The Ultimate Guide to Case Interview Preparation by McKinsey Consultants

Case interviews are THE primary tool for consulting firms to test candidates. They are not only used by the MBB firms (McKinsey, BCG & Bain) but also by the Big 4 (Deloitte, EY, PwC, KPMG) and Boutiques (LEK, Olivery Wyman, Accenture, etc.). Below you'll learn what they are, why firms are using them, and how to ace them.

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The consulting industry, especially at the best firms, has a highly competitive selection process. In this process, case interviews are THE primary tool to assess candidates. The idea is to check whether a candidate has the potential to become a great consultant. The case interview allows firms to test a variety of skills that are important on the job. Case interviews — in combination with other elements of the consulting hiring process such as the personal fit interview — have turned out to be the best predictors for future job performance. That’s why the concept of case interviews hasn’t changed in decades, and won’t change anytime soon.

Structured thinking

Consulting can be a complex job. Projects overall, but also an individual workstream, or even an individual analysis by an associate can hold a lot of complexity. Structuring is absolutely essential, when it comes to breaking down and understanding a problem, analyzing data, creating a range of ideas, or developing an approach. If you’re unstructured, you may drown in information, mix up individual issues, forget important aspects, or communicate in a confusing fashion.

Being structured often comes down to two qualities:

Keep a good overview of all the key issues. Don’t drop the ball on anything.
Break down the problem into manageable subcomponents in a clean fashion, without overlap.

The key term here is MECE, which was coined by former McKinsey consultant Barbara Minto. MECE stands for mutually exclusive, and collectively exhaustive. You want to cover each aspect of the problem individually. Avoid overlap and make sure that there aren’t multiple people working on the same thing in an uncoordinated way – so, make sure issues are treated in a mutually exclusive way. But you also want to cover all aspects of the problem so you don’t overlook any important issue – that means to be collectively exhaustive.

Quantitative skills

Good consultants give fact-based recommendations. You don’t make suggestions based on your gut-feeling. Instead, you need data, or a proof to back it up. Typically, it will be a certain quantitative analysis that will do the job here. The expectation towards a consultant is to be able to grasp quantitative relationships, set up an approach to solve a problem, and to safely execute the calculations.

It’s important to note that math in consulting is not difficult. Much like in most corporate jobs, there will be no calculus or trigonometry. You can solve almost anything with basic arithmetic. Of course, it's possible that there is simply a lot of data, but in most cases Microsoft Excel has all the necessary computing power to get to a result. The one thing that you should be comfortable with is dealing with large numbers. You shouldn't get stumped if you have to calculate 5% of 15 billion in your head.

More important than your mental computing power is often your conceptual thinking. You need to be able to quickly set up an equation or a cross-multiplication that will lead you to the result. Once you have the approach figured out, you can go and pursue that data. That's because oftentimes data is not readily available, and you may have to speak to a client, or buy it from a third-party vendor. Imagine you're talking to the head of finance to get the data required for your analysis. Then you have to know what you need and why you need it. If you're walking into these meetings without that, you're wasting your own and the client's time. Once you have the approach figured out, you can be much more targeted in what you want, e.g.:

Data interpretation

On a consulting project you’re often swamped with data. Aside from having good structuring abilities, a consultant needs the ability to quickly determine what the key insights are, from a variety of data sources. These sources can be charts or tables on a PowerPoint slide, Excel files, industry reports, financial reports, written input from interview notes, emails, or even verbal input.

Typically, clients just dump tons of files onto you indiscriminately. A lot of it may be useless. Other things are important but may be hard to understand. While consultants always try to produce clear and easy to understand charts, clients are often not that well-trained to do so. A chart that looks bad visually is the least of your concerns here. If charts or tables are confusing, or are missing labels altogether it gets significantly harder.

The data you receive may be quantitative or qualitative in nature, but whatever you have in front of you, you need to get on top of it quickly. Say you just completed a project and move on to the next. You may be working for a different client, on a different type of project, or even in a different industry. And in this new situation you’re confronted with new data, and a different way of displaying and communicating that data. It’s critical that you quickly understand what the data is telling you, so that you can become effective immediately.

Business judgement

Once you know the client context and learned more about their situation – through interpreting and analyzing their data – you need to connect the dots. Is the client in a good situation, or a bad situation? What are the main issues the organization is facing? What are risks? What are opportunities? It’s not enough to produce a nice analysis for the client. A consulting project needs to give deep a strategic and tactical assessment of the situation. And increasingly, consultants are expected to bring deep industry expertise, instead of just generic advice. A partner of a consulting firm is typically a renowned expert in his or her respective industry.

