The Case Interview

Job Search Login / Register Upload your CV Job Alerts Boost Your Chances For Recruiters

The Case Interview

One common interview format, especially for top positions, important positions and consulting firms, is the case interview. It is also probably one of the most dreaded and difficult of the interview types. Preparing for a case interview requires specific, thorough and in-depth research, an incisive response, sharp thinking, wide knowledge and intelligence. Definitely intelligence. Just because you think that you’ve passed through your initial interview with flying colours and have always been successful in previous positions don’t think that you’re home and dry. The case interview could be your nemesis! Many a person who has passed normal one-to-one, or one-to-panel interviews with impressive results has crashed and burned in the case interview, simply because they weren’t clever enough.

The concept of case interview is broadly based on an interview situation in which the candidate is exposed to solving problems on the spot. Although an initial interview may be based on your CV, in this subsequent type of interview the recruiter is not interested in going through a one-hour re-hash of your experience as a financial controller, and how it helped you become a financial expert. The CV part of your interview will either be reduced or cut fully, in preference of a more practical, real-life, "let’s look at how well you react and think" problem-solving scenario discussion. It cuts through your claim to be ‘a detailed orientated team player’ and gauges exactly what kind of detail orientated team player you are, by setting you a scenario problem and seeing how you resolve it. There are numerous forms in which a problem can be presented but in every case interview the recruiter is trying to judge all or some of the following:

General business knowledge

When solving scenario cases, there are a lot of times when you just don’t know the information you need or it is just not available. This is not a problem, as the interviewer does not expect you to know them and has probably set the question fully aware of the fact. In such situations, you will have to make assumptions, and the extent to which your assumptions are rational and sensible will impact your performance. If, for example, you need to bring in a future interest rate, and you say "Let’s assume the interest rate increases by 0.25 percent in the next six months" – that’s fine, the exact figure is not known anyway. If, however, you say "Let’s assume that the interest rate increases by 3 percent in the next six months", the interviewer might wonder what planet you’ve been on over the last decade.

General business acumen

Although the interviewer will not want to see you employing a mass of academic strategic models (in fact don’t use any at all), he or she will want to assess the degree to which you can bring to bear your business sense, insight and knowledge of relevant issues in a business problem situation, such as environmental scanning, competitive threats, competitive advantages, target marketing, stakeholder balancing, and so on. Each case will have it’s different emphasis and the interviewer will want to be convinced that you can recognise which approach to business analysis is appropriate for the specific case, as opposed to you trying to fit any situation into some academic model or framework you learned in your qualifying studies and now consider it to be the end-all-and-be-all of all strategic development.

Creativity

Taking a different angle on a problem, looking for a new approach, an insightful observation, finding a stumbling block that nobody else had spotted, using a strategic approach that worked for another company in a similar situation – this is what successful managers do. If you can demonstrate some creativity, you will leave a firm impression. This skill becomes more important in second and third interviews than in the initial interview. Just make sure that in your demonstration of creativity, you don’t produce some ludicrous plan that makes it apparent that you have absolutely no idea what you’re talking about.

Rational thought process

How do you go about arriving at a solution to a scenario problem: analysing the situation, identifying key concepts, establishing needs, generating and evaluating alterative approaches - all of these are in the decision mix somewhere. Your interviewer will be listening carefully to see whether you have a logical thought process, are able to clearly separate important facts from irrelevant facts and can use your analytical skills in appropriate ways. These are all issues and aspects which can impact the interviewer’s assessment of your decision making ability.

Confident when dealing with quantitative analysis

The interviewer will not exam your knowledge of correlation analysis, learning curve or differential calculus – but if you can’t figure out 20% of £350,000 in your head (which is £70,000), your application form will be heading in the 6 o’clock direction – without doubt. The interview will introduce a few tests into your scenario problem just to make sure that you are able do some rough, back-of-the-envelope calculations quickly, accurately and confidently. For people working in accountancy it’s bread and butter stuff so you should have no problems, but make sure – just in case!

Communication skills

You could be clever, perceptive, sharp, decisive and logical, but if you can’t communicate your thoughts, sell your ideas, justify your conclusions, argue your position, defend your corner, you will not be successful. Not in your interview, not in the business environment either. There’s no option to this one – you must learn to communicate and practice your spoken delivery before your interview.

Be prepared for the Case Interview – it is a “minefield’, and you don’t want to get blown away!