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- 2% of the people get a cancer once in life;
- If you consider the population evenly distributed with ages you have for each age group 1/75 of the population;
- If cancer lasts on average 5 years you should multiply the population per 5* 2% * 1/75.

Best,
Antonello

Hi!

This can not be answered. You have to first drill down and understand WHY the profits have decreased within the industry.

Cheers, Sidi

I wish you could provide more details on the training material you are using and if you have a study plan at all. I suspect that you may be training with the wrong material, for instance, case-in-point. If this is true, I suggest you grab the material, find a shovel, dig a very deep grave and bury the book in it. With all due respect to Cosentino, the book is outdated.

I suggest you build a study plan with Firmsconsulting. I say this because I am a subscriber to the platform. And I only made real improvements in my case practice after I stumbled upon the website. What makes them truly unique is that prepare all of their training material using Ex-Mckinsey Partners and Directors. I do not know of any platform that offers that the way they do.

That said, I am going to answer your questions directly.

With clarifying question, there are four rules that help:

Rule 1: Listen to the interviewer and not some voice in your head asking you to search your mind for clarifying questions. Don't worry about your speed now, it will improve if you focus on the right habits.

Rule 2: Don't ask clarifying questions for asking sake (because someone says you must ask). Better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt.

Rule 3: When you ask clarifying question, explain to your interviewer why you are asking. Else there is no point asking. In fact, if you cannot find a good reason, it is a strong signal that you are better off keeping quiet and moving on to the next thing. As your knowledge and business judgement improves, clarifying questions will come to you naturally.

Rule 4: Forget clarifying questions, work on improving your business judgement ( https://www.firmsconsulting.com/podcasts/what-is-business-judgement/)

To your second question about Recapping

I suspect this is a communication issue. When you are recapping, the interviewer expects a concise paraphrase of the problem and not repeating it word-for-word. What the interview is looking for is your ability to synthesize and not memorize. Don't worry, we have all been there before. So here is a training wheel for you to use

State the situation of the client, the complication the client is facing and the key question he/she is asking you to solve: "As I understand it, our client, a X(short description) is facing Y (problem) and what they have since is (the complication). They are wondering (the key question)"

I hope this helps!

Hi Spartak,

I think the best thing to deal with an open-ended market sizing case like this is to first bound the problem. Identify the major industry driver for the use of freight trucks and clarify with your interview: "I know there are X, Y, Z use of freight trucks, based on A, B, C, is it okay if I estimate the #freight required for the transportation of consumer goods?" If your interview rejects every attempt of yours to bound the problem, then you may want to approach it differently.
All Marketing questions are best solved by first understanding whether it is a demand-driven question or a supply-constrained case.

Are the #Freight trucks in the US so readily available that the demand for it can be matched by the supply of freight trucks? You could argue yes/no. I would say no because if supply is made to always match demand, then you might have to account for all major demands for freight trucks. Besides, arguing for yes is just going to complicate the estimation because now you have to account for all major demands for freight trucks. So this may not be best solved through the demand-driven approach.

It is supply-constrained if the demand for it does not automatically drive up its supply. For instance, the demand for American Visas in my country does not drive up the supply of AmE visa at the embassy (else we would have all left our country lmao).

You can argue that this case is supply-constrained. Else how would you make a case for supply chain management?
Now settling for the supply-constrained approach, you can now say #Freight trucks in US/year is the function of production capacity of factories in US/year + #Freight trucks imported/year + the #Freight trucks available from the previous year. (Assuming that damaged trucks are not part of the equation). Something like that. That should be manageable and should help you get to a realistic number.

Another approach is to use relative thinking. Compare the #cars on a typical highway to the plausible #frieght trucks on a typical highway/week multiplied by a correction factor (to account for freight trucks making multiple trips a week).

Make sure to cross-check your answer.

Estimation cases were always a pain in the ___ for me until I found FirmsConsulting. If you want to more details on the demand/supply approach I summarized above, you can find it here:

1. https://www.firmsconsulting.com/podcasts/demand-side-estimation-myth/
2. https://www.firmsconsulting.com/podcasts/math-and-estimation-case-guidelines/
3. https://www.firmsconsulting.com/complimentary-videos/market-sizing-estimation-cases/

Hi!

in short:

• being effective is about doing the right things (towards given objective(s))
• being efficient is about doing things right (without wasting resources, time, etc.)

Cheers, Sidi

Hi,

Please don't do that. It's your time when you can gather your thoughts. Please don't waste it on speaking out loud. Also, the silent thought process is different from talking to the interviewer.

Just think about the structure, draw it and present your structure

Best

Hello!

Overall, I would agree with Case in Point: in consulting interviews you are not measuring you industry knowledge, but the quality of your structuring and thinking.

However, your case is a very particular one, since you are an experienced hire who is supposed to be very knowledgeable about the industry (if not, why would they hire you in the specialized path instead of the general one?)

However, precisely for the fact that you arrived until there, I don´t think there should be much more preparation to be done for you! You knowledge your suffice!

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hello there,

At this point, what matters most is your performance in the interviews.
Hence, I would not advise to spent your energy on networking, as it would not add much to your case, except if you have exposure to the decision makers (partners and senior partners) in an intensive manner.

Even then, they would still need to have your interview performance aligning with the expectations.

Hope it helps.

Kind regards,
Nathan