end up testing is the same skillset that you need to become a successful consultant.

Let’s have a brief look at the different skills and the format of the interview.

What skills are assessed in a case interview?

Before you start preparing for case interviews, it is important to understand what dimensions the case interviewer will score your performance on. Knowing about what is important for the interviewer, you can tailor your preparation and pay special attention to the points outlined below.

We discuss 6 key areas that you need to focus on as well as provide examples of how a strong candidate would display mastery in each.

Case Interview Structuring and Problem-Solving

Problem-Solving . Throughout the case interview, the structure should be the anchor that keeps you focused and on track. Initially, you need to structure your issue tree with each branch representing a part of the problem you would like to investigate. Devise a MECE (mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive) approach, covering all aspects of the problem. Stick to this structure throughout the case and refer insights back to it. Tackle one branch of the structure at a time and deep dive into the branch until you have concluded your analysis or investigation and received a key insight. Then, move on to the next branch. After concluding each branch, synthesize your findings and discuss how they relate to your status quo in the case. Using this approach, you will significantly increase your chances to understand the root cause of the problem and devise a sound recommendation in the end.

Creativity and Insightfulness

Creativity. One way to rise to the top of a bunch of case interview candidates is to demonstrate a spike in creativity. When thinking about the problem and drafting your issue tree, go as broad and as deep as possible. Try to come up with as many different angles to the problem as possible (breath) and draft rich descriptions that qualify why these areas are important to investigate (depth). Refrain from using frameworks like 90% of other applicants. Remember: creativity is nothing without structure. Keep your creative thoughts contained in a MECE structure.

Case Interview Analytics

Analytical rigor and logical thinking . The analytical rigor links the structure to creative thinking. Employ a hypothesis-driven approach to your problem solving, i.e. have a clear picture of where you think the solution of the case is buried. This way, you will be able to qualify your thinking, follow your structure, tackle (likely) high-impact issues first, lead the interviewer, and ask the right questions.

Case Interview Math

Mental math and basic calculus . There are two parts to the problem when cracking math problems during a case interview. First, to solve a specific problem, you are often asked to derive the correct approach to calculate your desired outcome variable. You need to structure your approach before doing the actual calculations. Watch for different measurements, etc. Even the simple computations often include some twist. Second, you need to calculate by relying on basic pen-and-paper math. Incorporate some pen-and-paper and mental math exercises into your case interview preparation routine. The best way to solve math problems during the case interview is to first, ask the interviewer to structure your calculations, second, guide the interviewer through your planned approach, third, do the calculations swiftly in silence and sanity check them, and lastly, present your results top down to the interviewer PLUS qualify what these numbers mean in the context of the case. What is the ‘so-what’? We have written about case interview math in more detail here .

If you need to brush up on your math skills, we have created a program with detailed insider learning materials, 25 videos, and a guidebook as well as 2,000 practice drills that mimick the McKinsey, BCG, and Bain case interview math as well as the aptitude and analytics test math for you here:  the Case Interview Math Mastery .

Pyramid Principle and Top-Down Communication

Communication and maturity. In front of the client, junior consultants need to appear mature as they will present to and even coach client leadership twice their age. Communication is very important since you need to be able to elicit the right information as well as convince the interviewer about your recommendation. First, always communicate top-down, e.g. when making a statement, start with a key fact, then provide supporting information for this fact. You’ll ensure that your statements are to the point and prevent endless rambling about a certain topic. Time is limited and you want to get your point across in a concise and structured manner. Second, over-communicate about what you are thinking to allow the interviewer to understand your thoughts and considerations. The interviewer needs to understand how you reached a certain conclusion, e.g. when discussing your drafted analysis, tell the interviewer what you would like to investigate and why. Third, are you leading the conversation or are merely getting dragged along by the interviewer? Remember to be in the driver’s seat and be confident to lead the talk.

Business Savviness

Business sense and intuition . While you are certainly not expected to know details about a certain industry or specific context of the case, you need to be able to demonstrate business sense and intuition, which is very much related to common sense. You should be able to quickly understand the business – even just by asking targeted questions – about how a specific business works, what its business model is, what the main cost drivers are, and how the business makes money. When receiving new information or insights during the case, you should be able to make sense of it in the context of the case and relate it back to the information you already have as well as the problem at hand. Interviewers would like to see you quickly gravitate towards and identify the root cause of the case problem. Use your common sense or experiences/ knowledge with other industries or contexts to explain certain phenomena in the case, e.g. when coming up with assumptions.

