Product Description
- “What are the main drivers in determining the price of a new medical device?”
– “Should a beverage company acquire another producer?”
– “How should a manufacturer respond after a competitor introduces a breakthrough new product?”
While you could memorize answers to the most popular case interview questions, what happens when you encounter an issue that’s outside of their reach?
In How to Get Into the Top Consulting Firms, management… More >>
How to Get Into the Top Consulting Firms: A Surefire Case Interview Method – 2nd Edition
Tags: beverage company, Breakthrough, Case, case interview questions, competitor, Consulting, Edition, Firms, Interview, interview method, Into, medical device, Method, product description, Surefire, top consulting firms
#1 by Mohammad S. Rahman on March 23, 2010 - 11:23 pm
This is a very well written and well organized book that gives the reader a simple and straightforward approach to handling case interviews. When I first saw the Valuation Framework, I was intimidated, but that was because I had never really done any cases before. Once I went through a few cases, I realized that it was actually quite intuitive.
What is great about the book is that it talks about several facets of the interview process, not just the case interview. Tim has taken the time to cover resume-building, networking, and behavioral interviews as well.
This book is by no means the be-all-end-all case interview guide, but it covers a lot of ground without getting too complicated. I found it extremely helpful when I was preparing for my interviews.
Rating: 5 / 5
#2 by N. Poursharif on March 24, 2010 - 1:40 am
How to Get Into the Top Consulting Firms: A Surefire Case Interview Method – 2nd Edition
When I bought the book, I was new to the business / consulting world. At the time, I knew nothing about profit trees, how to value acquisitions, synergies, customer segmentation, pricing strategies, drivers and levers, how to be MECE, and most important, what interviewers were looking for in case interviews and consulting candidates. For someone in that position, this book will become a great reference.
Still it’s no miracle cure. I believe more now, after having read it, that raw problem solving talent and creativity is key … and simply having the set of tools and perspective of a pro will not cover for or account for the lack of those. Which makes me wonder whether tools and background are even important at all?
At the very least, a good litmus test for whether you would be a good consultant, or whether you would enjoy a career in consulting, is to see if you enjoy reading the book and if you enjoy / have some success in the cases.
Rating: 4 / 5
#3 by S. Mimoto on March 24, 2010 - 3:34 am
The book covers a lot of content. As a non-MBA, some of it was already familiar to me, some of it was new, but honestly, it was all worth reading and reviewing.
In the case interview section, it starts with the basic profit tree approach, then moves into how to value mergers and acquisitions, how to determine pricing for products, how to segment customers, and how to derive your own structure for new problems. There’s a lot of finance
and strategy, usually at a high-enough level to be relevant and necessary for case interviews.
Click on the “Search Inside” and search for “46″. Pages 46, 47 are good examples of the level of detail and content that’s covered. Same thing for “69″ – I really liked the leadership advice in pages 69 and 70.
I imagine a lot more of the content will be already familiar to MBAs… but this may well be one of the best opportunities to review it all in one place and think through the concepts in a “case interview lens”. Also, my friends who did MBAs said they started the program
in September and were interviewing with consulting firms for internships by the following January — in other words, with everything else going on as they started school again, they had 4-5 months to prepare for their interviews. So there is a steep learning curve and
even MBAs are only a few months into their program and a book like this can help push forward and focus that learning process.
Finally, the cases, which you should really practice with a friend are at the level that I found interviews to be. The last 2 cases in the book are probably the toughest I’ve seen, in practice or in reality! So if you can handle those OK, the interviews will be all downhill for you.
Rating: 5 / 5
#4 by Consultant on March 24, 2010 - 4:50 am
As an undergraduate computer science major, I interviewed with one of the top consulting firms recently and consider it an achievement (a small one) to have interviewed with them and made it to the final round.
This book is an excellent resource to begin preparing for any management consulting interview and I’ll highly recommend it to my peers.
The most helpful aspects that I was able to take away were primarily the sample cases you solve and the methodology it walks through with the reader in working through the case study without force-fitting a framework and not blocking creativity from playing a role.
In summary, an excellent overview of what a candidate can expect in a Management Consulting interview! Great tips on how to articulate verbally and written communication to win the interview. A must have!
Rating: 5 / 5
#5 by E O on March 24, 2010 - 7:41 am
This book is only 150-or-so pages, and it was almost more like a booklet or workbook. I expected a bit more for $30.
The author does present a good method for attacking case interviews. I was hoping there would be more information about behavioral interviews – there were only 2 pages covering that.
The book is spattered with typos and spelling errors, which I found distracting and a little annoying. It seems like it’s still a work in progress.
All in all, I thought the book was a little overpriced for what it offered, but it is a good primer for approaching case interviews.
Rating: 3 / 5