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:
- Title
- Chart or data
- 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:
- 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 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…”
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