Monitor Deloitte take home case

Hi Stella, 

I helped a candidate recently for the take-home case with Monitor Deloitte.

The format is easier than the traditional written case, as you don’t have a time constraint of 30-60 min but a few days to prepare.

The key delivery will be a deck of a 3-5 slides with your answers, which you will then have to present to the interviewers – usually with 20-25 mins of presentation and 20-25 min of Q&A.

For what concerns the slides, I would recommend to work on:

A) Structure the order of the slides

Normally the structure for a 5-slide presentation is the following:

• First slide summarizes the question and provides the answer
• Second, third and fourth slide have the supporting arguments for the first slide
• Fifth slide has the next steps

B) Structure the content of each slide

There are three basic components for slides:

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

Many people 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 together you should get a clear idea of the message of the presentation.

C) 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 unfeasible 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…”

In terms of how to prepare, 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

Hi Stella,

These are tough but the same principles apply! I.e. you need to sift through a lot of information fairly quickly to draw key insights/conclusions in the context of a clearly defined objective.

They will send you a prompt as well as a large amount of supporting information (pages of charts, graphs, tables). You need to then take this information and leverage it to create a presentation with your solution/recommendation and supporting insights.

Note: It is possible that they only send a prompt and no supporting information, in which case you need to make reasonable assumptions/research yourself.

Shoot me a message and I'll be happy to talk to you in more detail about what to expect and how to approach this!

Hello Stella, 

You can find tons of information in this Q&A, as well as links to similar resources to practice. 

The keyword to look for is "written case", there are rivers of ink written about this

In any case, it´s pretty common. Let me know if you´d like some help, since I have prepared and helped candidates before with similar endeavours. 

Hope it helps!

Cheers,

Clara

Hi Stella, I recently supported a couple of candidates in passing it. feel free to text me to share some input

Best,

A

Hi Stella,

Great tips from other coaches already...

I coached three candidates recently - two for Deloitte and one for PwC and all had to go through a home case. Cases were long 15 pages+ with plenty of charts, tables, data to analyse. They had to prepare a deck (4-6 slides) and answer specific questions such as identify key risks and challenges, what approach will you take to create a solution, what technology solutions would you recommend etc. The interviewer challenged them with questions on their assumptions, approach and solution details.

So, expect such a case.

Please feel free to message if you would like to discuss in detail. Having worked for Deloitte, I am happy to give you similar cases to practice and finesse your presentation. The key thing to crack such written cases is to nail your qualitative & quantitative analysis, make assumptions/hypothesis and back them, use an appropriate approach and flesh out the solution to cover process, technology and people layers of the operating model. And obvsiously have a sharp template deck ready already. Its also important to present well, so dont forget to practice that as well please.

Hello Stella!

Having a few days to prepare is a good thing. Take-home case is similar to the written case at some point, there are some good pieces of advice in the Q&A section.

In addition to what's been said above consider this before the interview:

1. Think about various aspects: the problem, audience, goals, solutions, metrics
2. Make sure you proofread your work.
3. Practice presenting and be ready for questions.

Do you need any further help?

GB