Email 1 of 2:

My first round interview will be in a few days and the final round, if I get through, will be on the same day.

I can’t thank you more for all the wonderful materials. Your approach is much more practical than any other sources.

Through quite intensive study of your materials for a month, I believe I have acquired the skills to “crack” a case in a systematic manner.

As I do not have friends in the consultancy industry to interview me, the LOMS program really gave me a real “feel” of what the interview is going to be like.

My main problem now is that sometimes I do not sound confident and articulate enough. Really hope that I can relax and answer well in a few days!

Thank you again. Will definitely inform you if I receive any goods news in a few days!

 

My Reply:

To work on the confidence and articulation skills, get a Business Week or Fortune magazine, read an article and then stand in front of a bathroom mirror… or sit in a chair in front of full-length mirror, and synthesize what you learned.

You will feel very self conscious in the process, but your “presence” will automatically improve with sufficient repetition. I did this to practice for live national television interviews — which is a lot more stressful than a case interview! (It works.)

Once you get used to the mirror exercise, try to work on being more concise in front of the mirror.  So take that Business Week article, and synthesize it with fewer and fewer words.

Try again on synthesizing the same article several times in a row — each time with fewer words, while still keeping the same meaning.

If you have a way to audio record yourself, record the first and last attempt and compare.

It is easier to practice being concise on material that you already know… then you can layer in having to think on your feet in an interview.

When I coach people on new skills, I try to get them to work on each skill independently, and then pull it all together.

Confidence comes from two places:

1) knowing your subject matter

2) being comfortable communicating

Your month of preparation for case interviews takes care of the #1 to the best of your ability, and the case interview practice exercises above help with #2 (and can realistically be completed in a single day or two).

NOTE: See https://www.caseinterview.com/case-interview-confidence-2 to see a follow-up to this correspondence.