Do you have the desire to become a top-level consultant? Do you dream of working for a consultancy from the MBB grooup one day? If so, what are your plans for practicing for the case interview?
There is a huge gap between preparing on your own and doing it with a partner. Especially if the partner is an experienced consultant who can be hired via coaching services. Even without an experienced consultant as a partner, it’s always good to have a person that you can pretend is the interviewer, to at least give you the feeling that you’re answering a question to someone.
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What’s the Difference?
Well, there are a few to mention. Should you opt for an isolated preparation, you better be very systematic, thorough, and can evaluate your knowledge level. According to the thesisgeek.com, it’s never quite the same thinking about things in your head and saying them out loud.
So keep an open mind and even if you’re all by yourself, it’s a good idea to sit in front of a mirror and start acting as if you’re at your interview right now and then.
Coaching Services
A good consultant is a state of mind, dare we say so. An eternal push to make yourself better than what you are, always thinking outside the box and creating new methods to overcome your challenges. It certainly is a lot more than pie charts, maths, and a handful of advice. This is why coaching services focus on teaching you a lot more than just generic consulting skills. They try to reach far into your mindset.
Coaching services are the most efficient method of preparation for your case interview that you’ll find. These sessions do not aim to be friendly or sugar-coated. They aim to find your weak spots and fortify them, as well as give you a full interview experience. You can find out more by visiting the My Consulting Coach website.
Personalized Experience
Depending on what you are looking for, there are various coaching offers at your disposal, and some of them are bound to be looking for. Whether you want a single session or more, each and every session will be fully personalized and tailored to fit your level of knowledge and skill, while keeping your ultimate goal as the objective.
Should you be far gone in your preparation process, the coach will make it their job to give you a professional assessment of your knowledge level so far, highlighting your weak spots in the process and helping you correct them.
Evaluate Your Knowledge
What coaching services stand out for is the level of feedback and assessment provided. You must have been in a situation where you are preparing for something for a certain amount of time, and you begin to question yourself whether you are ready. This is where the coaches jump in to clarify that.
Preparing By Yourself
When preparing alone, there are a few things to keep in mind at all times.
- Talk out loud from time to time, don’t just go over things in your head
- Don’t go making it easy for yourself and focus on the subjects that you consider your weak spots.
- Do your best to realistically evaluate your knowledge level. Test yourself all the time, find and tackle the hardest cases, double-check everything.
When you are doing one thing for a prolonged period, your view of it will tend to change. This is why it’s always useful to have another person working with you, to notice things that fly by you, or simply tell you some things from a neutral point of view.
However, since you are preparing alone, it is important to keep this in mind at every possible moment. Take breaks often enough. Should you overwhelm your brain with information and tasks, you will likely start to lose focus and your productivity will decrease, making it harder to notice your mistakes or irregularities.
Taking a short break, refreshing your mind, and then returning to work can do you a lot of good in this aspect. The same goes for if you should get stuck on a single task for too long.
Help From a Friend
The purgatory of your case interview preparation. Certainly better than preparing alone, yet not quite as professional as coaching services, help from a friend or a colleague can go a long way. Should your friend also be in the consulting business – you’re on a pretty good path.
Even if your friend is completely oblivious to the bare existence of consulting, you will still have the experience of talking in front of someone, verbalizing and structuring your thoughts, and working on your body language. The closer you can replicate your interview day situation, the less of a surprise it will be for you once you get to it. Don’t let your friend forget about that, either.
If your friend is not much of a consultant, use them for your fit interview questions, to talk about yourself as a personality and why you should be picked over someone else. Anyone should be able to adapt to such a task and get a few answers out of you while nodding their head and doing their best to act like a hiring manager for ten minutes.
As far as cases go, they won’t be of much use to you – but you can handle those on your own anyway, with everything available online today.
Final Thoughts
No matter what your intentions are in terms of your preparation, one thing is certain – lots of time and effort will be required. With the aforementioned coaching services, you can cut a few corners here and there and gain an advantage over your competition. But this does not mean that you are destined to fail should you choose to do your preparation all by yourself.
Because it doesn’t. You will only need to be very systematic in your approach and always try to find your weak spots and fortify them to prevent the interviewer from finding them on your interview day.
