MY FIRST CASE INTERVIEW
Ryan Rowe
Saturday, October 30th, 2004, 2:53pm
Toronto, Ontario, Canada

Yesterday evening I had my first case interview with a local consultancy firm.  They were holding their interview sessions this week and I was selected for a slot.  Consulting is a career I see as ideally-suited to my good problem-solving skills, creative mind, and developed interpersonal skills.  I'm a people person through and through and I tend to adapt myself to situations fairly quickly.  For these reasons and the allure of a high-paying job in which I'll get to travel a fair bit (I hope), I've decided to look towards consulting as a career after I graduate from the iMBA program.

Case interviews are essentially role-playing, skill-testing type situations. They usually consist of a team of interviewers (2-4) handing you a problem on paper or in the form of a short oral account of a business situation.  They then inspect you while you try to dissect the problem piece by piece and come up with the solution.  You're allowed to ask questions to try and fill in any blanks.  Consultancy firms expect qualified applicants to drill down and come up with a solution.  The best consulting firms expect the top candidates to go even farther by adding value to the solution and going the extra mile (or two).

Last night's interview was somewhat similar to the above.  And how did I do?  Hard to say.  I know I made a good impression on them as a person, but I was pretty nervous during the case interview process.  I asked a number of questions and then hit a blank wall trying to get to the answer.  The problem they posed to me was: 

A company is based in a large Canadian city.  Its competitors are growing at a faster rate and it wants to know why and what to do.

The truth is they weren't looking for an answer or a solution to this problem, but they wanted to see my thought process in action, and how I went about analysing the situation.  I did identify a number of the key considerations but forgot to mention one of the biggest ones: the customer.

I'm a bit disappointed that I wasn't able to crack that section of the interview.  My performance yesterday may even take me out of the race for a spot on their team but the truth is, I know I did my best. Now I know what to expect from a case interview, and next time I'll be better prepared to kick some ass.

WHATEVER DOESN'T KILL YOU ... ONLY MAKES YOU STRONGER.

October 30th , 2004: The photo above is of Icarus, the Greek youth who fell to his death after flying too close to the sun using wings made by his inventor-father, Daedalus.  I relate to the story because I sometimes aim really high and fall short of my goals.  I try not to let it discourage me, instead I just aim higher.

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