Proactiveness and Leadership

Leadership. Consultancies aim to hire only people who have the potential to be future leaders in the business world. As such you need to demonstrate that you are able to work independently and can fix a problem on your own. In the interview, take charge of the situation and confidently and proactively guide the interviewer through your thinking and the solution. Treat her or him as a client.

Ability to work under pressure. Consultants repeatedly need to adapt to new teams, locations, clients, and problems and constantly work towards tight deadlines. They need to function in foreign environments, adhere to the highest professional standards, and get up to speed quickly. As a result, you need to demonstrate resilience and the ability to work under pressure. To demonstrate this skill, as described above, make solving the case seem easy. Breathe and focus! Additionally, be prepared to encounter some surprises the interviewer might through at you. A flexible mindset will help you with that challenge.

All these elements above will be tested in case interviews. While this might be terrifying, remember two things. First, think of case interviews as a chance to see if you actually like the typical work and working style in management consulting. Second, try to enjoy the process of solving complex problems. The best candidates are the ones that sincerely are having fun doing case interviews.

Now, these skills are assessed in a very specific interviewing format, which is not natural for most applicants and needs significant practice to become second nature.

Ace the case interview with our dedicated preparation packages.

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What is the format of a consulting case interview?

A typical consulting interview consists of a personal fit part, usually around 20 to 30 minutes long, and the case interview, which lasts between 25 to 40 minutes (depending on the firm, office, and interview stage). For BCG and Bain , the interviews are conducted in a candidate-led format , meaning that you have to move through the case autonomously, shaping the direction of your analysis and moving from insight to insight. McKinsey employs an interviewer-led format , meaning that the interviewer takes the lead and guides you through the case, asking a succession of three to six questions. Check out our article on the specifics of the McKinsey case interview format .

A specific format is the consulting written case interview, which is employed by BCG and Bain during second-round interviews. Read more about the BCG written case interview and the Bain written case interview .

Now that you know how the interview is conducted and what skills you need to display, let’s look at the typical questions in a case interview.

What are the questions in a case interview?

In a typical MBB case study interview you will have to answer  four different questions types  – broadly speaking:

  • Structuring / brainstorming
  • Exhibit Interpretation
  • Recommendation (not applicable for McKinsey)

A consulting case interview structure is used to break the problem you are trying to solve for the client down into smaller problems or components. It is the roadmap you establish at the beginning of the interview that will guide your problem-solving approach throughout the case. Brainstorming questions test your creativity and have you come up with a structured list of different ideas and initiatives.

Read more about how to build case interview structures and frameworks here .

For chart or data interpretation , you are tasked to find the key insights of 1-2 PowerPoint slides and relate them back to the case question and the client situation at hand.

Read more about how to interpret case exhibits, charts, and data tables here .

Case math questions have you analyze a problem mathematically before qualitatively investigating the particular reason for the numerical result or deriving specific recommendations from the outcome.

Read more on how to approach and ace case math here .

Now for  structure and exhibit interpretation . Focus on answers that are

  • hypothesis-driven
  • follow a strong communication (MECE, top-down, signposted)

That being said, there is no 100% that you can reach or the one-and-only solution/ answer. It is important that your answers display the characteristics specified above and supported well with arguments.

As for  math questions , usually, there are answers which are correct (not always 100% the same since some candidates simplify or round differently – which is ok), and others that are wrong, either due to the

  • calculation approach
  • calculation itself

The recommendation is usually a brief synthesis of your analysis, starting with one or several clear recommendations, followed by supporting arguments from you analysis and next steps.

Moving through the candidate-led case

The trick in candidate-led interviews is to move through the initial case framework or structure, investigating each area by asking the interviewer targeted questions based on your hypotheses. You will receive additional information as well as data in the form of charts that you need to interpret or math questions that you need to solve. As the case progresses, your hypotheses should become clearer and each piece of additional information should add to a converging line of evidence. Once you have gathered enough data in each part of your structure and the case, you should be able to provide one or more definite recommendations

Now, for the interviewer, the overall picture counts. Mistakes in one area need to be balanced by a strong performance in other areas.  All consulting firms want to see spikes in performance in certain areas and a good enough performance in other areas.