A junior consultant (and especially a candidate) is not expected to have this deep expertise. Most importantly, you’re expected to think logically, and apply common sense. However, it does help to have some industry knowledge. The more awareness you have for the client context and the respective industry, the better you can apply business judgement and take part in discussions (client discussions as well as internal discussions among the consulting team). The type of knowledge that's good to have could look something like this:

Higher interest rates may be good for a bank, but bad for an airline
Higher energy costs won’t affect a retailer too much, but puts pressure on a steel manufacturer
An e-commerce company probably needs to put much more focus on a great customer journey than a large construction company with B2B customer relationships

Of course, there is no exhaustive list to study such facts. It's more a question of maturity. A partner is much more likely to bring you to a meeting with a senior client if you're knowledgeable about the industry and can confidently speak about it. It's this critical step from producing some nice analyses to actually being a respected sparring partner in strategic discussions that clients really pay for.

Creativity

Once the team understands the client and has a good feeling for their situation, they're frequently asked to bring ideas to address the situation. Even projects are often set up in a way to account for these distinct phases of an engagement. An exemplary consulting project may start with a 4-week diagnostic phase, followed by a 4 week design-phase, and rounded off with a 4-week implementation phase.

The diagnostic phase is where you collect most of the data and perform the key analyses. The result of this phase is a good understanding for the client’s problems. Then you move on to the next phase, let’s call it the design phase. Here you’re developing ideas how to address the issues and opportunities of the client that you identified in the diagnostic phase. For example, you may be asked one of the following questions:

To come up with ideas for these questions, creativity can be helpful. However, creativity in our context doesn’t mean artistic creativity. It rather means, coming up with applicable ideas that concretely address the client’s situation. Some of these ideas may be classic levers in the industry. Others can be a bit more unconventional. It’s often good to bring a good mix between the two. Having some more traditional ideas is always good. You shouldn’t go all out on one risky idea that no one in the industry has ever tried before, while there is still uncaptured potential with traditional, tried-and-tested ideas. But on the other hand, clients also want to see some wilder ideas. Consultants are expected to expand the client’s horizon with some new and innovative ideas. Again, if you have a bit of industry knowledge, this will be easier. But you may also bring in ideas from related industries.

Communication skills

Cutting across all dimensions, a consultant needs great communication skills. Whether a consultant is interviewing an employee in the client organization, or preparing the final board presentation of the project, communication is key. So much can be said about communication, but to simplify we will boil it down to these 3 qualities:

Clarity: Above all, as a consultant it needs to be completely clear what you’re saying. The key to good storytelling is top-down communication. Your most important finding, or your key recommendation needs to come first, because the client needs to know what’s going on. Junior consultants may still come from a different direction. They’ll tell you what they did, and why they did it, and who they talked to. So they’re describing the process of how they got to the result. Instead, they should start with the result. What did they find out? That’s typical feedback that junior consultants get. To put it bluntly, no one’s interested in what you did and how you did it. They’re interested in what they need to do with that. You can still talk about the details later. Maybe a client wants to challenge you, so you need to know the details. But focus on what matters. Of course, you can and should also complement your findings and recommendations with supporting arguments. A great read on this is the Pyramid principle by Barbara Minto.

Precision: In written as well as spoken communication, it’s important to be precise. It’s quite obvious that you shouldn’t have spelling, grammar, or numerical errors in a document for the CEO. This is equally important in verbal communication. But aside from these issues, you also need to ensure precision in what you’re saying, content-wise. For example, there’s a difference between growing profits, and growing profit margins, or profitability. Confusing terminology could change the meaning of what you’re saying, and especially consultants shouldn't be careless. Another aspect of precision is to understand organizational and top-management priorities. That's more important for the job than for case interviews but we'll briefly discuss it here. All too often in a consulting project you'll learn that certain words are taboo in the client organization. Some words you have to use, others you cannot use. It’s important that you follow these guidelines. A perfect example is McKinsey itself. A McKinsey consultant will never say that he’s serving a customer. Instead he says he’s serving a client. McKinsey doesn’t have "customers". They have "clients". This is a crucial distinction deeply embedded in the self-image of McKinsey. Similarly, clients also have such internal conventions that you need to respect.

