Case interview guides
Short, free guides to the main case types, the firms candidates ask about most, recruiting in each region, and the online assessments. Each shows what to expect, how a strong candidate approaches it, and the common mistake to avoid.
Guides by case type
Guesstimates and market sizing
How to estimate any quantity from almost nothing: clarify what is asked, build a short formula top-down or bottom-up, segment where it matters, choose assumptions that fit the region, and sanity-check against a real anchor.
Profitability
The most common case type. Diagnosing why profit has fallen and how to improve it, narrowing to the real driver through revenue, cost, and contribution, and asking for facts instead of assuming them.
Profit and loss
Reading a full income statement, finding the line that moved profit most, and explaining why it moved.
Market expansion
Growing into a space close to what the company already does (a new segment, channel, or nearby region) and testing whether the unit economics pass.
Market entry
Whether and how a company should enter a market where it has no presence, with a realistic ramp-up, local fixed costs, and a choice of entry mode.
Revenue growth and growth strategy
Growing revenue using a complete split of growth sources (core, adjacent, inorganic), then sizing and ranking the options on profit.
Pricing
Setting price with cost, competitors, and value to the customer, and judging price changes with the trade-off between margin and volume.
Mergers, acquisitions, and due diligence
Should a company or a private-equity fund buy this target: valuing it with multiples, treating synergies with doubt, and checking fund returns.
New product or service launch
Whether and how to launch, balancing demand, economics, and route to market, including sales taken from your own products (cannibalization).
Competitive response
A rival has acted; decide how to respond by comparing profit under each option and knowing the break-even point, rather than reacting on reflex.
Operations and process improvement
Something runs slow or costly; walk the process, compare it with demand, find the real bottleneck, and put a value on fixing it.
Cost reduction and cost cutting
Reducing cost to a target without breaking the business, by sizing the big buckets, choosing the right levers, and counting the one-time cost of each cut.
Capacity, supply chain, and footprint
Can we make and move enough: comparing demand with capacity along the chain, fixing the link that limits it at the lowest cost, and choosing where to place capacity.
Investment and capital project decisions
Is this project worth it: payback, net present value (NPV), and internal rate of return (IRR), compared with the cost of capital and the alternatives.
Market study and industry analysis
Understanding an industry by mapping customers, players, the value chain, and trends, sizing it, and forming a clear point of view.
Declining industry and turnaround
The business is shrinking: separate the company from the industry, fix what is fixable, and, when the whole industry is declining, manage the decline for cash.
Public, social, and non-profit cases
Government, charity, and non-profit cases: agree the real objective and success metric, then compare options on outcome per unit of money and commit to an answer.
Non-standard and creative cases
A prompt that fits no familiar type, handled from first principles: clarify the objective, build a simple model, and find the levers.
Digital and AI transformation
Where a company should use digital tools and AI (including generative AI), what it is worth, how to deliver it, and how to get people to use it.
Sustainability and decarbonization
Cutting emissions at the lowest cost and managing carbon costs: emission scopes, cost per tonne, abatement curves, carbon prices, and EU border charges.
Government and economic development
Turning a national target into the capacity, people, and money needed each year, finding the gap, and choosing levers: tourism, workforce localization, service delivery, privatization, and digital public services.
Healthcare and pharma
Cases on medicines, hospitals, and health insurers: pricing a drug under health technology assessment, sizing hospital capacity with Little's Law, and payer and provider economics.
Unit economics and subscription businesses
Whether a business makes money on each order or customer: contribution per order, customer acquisition cost (CAC), lifetime value (LTV), churn, and cohorts.
Financial services P&L: banks and insurers
Reading bank and insurer profit: net interest income and margin, fees, cost/income ratio, and credit losses for banks; loss, expense, and combined ratios for insurers.
Organization and post-merger integration
Designing how a company is organized (spans and layers, operating model) and bringing two companies together after a merger (integration office, synergy tracking, people).
Which case type is this?
A one-page guide to recognizing the case type from the client's question, with ten prompts to classify.
Final rounds and partner cases
For candidates who have finished the basics: how partners run open, judgment-heavy cases, how to hold or update a view under pushback, and three original partner-style cases with model answers.
