Never Lose Your Patience Before The Case Interviewer

Posted by aceyourcase on April 9th, 2012

Case interviews are always provedto bea grilling session for the candidates aspiring to become consultants. It is also a fact that one who wants to become a business consultant has to go through those sessions. Indeed, it is a nerve affair for anyone who is facing the case interview for the first time. To ace the case interview successfullyalways try remain cool, rather than keeping your nerves high.

Sometimes, the case interviews are projected to the candidates like a war. Even before the start of an interview, they startfeelingthe pressure and become nervous. At the time of interview, when interviewer starts grilling candidates, they often lose their cool and starts panicking. That is something, which no interviewer wants in a business consultant.

This is one of the major reasonsbehind the failure of some talented aspirants.They must never let their confidence down at any point during the interview, no matter how tough the interview is. Once they start losing their morale, then it will be difficult for them to regain it. The objective of the interviewer is to know that how you will manage the things when they are against you; that is the job of a business consultant.

Many renown consulting case experts always advice new talents that they should work more on their personal skills than their business skills. Indeed, business skills and analytical skills are the first parameter for making it in to the case interviews, but the case interviewers are also smart enough in knowing that you must have excellent skills that’s why you are here. Those skills were already tested in the written exams conducted before the case interviews. So, now the main focus shifts on testing their interpersonal skills rather their business skills.

Like the candidates, case interviewer’s also come with a pre determined mindset. They are also as nervousas the interviewee, becauseit is also the test of their own skills and patience. They always want to make their job as easy as they can. Theyfirmly believe that selecting the candidate based on their business skills is tougher than selecting them based on their interpersonal skills. They understand that the candidates appearing for the final consulting case interview must have come prepared and brushed up their skills properly, so it is difficult for them to filtercandidates based on their knowledge and skills.

They purposely give candidate a consulting case study that doesn’t ends anywhere. And when thecandidate is ready with his/her findingson the case, they askhim/her purposely for the facts thatare not present. The whole idea behind this is to check; which candidate is able to keep his/her mental state cool and calm while solving the case. This makes their job easy of finding the best candidate for the job of a case consultant. They don’t bother about the analytical and business skills of the candidates, because they know once the candidates join their firm,their skills will be automatically polished by the in-house experts. They willnurture them very well according to their own needs.

Resources:

This article is based on content from Victor Cheng, Marc Cosentino and Tom Rochtus on how to ace case interviews.

Please check the following materials for more background:
- LOMS by Victor Cheng
- Case in Point (4th edition) by Marc Cosentino
- Case Interview Success (3rd edition) by Tom Rochtus