Cracking the Case

As a note, my courses are much more in depth and tactical. This is just a beginner’s summary of how to solve a case as I wrote this up to serve as a guide to the type of basic information you’d get at a Company Case Presentation. For starters, buy the book Case in Point. It’s a good case book to begin with as it has a lot of cases and I even reference some of the cases in my sessions. The best way to become comfortable with the case interview is to read and analyze as many of them as you can so that you’re familiar with the structure and flow of what a real case would sound like during an interview. It’s cliché, but the earlier you can begin preparing, the better off you will be.

A case interview is like jazz music. While there’s an overlying structure and format to the rhythm of a case, working through the answer with your interviewer will be mostly improvisational. The main thing you really need to know to gain momentum and be comfortable during a case are the basic steps of how to begin the case and what to do next.

Plan, analyze, test, communicate. At a high level, this is the roadmap you should follow. As you work through each stage of the case, remember that a key to success is to work with your interviewer and let him know the inner workings of your thought process. Intelligently think out loud and relay every substantive thought in your head to your interviewer. Your interviewer wants you to keep him in the loop in terms of what you’re thinking so that he can fairly assess your creativity and analytic skills. If you’re not already, you’re going to have become comfortable talking out loud to yourself. With this said, let’s now breeze through the critical components of each of the four main steps of a case:

A case usually starts with your interviewer providing you a thirty second synopsis of a client’s situation. In the planning phase, your goal here is to give your interviewer the confidence of knowing that you can filter through the parade of facts provided and formulate a one sentence objective. When you’re talking to your interviewer you should do a recap of who your client is, what type of problem they are facing, and the overlying goal of the case. Always ensure that you have stated the direct objective. This recap should sound something like this: “So to summarize, our client is a medium sized fashion retailer whose shareholder focus right now is currently on growth, mainly store expansion. To be clear, the objective of the case is to provide guidance on how to enter new markets. Is there anything else we should be focusing on?”

The analyze phase probably accounts for 50% of your case performance ‘grade’. During this process you will conduct two activities: a deeper investigation of the context surrounding the business problem of the case given, and also a structural layout of how you intend to solve the case. In terms of gaining context, you’ll be expected to ask your interviewer ‘feeler’ questions to gain a better understanding of the current situation. This is where reading up on lots of cases really pays off. While there’s no exact list of questions you’re supposed to ask your interviewer as it will vary case by case, if you read enough cases you’ll start recognizing the pattern of questions you’ll need answered by your interviewer in order to structure the framework needed to solve the case. As I mentioned earlier, brainstorm out loud. Your interviewer is there to help you steer through the case. He’s the one with all the information; your job is just to ask the right questions. Various managers I’ve spoken with have told me that for undergraduate candidates, they are purposely overly vague when providing details of the case. They do this intentionally not to seem disorganized, but because they really want to see candidates probe for information and show off how analytical they can be. In business, so many bad decisions are made because the right questions are not asked. Part of your case performance will be graded on your ability to ask the right questions.

The next major aspect of the analyze phase is to layout the structural framework you’re going to use to solve the case. There’s no one ‘right’ way to solve a case as a variety of paths can be taken to reach a feasible solution. You just need to make sure that you lay out your thinking in a logical manner and that you identify and address the gaps and overlaps of the related issues. The metaphor I compare this process to is outlining a research paper. Think of what it takes to create a good outline: organization, a plan of attack, and strong evidence, The process of analyzing a case is very similar. Are your thoughts laid out like bullet points or are they scattered and jumbled? Are you using real business insight to solve the problem and validate your claims? One of the best things about the book Case In Point is that through numerous examples it shows you what outlining a case would sound like in an interview.

In terms of developing a plan of attack, most undergraduates resort to canned frameworks to help dissect the case. The problem with this approach and I was guilty of this too when I interviewed is that most students memorize one approach and try to force that methodology on every case. This is not the best way to succeed. To me, the best way to pass a case is to understand how to leverage basic business strategy, creativity, logic, and flow chart analysis to break down a case into smaller components. In my tutorial sessions this is what we will spend the most time covering.

Once you’ve developed your plan of attack, the next step in the case is to test your hypothesis. Here you will be expected to analyze each component of the strategy you’ve adopted step by step in a logical manner with your interviewer. The goal here is to discuss the analyses you would perform to determine if your initial hypotheses in terms of meeting the objectives of the case are true. Often times, you will have to ask additional questions to get the information needed to develop your analyses. In addition, as you ask the correct key questions, you may be instructed to perform an analysis with simple data supplied by the interviewer. Usually this analysis involves interpreting or drawing a graph of say a supply/demand or a profit maximization curve. In my class we’ll have a review of charts, but now may be a good time to brush up on some Intro to Econ if you can. (For fun, see if can you solve this above average difficulty problem?- An emerging beverage manufacturer wants to know how long it will take to recoup a proposed investment of a new $15 million dollar aluminum manufacturing plant in the southwest for its entire west coast operations which will save 5 cents per can distributed on supply chain costs. The company plans on distributing 30 million cans the first year and plans to increase production distribution 10% each year. Variable and fixed costs are equal for both the southwest and existing mid-west plant.)

As you go through your hypotheses with your interviewer, your interviewer will most likely give you hints as to whether or not you’re on the right path. If your interviewer is being resistant to your ideas, take that as a sign that it might be time to define a new approach for solving the case. It doesn’t mean that your initial thoughts were wrong and that you’re failing the case, but rather you should see it as an opportunity to show that you’re a multi-dimensional thinker and to quickly adjust and regroup. Take advantage of your interviewer and try to read his tonality and body language. During the initial stage of the interview, your interviewer may not drop many clues as to the direction of the case you should be taking as he wants to see your ability to think independently. But as time draws near, he’ll most likely drop enough hints to steer you in the right direction so that you’ll be able finish the case on time.

Finally the last stage of a case is to bring closure by providing a full summary of the current situation and how you would go about approaching the problem. For those of you who struggled through the analyze and test phase, this is your last chance to leave a good impression with your interviewer. The key here is to clearly provide the full gambit: define the case objective, identify the ways you evaluated the case (not just the successes but also the pitfalls and dead ends), and ultimately articulate the solution clearly without being too verbose. These will be your last words to your interviewer, make them count!

Solution to West Coast Plant Operations Break Even Point

The Following Companies Have Practice Cases On Their Website For You To Take Advantage Of.

For some real case examples online, reference the company links below.  If the link doesn’t work, just go to the company site and you should be able to get to the practice case section through the Careers link.  These posted cases are “official” and will give you a genuine idea of what you may face.  

Accenture | BCG | Bain | LEK