Empathy: And of course, you need to display empathy in all situations. That starts with listening carefully. Not just what people are saying, but also, how they’re saying it. It’s incredibly important to understand the feelings, concerns, and motivations of your clients (and team members). Imagine you’re working on a project that involves layoffs, and you’re interviewing middle managers to better understand an organization. These managers are often extremely anxious, and it’s a delicate task to interview them. You always need to be professional, friendly, and honest. In personal conversations, meetings, or even emails. No one wants a rude, cocky, or arrogant team member, because with such behavior you can burn down bridges in the client organization and jeopardize the entire project.

Likability

This is the X-factor. At the end of the day, and whatever your skillset is, you must function well in a team. Projects are often stressful, and its not uncommon to spend 10, 12, or 14 hours and more on a single day with your team in a team room. If there’s a team member that is highly disagreeable, unfriendly, and antisocial, it won’t make for a good team room atmosphere. The same goes for client interactions. You’ll be infinitely more successful in getting clients to collaborate if you have a pleasant personality.

Of course, not everyone is equally charismatic, but there are always things you can do. Being friendly, helpful, and showing some humility already goes a long way. And if you, on top of that, contribute to a fun atmosphere, you’ll be cherished by teams and clients. A good joke and some banter is always welcome in the team room. And if you want to be on the safe side, make sure its appropriate jokes.

Structured thinking

Early on in basically all case interviews you’ll be asked to structure the problem. This "structure", sometimes also called an "issue tree", or a "framework", will guide your approach throughout the case. You need to ensure 2 things. First, it needs to be MECE, and second, it needs to be well-adapted to the situation and the industry:

Adaptation to the situation and the industry means that you should customize your issue tree. A mistake that candidates make is to learn frameworks by heart. That way, they hope that the issue tree is MECE and they don’t have to create a new one on the spot. What typically happens is that their framework is super generic and doesn’t fit to the client’s situation. Parroting memorized frameworks is a pet peeve of interviewers. They've heard the standard frameworks a hundred times and will recognize if you apply them blindly. So, try and be conscious about what framework you set up. A good test is the "juice factory" test. If the issue tree you set up for your case could just as well apply to juice factory (assuming the case is not set in the juice sector), then it's probably too generic.

You’re best positioned if you practice case interviews frequently, and maybe throw in some dedicated structuring drills. Sooner or later you’ll develop a feel for it. And if you can then complement it with some industry knowledge, your issue trees will be top notch. Typically, it's good to remember some of the basic skeletons of an issue tree, such as the "profit and loss"-framework. Or the "business situation"-framework, originally coined by Victor Cheng. It covers the “Customers”, the “Product”, the “Company”, and the “Competition".

A great issue tree depends on the type of case interview:

For a classic McKinsey-style interviewer-led format you need to produce a great structure upfront. That means it should be comprehensive and detailed. A good structure is often more than 2 layers deep, MECE, and featuring lots of great examples on the lowest layer. Importantly, you only get one chance to do this, and the interviewer will evaluate this exactly as you presented it. There’s no circling back to it and expanding it throughout the case.

In the interviewee-led format, you’ll typically don’t build such a comprehensive issue tree upfront. You may only draw up one layer, and justify why you’d jump into a certain issue first. And then you build out this issue in more detail. Once you’ve exhausted all the important branches of one issue, you may move up the hierarchy and drill down into the second issue. The issue tree is more of a tool, instead of a task. By the end of the case, the issue trees may even look similar. It’s just that you need to produce it immediately in a McKinsey-style interview.

There are further instances in which you need to demonstrate structured thinking. When you’re solving problems throughout the case it always helps to be structured. Breaking down a quantitative analysis into its component pieces, or coming up with a list of ideas, thinking systematically makes everything easier. Even when you’re communicating your final recommendation (or any intermediate synthesis), a structured approach is preferred. You may say something like: “I recommend the client to do X, and there are 3 reasons for this: reason A, reason B, and reason C.

Quantitative skills

Throughout the case interview there can be situations in which you need to make a quantitative analysis. Either the interviewer asks you directly, or it’s evident from the information presented. Typically, its not a difficult task. That’s why its all the more important to execute it confidently. Yes, a single mistake won’t cost you the job, but its you better avoid it.