The  most common example  we see almost every day: You can be strong in structure and exhibit, yet make a small mistake in the math section – overall as you might consider 80% – and still pass on to the next round.

For a list of up-to-date case interview examples from many top consulting firms, click here .

While there are many similarities in McKinsey interviews and interviews with other firms, McKinsey interviews are interviewer-led, while other firms employ a candidate-led format .

McKinsey, BCG, and Bain cases have certain things in common:

  • The elements of the cases are the same. You will have to structure problems, interpret exhibits, and work through some calculations, come up with recommendations or implications, etc.
  • The skills that are assessed are the same. You need to exhibit strong problem-solving skills, creativity, ability to work under pressure, top-down communication, etc.

However, there is one key difference:

  • In interviewer-led cases, you take ownership of every question and go into greater detail here, while the interviewer guides you from question to question. In the interviewee-led case, you drive the whole case and have to move along, get the correct information to work with by asking the right questions, and analyze the problem to then deduct a recommendation

In a McKinsey case, the interviewer will guide you through a series of connected questions that you need to answer, synthesize, and develop recommendations from. There are clear directions and a flow of questions, which you need to answer with a hypothesis-driven mindset . These are arguably easier to prepare for and to go through since the flow and types of questions will always be the same.

In a candidate-led BCG case interview or Bain case interview, due to the nature of your role as an investigator, it is much easier to get lost, walk down a wrong branch of the issue tree, and waste a ton of time. While the interviewers will try to influence you to move in the right direction (pay attention to their hints), it is still up to you what elements of the problem you would like to analyze. Each answer should lead to a new question (hypothesis-driven) on your quest to find the root cause of the problem to come up with a recommendation on how to overcome it.

How to prepare for consulting case interviews?

Most candidates prepare for MBB cases using generic frameworks. Alternatively, they are looking for a management consulting case studies with solutions PDF or a case study interview questions and answers PDF with the hope that the cases will be the same across firms, interviewers, and interviews. There is no shortcut or a consulting case interview cheat sheet.

Do not learn case-specific case interview frameworks by heart , expecting them to work for every case you will encounter. There is no specific MBB case study framework or MBB case study book. It is much more important to learn the right approach that will help you tackle all types of cases. This is even more relevant for MBB interviews compared to tier-2 consultancies and boutique firms.

What you need to do is to study each individual question type and the associated skills in a case interview and learn how to approach it, regardless of the client situation, the context of the case, the industry, or function.

The era of the consulting case interview prep book is over. Be aware that case interview frameworks were applicable in the 2000 years, the era of Victor Cheng and Case in Point. McKinsey, BCG, and Bain have long caught up on this and the cases you will get during the interviews are tailored in a way to test your creativity and ability to generate insights on the spot, not remember specific frameworks.

In fact, it will hurt you when you try to use a framework on a case that calls for a completely different approach. Also, it gives a false sense of security that will translate to stress once you figure out how your approach won’t work during the real interview – We have seen this way too often…

Your goal should be to learn how to build issue trees, interpret charts, and perform math no matter the context, industry, or function of the case and follow our MBB case interview tips. Do not focus on consulting frameworks. A consulting case interviewer tutor can expedite your progress and significantly improve your performance for that matter.

How we can help you ace the MBB interviews

We have specialized in placing people from all walks of life with different backgrounds into top consulting firms both as generalist hires as well as specialized hires and experts. As former McKinsey consultants and interview experts, we help you by

  • tailoring your resume and cover letter to meet consulting firms’ highest standards
  • showing you how to pass the different online assessments and tests for McKinsey , BCG , and Bain
  • showing you how to ace McKinsey interviews and the PEI with our video academy
  • coaching you in our 1-on-1 sessions to become an excellent case solver and impress with your fit answers (90% success rate after 5 sessions)
  • preparing your math to be bulletproof for every case interview
  • helping you structure creative and complex case interviews
  • teaching you how to interpret charts and exhibits like a consultant
  • providing you with cheat sheets and overviews for 27 industries .

Reach out to us if you have any questions! We are happy to help and offer a tailored program to help you break into consulting.

