What The Boston Consulting Group States About The Case Interview



by Victor Hong


Beginning with a solitary workplace a half century back, the Boston Consulting Group now has a presence in 41 nations. It has finished in the top fifteen of Fortune's "Best Businesses to Work For" six years in a row and has made it into Consulting Magazine's "Best Firms to Work For" list each and every year since the magazine was launched in 2001. If that sounds like the type of place you would prefer to work, then you are able to begin by becoming familiar with the case interview. Like a lot of top ranked consulting companies, BCG utilizes the case interview as being a regular technique of discovering the needle of the potential star in the haystack of resumes which are sent to it every year.

BCG describes its interview process as "a dialog aimed at getting to understand you personally, learning much more about your analytic capabilities, and also introducing you to our people and our work." Crucial to those last two objectives will be the case interview. At BCG, the "case" in the case interview is likely to become a business issue that the very person interviewing you needed to wrestle with in their profession as a consultant. Does this imply that you simply are anticipated to come up with the exact same solution to that problem that your interviewer did? Absolutely not - like all firms familiar with the case interview, BCG could be the first to tell you that it's not the answer that interests them but instead what your search for your answer reveals about your capability to quickly grasp the essence of a issue and construct creative but reality-based methods to it.

Listed here are a number of BCG's ideas for candidates facing a case interview:

Structure the issue. After the case continues to be introduced to you, inquire your self what the important problems are that you simply should consider and which of these are most important. Make this the framework for your case interview response - and be ready to explain your options to your interviewer.

Don't stubbornly and inflexibly stick to your first answer. In the event the interviewer raises questions about your initial answer, do not see this as a criticism of your skills that you must respond to. Remember the case interview is intended to replicate the work procedure at BCG, and part of that is to become open to input from others and also to adjust your hinking accordingly.

Don't depend on information you brought into the room with you. Everything you discovered from case interview practice sessions or your previous knowledge in a few branch of business or even the public sector is beside the point now. The interviewer is less interested in what you know than the way you deal with a issue you initially know absolutely nothing about. That is how you will really shine in the case interview!