Confused by case Interview at BCG TA

Hi Francesco,

Many thanks for your thorough response I really appreciate it.

May be I convert this into a discussion :)

Not being structured sounds good explanation. When I think now, I could have presented my brainstorming ideas in first case better, but it really felt more like a question than a case. It was more like, what do you think when mankind will go to the Mars or something from that series :) It was more like a topic of discussion. One company buys another and where there can be a cost saving. Just this one sentence. May be I was too stressed, but it did not really feel to start drawing or writing on the paper :(

I think that the examples in the internet are really different. So far I have not seen a one sentence case. It sounded more like a estimation or sizing question and I felt like I should not write anything. I could not even ask whether I understood the question properly, because it was just one sentence, either you understood it or you did not listen :)

Like you said, I also tried to structure with fixed and variable costs, but I got the impression from the interviewer that it was not a good idea :) Then I divided the costs in different activities, like: marketing, customer service, R&D, operations, distribution channels, etc. May be I missed something or my assessments were not correct, but I thought that was not a point.

What I am trying to say is that, it felt like I was asked 3*5 and I should have pretended that I was calculating 4324 * 31231.

Concerning the second case, sorry may be I did not explain it good enough but it was not about the savings. It sounded like interviewer-led case, here are the data about the some company process, how much time they spend for some activities, we know that there is some problem and you have to find out what is the problem, why they have it and how can we solve it.

From the data I figured out that the problem was that overall process was slow and it was because one activity was too slow creating the bottleneck. But from the data one could say what was happening in the company because of that bottleneck. I proposed some ideas, but none of them were true. When the interviewer explained what was really happening, I almost asked, how could I possible known that :) And that’s why I thought it was more like an expertise-interview. One had to really knew the process.

I am sorry to bother you but I hope this is interesting for others as well.

To summarise your response, it was not that my answers were wrong or not sufficient, but the problem was the way I presented them.

Thanks again.