Hi Clara,

Most likely the assessment will involve (i) some time for you to review the material they send and prepare slides/presentation material (ii) some time to present your findings.

For part (i), sometimes they send the material in advance and you have a few days to prepare, sometimes they provide the material during the interview itself. You can verify the exact format with HR. 

Assuming they will provide the material during the interview, I would recommend to work on the following areas.

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1. Define your action plan and allocate time

The first thing you should do in a written case is to define a plan and allocate your time in the best possible way. Most candidates mismanage time as usually there is a lot of material to go through (this is a key difference compared to the standard case interview).

If you have, say, 45 minutes to review the material, a good approach would include:

• 2 min – Read the questions
• 15-20 min – Read the material
• 3 min – Structure the approach
• 15-20 min – Perform math/ Identify answers/ Create slides
• 5 – Final review

You should learn how to stick to the time allocated to maximize your performance.

2. Practice graph interpretation

You will likely have to analyze graphs as part of the data provided. The best way to practice is to take graphs from online sources and use a timer to test in how much time you can understand the key message. McKinsey PST graphs are good to practice for that.

3. Learn how to quickly understand of key information

You won’t have time to read and prioritize everything, therefore you have to understand where to focus. The ideal way to practice is to use long cases such as HBS ones. You should then learn to absorb the key information of the case.

4. Practice math

You will likely have some math to do as part of the data analysis. GMAT and McKinsey PST math should work well to prepare for this.

5. Work on how to communicate your slides/answers

To present your findings in the second part, I would suggest the same structure used for a conclusion in a live interview, that is:

1. Summarize the main questions you have to answer
2. Present your proposed answers and detail the motivation behind
3. Present risks and next steps for the areas you have not covered

Given you won’t be able to double-check hypotheses with the interviewer when you prepare the presentation, you should clearly state when you are making hypotheses and that you will have to verify them with further analysis.

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If you have to prepare slides I would recommend to take into account the following :

A) Structure of the presentation

Normally the structure for a 5-slide presentation is the following:

• 1st slide – summary of the questions and your answers
• 2nd, 3rd and 4th slides - supporting arguments for the first slide
• 5th slide - risks and next steps

B) Content of each slide

There are 3 basic components for most slides:

1. Title
2. Written content 
3. Graphs / Tables

Many candidates structure the title as a mere description of what the chart is about.

A great title instead shows the implication of the graph as well.

Example: say the graph is showing a cost structure for a division.

• A bad title would be: “Cost structure from 2005 to 2015”.
• A good title would be: “Cost structure of Division XYZ is not sustainable”.
• A great title would be “Cost structure of Division XYZ is not sustainable due to ABC”, assuming you have insights on that.

The rule of thumb is that if you read all the titles of the slides, you should get a clear idea of the message of the presentation.

C) Present the slides

When you present, I would recommend the following steps for each slide:

1. Introduce the slide: “Let’s move to slide 2, which will show us why we have an issue with this division”
2. Present the main message of the slide: “As you can see, we have a cost structure which makes it unfeasible to be competitive in this market”
3. Provide details: “The graph, indeed, shows how our fix cost is XYZ, while competitors can benefit from economies of scale. Indeed…”

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If you want to prepare further, I do a session exactly on that.

Before the session, I can send you the data source to work on. We can then simulate the presentation during the class, reviewing step-by-step all the improvements needed.

Please feel free to PM me in case you have any questions.

Best,

Francesco