Hi there,

Yes, you have this right.

Risks need to be clear things that could go wrong if we implement our proposed solution. Of course, if we're cutting employees there are real risks to consider here.

In terms of next steps, I don't love yours. They don't quite mitigate your risks. Rather, your next steps need to do an assessment of labor force/legal reactions to the move by comparing similar moves made by the company or peers in the past.

Hi there,

I would define the two concepts as follows - this should help to understand topics and depth of presentation.

• Risks: anything that could go wrong in terms of reaching the objective of the case, given the recommendation
  • Negative PR for firing people and issues with trade unions may definitely be a risk (the company may possibly not be able to implement the plan due to that)
• Next steps: anything that you could do to reach the objective (if not yet met) or to alleviate risks. In this case
  • If you have not reached the level of synergies required ⮕ Look for additional synergies (plus possibly also risks mitigation)
  • If you have met the level of synergies required ⮕ Look for ways to mitigate risks (investigate reallocation of employees / stop hiring / start discussions with trade unions, etc)

Hope this helps,

Francesco

This depends on what you feel the interviewer expects. It will never hurt you to not only throw out solutions, but provide a risk & mitigation assessment too. Why? Some solutions may have inherent risks that cannot be mitigated - i.e. some residual risk that decreases the overall attractiveness of the solution. If necessary - make sure to price that risk in in your quantitive solution of the case (i.e. a reduction in the potential identified earlier in the case, i.e. less synergies).

Before deep-diving into any details, make sure the interviewer unterstands high-level why you are propsing next steps and what the rough subjects / topics are. Do your next steps refer to implementation? Mitigation of risks? Unlocking further potential? Only if the high-level next steps are clear, offer to go into detail.