For those of you looking to join the consulting industry this recruiting cycle, here are few resources I found particularly helpful when preparing for case interviews.
Books: Many sources will point you to the classics for case prep (Marc Cosentino’s Case in Point and Victor Cheng’s Case Interview Secrets); however, I found the best books to be Taylor Warfield’s Hacking the Case Interview and The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook. The former provided a wonderful introduction to the case interview and was a fairly easy read. It also provided tips to build a custom, fit-to-size framework instead of frameworks for every scenario. The Workbook had many unique cases to study from and was wonderful to use for solo study. As a case interview novice, I would definitely start with these two books as a foundation.
MBA Program Case Books: As you begin to build up your basics, try your best to find a partner/fellow candidate and practice cases from books compiled by MBA candidates at top schools. A quick internet search can land you PDF files from Wharton, Fuqua, HBS, Darden, INSEAD, Ross, Kellogg, and more. Most will tell you which firm and which round the cases are pulled from. This way, you can get a better idea of the style and format of the case you will get as you go through recruitment. My personal favorite was Ross’ 2010 Casebook – it had some unique cases that weren’t your run-of-the-mill profitability or growth problems.
Online Resources: Once you have your foundation set, isolate the areas you need to work on and practice just those parts. I found an incredible website to do just that – www.craftingcases.com. It’s free to use for just one week, but in that time, you can drill down and focus on areas of improvement, whether that be improving estimations, building more creative frameworks, or summarizing recommendations.
Hope these tips helped! If you have more questions, please feel free to reach out to me at joycelyn.yip@usc.edu.
Published on March 18th, 2020
Last updated on March 18th, 2020