Hi,
In my personal experience, cases at Bain are very similar to those of the other companies using the candidate-led type (BCG, Oliver Wyman, A.T. Kearney, Roland Berger, L.E.K,…).
Having said that, two important points come to my mind:
- Bain cases are candidate-led; this holds true even if some interviewers at Bain tend to be more active at guiding the conversation towards specific points/questions or present you with slides with insightful data. In any case, the interaction is always less structured than interviewer-led cases at McK
- Some comments in other threads in this forum identify three recurring types of cases at Bain: PE/M&A, market sizing, and profitability. That is certainly true for certain geographies/cities (e.g. Paris and London)…but might vary significantly for other regions
My recommendation is to continue your preparation with generic candidate-led cases + some examples from Bain. I can think of 2 sources:
- there are a few public examples available online (some are also available here on Preplounge; google will help too :))
- MBA casebooks – with a simple search you will be able to find some samples (e.g. ‘HBS Management Consulting Club’ has a couple)
Another obvious (and more expensive) source of Bain cases are the paid experts :) I have experience with several real Bain interview cases (from my own experience while at the firm and other Bainies colleagues)...but I won’t be able to share the details here :)
As a last important point, let me remind you that some Bain offices use a written case for certain candidates. If that is your case, you will be informed by the recruiting team.
Written cases include 20+ pages of documents which you need to analyse to answer a few client questions on 3 to 5 slides and present them to your interviewer. In addition to the skills that are tested in standard oral case interviews, written cases also test two extra skills: ability to identify key pieces of information that are in pages of less relevant content in order to develop insights ability to develop and deliver high quality slides.
Unfortunately there are not many written cases available online. You can find an example (also largely available online) in my public folder here: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/bk3q9ijqa4a6tri/AACCymvYb6Vyyz87F0IX1ktFa?dl=0
If you want to know more about written cases, you can read a more detailed post here https://www.preplounge.com/en/consulting-forum/bain-written-case-1743
Feel free to get in touch for any question/doubt,
Jacopo
(edited)