Hi there,
Q: I will receive the case a couple of days in advance, but I have received a few details on it and I am expected to prepare a presentation - 2 slides - I will present for 20 minutes - any tips on how to approach this?
If I understood correctly, you will (i) first receive some material, (ii) then have to prepare a few slides on your own, (iii) the day of the interview you will have to present for 20 minutes.
I guess your main question is on how to prepare the slides (if you want to review general written case skills you can check this).
I would recommend to take into account the following.
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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
In your case, you will have to compress in 2. It is a bit difficult to comment on how without knowing the questions and the prompt but you can probably cover similar areas.
B) Content of each slide
There are 3 basic components for most slides:
- Title
- Written content
- 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:
- Introduce the slide: “Let’s move to slide 2, which will show us why we have an issue with this division”
- 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”
- 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