Cracking the Case: A Consulting Interview PrimerPage 1 of 3[Web Exclusive] You don't have to be Sherlock Holmes to ace the cases in a consulting-firm interview. In fact, a little preparation can make solving them seem, well, elementary.Firms Are There to Help YouConsulting Industry GuideRemember your seventh-grade algebra teacher’s three favorite words? "Show your work." At the time, it seemed silly: Why not just show the right answer? Now that you’re older and wiser, however, you know that in many cases how you get to the right answer is more important than simply knowing the answer itself.The same goes for the case questions that consulting recruiters lob at you. Consulting is a demanding job with few "correct" answers; this method of interviewing gauges how well you manage the process of getting to an answer and how you perform under simulated client-engagement conditions. We talked to consultant-hunters at several firms to glean their advice on cracking the case interview. Here's what the recruiters revealed—and how you can best prepare. Why the Case Interview?Case interviews have long been used by recruiters to see a candidate's thought processes in motion. Can you deconstruct 光华人向上的精神and analyze complex, open-ended business problems? Do you stay calm, or will you sweat bullets under pressure at a client site? At the most basic level, a case interview is about asking the right questions, developing a logical way of working through the relevant issues, and arriving at a recommendation. Your structure may be a packaged framework or it may be various frameworks strung together; you may even choose not to use frameworks at all. What's important is that you demonstrate some defined st...
