Hi all - I have my first interview as an experienced hire with Kearney's Leadership Change and Organization practice in the Middle East. I have around 10 days to prepare. Any advice on an optimal game plan to give myself the best chance at doing well and moving to the next round and eventually landing the position? Also, any advice on Kearney-specific style of interviewing, behavioral and case-interviews? I have a quant background, with a few management consulting projects under my belt - however, my case skills need significant sharpening. Thank you!
Kearney, Leadership Change and Organization Practice
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Hi Jes,
In terms of general prep, I would recommend the following (you have probably already covered some of the points):
- Define a calendar for your preparation. Identify how many hours you have before the interview and allocate a time slot for preparation in your calendar for each day, working on the points below. Many people need 100+ hours to be ready before the interview when they start from zero so you can keep that as a benchmark.
- Read Case In Point or Case Interview Secrets for a general understanding of what a consulting interview is. Don’t focus on the structures proposed in the books, as they are not good enough nowadays.
- Start reading good MBA Consulting Handbooks – you can find several for free online (Insead is a good one to start). Read the cases and try to apply your structure to solve them. Whenever you see there is something missing, upgrade your structure with the new insides. Try to read at least a new case per day – in this way you will absorb better the information with constant learning. You will likely have operations cases at Kearney but not necessarily only them so don’t limit the practice to that.
- After the first 5-10 cases in books/handbooks and basic theory, start to practice live. PrepLounge can be helpful to connect with other candidates for that. There is a relevant part of the interview score that is based on your communication, which you cannot practice at all if you read cases only. Keep track of your mistakes and see if you repeat them. If so, try to identify the source of the mistake (feedback of experienced partners would be particularly useful for this). Be sure to focus on both the fit and the case part. The latter should also cover math and graph analysis.
- Before the interviews, be sure to prepare your questions for the interviewer – great way to show you prepared in advance and to connect with the interviewer for a good final impression.
If you need specific help for Kearney, please feel free to PM me, I helped several candidates to land offers from them in the ME and know 20+ real case questions they asked there.
Best,
Francesco
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Hey there,
10 days is not a lot to be honest. Did you already prepare a couple of days or just starting now?
With this timeframe in mind, it is important that you lift your weaknesses to a level that would be acceptable for the interviews (solid foundation) while lifting your strengths to a level that impresses the interviewer. You always need to have a solid foundation for each skill + demonstrate spikes in certain areas.
How can you do that within 10 days?
- Focus on quality over quantity. Doing or reading 100+ cases does not mean much if you are not applying the right habits to score high. Consider booking at least an initial coaching session to get a detailed and objective evaluation of your performance + learn the right habits for every case regardless of context and framework + get a tailored preparation plan out of the session that will set you up for an effective and efficient prep
- Use the feedback from this session to tailor your prep accordingly
- Practice drills alone and practice full cases with other excellent candidates that know the right habits and approach
In practice, do this every day
- 1-2 live cases with other candidates
- Read through 10 cases from consulting club case books
- Conduct structure drills (1-2 hours)
- Conduct chart interpretation drills (1-2 hours)
- Conduct math logic generation and calculate (1 hour)
- Conduct number drills (1 hour)
- 1 coaching session every 3rd day (2 cases and 1 fit)
- Prepare answers for personal fit once (3 hours), and rehearse them 3x (3 hours)
Reach out if you need help!
Cheers,
Florian
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Hello, I would use prep lounge's case library and filter for operations strategy and org. behaviour cases. Example below:
https://www.preplounge.com/en/management-consulting-cases/candidate-led-usual-style/intermediate/fastnfurious-cars-change-management-plan-222
In general, I would ensure you know the following:
- why should they hire you?
- why do you want to join Kearney specifically?
- why do you want to do leadership change and org.?
Re: cases, I would prepare as I mentioned above by practising 2 cases per day (2 hours) minimum live with another person (F2F or virtual via prep lounge) and focusing on cases centred on change management -- they exist!
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Hi Jes,
To be honest, 10 days is quite short and you'd be well-served to get a coach (they are essentially a time lever).
In terms of preparing, you need to of course get ready for fit/behavioral (10-20% of your time) and casing (80-90%). Now, of course there is a lot of online material and you can prep with other candidates. Unfortunately, there are not a lot of change/organization cases AND there are not a lot of experienced hire cases (nor candidates who know how to case you in this more "flexible" style).
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Hey, feel free to send me a direct message to discuss your requirements. I have helped a number of candidates get into BIG4 Human Practice recently, and some of them were on short notice just like you.
Also, check out the 3 Human Capital/Organisation Design I have published in the case library.
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