Now displaying: January, 2013
Jan 30, 2013
This podcast is about the impact of confidence on cases and the importance of avoiding the content trap. We use simple ratios to explain why you need to be confident and how the content-trap sinks many candidates. The content trap occurs when a candidate tends to have poor knowledge of the first principles of cases and rather relies on completing as many cases as possible in the hopes of memorizing all possible frameworks. This is a losing strategy since they are not learning how to solve cases.
Jan 24, 2013
Analyzing customers, competitors and the market: 3 areas which must always be considered in cases, even when it is not clear why. In essence, all businesses exist to serve customers. A business cannot exist without customers and to understand demand you must understand customers. The ability to meet demand is impacted by competitors/substitutes and market barriers like legislation, inflation etc. Therefore, these three areas must be analyzed in cases where demand may be an issue.
Jan 18, 2013
The importance of starting estimation cases from a known versus unknown variable cannot be underestimated. This may sound like a strange piece of advice, but makes a monumental difference on the ease of calculations and sanity-checking at the end. Moreover, simple probability theory indicates you dramatically increase your chances of getting a correct answer at the end if you begin your equation with a known variable.
Jan 12, 2013
Candidates mess up calculations for 4 primary reasons: missing units, complicated equations, weak visual layout and poor technique. Notice that we ignore speed and arithmetic. There is a reason for that and it is discussed in the podcast. The most surprising one of the lot is missing units. We have trained PhDs who graduated first in their schools and many tend to drop units thereby producing meaningless answers. These are all simple mistakes but the impact is substantial.
Jan 6, 2013
Despite the words “framework” and “structure” used so often, most candidates cannot explain what it is and why it is used. Unless you know the latter, you tend to misuse the framework and incorrectly use it in a case. This podcast presents the need for case structures from the viewpoint of the interviewer or engagement partner. It indicates that case structures are not there merely to guide you, but to guide the person guiding you. And if you extend this to its logical conclusion, if the framework is their to guide the interviewer, then communicating your structure and thinking becomes very important.
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