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Florian spent 5 years with McKinsey as a senior consultant. He is an experienced consulting interviewer and problem-solving coach, having interviewed 100s of candidates in real and mock interviews. He started StrategyCase.com to make top-tier consulting firms more accessible for top talent, using tailored and up-to-date know-how about their recruiting. He ranks as the most successful consulting case and fit interview coach, generating more than 500 offers with MBB, tier-2 firms, Big 4 consulting divisions, in-house consultancies, and boutique firms through direct coaching of his clients over the last 3.5 years. His books “The 1%: Conquer Your Consulting Case Interview” and “Consulting Career Secrets” are available via Amazon.

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Hacking The Case Interview

Hacking the Case Interview

PwC and Strategy& case interviews

PwC (including Strategy&) interviews consist of case interviews, written case interviews, group case interviews, and behavioral or fit interview questions. The office and group that you are interviewing for will determine which of these types of interview questions you will get.

If you have an upcoming interview with PwC or Strategy&, we have you covered. In this article, we’ll go through in detail:

  • PwC and Strategy& interview processes
  • The 6 steps to solve any PwC (Strategy&) case interview
  • PwC (Strategy&) case interview examples
  • The PwC (Strategy&) group case interview
  • The PwC (Strategy&) written case interview
  • PwC (Strategy&) behavioral or fit interview questions
  • Recommended PwC (Strategy&) case interview resources

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

PwC and Strategy& Interview Processes

Strategy& interview process.

If you are applying to Strategy&, the interview process typically consists of two rounds. Each round has two to three 45-minute interviews.

These interviews will be focused on case interviews and behavioral or fit interview questions. Roughly half of the time will be spent on the case interview. Your interviewers will try to save the last 5 to 10 minutes of each interview for your questions.

Here is what a Strategy& interview process could look like:

  • Strategy& first round interview : Two 45-minute interviews. For both interviews, roughly 10 minutes will be spent on behavioral or fit questions, 30 minutes will be spent on the Strategy& case interview, and the last 5 minutes will be time for you to ask questions.
  • Strategy& final round interview : Three 45-minute interviews. One interview will be more heavily focused on behavioral or fit interview questions. The other two interviews will be primarily focused on Strategy& case interviews.

It is important to know that Strategy& emphasizes behavioral and fit interview questions much more than the average consulting firm. You’ll spend a bit more time answering these questions than you would at firms such as Bain, BCG, Deloitte, or Accenture.

Interviewers want to ensure that candidates that are interviewing for Strategy& actually want to work there. They want to screen out candidates that are treating Strategy& as a backup firm to McKinsey, BCG, and Bain.

PwC Consulting Interview Process

If you are applying to Management Consulting,  Technology Consulting , or Risk Consulting, you may have up to three rounds of interviews.  

  • PwC first round interview : One 30-minute interview with a recruiter focused on behavioral or fit interview questions
  • PwC second round interview : Two interviews focused on case interviews and behavioral or fit interview questions
  • PwC third round interview : Three to five interviews focused on case interviews, behavioral or fit interview questions, a written case interview, and/or a group case interview

There is a lot of variability in the types of interviews you could get in your last round of interviews. Depending on the office and group, some candidates may get a written case interview or a group case interview. Others may just get normal case interviews.

The 6 Steps to Solve Any PwC (Strategy&) Case Interview

PwC and Strategy& case interviews are all candidate-led. This means that you will be expected to drive the direction of the case. You will suggest what areas to explore, what analyses to do, and what the next step should be.

On Strategy&’s case prep website , they state that there is no single correct way to answer a case. If you show your thought process and develop logical and reasonable conclusions, you will have successfully solved the case.

Follow these six steps to solve any case interview.

1. Understand the case

The case will begin with the interviewer giving you the case information. While the interviewer is speaking, make sure that you are taking meticulous notes on the most important pieces of information. Focus on understanding the context of the situation, the company, and the objective of the case.

2. Verify the objective

Understanding the business problem and objective of the case is the most important part of the case interview. Not addressing the right business question is the quickest way to fail a case interview.

Make sure that you ask clarifying questions to better understand the business situation and problem. Then, confirm that you understand the case objective with the interviewer. This ensures that you start the case on the right track.

3. Create a framework

Develop a framework to help you tackle the business problem. A framework is a tool that helps you structure and break down complex problems into smaller, more manageable components. With a framework, you’ll be brainstorming different ideas and organizing them into different categories.

Afterwards, walk the interviewer through your framework. They may ask a few questions or provide some feedback to you.

