tech case study interview

47 case interview examples (from McKinsey, BCG, Bain, etc.)

One of the best ways to prepare for   case interviews  at firms like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain, is by studying case interview examples. 

There are a lot of free sample cases out there, but it's really hard to know where to start. So in this article, we have listed all the best free case examples available, in one place.

The below list of resources includes interactive case interview samples provided by consulting firms, video case interview demonstrations, case books, and materials developed by the team here at IGotAnOffer. Let's continue to the list.

• McKinsey examples
• BCG examples
• Bain examples
• Deloitte examples
• Other firms' examples
• Case books from consulting clubs
• Case interview preparation

Click here to practise 1-on-1 with MBB ex-interviewers

1. mckinsey case interview examples.

• Beautify case interview (McKinsey website)
• Diconsa case interview (McKinsey website)
• Electro-light case interview (McKinsey website)
• GlobaPharm case interview (McKinsey website)
• National Education case interview (McKinsey website)
• Talbot Trucks case interview (McKinsey website)
• Shops Corporation case interview (McKinsey website)
• Conservation Forever case interview (McKinsey website)
• McKinsey case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)
• McKinsey live case interview extract (by IGotAnOffer) - See below

2. BCG case interview examples

• Foods Inc and GenCo case samples  (BCG website)
• Chateau Boomerang written case interview  (BCG website)
• BCG case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)
• Written cases guide (by IGotAnOffer)
• BCG live case interview with notes (by IGotAnOffer)
• BCG mock case interview with ex-BCG associate director - Public sector case (by IGotAnOffer)
• BCG mock case interview: Revenue problem case (by IGotAnOffer) - See below

3. Bain case interview examples

• CoffeeCo practice case (Bain website)
• FashionCo practice case (Bain website)
• Associate Consultant mock interview video (Bain website)
• Consultant mock interview video (Bain website)
• Written case interview tips (Bain website)
• Bain case interview guide   (by IGotAnOffer)
• Digital transformation case with ex-Bain consultant
• Bain case mock interview with ex-Bain manager (below)

4. Deloitte case interview examples

• Engagement Strategy practice case (Deloitte website)
• Recreation Unlimited practice case (Deloitte website)
• Strategic Vision practice case (Deloitte website)
• Retail Strategy practice case  (Deloitte website)
• Finance Strategy practice case  (Deloitte website)
• Talent Management practice case (Deloitte website)
• Enterprise Resource Management practice case (Deloitte website)
• Footloose written case  (by Deloitte)
• Deloitte case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

5. Accenture case interview examples

• Case interview workbook (by Accenture)
• Accenture case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

6. OC&C case interview examples

• Leisure Club case example (by OC&C)
• Imported Spirits case example (by OC&C)

7. Oliver Wyman case interview examples

• Wumbleworld case sample (Oliver Wyman website)
• Aqualine case sample (Oliver Wyman website)
• Oliver Wyman case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

8. A.T. Kearney case interview examples

• Promotion planning case question (A.T. Kearney website)
• Consulting case book and examples (by A.T. Kearney)
• AT Kearney case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

9. Strategy& / PWC case interview examples

• Presentation overview with sample questions (by Strategy& / PWC)
• Strategy& / PWC case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

10. L.E.K. Consulting case interview examples

• Case interview example video walkthrough   (L.E.K. website)
• Market sizing case example video walkthrough  (L.E.K. website)

11. Roland Berger case interview examples

• Transit oriented development case webinar part 1  (Roland Berger website)
• Transit oriented development case webinar part 2   (Roland Berger website)
• 3D printed hip implants case webinar part 1   (Roland Berger website)
• 3D printed hip implants case webinar part 2   (Roland Berger website)
• Roland Berger case interview guide   (by IGotAnOffer)

12. Capital One case interview examples

• Case interview example video walkthrough  (Capital One website)
• Capital One case interview guide (by IGotAnOffer)

13. Consulting clubs case interview examples

• Berkeley case book (2006)
• Columbia case book (2006)
• Darden case book (2012)
• Darden case book (2018)
• Duke case book (2010)
• Duke case book (2014)
• ESADE case book (2011)
• Goizueta case book (2006)
• Illinois case book (2015)
• LBS case book (2006)
• MIT case book (2001)
• Notre Dame case book (2017)
• Ross case book (2010)
• Wharton case book (2010)

Practice with experts

Using case interview examples is a key part of your interview preparation, but it isn’t enough.