Handling ambiguity and curveballs
For candidates who have finished the basics: pivoting when data contradicts you, saying "I do not know" well, missing and wrong numbers, a goal that changes mid-case, and silence. Six exercises with model responses.
Speed and precision
For candidates who have finished the basics: 60-second structures, fast market sizing, mental math under pressure, and the judgment of when rounding is safe. Sixteen timed math and sizing drills.
Thinking like the interviewer
For candidates who have finished the basics: what interviewers commonly look for at each stage of a case, the 15 most common failure patterns with fixes, and a self-scoring rubric that matches Partner mode.
Integrated multi-part cases
For candidates who have finished the basics: three long stretch cases that switch type midway (profitability to pricing to rollout, market entry to M&A, operations to cost to organization), each fully worked with checked math.
Readiness self-check
For candidates who have finished the basics: an honest checklist for final rounds with concrete thresholds, where to find the evidence on the site, and what to do if you are not ready yet.
Practice cases: Middle East
Six full cases set in the Gulf: an airline route, a government service center, a private-equity clinic deal, fiber broadband in Oman, hotel rooms for a new heritage destination in Saudi Arabia, and a public health screening programme in the UAE.
Practice cases: India
Four full cases set in India: a biscuit maker's price point, digital lending to small shops, a new hospital in a smaller city, and rooftop solar.
Practice cases: Europe and UK
Four full cases set in Europe and the UK: convenience-store profit, a grid battery, industrial service growth, and a home insurer's sales channels.
Practice cases: Singapore and Southeast Asia
Six full cases set in Singapore and Southeast Asia: wealth-management fees, a new airline route, buy-now-pay-later in a super-app, moving production to Vietnam, certifying palm oil smallholders in Malaysia, and a weekly mobile data pass in the Philippines.
Practice cases: US and Canada
Four full cases set in North America: a pet-food price rise, software growth quality, a private-equity buy-and-build, and urgent-care clinics.
Practice cases: Global
Four full cases with a global lens: electric city buses, electric mining trucks, hotel revenue, and choosing a first international market.
Practice cases: Australia and New Zealand
Three full cases set in Australia and New Zealand: online grocery delivery, an iron ore mine in a price fall, and fast chargers for electric cars on a highway.
Practice cases: Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
Three full cases: a dim sum restaurant in Hong Kong, home chargers for electric cars in a large Mainland Chinese city, and a new e-bike line in Taiwan.
Practice cases: Japan and South Korea
Three full cases: a rural railway in Japan, a Korean skincare brand growing in the US, and a private-equity deal for a Japanese parts maker with no successor.
Practice cases: Africa
Three full cases: pay-as-you-go solar in Kenya, power for a mine in South Africa, and a national program to bring more adults in Nigeria into financial services.
Practice cases: Latin America
Three full cases: doctor's offices in Mexican pharmacies, grain storage in Brazil, and water for a copper mine in Chile.
Guides by firm
McKinsey & Company
A personal experience interview plus a problem-solving case in each interview, the Solve assessment, and an AI-assisted case now used in selected offices.
Boston Consulting Group
BCG's published stages (application, skills interview, case interview, team interview), its online assessments by country, and its five core competencies.
Bain & Company
A digital assessment (Sova or TestGorilla), case and experience interviews, and a written take-home assignment in some roles.
Deloitte
Monitor Deloitte strategy work inside Deloitte's Strategy, Risk & Transactions business, with cases, group exercises, and processes that differ by country and team.
Strategy&
PwC's strategy consulting business, formed from Booz & Company in 2014, with a large Middle East presence and a published process in several countries.
EY-Parthenon
EY's strategy and transactions brand, expanded in 2025 to include EY's whole Strategy and Transactions practice. Check the role type before you prepare.
Kearney
A global strategy and operations firm with reported candidate-led, operations-heavy cases and a written or group case in some final rounds.
Oliver Wyman
A strategy firm strong in financial services, now "Oliver Wyman, a Marsh business", with conversational and case interviews and a published six-step case approach.
L.E.K. Consulting
A strategy firm strong in commercial due diligence and life sciences, with reported fast, quantitative cases and a written case in the final round.