For a complete guide on how to create tailored and unique frameworks for each case, check out our article on case interview frameworks .

4. Develop a hypothesis

After creating a framework, you should develop a hypothesis. A hypothesis is an educated guess on the answer based on the data and information that you have so far.

Your hypothesis does not need to be correct. You’ll be continuously testing and refining your hypothesis throughout the case. The purpose of having a hypothesis is to guide your analysis and ensure that you are spending your time answering the right questions.

5. Test your hypothesis

The majority of the case will be spent testing your hypothesis.

After stating your hypothesis, it is up to you to lead the direction of the case. Depending on the context of the case, you may want to ask for data to do some analysis. You may also want to explore qualitative questions that you have. As you uncover more information, your hypothesis will likely have to change. 

Sometimes, your hypothesis will be completely wrong and you’ll need to develop a completely new hypothesis to test. Other times, your hypothesis may be on the right track, but you’ll need to refine or narrow it down further.

Throughout the rest of the case, you’ll be answering a mix of quantitative and qualitative questions. Make sure that after each question, you explain how your answer impacts your hypothesis or answer to the case.

6. Deliver a recommendation

In the last step of the case interview, you’ll present your recommendation and provide the major reasons that support it. You do not need to recap everything that you have done in the case, so focus on summarizing only the facts that are most important.

It is also good practice to include potential next steps that you would take if you had more time or data. These can be areas of your framework that you did not have time to explore yet or lingering questions that you do not have great answers for.

PwC (Strategy&) Case Interview Examples

We've compiled examples of PwC and Strategy& case interviews below that were given to candidates in the past.

Example #1 : How can Royal Caribbean cruises double revenue over the next five years?

Example #2 : Your client is a national packaging manufacturing company that makes cardboard boxes in various sizes. How can they improve profitability?

Example #3 : The top two concrete suppliers in South America are considering a merger. Should they merge? What considerations would you think through when making this decision?

Example #4 : A fast food chain based in Alabama is considering introducing fresh meat hamburgers into their menu. They previously have only served hamburgers made from frozen meat patties. What will be the impact of introducing fresh meat hamburgers?

Example #5 : A construction company is considering increasing their prices for road maintenance services. Should they increase prices? If so, by how much should they increase prices by?

Example #6 : A national insurance company is looking for opportunities to cut costs. What recommendations would you have for them?

Example #7 : A prestigious undergraduate university in the northeast is considering launching online learning classes that would be available for students that are not enrolled in their on-campus classes. What considerations would you think through in order to determine if this is a good idea?

Example #8 : A local airline is considering adding alcoholic beverages to their menu of in-flight food and drink. What will be the impact on profitability for this business decision?

For more practice, check out our article on 23 MBA consulting casebooks with 700+ free practice cases .

The PwC (Strategy&) Group Case Interview

For some offices, PwC (Strategy&) uses a group case interview in their final round of interviews. This special type of case interview focuses on assessing how well you can collaborate and work with other people. Teamwork is an essential skill to have.

Here’s what you should expect:

  • You’ll be put into a group with 3 to 5 other candidates
  • The interviewer will hand out the case background materials
  • You’ll have 10 to 15 minutes to review the materials and prepare
  • The group will have an open discussion for 15 to 20 minutes
  • During this discussion, interviewers will be observing candidates and will not interfere
  • Afterwards, the interviewer will ask the group specific questions for 15 to 20 minutes

Your goal in a group case interview is to add value to the group. There are six different ways that you can do this:

  • Lead or facilitate the discussion : You can propose what topics to discuss, the order they should be discussed in, and how much time should be allocated towards each topic. If the group gets off track, you can bring the group’s focus back together.
  • Expand upon other people’s ideas : If a group member suggests a great idea or raises a good point, build upon it and make it even better.
  • Synthesize information : You can summarize information that other people have said and reconcile different viewpoints and ideas together.
  • Keep track of time : You can volunteer to keep track of time and make sure that the group is on track.
  • Play devil’s advocate : You can help your group develop strong ideas by testing the team’s thinking by considering potential risks or downsides of their ideas.
  • Take notes:  You can keep track of what other people are saying so that you can recall what has been discussed if any group members have questions.

An important thing to remember about group case interviews is to treat your group members as teammates instead of competition. This is not an exercise in which you are competing with others.

