Hi,

My advise is:

• Actively voice out your computations with your interviewer - Especially since interviews are mostly done online now, you don't want to lose 3-5 minutes of engagement with your interviewer, especially if your computations turn out wrong. By proactively voicing out your computations, you (1) keep your interviewer engaged and (2) enable your interviewer to easily spot errors.
• Prioritize method vs. final answer - As an interviewer, as much as I value the candidates getting the right answer for quants, my minimum criteria is that they at least got the methodology right. (you can always use excel in real life!) With that said, make sure you structure the quant problem properly first and get methodology right before nerves kick-in and you get lost with the amount of numbers thrown at you!
• Practice, practice, practice! - More often than not, math errors are caused by nerves. Keep doing mock interviews with quant-heavy cases until you feel comfortable!

I have a couple of cases which are quant-heavy. Happy to do some practice interviews and help! 

(edited)

Hi there,

Agree with the great advice from the other coaches - not much more to add.

One thing I want to re-emphasize though is in line with what Pedro said: right and slow will get you a pass, wrong and fast definitely won't! 

Some people think it's a myth, but Maths mistakes can really cost you an offer - while some interviewers are more forgiving about it, but most of them are NOT. Hence, don't take the risk! 

Think about it this way: It's about habits, not even just about quant acumen most of the time. If a Manager can't rely on you sanity-checking your work before you speak / present, they will feel uncomfortable putting you in front of a client, where tolerance for sloppy mistakes is close to 0.

With that in mind, practice practice practice arithmetics + some simple algebra. That's all you need. 15min a day for 2-3 weeks (being conservative here) will get most people to a level where they become consistent and actually also fast.   

Regards, Andi

(edited)

You basically need more practice. But focus on getting it right other than getting it fast. Slow and right can get you to the next round. Fast and wrong… not really.

This is actually good advice for the case practice overall - first focus on doing this well - speed will come later.

Having said this - do specific math preparation. You can improve a lot by doing 15-20 mins of calculus every day. Some good tools were recommende by other coaches.

Hi there, 

Yes. It's fixable. Do this:

1. Practice as much as possible. Focus on quality not speed. Don't look at the time as you practice, but instead try to improve your ability to understand better the logic of the calculations.

2. As your accuracy increases, start applying time pressure across more practice exercises.

Regardless of the situation, if you have to choose between taking too much time and giving the wrong answer content-wise, always choose the former. People are rarely rejected because they take too long, but they're always rejected for being wrong. 

Think backward from the end goal. You have to run correct calculations, there is no other option. 
If you are slow, it is fine, provided you are correct. 
Now, that you know that your calculation can be precise with some time, you can work on improving.

To improve, just train as much as possible on the most common patterns: zeros, percentages, how to round up, etc.
After some days of basic training, where you have to streamline your thinking process for each of the above patterns, take a timer, and time how long it takes to run 10 calculations. Then do other similar calculations reducing the time you can spend on them by 10% from the previous trial. Do it till each of your calculations is correct. Then reduce by 10%. And then another 10%.