Roland Berger
A strategy firm with German roots and a global network, with interviews and case studies on its selection day and reported written and group cases.
Accenture Strategy
Accenture's strategy practice, part of Reinvention Services since September 2025, and a major recruiter at Indian business schools.
Boutique and specialist firms
Alvarez & Marsal, OC&C, and Simon-Kucher: what each firm focuses on and how that shapes its interviews.
Arthur D. Little
A strategy and innovation firm strong in Europe, the Middle East, and Asia, with brainstorming-heavy cases and a written or presentation case in some offices.
KPMG
KPMG's strategy teams, with a published UK graduate process (online assessments, a video interview, and an in-person assessment day) and reported written cases elsewhere.
Indian strategy firms and capability centres
Redseer, Praxis Global Alliance, and the India-based capability centres of MBB firms: what they do and how their hiring differs.
Recruiting by region
Recruiting in the Middle East (GCC)
Where the jobs are in Saudi Arabia, the UAE, and Qatar, how hiring works, the nationalization rules, and the public-sector cases you should expect.
Recruiting in India
Campus placements at top business schools, the firms that hire the most, Indian strategy firms and capability centres, and how to prepare for guesstimate-heavy interviews.
Recruiting in Singapore and Southeast Asia
Singapore as a regional hub, the firms that hire there, the Employment Pass and COMPASS rules for foreign hires, and the cases to expect.
Recruiting in Europe and the UK
UK application windows, rolling hiring in continental Europe, local-language interviews, written and group cases, and typical European case themes.
Recruiting in the US and Canada
Early application windows, BCG's published US steps, MBA recruiting, AI-assisted interviews, and work authorization in general terms.
Recruiting in Australia and New Zealand
The firms in Sydney, Melbourne, Brisbane, Perth, Canberra, Auckland, and Wellington, the once-a-year graduate campaigns and summer vacation programs, work-rights rules in postings, and the government's reduced use of consultants.
Recruiting in Mainland China, Hong Kong, and Taiwan
The firms in Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hong Kong, and Taipei, Mandarin and Cantonese expectations, campus seasons and fixed deadlines, recent changes in the market, and work permits in general terms.
Recruiting in Japan and South Korea
Japan's graduate hiring calendar and why strategy firms move earlier, internships as a selection step, Japanese and Korean language expectations, the firms in Tokyo and Seoul, and work permits in general terms.
Recruiting in Africa
Where the firms are in South Africa, Nigeria, Kenya, Egypt, and Morocco, how they hire (including candidates studying abroad), language, the rules that shape hiring, and the cases to expect.
Recruiting in Latin America
The firms in Brazil, Mexico, Colombia, Chile, and Argentina, published timelines such as Bain Brasil's and BCG Brasil's, Portuguese, Spanish, and English in the process, Brazil's internship law, and typical case themes.
Recruiting in any other country
A step-by-step method for any country: find which firms have offices there, learn how they hire, check the language and work-permit questions, and follow a checklist.
Online assessments and other formats
Gamified problem-solving assessments
Timed, game-style screens that test how you think, not what you know about business. McKinsey's Solve is the best-known example; most other firms use different online screens.
Chatbot-led digital case interviews
A chatbot presents a business case, you answer a series of timed questions using exhibits, and you finish by recording a short video recommendation, with no human present. BCG's online case, guided by a chatbot called Casey, is the best-known example.
Aptitude and psychometric tests
Timed numerical, verbal and logical reasoning tests, often with a personality or situational judgement section. Outside McKinsey and BCG, this is the most common first screen, and the provider varies by firm and office.
Trait and behavioral game assessments
Short behavioural games and questionnaires that read how you tend to work and decide. Their use is shrinking at some firms, so check which one your invitation names.
One-way recorded video interviews
Recording answers to on-screen questions with no human present, whether as a stand-alone interview or as the last step of another screen, and how to perform well in that setting.
AI-assisted case interviews
A new 2026 format where you use an AI tool during the case while the interviewer watches. What firms have said, what is only reported, what is assessed, and original exercises to practice.
Written, presentation and group cases
Case formats beyond the one-to-one conversation: a written or presentation case you prepare alone, and a group case with other candidates. How they run, how they differ by region, and how to perform.
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