Interviewers are trying to determine whether you would be a great teammate. Multiple people or even all people in your group can receive job offers. Therefore, focus on adding value to the group rather than on making yourself look better than your group members.

For a full guide on group case interviews, check out our consulting group case interview step-by-step guide .

The PwC (Strategy&) Written Case Interview

For some offices, PwC (Strategy&) uses a written case interview in their final round of interviews. This special type of case interview focuses on assessing how well you can analyze information and communicate your insights.

  • PwC (Strategy&) will provide you with case background material
  • You will have an hour to review the material and prepare 3 to 5 slides
  • You will have 30 minutes to present and discuss your recommendation with the interviewer, who will challenge your assumptions and ask follow-up questions

To solve any written case interview, follow these eight steps.

1. Understand the business problem and objective

The first step in completing a written case interview is to understand what the objective is. What is the primary business question you are trying to answer with the data and information provided?

2. Read the list of major questions

Some written case interviews will provide you with a list of 3 – 4 key questions that you will be expected to address or answer. Read through these questions first since these will be the questions that you will want to prioritize.

If the written case interview is more open-ended and does not provide you with a list of key questions, skip this step and move onto the next step.  

3. Skim the materials

Next, flip through the information packet that is provided to see what information is available. Identify what data you have and what data you do not have.

The goal in this step is not to read and analyze every slide. That would take too much time. Instead, by seeing what information exists, you will be able to better prioritize what you spend your time reading and analyzing.

4. Create a framework

Before you begin reading and analyzing the information in the slides in more detail, you should create a basic framework to help guide your analysis. If you are provided with a list of key questions or pre-filled slide templates, then this will likely be the foundation of your framework.

Otherwise, based on what information exists in the information packet, identify the three to four key questions you need to answer or investigate.

5. Read and analyze the material 

Afterwards, read and analyze the information that is relevant to each area of your framework. As you begin answering questions and drawing insights, make sure to write a one or two sentence summary. This will make it easier to decide on a recommendation later.

6. Decide on a recommendation

Review the list of key takeaways that you have summarized from answering all of the major questions in your framework. Decide on what recommendation these findings collectively support.

Remember that there is typically no right or wrong recommendation. As long as your recommendation is supported by data and evidence, you will be in great shape.

7. Create your slides

Once you have a recommendation, it is time to start filling in your slides. You should use the following structure when creating your slides:

  • Slide 1: Present your recommendation and the three reasons that support it
  • Slide 2: Present your first reason and the data that supports it
  • Slide 3: Present your second reason and the data that supports it
  • Slide 4: Present your third reason and the data that supports it
  • Slide 5: Summarize everything that you’ve covered so far
  • Slide 6: Propose potential next steps

8. Prepare for potential questions

If you have any time remaining, brainstorm potential questions the interviewer may ask you during your presentation. They may want to know how you performed your analysis or how you reached your conclusions.

Preparing for these potential questions will help your presentation go much more smoothly. You will also feel much more confident while presenting.

For a full guide on written case interviews, check out our consulting written case interview step-by-step guide .

PwC (Strategy&) Behavioral or Fit Interview Questions

In addition to case interviews, you will likely be asked a few behavioral or fit interview questions. There are ten questions that are most commonly asked.

1. Why are you interested in working at PwC or Strategy&?

How to answer: Have at least three reasons why you’re interested in working at PwC or Strategy&. You could mention that you loved the people that you have met from the company so far. You can talk about PwC’s massive global presence and expertise in nearly any industry or function. You can speak to how PwC provides strategy and implementation, so you can see the impact of your work.

2. Why do you want to work in consulting?

How to answer: Again, have three reasons why you’re interested in consulting. You could mention the fast career growth opportunity, the opportunity to develop soft and hard skills, or the level of impact that you can make by working with large companies on their most challenging issues.

3. Walk me through your resume

How to answer: Provide a concise summary of your work experience, starting with the most recent. Focus on emphasizing your most impressive and unique accomplishments. At the end, tie your experiences to why you are interested in consulting.

4. What is your proudest achievement?

How to answer: Choose your most impressive, unique, or memorable accomplishment. Structure your answer by providing information on the situation, the task, the actions you took, and the results of your work.

