Case Interview Workshop Introduction (Part 1 of 12) | caseinterview — Transcript

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1. 0:00Good morning my name is Victor Cheng
2. 0:07if you're interested in case interviews you're in the right place
3. 0:09we have a good-sized day today
4. 0:12we're gonna go about eight hours
5. 0:13have allot of material for you
6. 0:15and I am going to do a total brain dump
7. 0:18of everything I know about case interviews
8. 0:19as much as I can in about eight hours
9. 0:22okay let me start by telling you my story
10. 0:25and a couple things we'll cover today
11. 0:27I'm a former McKinsey guy
12. 0:33and I went to undergrad at Stanford
13. 0:36I did my masters there too shortly thereafter
14. 0:39and was recruited out of Stanford
15. 0:41into the McKinsey analyst program
16. 0:43this was a couple of years ago
17. 0:45four hundred people applied out of Stanford
18. 0:48which is a decent school, I think my year four got offers
19. 0:52or six got offers four took them
20. 0:55and in total that year McKinsey worldwide hired
21. 0:58about a hundred analysts
22. 0:59across all countries and all continents
23. 1:01two years later about 90 of those 100 were
24. 1:05encouraged to leave the firm go do something else
25. 1:08and come back
26. 1:09I was one of 10 that was sort of promoted to an associate
27. 1:13and asked to jump on the partner track and continue on
28. 1:16I have done case interviews on both sides of the table
29. 1:20and it's very interesting once you sort of been on both sides
30. 1:23you get very intimidated when you're being interviewed
31. 1:27and when you're the interviewer your sort of annoyed
32. 1:29that you have this thing in you're schedule
33. 1:31that you have to get rid of
34. 1:31so I am going to try to demystify a lot of stuff
35. 1:34I think the more you know the less intimidating it is
36. 1:39I don't know if you guys are intimidated
37. 1:41but I was scared to death when I did this as an interviewee
38. 1:44scared to death
39. 1:45and I realized it wasn't necessary
40. 1:47so big part of it is familiarity
41. 1:49another part of its sort of skills
42. 1:50my goal for today is a couple things
43. 1:57I would like to give you guys familiarity with the process
44. 2:00case interview process
45. 2:01and would like to give you a couple key skills
46. 2:03that will get you through the first half of the case interview
47. 2:07I always think of the first half as skill driven, teachable
48. 2:11and the last half is sort of like your talent
49. 2:14so the opening of the case is very formulaic
50. 2:18getting into the case the first 10-15 minutes or so
51. 2:21it's a very formulaic
52. 2:22ending the case, very formulaic
53. 2:25the last sort of middle 20 30 %
54. 2:27that's where sort of business judgment, acumen
55. 2:30analytical insights, sort of raw horsepower mentally
56. 2:34as well as experience really comes into play
57. 2:36and that's talent
58. 2:37my job is to make sure you get through beginning,
59. 2:40the middle, and the end
60. 2:41and your talent is really left to shine on your own
61. 2:44and we could sort of get rid of the rest of the stuff
62. 2:48my other goal for today too is to give you confidence
63. 2:53like I mentioned earlier I was very scared
64. 2:56going through this process
65. 2:57I did fairly well,
66. 2:58I should talk about the companies I got offers from
67. 3:01which I don't usually talk about
68. 3:03but I got offers from basically all the firms I applied to
69. 3:06all the major ones except maybe one
70. 3:08McKinsey, Bain, I went to the final round of Booz
71. 3:11but declined to go because I had the offers I wanted
72. 3:14offers from Monitor, Mercer, LEK, AT Kearney
73. 3:19which were the top firms when I was recruiting
74. 3:27I'll give you some insight in terms of what worked well for me
75. 3:30I will say this there is more then one way to be right
76. 3:32there's more than one way to be right
77. 3:35this is not the only way, it happens to be a way
78. 3:37so would love for you guys to have an open mind today
79. 3:41and then sort of take what you want from it
80. 3:43and then use what you can
81. 3:46a couple of things in terms of how this workshop
82. 3:48is intended to be different
83. 3:50and I don't know what you guys have seen so far
84. 3:51but there are a couple things that we'll be talking about
85. 3:54that I never saw other firms do in terms of providing training
86. 4:00to potential candidates
87. 4:02first I'm going to talk a lot about is the interviewers mindset
88. 4:06get into the psychology of why they do the things they do
89. 4:09and if you understand what they're thinking
90. 4:12it's a lot easier to impress them
91. 4:14it's sort of like the number one skill for a marketer