The classic process to solve quantitative tasks has 3 steps:

Approach: Once you understood the assignment and the data that was presented to you (ask if you're unclear), ideally you develop an approach. How do you want to address the problem? This is recommended in almost all situations, except for the easiest, and most obvious ones. Your approach may be a system of equations that you want to solve. Or a sequence of say, 3 steps. Ideally, you share this approach with the interviewer who then has at least a chance to intervene if you’re on the wrong track.
Calculation: Then you execute your calculations. While there are lots of smart applicants at the top consulting firms, don’t pressure yourself to be super fast. Yes, fast is good. But if you rush it and make mistakes your speed is irrelevant. Better do it in a moderate pace and accurately than super quickly and wrong. Or if you’re fast, give it a few more seconds to sanity check and quality check your results briefly.
Synthesis: In the end, you synthesize what the result means for the client and the situation overall. This is key. Don’t explain what you did, and the process you executed. The result counts, as well as the implications for the client.

To practice, solve case questions to get better at the necessary algebra, and add in some dedicated math drills, to become fast and confident at basic arithmetic. Pay special attention to dealing with large numbers. You shouldn’t be intimidated when figures are presented in millions, or billions.

One important bonus tip: It’s not always necessary to get the exact result down to 3 digits behind the decimal point. A directional result is often good enough. If the numbers are complicated, ask the interviewer if its okay that you round the calculations, to speed up the process. If it’s a close call, or the interviewer insists on an exact result, you can still do that. But always follow the 80/20 rule if you can. Which means, make an approximate calculation. Interviewers won't perceive it negatively if you ask them to round in your calculations. In fact, it's seen much more as a sign of confidence and of having a consultant's mindset.

Data interpretation

In a case interview, the interviewer may show you an exhibit which you then need to interpret. This can take a variety of forms, for example:

Charts: All basic chart formats, such as bar charts, line charts, or pie charts are possible. But also some less conventional charts are conceivable, such as bubble charts, histograms, Mekko charts, or scatterplots
Tables: Tables filled with quantitative information (numbers), verbal information (text), or other qualitative information (e.g., symbols like Harvey balls)
Maps: Global or regional maps, typically overlaid with additional information, such as production facilities, supply chain routes, population centers, or topography
Plain text: Potentially from a customer review, a product description, or a statement by the management

The information presented in any of these formats can come from an almost limitless variety of sources. To give a few examples:

The key is to distill the main insights from the information presented to you. Such exhibits in a case interview typically have a key insight or a few noteworthy elements. The job of the candidate is to identify them, and communicate them to the interviewer. And ultimately, assess them in the overall case context. How does this fit into the bigger picture and what does it mean for the client? You’ll naturally get better at this with case practice, but you can also throw in some dedicated practice. Have a look at charts produced by the Economist, or FiveThirtyEight, and try analyzing them.

Business judgement

Business judgement is something you have to display throughout the interview. Once you receive the interviewer’s case briefing and after you’ve clarified the situation, even your initial structure benefits from business judgement. What industry is it, and what is the client's problem? Answering these questions with proper business judgement will tell you which key elements need to be present in a structure. And at the very end of a case interview you’re asked to give a final recommendation. This is also informed by business judgement.

Throughout the case, business judgement is typically combined with a task on data interpretation, or a quantitative analysis. Whatever you learn from the data or the analysis needs to be interpreted with regards to what it means for the client. The interviewer may also pose questions to you throughout the interview. This can take a variety of forms, for example:

Getting better at business judgement is not something that is easily done overnight. Case practice helps a lot. But most importantly, go through the world with open eyes, read business articles, watch business news, and listen to what business leaders have to say in interviews, on conferences, or at annual general meetings.

Creativity

In a case interview you may also be asked to demonstrate creativity. Depending on the situation in the case interview, you may have to come up with ideas to lower costs, to reduce customer churn, to grow revenues, or to think of new product features — to name a few examples.

An interviewer would typically assess the quantity and quality of ideas. That means, more ideas is better than fewer. And its better to have high-quality ideas instead of low-quality ideas. A high-quality idea is one that is interesting, addressing the concrete client situation, and actually implementable. No interviewer will count the number of ideas, or rate the individual ideas on a scale. It’s more of an implicit assessment. Also, the interviewer may push for more ideas. Don’t view this as a negative. Oftentimes, interviewers just want to challenge you a bit and see if you remain calm and can keep producing a few more ideas.

