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Not concise enough

Case Interview
Recent activity on Mar 03, 2019
2 Answers
1.9 k Views
Anonymous A asked on Mar 03, 2019

I have had a problem with not being concise enough. Especially I get a problem when I do not have a clear idea of what the answer is. In such situations I tend to talk a lot before I finally find out where to go. Do you have any advice for how I can avoid this?

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Vlad
Expert
replied on Mar 03, 2019
McKinsey / Accenture Alum / Got all BIG3 offers / Harvard Business School

Hi,

You should be structuring instead of talking:

  • Immediately make a new structure if you know what the structure should be (e.g. if the problem is in sales and you know that for sales issue you should look at Sales Strategy / Coverage / Motivation / Skills & process
  • Take a minute and come up with a new structure based on common sense
  • Ask the interviewer: "Could you pls tell me more about the process?"And build a structure based on the process.

Good Luck!

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Anonymous replied on Mar 03, 2019

In ideal world, your answer has 3 bullet point and each of tham has another 3 sub-points.

Often its hard, but try to practice shifting the answer into the 3 simple points.

If you are not certain about the answer (which is not so rare in cases) - answer with conditions. I.e. In case something is lower than XXX, the right approach is YYY. To confirm XXX, we would need to find out more about ZZZ...

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