92. 4:16is if you know your customer extremely well
93. 4:18its a lot easier to sell to them
94. 4:19same thing with interviews
95. 4:20if you know how they think,
96. 4:22and by the way they're they're very predictable
97. 4:26and some would argue even a little boring
98. 4:28so once you understand that and how the firms think
99. 4:31everything makes sense
100. 4:33all the new twists there doing,
101. 4:35I know there's some new twists in terms of case interviews
102. 4:37like group format, and half solve cases you have to finish
103. 4:40and all kinds of things like that
104. 4:41once you understand the mentality it makes sense
105. 4:44and if they ever do new things in the future
106. 4:46it will likely make sense too
107. 4:48so some of the firms that have been doing that
108. 4:49that when I read about it
109. 4:50because I haven't done the new twists before
110. 4:54I thought that's brilliant, that's so smart
111. 4:58because I  know exactly what they're trying to accomplish
112. 5:00by doing that
113. 5:00and I can sort of guess as to what kind of problems
114. 5:03they were having in the recruiting process, by not doing that
115. 5:06sort of opens your eyes into how that role thinks
116. 5:09the other thing we are going to do is
117. 5:12I'm going to go into very specific processes
118. 5:15in terms of how to tackle very specific cases
119. 5:17certainly the high level conceptual
120. 5:20but I want to drill down to what questions do you ask
121. 5:23in which order
122. 5:24depending on what the answer to the previous question was
123. 5:27you can't do that for the whole  case
124. 5:29I said the first chunk of the case is fairly formulaic
125. 5:33until you start getting date back
126. 5:35the other thing that's important to keep in mind
127. 5:38is particularly since since most of you guys are from Harvard
128. 5:41the case interview and an HBS case is very different right
129. 5:46and I saw a gentleman with an HBS case
130. 5:48can I borrow one real fast
131. 5:54I am going to give you the difference too
132. 5:55so a HBS case has what a lot of pages
133. 6:03too many pages, my wife went to HBS
134. 6:07and she  was always complaining
135. 6:08so an HBS case has 21 pages,
136. 6:11a case interview this is what you get nothing
137. 6:15you get maybe one sentence
138. 6:18the difference between the two
139. 6:20is you need in a case interview to have processes
140. 6:24for eliciting data from your interviewer right
141. 6:26so that's that's the skill
142. 6:28and then towards the end
143. 6:30when you flush out all the data
144. 6:31then they start looking similar
145. 6:33you have  data to analyze
146. 6:35and so when you get cold called
147. 6:36you know when you're opening up a case
148. 6:38the last like ten minutes of a case interview
149. 6:41it's like a cold call
150. 6:42so now what do you do if you are in the client's situation
151. 6:46but at the beginning the case interview you have nothing
152. 6:49you have maybe one sense, company is in trouble
153. 6:52what do you do
154. 6:53no data,
155. 6:55and so the skill is getting the data
156. 6:59getting the right data, in the right order
157. 7:02and one of the challenges is
158. 7:04and you'll see this sort of in terms of how consultants think
159. 7:07is there's an infinite amount of data that you could get
160. 7:11so your case writers have gone to an awful lot of trouble
161. 7:13to include information in these cases
162. 7:15but you have a blank slate
163. 7:17you could literally get anything and everything
164. 7:19and that's actually a big challenge for consultants
165. 7:21they literally will walk into a client,
166. 7:23client will say I'm in trouble, I need help on X what do we do
167. 7:27I have 45,000 employees interview any of them
168. 7:30which one do you want to interview
169. 7:31I have terabytes of data,
170. 7:34you know millions and trillions of records of information
171. 7:36have at it
172. 7:37you don't have time to do all of it
173. 7:39big part of the skill is figuring out what to ask for
174. 7:41there are a couple things I won't cover today
175. 7:48I won't cover like regular job interview questions
176. 7:53where do you see yourself in five years
177. 7:55what's the strength of yours, what's the weakness
178. 7:56you know tell me a mistake you made that kind of stuff
179. 7:58I'm not going to talk a lot about the more recent twists to case interviews
180. 8:02I haven't done I haven't been on either side of those
181. 8:05so my knowledge on that is sort of third hand
182. 8:08I'll give you a resource of where to go for more information on that
183. 8:11I'm not going to talk about estimation
184. 8:12back of the the envelope cases
185. 8:14and I'll tell you why in a second
186. 8:16you guys familiar with what that is?