At some point you’ll want to practise with friends or family who can give some useful feedback. However, if you really want the best possible preparation for your case interview, you'll also want to work with ex-consultants who have experience running interviews at McKinsey, Bain, BCG, etc.

If you know anyone who fits that description, fantastic! But for most of us, it's tough to find the right connections to make this happen. And it might also be difficult to practice multiple hours with that person unless you know them really well.

Here's the good news. We've already made the connections for you. We’ve created a coaching service where you can do mock case interviews 1-on-1 with ex-interviewers from MBB firms . Start scheduling sessions today!

The IGotAnOffer team

Case interview questions and why you should use them in tech

Several years ago, we discovered one of the most troublesome issues of the IT professional hiring process: it is not very realistic. Luckily, there are numerous interview techniques to help with this, from situational interview questions examples to the ideal personal interview questions and coding challenges that can be used on your next candidate. This article will focus on one of a number of technical interviewing strategies you can implement in your recruiting process: the case interview questions.

Case interview questions for tech companies

The case interview was originally a technique focused on assessing candidates for partner-track roles and associate-level employees. However, it has evolved to analyst-level employees who provide internal support to senior management and the research department.

In this article you’ll see:

What is a case interview?

Why use case interview questions.

• Types of cases you might see in an interview
• Sample case interview questions
• Case interview scenarios

Table of Contents

A case interview typically involves presenting a candidate with an authentic business scenario, similar to the one that your firm regularly handles with its clients. During the case interview, an interviewer presents a situation and asks the candidate to explore the underlying causes of the problem. The candidate is then expected to perform an analysis and provide advice on how to handle the scenario. In the IT realm, the candidate may be asked to demonstrate how that advice might be implemented in order to show specialized technical proficiency. So, in brief, the candidate’s task is to:

• ask questions, to help identify the main problems
• develop and present a framework for analysis
• use the framework to offer recommendations or suggestions of advice

The questions or ‘cases’ used in these case interviews are often drawn from the interviewer’s actual project experience. So generally, the interviewer must be suitably experienced, not just in their professional capacity, but also in the ability to host these kinds of interviews. Case interviews typically last from 45 to 60 minutes, with a focus on the case itself for around two-thirds of that period.

Case interviews are more often used by management consulting firms (increasingly by other organizations too) as part of the selection process. Sometimes the case interview will be the only form of questioning but often they are used in conjunction with another form of technical assessment , i.e coding or situational. They are commonly used one-on-one but can be utilized in groups as part of an assessment center.

Case interview questions test for the ability to translate a problem statement into a working technical solution . A case interview can test not just programming skills but also:

• analytical and logical reasoning ability
• numerical and verbal reasoning
• problem-solving ability
• organizational and time management
• the ability to think quickly under pressure
• presentation and communication skills
• confidence, business acumen, and professionalism

An advantage of the case interview is that the correct answer is not as vital as the process the candidate used to reach it. The objective of this type of interview is not to merely produce the right answer, but for the candidate to demonstrate their ability to solve complex problems independently and under pressure. In fact, there is often no ‘right’ answer. The nature of these interviews is generally very interactive, designed for the candidate to ask questions, seek clarification, and bounce ideas back off the interviewer.

Types of case interview questions

There are essentially three types of case interview questions and we will cover them here.

Brainteasers

Brain teasers are sometimes referred to as “ back of the envelope” questions in the consultancy field. They are logic questions that are used to gauge a candidate’s problem-solving skills. They are almost always numerically driven and the candidate will be asked to estimate the value, cost, or a number of an everyday item, thing, or commodity.

