How to make an oral presentation of the case analysis at the BCG written case interview?

Hi,

I had a written interview at BCG in the decision round just a couple of weeks back.

They put you into a room and give you a memo along with a bundle of papers. The memo is an e-mail from your senior colleague, basically saying that a new client has appeared who wants data presented tomorrow. The senior colleague is a bit too busy and needs you to summarise the data and send it to him/her asap.

The bundle is a body of around 30 slides that has a lot of info about the client. Some useful, some not.

Your goal is to distil what is important from all of this and use it to formulate an executive summary.

You won't have to 'present' in front of an audience but will discuss it with the Partner/Principal along with your rationale.

Look out for quant - if you're not calculating, you're doing something wrong.

My advice would be to begin writing the executive summary first, and fill it out as you find relevant data. WRITE DOWN YOUR RATIONALE cos under pressure you won't remember it.

Out of the 30 slides, only around 10 of mine were useful. The Principal then scrutinised my decision-making process and rationale.

It won't be easy so be sure to budget your time and keep an eye on the clock!

Good luck.

(edited)

Hi Elena,

I agree with Guilherme; as for how to approach the written case I would suggest the following steps:

Step 1: allocate the time

The first thing you should do in a presentation case is to define a plan and allocate in the best possible way your time. With 2h for the analysis, a good approach would include:

• initial quick reading – 10-20m
• structure the approach – 10m
• make slides/answer to the questions adding detailed analysis and math – 1h20m-1h30m
• final review – 20 min

You should then practice to stick to the time allocated, in order to maximize your final performance.

Step 2: structure your slides

There are three basic components for slides:

1. Title
2. Chart or data
3. Label for chart

Many people structure the title as the mere description of what the chart is telling. A great title, instead tells the implication of the graph. Eg 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 insides on the cause. The rule of thumb for the title is that if you read all the titles of the slides together you should get a clear idea of what is going on.

Step 3: present the slides

When you present, I would suggest 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 for us not feasible 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…”

Below you can find additional tips to prepare on the presentation:

http://bit.ly/2hs3GtS

Hope this helps,

Francesco

(edited)

Hi Elena,

First of all, congratulations for reaching this stage!

Second, there is a common presentation structure that can help you delivering the messages and also guide your thought process:

• First slide: This should be your executive summary of the case. I suggest you to use the left column to restate the problem the client is facing and the right column to put your conclusions/recommendations/impact estimation if possible
• Second, third and fourth slides should have the analyses to back-up the right column of your first slide
• Fifth slide should contain the next steps (like deeper analyses in one topic and/or implementation plan)

Hope this can help you and wish you all the best in your interview!

Best

Guilherme

Hello!

Written case interviews are indeed becoming very fashionable nowadays as a way to interview!

Remember that the skillset tested is the same than in the "usual" cases, hence, all the practice you may have done totally plays in your favor.

One important point to add is the need to be very 80-20, structured and to the point, since the prep time is very short, so we need discipline with the analysis to have enaugh time to prep the communication strategy.

To your particular question, one key thing to presenting these cases is to be very to-the-point. For that, adding action titles will be very helpful for sure, as well as creating clean and simple slides with the key data and only text for key insights

There are many many entries in thsi same Q&A regarding written cases, hence, I would recommend you to look with the keywords "written case"

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara