How to best prep for a case interview (Bain) in 72 hours

It’s a tight timeline, but it’s not impossible depending on your starting point. Here is what I would recommend:

1. Reach out to recruiting to see if there’s flexibility of the date — frame it in terms of managing existing commitments
2. Identify 1-2 high quality peers to give you mock cases — doing mocks with beginners won’t help you as much
3. Consider investing in coaching — I’m happy to discuss how I could help you with a crash course and can invest the time to get you ready 

In addition to case prep, make sure you spend time developing your stories for the fit portion of the interview. I can walk you through an approach to craft a compelling narrative and fit stories.

Hi there,

Q: What would you recommend as the best ways to prep quickly and get all the fundamentals in place?

If you don’t feel ready, I would recommend reaching out and asking if it is possible to reschedule the interview. They won’t necessarily oblige, but there is no downside to doing so. Most candidates spend 100+ hours preparing, and it would be difficult to match that level of preparation in just a few days.

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In terms of how to prepare, I would recommend the following:

1. Define a calendar for your preparation. Identify how many hours you have before your interview and allocate a time slot for preparation in your calendar accordingly. As mentioned, many candidates need over 100 hours starting from scratch to be ready, so you might use it as a benchmark.
2. Start by reading good MBA Consulting Casebooks. You can find several for free online (INSEAD is a good one to start). Read the cases and try to apply your structure to solve them. Whenever you see something is missing, upgrade your structure with the new insights. Try to read at least a new case per day – in this way, you will absorb the information better with constant learning.
3. After the first 5-10 cases in books/handbooks and basic theory, start practicing live. PrepLounge can be helpful for connecting with other candidates for that. There is a relevant part of the interview score that is based on your communication, which you cannot practice at all if you only read cases.
4. Keep track of your mistakes and see which ones you are repeating. If so, try to identify the source of the mistake (feedback from experienced partners would be particularly useful for this). Be sure to focus on both the behavioral part and the case part during the mocks. The case part should also cover math, market sizing and graph analysis.
5. Before the interviews, be sure to prepare your questions for the interviewers – a great way to show that you prepared in advance and to connect with the interviewers for a good final impression. Ideally, try to get information on who they are and study their profile to have good questions to ask.

Good luck!

Francesco

Hi there,

That's great and terrifying news at the same time. ;D.

Let's look at the situation:

The key challenges for you would be to 

a. find a replicable approach for cases that works every time and highlights your skill set (it's one thing to be a strong problem solver but it's a learned skill to demonstrate that in the correct way during a case).

b. polish rusty skills such as mental math to become faster/smoother again.

c. create a list of strong fit interview stories that fit the Bain narrative.

Given your goal and timeframe, the only sensible answer would be to hire a coach for a couple of intense sessions to work.

I would argue around 3 sessions with a coach and time spent alone to work on your weaknesses.

Reach out if you need help!

Cheers,

Florian

Hi there,

First of all, congratulations on the invitation from Bain!

I would be happy to share my thoughts on your question:

• First of all, I would highly advise you to contact the recruiting team and ask for a postponement of the interviews, although this is very unlikely as you seem to have applied to Bain London.
• Moreover, I would advise you to consider working with an experienced coach like myself to accelerate your preparation as much as possible.
• Lastly, please keep in mind that, contrary to what other coaches have said, Bain has changed its personal fit format. Therefore, randomly preparing personal fit stories will not help you succeed in the behavioral interview.

You can find more on this topic here: How to succeed in the final interview round.

If you would like a more detailed discussion on how to best prepare for your upcoming interviews, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.

Best,

Hagen