Corporate Strategy Analyst at Agoda how best to prepare

Hi,

The preparation ispretty similar compared to preparing for MBB consulting interviews. To acethe interview, you need to master 2 skills:

1. Behavioural questions

Be ready to discuss your past experiences and how they relate to the role. Use the STAR method to structure your answers. Prepare thoughtful questions to ask the interviewers about the role, team, and company culture.

2. Quant heavy Case studies

Practice solving case studies and presenting your thought process clearly. Agoda often uses theoretical questions or case studies to assess your analytical skills. Try to perform mock interviews with peers or a coach. 

By following these steps, you'll be well-prepared to make a strong impression during your interview at Agoda. Good luck! 

Mattijs

Hi there,

It sounds like you’re in a great spot with your strong quant skills—that’s already a big plus. For the business side, here are a few practical tips:

1. Understand Agoda’s Business Model: Take some time to explore how Agoda makes money, their customer base, and what drives their operations. This will help you think through the strategic questions they might ask.
2. Think Business Impact: Practice connecting data to actionable insights. For example, if the data shows a drop in revenue from a specific region, think about the “why” (e.g., competition, supply issues) and possible solutions.
3. Excel and Clarity: Keep your analysis clean and focus on telling a clear story. Your goal isn’t just to crunch numbers—it’s to explain what they mean and why they matter for the business.
4. Mock Scenarios: Create simple practice cases. For instance:
   • For marketing: “How would you analyze campaign performance and recommend optimizations?”
   • For supply: “What would you do if supplier performance is lagging in a key region?”

You’ve got the analytical foundation, so focus on the “so what?” of your findings. Good luck—you’re going to do great! Feel free to reach out if you want to run through any specific scenarios.

Hey there, 

Great that you're comfortable with the quants side. For the "corporate side", use your technical and excel skills to be able to get necessary and insightful data summaries from the data that could be helpful in telling the organisation important information. 

Without access to the data and the specific business problem, it would be difficult to advise whatever to look for. But think about anomalies in the data, or trends, averages / median results, etc. that can speak to opportunities, gaps, etc. for the organisation. Think about what insights and actionable next steps could arise from the data set you'd have worked on.

Feel free to reach out if you'd like to explore this further and we can discuss strategies of moving from technical data to corporate strategies

All the best

Hey there!

To prepare for the Agoda Corporate Strategy Analyst interview, start by thoroughly understanding Agoda's business model, key metrics like customer acquisition cost (CAC), average order value (AOV), and competitive positioning in the travel and hospitality space. Research their marketing, supply, and product strategies to familiarize yourself with potential case topics. Practice analyzing Excel datasets, focusing on tasks like calculating marketing ROI, evaluating pricing strategies, and measuring product or supply performance. Sharpen your technical skills by revisiting Excel functions such as pivot tables, VLOOKUP, and filtering, as well as basic SQL queries like SELECT and JOIN to handle any technical components. Use business frameworks to structure your answers during the case, ensuring your insights connect data analysis to broader strategic decisions. Simulate time-pressured mock interviews to improve clarity, communication, and analytical speed. Lastly, prepare behavioral examples that highlight your ability to solve complex problems using data and influence stakeholders effectively, as this will demonstrate both technical expertise and strategic thinking.

Best, Alessa

You absolutely need to practice with real excel tests. I have about 40 written/take home tests acquired over the past 5 years. Happy to send some to you for homework which we'd then review live.

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I do think you'll appreciate this article though (on what canddiates usually do wrong):

The Most Common Pitfalls in Case Interview Preparation

And the do's and dont's:
 

Dos and Don'ts in a Case Interview
 

And further reading here:

How to Shift Your Mindset to Ace the Case
 

Candidate-Led Cases: What to Expect With Example Cases

Hello there!

I have done similar cases to my current role and interviewed several candidates using a similar approach. Some advices follow below:

1. Define the problem and confirm your understanding with the interviewer. You have to be clear about what you are solving and what the success metrics are.

2. Make sure to check your math at every step of the case. It is painful to see a person who has done a small mistake that impacted the entire case.

3. After hitting the baseline (doing math properly), what will make you get the offer is the quality of insights you will provide. Let me deep dive here:

A) after getting to the number, get back to the problem you are trying to solve ( the SO WHAT?) and see how the results impact it. Also, think about second order consequences. You may proactively propose new equations to validate the insights. E.g.: the problem is for a company to increase margin and the math shown you that 80% of the costs are in a specific bucket. Calculate how much of these should reduce for you to get to the desired profit and see if it is feasible. Furthermore, what would be the long term impact of this cut to the quality of the product/the culture/etc.

B) compare the numbers to proxy’s to see if they are feasible / plausible. E.g.: you discovered that the company would have to cut MRO costs by 20% to achieve the desired profitability. It would be important to check if the company has higher costs than the industry (plausible) and if it doesn’t, how much of a cut past efforts / other engagements have hitted (feasible)

C) propose next steps based on the numbers. It may be additional equations to evaluate new hypothesis that arose based on the observations above or just simple execution. Have in mind they would ask you this: how would you do it? It ia important to be structured here and think about execution in terms of a project.

There are way more to it, but these are the baseline steps to a good case. Best of luck! Feel free to DM me if additional questions emerge!

Mari