187. 8:19like how many golfers are in America
188. 8:22you sort of estimate how big a market that is
189. 8:25I hope I don't offend anybody,
190. 8:27but those are actually fairly straightforward cases
191. 8:31relative to the much more complicated ones
192. 8:33that we will talk about today
193. 8:33and I think there are resources out there
194. 8:36that have done an excellent job of covering that
195. 8:38and so rather than duplicating it
196. 8:40I'd rather sort of focus the majority of the time
197. 8:42on the things I don't think people cover in enough detail
198. 8:44I want to cover the toughest cases
199. 8:47and the most confusing ones,
200. 8:50the ones most people get tripped up
201. 8:50the more straightforward ones
202. 8:51I am going to point you somewhere else
203. 8:52there's actually a great book that I picked up recently
204. 8:55you have probably heard of it
205. 8:57called Case in Point by Mark Cosentino
206. 9:00who I think used to be part of HBS's career services
207. 9:04and it's a great book
208. 9:05so I really like his sections on estimation questions
209. 9:09and back-of-the-envelope
210. 9:10he actually had a couple insights I didn't even realize
211. 9:13that were very useful
212. 9:15and I really like his coverage of the new sort of case twists
213. 9:19and specifically what the formats are
214. 9:21and he has some good examples there
215. 9:22I'll refer you there
216. 9:23so you'll get what you need by going to that resource
217. 9:26but I won't cover that today
218. 9:27because I am going to cover the more complicated  stuff
219. 9:28in terms of questions if you have questions, raise your hand
220. 9:35I'm going to watch the time carefully
221. 9:37having scripted out very tightly
222. 9:38If I have time I will take them
223. 9:40if not I'll just defer them and we can handle them on a break
224. 9:43let me talk a little about why I'm doing this
225. 9:49two reasons, the first is the first time
226. 9:53I gave us workshop like this it was two four people
227. 9:55and it was just a bunch of friends of mine
228. 9:57I had received allot of offers my year
229. 10:03those in the year behind me were curious as to how I did that
230. 10:05so I said sure I will tell you guys no problem
231. 10:07I have no problem sharing,
232. 10:08out of the four people, three applied for consulting jobs
233. 10:13all three got jobs, one was at Booz, one was at Bain
234. 10:16and one was at a sort of a boutique firm
235. 10:17and the interesting thing was they all kept their notes
236. 10:20and without telling me
237. 10:22they started circulating it to their friends in subsequent years
238. 10:25so three four years later after I got my job offer
239. 10:29I got emails from people,
240. 10:31are you the Victor Cheng who did this who did the case thing
241. 10:34and this person got into McKinsey
242. 10:36and said thank you so much, it really helped
243. 10:38and then it has sort of been floating around
244. 10:40sort of underground
245. 10:41I thought well if you're going to pass it around
246. 10:43might as well sort of clean it up
247. 10:44because I sort of know a little bit more now
248. 10:45have a little perspective on the process
249. 10:47and update it with my latest thinking
250. 10:51that's the first reason
251. 10:53the second is actually,
252. 10:54my business is not a case consulting practice
253. 11:00or anything like that, I'm not a recruiting firm
254. 11:02I'm not looking to hire people, I sort of have my own thing
255. 11:06and this is sort of something else I like doing
256. 11:08and I have a charity that I like to sort of promote
257. 11:12if you don't mind me taking five minutes
258. 11:14out of an eight-hour day to just tell you about this charity
259. 11:17I'd really appreciate that,
260. 11:19this organization is called Kidpower.org
261. 11:23and that's their website
262. 11:24and what they do is they train kids how to be safe
