Case examples based on interviewer's focus area

Question

Hi!

Quite unexpectedly I got a final round interview with a global firm (not MBB) and I'm pushing myself as hard as I can to prepare.

I'm trying to guess what are the possible cases I could receive based on my interviewer's profile which is pretty concentrated and interesting. What cases would you look at in the first place?

# Interviewer A

- strategic sourcing

- procurement

- cost benchmarking

- cost optimization & transformation

- due diligence

- market analysis for PE, consumer, retail, financial services

I know it's kind of difficult to predict but do you know some good procurement/cost-centric cases?

Thanks!

Christian

Answer 1

Hi Chris,

I would suggest the following approach:

Download 4-5 MBA consulting handbooks. You should find many of them online for free.
Filter by procurement/costs. Sometimes you may also find a division by firm.
Read the cases trying to structure your own approach first, or ask a friend to help you as the interviewer for the case.

As Vlad mentioned, there is no guarantee you will necessarily receive a case based on procurement/costs, I would suggest thus to prepare on the other common type of cases as well (revenues increase, new product, market entry, market sizing, etc).

Best,

Francesco

Answer 2

Congrats, sounds like ATK, if I'm right, they do have some official cases online a few years ago, you can google it.

Answer 3

Hi,

There is not much value in that guessing:

The correlation of cases with the interviewer's profile is not that high
Your interviewer's background is quite diverse
Consultants do so many projects in various industries and functions that the number of outcomes (cases) becomes even bigger

I would recommend concentrating on the case prep and finding the partners who can give you a great feedback.

Best!

Answer 4

For final rounds usually correlation is actually pretty high with specialization if interviewer. However trying to guess and prepare for specific topics feels to much of a gamble to me, especially if the profile they provided you with is outdated (I know interviewing partners that didn’t update their profiles for 5-7 years!). My suggestion is to I’ve some emphasis to those topics, but not focus exclusively.

Funny, when I read that list of topics I also thought about ATK or Alix.

Hope it helps,

andrea