5. What is something that you are proud of that is not on your resume?

How to answer: This is a great opportunity to highlight an accomplishment that is not related to your professional work experience. Perhaps there is a non-profit that you volunteer at, a side project or business that you work on, or a hobby that you have won awards or recognition for. Choose something that is impressive and interesting.

6. Tell me about a time when you led a team.

How to answer: If possible, choose a time when you directly managed a person or a team. For this question and the following questions, make sure that you structure your answer. Structure your answer by providing information on the situation, the task, the actions you took, and the results of your work. This is known as the STAR method and is commonly used to answer behavioral or fit interview questions.

7. Give an example of a time when you faced conflict or a disagreement.

How to answer: When answering this question, focus on emphasizing the steps you took to resolve the conflict or disagreement. Speak to the interpersonal skills you had to use in order to mediate the situation. Interviewers want to know that you are a great mediator and that you can handle conflict in a constructive way.

8. Tell me about a time when you had to persuade someone.

How to answer: Choose a time when you were able to change someone’s mind. Focus on emphasizing the steps that you took to persuade that person and what impact and results this had. Interviewers want to know that you are a great communicator and a good people person.

9. Describe a time when you failed.

How to answer: Choose a time when you failed to meet a deadline or did not meet expectations. Focus on emphasizing what you learned from the experience and how you used that experience to deliver even better results in the next opportunity that you got. Interviewers want to see that you don’t get discouraged from failure and that you treat those experiences as learning opportunities.

10. What questions do you have for me?

How to answer: This is a great opportunity to get to know the interviewer on a more personal level. Ask them questions about their experience in consulting or their career. Express genuine interest in what they have to share and ask follow-up questions. The more you can get the interviewer talking about themself, the more likely they will have a positive impression of you.

For a step-by-step guide on how to best answer all of these questions and more, check out our complete guide on consulting behavioral interview questions .

Recommended PwC (Strategy&) Case Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to learn the most robust, effective case interview strategies in the least time-consuming way:

  • Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
  • Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
  • The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.
  • Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with former consulting interviewers
  • Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer
  • Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

Land Multiple Consulting Offers

Complete, step-by-step case interview course. 30,000+ happy customers.

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Growth Strategy

Revenue growth is one of the most popular strategy cases in a case interview.

Usually, growth strategy cases are introduced by open-ended questions such as “A firm XYZ wants to increase their revenue. How should they go about it?”

Gather the necessary information about volume and price to determine the best growth lever

Case interviews  with revenue growth cases can be tackled by influencing two major parameters that determine growth figures. These are volume and unit price. In order to make suggestions, once again, you need to understand the client’s business and the industry. Growth strategies can focus on a product, a division, or the company as a whole. Areas you could investigate based on your hypothesis are:

  • What is the client’s product mix? What is the lifecycle of each product ?
  • What is the state of the respective industries? Are they growing?
  • Which product segments have the biggest potential?
  • What drives customer satisfaction?
  • How does the client’s sales growth rate compare to that of the competitors in the market ( Benchmarking )?
  • How are the client’s prices compared to that of competitors? For instance, if the product is a commodity, then prices should be similar.
  • What is the customers’ price sensitivity? If the product is a commodity, then customers are likely to be  very   price sensitive .
  • What are the client’s marketing and sales channel activities? Evaluate their effectiveness.
  • What are competitors’ marketing and sales channel activities? Evaluate the effectiveness if they are better than the clients’ sales.
  • What are the client’s available funds for growth (you can find it via balance sheet or cash flow statements )?
  • What do the shareholders' demand/expect?

Choose a growth strategy and the growth vector you want to pursue

After having gathered this set of information, you will have got a feeling for the type of growth that is demanded. Based on this information, you can then decide which growth strategy to implement. Roughly, you can subdivide strategies into (1) organic growth and (2) inorganic growth. The categories can further be organized using an Ansoff matrix .

Find new customers by (Ansoff Matrix):

  • Increase/switch distribution channels.
  • Expand the product lines.
  • Enter new markets .
  • Perform a major marketing campaign.
  • Increase your share of the wallet with your existing customers, e.g. by selling them add-on/bundled products.
  • Lower customer churn rate by preventing unwanted customer attrition.
  • Acquire other companies.

If you have thoroughly completed this BootCamp, you will notice that many case types overlap with each other. You will rarely find a case that fits only one type. Most of the strategic decisions intersect. After completing the BootCamp, you should get a feeling for those connections and be able to see the big picture. 

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