263. 11:26they actually train kids
264. 11:28all the way up to people who are disabled
265. 11:30and seniors, people who get preyed upon in society
266. 11:33been around 19 years
267. 11:34they have trained a million people worldwide
268. 11:37they have a very highly leveraged model
269. 11:39they have no money, but they've trained a million people
270. 11:41what they do is they sort of train the trainer
271. 11:43so they leverage existing infrastructure
272. 11:45so they open up Vietnam as as an affiliate office for $5,000
273. 11:49no ongoing overhead
274. 11:51because they tapped into the overhead
275. 11:52of an existing organization there
276. 11:53they're impressive
277. 11:54I actually took one of their courses
278. 11:55because I have two daughters and I wanted them to be safe
279. 11:58and I was very surprised
280. 11:59that they could take something that was so useful
281. 12:01even applied to a little child
282. 12:03who doesn't have to understand that there are bad people out there
283. 12:07but can learn things like asserting your personal space
284. 12:11which is a key skill, I taught my 2 year old how to assert her personal space
285. 12:14and apparently that scale if you carry that on over the years
286. 12:17really dramatically reduces your chances
287. 12:19of having bad things happen to kids
288. 12:20I was worried to death as a new dad
289. 12:23wanted to learn how to do this, found this organization
290. 12:25and they are sort of one of the best at teaching people these skills
291. 12:28and retaining it
292. 12:29and actually I will be using a little bit of their teaching skills
293. 12:33here today as well
294. 12:34a couple examples I want to talk about
295. 12:35there was a a seven year old girl who took one of their training classes
296. 12:39and one year later, a guy at the zoo tried to molest her
297. 12:45she got away because she knew what to do
298. 12:47another teenage girl took a class, two years later
299. 12:51was wrestled to the ground by a kidnapper
300. 12:54and fought him off and escaped, lived to tell the story
301. 12:58and finally another example
302. 13:00a ten year old took a class, one class, one time, no other training
303. 13:0413 years later was out in the woods walking with an old friend
304. 13:08an old boyfriend,
305. 13:10when the old boyfriend said you know it's kind of odd
306. 13:12there's a guy he recognized and it was an ex disgruntled employee
307. 13:16who was rushing him with a baseball bat
308. 13:19really pissed off
309. 13:21this is an unusual thing for him
310. 13:24so he sort of froze
311. 13:25she stepped in stepped in took him out and they went home
312. 13:28I thought that was amazing
313. 13:31that after 13 years you still remember this stuff
314. 13:33they're one of the best at sort of what I call a teaching by doing
315. 13:35they basically role play a lot
316. 13:38that seems to help really help retain the skills
317. 13:40the person I am working with there her name is Irene
318. 13:44Irene is really interesting she started this organization
319. 13:47when she was with two of her own kids and I think two of their friends
320. 13:50in broad daylight in the middle of downtown
321. 13:52and someone tried to kidnap one of the kids right in front of her
322. 13:55and she got the kid back
323. 13:57but sort of felt like , how brazen can someone get
324. 14:00and started this charity to help teach others
325. 14:04the interesting story which is why I am talking about it today
326. 14:08I don't know if you guys heard of the the Polly Klaas kidnapping
327. 14:11about 10-15 years ago, very high-profile kidnapping in California
328. 14:15and the interesting thing was up until that time she was a very shy person
329. 14:19I think by nature and didn't really want to be pushy
330. 14:22I'm sort of helping her be more pushy it too
331. 14:25and what happened was that girl got kidnapped
332. 14:28all the teachers in this organization they knew the family really well
