How to solve a case if the industry / sector is completely new to you?

Hi there,

This is extremely hard to answer via writing (I recommend coaching), but I'll do my best:

1. Conduct multiple various industry deep-dives on your own. Research a few industries deeply. This will help you learn what to ask for (you'll start to see patterns across industries).
2. Relating to #1, start to learn what matters. Learn patterns across industries. For example, if I'm building a big/complex thing, Capex/R&D are going to be major costs.
3. Ask strong questions, particularly around the business model itself, until you really understand the industry
4. Think about a parallel/similar industry and draw conclusions

Again, it's hard to explain this via writing and is much easier to teach. I do truly advise you get a coach for a few sessions to work through this!

Hey there,

Broadly, industries can be classified as follows:

• Raw Materials- e.g. mining, agriculture and fishing
• Manufacturing e.g. cars, planes, steel
• Support services e.g. hospitality, teaching and nursing.
• Digital Service e.g. IT, Software, Cloud

Read up trends in these industry categories to have an idea. But you are not expected to have deep expertise or knowledge of any particular industry for the case interview. Unless you are going for an specific experienced hire role then the job description will specify the industry.

Otherwise, ask the right questions and use your assumptions/hypothesis to guide your solution for the case. Any company that operates in any industry will have following layers:

• Customers they sell to (B2B or B2C)
• Channels to sell to those customer (e.g. retail, online etc)
• Product & Service to sell through those channels to the customer
• All underlying processes
• Data to enable the processes
• Technology/Tools to execute the processes
• People & Organisation
• Physical assets (offices, warehouse, stock etc)

Hope this helps a bit.

Hi!

Consulting cases do not require prior knowledge of the specific industry, even though it sure helps!

There is no standard set of questions you can ask your interviewers as it depends on many factors like the prompt, the data already provided, etc.

My recommendation: think about how you would structure the case to ask the right questions!

Hope this helps.

Best,

Anto

Hi there,

Generally speaking, I advise you to bring your readiness to a level where you have a solid understanding of the most important industry drivers of all common industries (as listed on the company websites). Even if you're not penalized for not being an industry expert if it's not required, it's still an easy way to truly stand out from the crowd.
Besides reading through industry overviews in case books and other external resource, I would highly recommend building your own industry overview from industry overviews by consulting companies as well as analyst reports (as available) focusing on the truly critical industry drivers.

With more “exotic” industry sectors like the one you mentioned, I think you have two basic approaches:

• As you already mentioned, try to identify the main driver with clarifying questions at the beginning of the case interview, truly focusing on that one missing piece of information instead of broadly asking about the industry. Instead of just asking about that piece of information, I always advise my coachees to make a hypothesis and ask about its validity ("I can imagine that … . What do you think about that?"). This way, even if the interviewer has the tendency to not provide many details on the industry, he will most probably give you the missing information.
• If you either do not receive the required information by the interviewer or you simply don't dare to ask, you can also extend your structure by a factor like “industry dynamics” as one of the first topics qualitatively discussing key factors in the market with the interviewer to derive the main driver you should be focusing on. However, I would still advise you to rather identify the main driver with clarifying questions as you know earlier on what to focus on.

I hope that helps,

Hagen

Hi there! This happens to almost anyone and everyone. Even if you do 200 cases - your 201st case could be from an unknown space.

Technically - you are not expected to know about the sectors or have any specific business knowledge.

You are right about asking even the most basic clarifying questions. If you ask in the beginning then the interviewer can still provide them.

If the interviewer doesn't - then you need to go by the “first principle” approach.

Its not easy to explain how to do “first principle approach” over messages or Q&A. I can demonstrate it to you using your own interview examples (and from other recent MBB interviews) through a coaching session. Happy to help!

Hi there,

That's a very good question. Usually, I would try to ask clarifying questions on the business model (i.e., how does the business generate revenues) and cost structure (unless it's clear or it's not needed for your case). If you think you know how the business model works but you're not sure, you can always validate your understanding, e.g., “My hypothesis is the business mainly generates revenues from Xxx - Is this in line with your understanding?" Similarly for cost structure…, if applicable

Unless you are applying for a specific industry/ function, or an experienced hire expected to have understanding of specific industry/ function, you will not be penalized for not being fully knowledgeable about unconventional industries/ functional topics. But you should still be able to formulate some hypotheses/ educated guesses if you want to stand out as a good candidate.