To improve your creative skills in the consulting sense, practice helps a lot. You can build this into your daily routine. Whenever you’re out and about you can challenge yourself and think of ways to improve a business you’re interacting with in a certain way. For example, on the cost dimension, the revenue dimension, or the customer experience dimension.

Also, there are some techniques you can apply. Remember, we’re not talking about artistic creativity. Oftentimes some structured thinking already helps. If you’re asked for ideas to reduce costs, you may be at a loss what to do. But when you break it down into individual cost buckets, its much easier to come up with ideas.

Communication skills

Throughout the case interview, across all the tasks you’re solving, all the analyses you’re producing, and all the way to the final recommendation, your communication skills are on display. The interviewer will ask herself, if she'd feel comfortable if you spoke directly to a client, or created a slide that goes directly to a client without further quality check by a senior consultant.

Most importantly, you want to listen carefully and speak clearly and precisely. Explain what you’re doing and why, explain your findings and key insights. For example, your final conclusion should be crystal clear. What exactly are you recommending to the CEO and why?

To practice, you ideally take a completed case interview and go over it one more time. Talk it through again. Maybe in front of a mirror, maybe in front of another person, maybe even record yourself. Try and make it as confident and convincing as you can. Over time you’ll develop a feel for it and for your own personal communication style.

Likability

This is something that should not be explicitly assessed by an interviewer. But of course, they are not immune to letting this factor impact their judgement – a sort of halo effect. And never forget that interviewers are human. We have heard multiple times a colleague say after an interview "well, this candidate wasn't really the most likeable person". If the interviewers are then discussing your performance and whether you should move on to the next round, you can imagine that it is unlikely that this interviewer will argue in your favor if you are a close call. In contrast, for some interviewers the opposite might be true. They may find that a candidate is likeable and give this candidate sympathy points. That’s more likely to happen in firms with less stringent processes. But it can never hurt if your interviewer likes you – especially if you are only on the verge of passing the interview.

There are a couple of things you can do to tilt the odds in your favor from the start, and get into the proper mindset — for example:

Don’t be cocky when talking about your experience. It’s great to be confident, and to be proud of your achievements. But no one likes a show-off. Your interviewer passed the CV screening and interview in the past and it is likely that her CV is at a similar level as yours. Additionally, the interviewer knows your CV and can usually gauge your experience pretty well. If you come across as nice, humble and down-to-earth, while having a killer CV and a great case performance, you’ll leave an amazing impression.

If you think about it, this interview is supposed to be fun. In other jobs you may be asked boring questions, like “where do you see yourself in 5 years”. Or “what’s your biggest weakness”. In a case interview, though, you can solve a challenging business problem under the eyes of an experienced consultant. It’s basically a gamified interview. And after solving the case you can ask the interviewer if the case was based on a real-life situation and what the outcome was. What’s not to like about that?

At the end of the interview, you typically have the opportunity to ask questions. The clear advice is: use it. Showing interest in the job or the interviewer as a person is very important. Not having any questions may come across as if you haven’t done your research. Or that you don’t care about the job and you just heard that it's well-paid. Ideally, you have some interesting questions that aren’t already answered on the company website and haven't been asked in a million recruiting events. For example, the question "how is the work-life balance in consulting?" is a question that the interviewer probably heard at every recruiting event 5 times. You may ask the interviewer about his or her coolest project in the last 2 years, and what made it fun. That surely puts the interviewer in a good mood and gets them talking.

Case briefing: The interviewer introduces the situation and outlines the problem you’re solving in the case
Structuring: You can take some time to structure the approach. In an interviewer-led format, you can take some more time, to develop a comprehensive and very detailed structure. In an interviewee-led format, you'll take less time and develop more of a barebones version of an issue tree
Progressing through the case: You will be presented with information and with questions by the interviewer and have to solve them. In an interviewee-led format, you have more leeway in what to do when, but ultimately the interviewer will steer you in a direction. The interviewer doesn’t have an answer or an exhibit for all possible questions, so of course there will be guidance. In an interviewer-led format, this guidance is stronger. The interviewer may ask very precise questions and provide you with a concrete exhibit
Closing with a recommendation: After having exhausted all sensible branches of an issue tree, or simply when the interviewer says so, you're asked to give a recommendation to the client. Again you can take some time to go over the case and develop a final recommendation. This is usually complemented by supporting arguments, and maybe even some caveats, or next steps that the client should consider

Overall, the differences between formats should not be overemphasized. In an interviewee-led format, the interviewer will still provide guidance. The case must come to a conclusion and the interviewer wants you to get on the right track eventually – so it has elements of an interviewer-led format. Moreover, the interviewer can't allow you to explore any direction of the case as she only has exhibits and information on a limited number of branches in the issue tree. On the other hand, an interviewer-led case doesn’t mean you can sit back and wait for orders by the interviewer. You’re asked to be proactive, make a plan, suggest next steps, and drive the case. At least that’s what good candidates do. So there’s less of a difference than you think, and if you’re great at cases, you’ll succeed in any format – the skillset you need is the same.