333. 14:33they had actually invited her to the classes
334. 14:37but she didn't go and she was kidnapped and killed
335. 14:40so Irene always wonders you know sort of the guilt trip thing
336. 14:44maybe if I was sort of pushier maybe it would have made a difference
337. 14:47I don't know
338. 14:48ever since then about fourteen years ago
339. 14:51she's been very motivated to get the word out
340. 14:54and I really respect that passion
341. 14:56so my request for today
342. 15:00I have spent about 20 hours preparing materials to go through today
343. 15:03about six to eight hours worth
344. 15:05and my request is this if you find today useful
345. 15:09that you make a $50 donation to Kidpower.org
346. 15:13and that's happens to be the cost of what it takes to train one kid directly
347. 15:18in terms of them training themselves rather than through an affiliate
348. 15:21I will give you the case,
349. 15:23because you know we are numerically driven people today
350. 15:26it takes about a $100,000 to get a Harvard MBA
351. 15:29it went up since my wife was here, glad I don't have to pay that bill
352. 15:32the MBA opens doors,
353. 15:35it gets you interviews that you may not have otherwise gotten
354. 15:38my goal is to help you ace the interviews that you do get with the MBA
355. 15:42and for only fifty bucks
356. 15:44that's pretty compelling,
357. 15:45and if you can't see the math then you might have other problems
358. 15:49so it's a good deal
359. 15:52alright enough of my my guilt trip there
360. 15:54here's my agenda for today
361. 15:58we are going to cover very briefly, case interview basics
362. 16:02talk about the interviewers mindset
363. 16:05in general when they're on the job and when they're in interviewer mode
364. 16:09if you understand them in general then as they get to the interviewer mode
365. 16:13that sort of becomes more specific
366. 16:15I'll talk about sort of a general process
367. 16:19for how to open, analyze, and close a case
368. 16:21all very important steps
369. 16:24we'll spend most of time today on demonstrating these principles in action
370. 16:29probably half the day is just case case case case case
371. 16:32I have 5 or 6 of them that I'll sort of roleplay
372. 16:36and we can sort of do more if we need to
373. 16:38I will close on some tips on how to practice the interview skills
374. 16:42I had a lot of practice,
375. 16:44I did live interviews, I forget how many actual interviews
376. 16:48I had about 60 cases in my recruiting process
377. 16:50I got about 58 them right
378. 16:51bombed the one but it didn't matter
379. 16:53because I got my other fourteen from that firm nailed
380. 16:56then I had one that I think I offended the person
381. 16:58so didn't get the offer there
382. 17:00still pisses me off to this day, its been along time
383. 17:03I'm gonna talk about practicing
384. 17:05by the time I had my first live interview,
385. 17:07it was probabally my 30th or 40th case
386. 17:09makes a big difference
387. 17:12the first person who ever helped me on a case
388. 17:15was a business school student actually at Stanford
389. 17:17and I sort of begged her to sort of coach me through the process
390. 17:20and to give me a case
391. 17:22and she was very kind, very generous, so this is sort of paying it forward
392. 17:25I bombed, like I bombed
393. 17:29so I could tell that she was like oh my gosh I am wasting my time
394. 17:33a very nice lady, she was very patient and coached me through it
395. 17:37still remember the case by the way
396. 17:39I know what I screwed up
397. 17:40you know you always remember the ones you miss right
398. 17:41that was sort of the first one and I bombed
399. 17:47but it was in private it had no consequence
400. 17:50it takes practice, I mean I practiced a lot
401. 17:53I was looking at some my old notes
402. 17:57and I was pretty pretty anal about the whole process