Hi,

As a recent McK offered fellow I strongly recommend you to do as much one-on-one cases with partners and/ or coaches. This will allow for your greatly better understanding of how to conduct than these readings. These books can be read but couldn't be the main basis for your prep.

Good luck!

Hi there,

For Q#1 you should ideally do this in the moment. You should be able to adjust your viewpoint as you go. There may be periods in a case where you are “stuck” or disorganized and need to take time…but, where possible, you want to move forward “live”

For Q#2 Please stop reading books. This gets you like 5% of the way there…

You need to get cased by people and case people. I don't like saying absolutes, but there's like a 0% chance you succeed if all you do is passively read some books. You need to case. A lot.

Based on your post, I greatly worry for your prep. Please read the following to make sure you don't make key mistakes in your prep:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/articles/pitfalls-case-interview-preparation

https://www.preplounge.com/en/articles/how-to-shift-your-mindset-to-ace-the-case

(editiert)

Hi there,

Here are my thoughts regarding both questions:

1- The key is having a framework that is solid yet flexible enough for you to adapt. For instance, if you're dealing with a profitability case, you will need to break down profits into revenues and costs, and then each into their components, but you do not need to put in the structure itself your hypothesis around costs being too high. Keep the structure as a structure, and do not pollute it with your own take on what the answer is. That way, if your hypothesis changes during the case, you would still have a clean generic structure where you can run the same calculations, with different numbers and assumptions though.

2- Preparing for consulting interviews is 20% theory (learning the basics) and 80% practice (practice, practice, practice! with coaches, with peers, with friends, with family, with whoever can practice with you!!). This is how you learn what your weaknesses are and this is how you start adapting to different styles of interviewers. If you stick to books, you're only getting used to 1 rhythm and style, which is yours. 

Mario