You know you are going to get a lot of cases that ask you to analyze a company (the client). Below is a lists of core questions you should be thinking of and asking about the company. You need to learn these so you can rattle them off in your sleep. It will speed up your structure (because you won’t have to stop and think) and ensure that you don’t miss anything critical. You will probably add to or subtract from the list depending on the case, but it will eventually become second nature to you and thus build up your confidence.
ABOUT THE COMPANY:
CORE QUESTIONS TO ASK
- Profits and revenues for the last three years?
- Customer segmentations?
- Characteristics?
- Changing needs?
- Profitability by segment?
- Product Mix?
- Costs / margins?
- Product differentiation?
- Market share?
- Production capabilities / capacity?
- Brand?
- Distribution channels?
- WCS (What constitues success?)
- What metric is used?
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About the Author
Marc Cosentino
Marc, the world’s foremost authority on case interviewing has twenty seven years of experience with case questions. He has written well over a hundred cases, while coaching, preparing and training more than a hundred and fifty thousand students and alumni. He has written three books involving cases and consulting. Cosentino has given workshops to students at colleges and MBA programs for the last twenty seven years and has held training sessions for career services professionals on how to give cases and how to analyze a student’s performance.
