Case Interview Frameworks

Having recently asked more than 120 candidates in my coaching sessions, there is a very clear picture of what causes quite some headache in solving case interviews:

Strikingly

9 out of 10

candidates say their single largest issue in solving case interviews is getting the

structure right!

Going slightly into more details of this little survey, candidates mostly refer to both the initial, overall structure at the beginning of the case, as well as structuring individual parts at later stages of the case interview.

At later stages of the case interview, the case usually gets much more focused and the questions get more specific and narrow. Nevertheless it is incredibly difficult to come up with the right issues, and at the same time being structured in your answer - almost impossible for even a strong candidate to do both things at the same time on the fly!

This is exactly the right situation in which having a solid toolbox of frameworks at hand is worth one's weight in gold - for this type of situation, chances are extremely high that one of the more or lesser known frameworks can give you a headstart over other candidates.

Even though a standardized framework might not fit to 100% in your individual situation - having covered 80% with a framework as a basis is in any case much better than 0% and trying to come up with a solid structure from scratch by yourself.

And starting with 80% rather than 0% will put you in a good situation that you will cover the remaining percentage points very well with either adapted parts of another framework, or with an individual issues for this specific situation.

Having the right toolbox will definitely give you a strong advantage over other candidates - we all know that "ABS - Always Be Structured" clearly is a must-have for a successful case interview. Even though this is true for all major consulting firms, there is one firm which is even more picky when it comes to being structured - it is the very firm which coined the term "MECE - mutually exclusive, collectively exhaustive", and by now you probably already know which firm I am talking about: McKinsey.

But wait - what about the initial, overall structure at the beginning of a case interview?

For this part of the case interview, I definitely share Victor Cheng's opinion on frameworks to a large extent. In short, he says that for most candidates it is easier and more promising to remember 3-4 key frameworks to cover a large part of interview cases, rather than trying to remember a large, complex set of different frameworks for different types of interview cases. Yes, this absolutely makes sense!

While this holds true for the first and mostly the second level of your structure, you will quickly notice that being able to lay out another level of structure would be really helpful - namely when the interview is specifically asking for it because he wants to go deep in a certain part of the case.

Also here, developing a MECE structure on the fly is immensely difficult, even for strong candidates, let alone average ones.

Therefore I can tell from experience that having a good toolbox of case interview frameworks at hand is also immensely useful when laying out the overall structure of the case interview. Not in order to cover the full interview case with a simple, standardized framework (which would be rather foolhardy to believe that this works in reality!), but to cover specific parts of the case in layers further down in your structure!

As structuring case interviews is such a big pain point for basically all candidates applying at major consulting firms, I put together a "Case Interview Frameworks" book to cover all need-to-know frameworks for consulting case interviews, which is now already available in the 2nd edition after incorporating the feedback of many coaching candidates.

Click on the book cover above or the orange download button right now to immediately download your copy of "Case Interview Frameworks: The #1 Guide to Structuring Your Consulting Case Interview" (2nd ed.)!