For brain teasers as well as for case interviews, it can be quite useful to remember some key numbers about countries and geographies. For example, it is good to know that the US have a population of around 300 million. This would already help you in the market sizing example stated in the list above. But no one expects you to know the population of any country in the world. Just memorize the key markets and the specific market of the office you are applying to. Here are some key population figures that are useful:

Global: 8 billion
USA: 300 million
Europe: 750 million
EU: 450 million
China: 1.4 billion
India: 1.4 billion

If you've gained some experience abroad (i.e., to understand the relationship between the metric and imperial system) and walk through life with two open eyes, you are probably familiar with the most important metrics that could come along in a case interview. Don't overemphasize memorizing facts and figures. Your time is much better spent in preparing for the case interview and working on personal fit. We have never seen the need to know the GDP of one specific country or region at case interviews at MBB firms. If you are applying for specific roles at boutique consulting firms that focus on economics this advice is obviously not applicable.

Group case interviews: You’re solving the case together with other people, similar to an assessment center. The idea is to test how well you interact with a group of people. Of course you need to make sure that you’re making valuable contributions. Don’t just say something to have a large share of voice, but make your contributions count. Most crucially though, you need to involve other people. Listen to their ideas and don’t be shy to praise team members. Actively involve other team members in the problem solving approach. Don’t shoot down ideas or interrupt people. A consulting project is never a competition among team members. It’s about helping each other, and making each other shine.

Written case interviews: In a written case interview, you’re often given large amounts of data, sometimes dozens of slides. Then you have an hour or two to review the information, make the necessary analyses, and create slides to present your findings. Since the end product of a consulting engagement is basically always a slide deck, written communication in PowerPoint format is extremely important, which is tested in this type of interview. If you anticipate this type of interview, make sure that your PowerPoint skills are solid and you can quickly create a presentation with basic charts and graphs. Check out presentations of consulting firms which you can find online.

Listen carefully

No matter if it’s the initial briefing, or any other information by the interviewer, it’s important to listen carefully. In a client situation it would be extremely uncomfortable if you had to go back to the client and ask a question again. And the interviewer is also not exactly excited if he or she has to repeat information multiple times because you aren't pay attention. Of course, if for whatever reason you didn't catch something important, then ask. It's still better to ask twice than trying to solve the case while missing critical details. But by listening carefully you can avoid this situation altogether. You may even play back the question in your own words to the interviewer, to be sure you understood.

Take notes

This is related to listening carefully. Be prepared to take notes. At least when it comes to the key information. Forgetting the exact question of the interviewer in the briefing is easier than you think, after working on a case for 25 minutes. That’s why you better write it down. You may even practice note taking. Employ all the shortcuts you need so you're efficient. But at the end of the day, you’re safer if key information is documented somehow. Moreover, taking notes in a structured manner helps you at the end of the case when you have to make a recommendation. If your notes a structured in a way that you can easily find points that support your recommendations you save a lot of time in preparing your synthesis.

Ask clarifying questions

If there is anything unclear to you, kindly ask the interviewer to clarify. After hearing the briefing, and before starting to structure the problem, its completely common to ask some clarifying question. You want to make sure that you understood the client’s goal and any overarching conditions or constraints that your recommendation needs to meet. Of course, it's also good to clarify terminology that you are unfamiliar with, especially when the terms are central to the case question. And you may even ask for a bit of industry background if you are completely unfamiliar with it.

Also, during the case, when you start a new task, it's possible to ask questions. If there is a chart and something about it is unclear to you, or you’re not sure what to do with it, you can ask. Don’t overdo it, and only ask if something is really unclear — but it's definitely better to ask, than to remain stuck.

