I “Raw-Dogged” a Case Study Interview So You Don’t Have To

Should we really fear the case study interview? Maybe. Maybe not.

Since undergrad, I’ve heard moans and groans over the dread case study interview, but I’ve never actually known what it entails. In an effort to equip you for facing this difficult job market, I decided to brave one and demystify the experience—but totally unprepared.

A friend of mine works for a boutique consulting firm. I asked her to sit down with me over Zoom and simulate the exact interview conditions a potential candidate may face, including not telling my answers or assumptions were right. She was to treat me as a possible hire, not a friend.

Before starting it I felt nervous. I knew I was unprepared—I’ve never been unprepared for anything in my life. The stakes were low, but, still, I wanted to succeed.

What is a Case Study, Anyways?

A case study interview is, more or less, a logic test. Your interviewer wants to hear how you think through a situation, whether it’s brainstorming a plan or calculating a certain indicator. My interview was more along the lines of the latter, specifically on estimating market size.

Sounds simple enough for an epidemiology student and data enthusiast, right? Eh. The catch? No calculator. Just old-school pen and paper. Before today, I couldn’t remember the last time I did computation by hand.

I was also mentally prepared to think about patient populations in need of a product. Instead, I was asked about revenue from beer sales across NFL stadiums…

Now, in a case study interview, you’re not left totally to your own devices. You can ask specific questions about data and assumptions to ascertain values and proportions. In mine, for instance, I asked for their assumptions on things like beer price and NFL game attendance. Some things they will tell you to disregard, but others you will have to estimate yourself, like, for me, the number of adults who actually buy beer at a game. Overall, it takes a lot of thinking on your feet.

Why Did I Wing It?

If you aren’t a chronically online 20- or 30-something, to quickly clarify, the word “raw dog” is slang for winging or improvising something or being generally unprepared for a situation. We’re not going to get into the origin of this phrase here, you can do that yourself.

ANYWAYS! You might be thinking that doing absolutely no preparation for a case study was certainly an interesting choice on my end. And, admittedly, it was. I wasn’t really sure what to expect in terms of how to navigate the task and I wasn’t prepared to do math by hand.

But, with all the angst around this kind of interview, I couldn’t help but wonder—was it warranted? Are case study interviews really that painful? Or, was it somewhat of a myth perpetuated by generations of yuppies to scare the fresh meat? So I had to find out for myself by establishing an uninformed, unpracticed baseline.

With a quantitative background as a public health student, I also thought that it might play to my strengths. After all, epidemiology is, in essence, the science of the denominator and how to think through to determining what belongs there. It comes with a sort of universal logic that can be translated to other contexts. Did I underestimate the case study interview because of this? Maybe. But maybe not.

Lessons Learned

This may be an unpopular opinion but the case study was kind of…fun?

Like I said, it’s a logic exercise. You ask questions, gather evidence, and propose your answer. It’s certainly challenging and shouldn’t be underestimated—you have to ask yourself what information would ACTUALLY be useful—but it’s like detective work or a puzzle.

Maybe I’m a bit biased here. There were no stakes attached to my experience. And this review is with n=1—I am one person who did one case study for one company. It could totally vary across companies and scenarios. And, like any interviewee, I don’t know if I gave an answer in the ballpark of “correctness”, not matter how good I feel about it. But, after my experience, I think our fear of case studies might be a bit overblown.

Let me be clear—you should absolutely do interview prep ahead of any kind of interview, especially something like this and especially if you’ve never done one before. There is certainly an art and science to it. But should you be frazzled by it? I don’t think so. It can be a bit rattling to be given a random situation—like beer at NFL stadiums—but these cases aren’t designed to be trick questions. And, to an extent, it isn’t as much about how accurate you are but how strong the logic behind your answer is. You have all the knowledge to give a good answer—don’t fool yourself into believing you can’t do it.

So, key takeaways:

1) Practice doing math by hand, especially if you aren’t a “math person”—not just adding and subtracting, but multiplying big numbers, calculating rates and proportions, and doing long division.

2)Practice a few before you do it for real—help calm any nerves you have (after all, it’s still an interview!) by getting yourself in the headspace. Instill in yourself that you CAN do it!

3)In the interview, articulate your logic and steps aloud. Focus more on that than the end result. Again, it’s a logic test—they want to know how you think and arrive to an answer. What assumptions do you make? What values are you considering?

and, finally

4) Remember, the case study interview is something but it isn’t everything. Give it your best shot, keep your cool and your confidence, and remember they are looking at you holistically.

I hope my little social experiment takes some of the anxiety away from case study interviews and helps you tackle yours with confidence and cleverness! You got this! After all, you will actually be prepared!

You’re on the case!