Hi there,

I would recommend the following, depending on the situation.

1) During the interview

The only option is to ask clarifying questions at the beginning. As you mentioned, if you don’t clarify the revenue model of the client and you are not familiar with that, it is likely you will miss something.

2) Before the interview

Whenever you find industries you are unfamiliar with, I would recommend you look for 3-4 cases related to that industry and create related profit trees.

Best,

Francesco

Hi!

I believe you have several heavy misconceptions.

If you ask about the business model and how the client caters towards its principal goal, then there are only two scenarios in which the interviewer would not give you the information:

Scenario 1: You are not interviewing with an MBB trained interviewer: If your interviewer does not give you information on how the client's busines model works, or “expects you to know it”, then this person is definitely not a trained MBB interviewer! (and yes, this also applies to many coaches)

Scenario 2: You ask your question in a super awkward way: most importantly, not indicating why you even ask the question; aka “Is there any information on the business model?", which essentially sounds like “Dear interviewer, can you please solve the problem for me?”. Instead, you should ALWAYS make clear the rationale behind your question. For example ”In order for me to develop an adequate criterion to clearly answer our client's question, I would need to disaggregate the clients objective/focus metric into its component. The precondition for this is for me to know, how they actually create value against this objective. Hence, could you roughly outline to me their business model in terms of, for example, major income streams, as well as the major steps of their value chain? This will help me come up with a very specific and sharp logic how to help our client."

What you must understand:

If you are targeting MBB on the generalist track, then building up a lot of industry knowledge is a colossal wast of time! On the normal consulting track, MBBs are NOT hiring for kowledge! This is one of the most fundamental principles of how McKinsey, BCG, and Bain have built their entire assessment methodology! This is a major thing that thousands of people do not understand (also due to bad avice that is spread everywhere left and right) and what causes them to prepare in a completely wrong way for MBB interviews.

What MBB firms are testing is NOT whether you know certain industry aspects, but whether you are able to showcase a ROBUST and REPEATABLE thinking process by which you can address problems! THIS is wat they are searching for. MBBs do NOT hire knowledge from graduates. This would be absurd. They build up specific knowledge and expertise internally.

MBB firms are interested in your principle skills (such as problem solving skills, communication skills, capacity to influence, maturity etc.). If these principle skills are given, then all relevant sector or functional knowledge will be absorbed on the job and via structured training curriculums at the firms! When I recruitied for McKinsey and BCG, my guiding principle was: "I need to hire the right brains and personalities. I am not interested in their business knowlege, since if they have the right capabilities, they will be able to quickly absorb the relevant knowledge anyway". This is the reason why MBB firms insist on the point that your major doesn't play a role in whether you can get an offer or not.

Again: On the normal consulting track, MBBs are NOT hiring for kowledge! They are hiring for skills! 

Cheers, Sidi

Hello,

It looks like you got some great advice on this thread! I would definitely like to reiterate that your interviewers are not looking to assess your business knowledge, they are looking to assess your problem skills. So definitely don't worry if you aren't very familiar with an industry you are being given a case on, it happens to candidates a lot of the time. That being said, here are my additional two cents on it:

Before the interview:

- As several experts have suggested here, try doing deep dives and reading about various industries (maybe pick some ones you feel particularly uncomfortable doing a case in?). 

- Practice doing cases that focus on businesses operating in industries you are unfamiliar with. Apply your case toolkit to boil question down to the common denominator (e.g. factors such as profitability, market structure, competition, customer set are going to be important in any industry, regardless of the specifics).

During the interview, if you are given a case on an industry you don't know anything about:

- Ask lots of clarifying questions! Don't worry about making it seem like you don't know about the industry since this is not what you are being assessed on. If you are worried that the interviewer won't want to give you that much information, you could frame them as assumptions you are testing (e.g. “Would it be fair to assume that the main source of revenue is advertising?”)

- Think about the industries you have worked in, have purchased from, or otherwise engage in in everyday life. Are there any parallels that might apply to this industry? For instance, if you are unfamiliar with the baseball broadcasting system, are there any parallels you could make to other sports broadcasting, or to the media industry in general.

- Don't worry about your lack of background knowledge, and apply your case solving toolkit! Ultimately this is what the interview is designed to test. If you proceed through the case systematically, you should be able to find some useful clues and answers. Once again, factors like profitability, competition, customers segments, and so on, are going to be important regardless of the industry.