Take your time

When you're confronted with new data or a new task, it's absolutely fine to ask for a bit of time. This will allow you to review the information, make a plan, and execute your plan. For example, when you have to make a calculation, or when you have to analyze an exhibit, it's typically wise to ask for a few moments to think about the problem. A lot of candidates, maybe because of nerves, will rush into it and feel pressured to come up with results and insights quickly. From an interviewer’s perspective, this is not needed. In fact, it’s a sign of confidence if you ask for some time and then work diligently under the watchful eyes of the interviewer. This time is typically well-invested. It allows you to think it through, quality check your findings and results, and share them in a structured manner with the interviewer.

Communicate with the interviewer

Talk to the interviewer. There's a conversational element to all case interviews. You want to avoid a situation in which it's simply ping-pong between you and the interviewer, like in an interrogation: "Here is some data" — "Ok, here is a result" — "Good, here is some more data" — "Ok, I solved this one too" — "..."

It doesn't have to be so mechanical, neither you nor the interviewer is a robot. Finding an (appropriate) conversational style will be highly appreciated by the interviewer. Even a funny remark at some point during the case wouldn't hurt. Furthermore, walking the interviewer through your solution on a continuous basis gives the interviewer the chance to intervene if you took the wrong turn at one point. If you just present the final solution to a question to the interviewer, she probably has no idea where you got lost and can't really help you.

Synthesize

Whenever you complete a step in the case, it's recommended that you summarize your findings verbally and share it with the interviewer. That keeps the interviewer in the loop and also forces you to think about how your findings fit into the overall case question.

Drive the case with intent

Whatever form of interview it is (e.g., interviewer-led, candidate-led, group case), you should be ready to take the lead and suggest what you would do next. Even if it is an interviewer-led case interview, you should have a clear next step in mind. This shows the interviewer that you’re not just waiting passively to receive orders and instructions, but that you’re proactive. That’s a quality you want to see in a team member. Of course, don’t just go through the motions and suggest random next steps. Always be prepared to qualify why you're planning to do certain things. Otherwise it will look random. Show that you have a plan and that you’re in control. To be able to do that, always ask yourself how any new information you uncover fits into the overall case context. How does this change the situation? Was my hypothesis disproven, or supported? What else could be driving the situation that I could still investigate?

Case Interview Guide:
Ultimate Guide to Master the Case Interview at McKinsey, BCG & Bain

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Start your journey now and solve your first case for free!

Sky high

What is a case interview and why is it so important

The 7 skills and traits you need to succeed in consulting

Structured thinking

Quantitative skills

Data interpretation

Business judgement

Creativity

Communication skills

Likability

How case interviews test these 7 skills and traits and what makes a good performance

Structured thinking

Quantitative skills

Data interpretation

Business judgement

Creativity

Communication skills

Likability

How a case interview is typically structured

The difference between interviewer-led and interviewee-led case interviews

Full case interview vs. brain teasers

Facts and metrics to know for case interviews

Alternative settings and interview types

General good habits in case interviews

Listen carefully

Take notes

Ask clarifying questions

Take your time

Communicate with the interviewer

Synthesize

Drive the case with intent

Sign up now and try one case for free!

Check out our case library and start preparing

Sign up now and
try a case for free!

Check out our case library and start preparing!

Quick links

Do you have any questions?
Get in touch with us

Case Interview Guide:Ultimate Guide to Master the Case Interview at McKinsey, BCG & Bain

How to use our simulation

Start your journey now and solve your first case for free!

Sky high

What is a case interview and why is it so important

The 7 skills and traits you need to succeed in consulting

Structured thinking

Quantitative skills

Data interpretation

Business judgement

Creativity

Communication skills

Likability

How case interviews test these 7 skills and traits and what makes a good performance

Structured thinking

Quantitative skills

Data interpretation

Business judgement

Creativity

Communication skills

Likability

How a case interview is typically structured

The difference between interviewer-led and interviewee-led case interviews

Full case interview vs. brain teasers

Facts and metrics to know for case interviews

Alternative settings and interview types

General good habits in case interviews

Listen carefully

Take notes

Ask clarifying questions

Take your time

Communicate with the interviewer

Synthesize

Drive the case with intent

Sign up now and try one case for free!

Check out our case library and start preparing

Sign up now and try a case for free!

Check out our case library and start preparing!

Quick links

Do you have any questions?Get in touch with us

Case Interview Guide:
Ultimate Guide to Master the Case Interview at McKinsey, BCG & Bain

Sign up now and
try a case for free!

Do you have any questions?
Get in touch with us