However, the use of brain teasers is flawed. Even ask Laszlo Bock, former senior VP of people operations at Google. He went on record to say they are “ a complete waste of time ” and that they “ don’t predict anything .” Decontextualization helps. These questions measure how good candidates are at coming up with a clever, plausible-seeming solution to an abstract problem under pressure. However, employees don’t experience this type of pressure on the job.

Imagine being asked how to explain the internet to someone coming out of a 30-year coma. Not very applicable is it?

   Image credit: pxhere

The “parade of facts” or graphic interpretation.

The parade of facts question is one that provides significant detail, some of it irrelevant, that tests the candidate’s ability to distill key issues. This form of questioning requires a depth of analysis based on relevant facts. As these questions are time-consuming, the use of them is relatively rare.

Because of this, firms tend to gravitate towards a graphic or statistical interpretation approach. The scenario might come in the form of an image or a graph, but still includes outlying information, i.e red herrings. This format is often less confusing for the candidate and is a more efficient technique to disperse key information. With this type of questioning, the candidate is required to interpret and review statistical data represented in a chart or graph.

Perhaps the most common form of case interview poses the question in only a few sentences. This leaves the candidates with minimal information and forces them to go several layers deeper by asking relevant questions to understand the key issues. Sometimes this type of interview is referred to as “the great unknown.”

The format is commonly used in a role-play scenario where the candidate is the consultant and the interviewer as the improvised client or manager. The fact this style of interview invites the candidate to formulate their own questions and develop frameworks is attractive to the organization’s using it .

The roleplay method is a great tool for the candidate to display client relationship skills and prove that they enjoy solving problems. Even if the structure of the question isn’t entirely role-play in nature, the question is very much situational and circumstantial. It places the candidate in the role of a consultant and allows them to creatively and critically analyze a real-world (often) business problem.

Tech case interview scenarios

Business situations.

These questions are designed to test the level of business knowledge a candidate has and whether they can apply it to authentic business problems.

Several types of common business problems can include (but are not limited to):

• profit and loss
• organizational structure
• the implementation of new technology
• marketing scenarios

The candidate will likely offer a verbal response to a question of this nature. The interviewer can draw on their own experiences to help guide the candidate through the scenario.

Some examples of a good question:

• A progressive, tech-savvy CEO of a regional hospital chain is concerned that their company’s profitability is half that of the market leader. Using your tech background and business expertise, how can the company grow its net income?
• Describe how you would approach a situation where your current project’s progress is slipping because of a lack of contributions from one of the client’s project team members?
• A multinational manufacturing firm is faced with flat sales and the IT department is under pressure to identify ways to reduce costs. Our team has been tasked with developing a roadmap to achieving cost savings – how should we proceed?
• A very large sports league needs to move their entire datacenter into the cloud in six weeks to support their new mobile video application. What are the first sets of challenges you would expect to face?

Business strategy

A business strategy question might involve an area such as growth, organizational expansion, and multiple operations issues. A complex business strategy question can involve multi-industry, multinational, and market-dependent problems. A more localized scenario is even a possibility, giving the interviewer the freedom to probe your knowledge in a variety of areas.

Common types of business strategy scenarios include:

• advising clients about an acquisition or merger
• responding to a competitive move by another company in the industry
• evaluating opportunities for a new product introduction

A scenario that has been tackled effectively will be from a candidate who sets out a problem-solving framework. So in essence, setting out a plan, formulating the analysis and drawing recommendations from those conclusions.

• A client is a global financial services firm that is considering allocating more resources to the facilitation of electronic fund transfers globally. The CEO wants you to develop a strategic plan to increase the company’s share of the market.
• A client is a software development investment company attempting to develop a ride-sharing app that uses “green” technology for its driving fleet, resulting in 85% less emissions and being 15% more affordable than its competition. Please help determine the product’s market potential and the strategy to bring it to the market.
• A large retail firm is looking to develop a new digital strategy to better engage customers and improve sales – how should they begin this journey and what factors are most important to keep in mind?
• The third-ranked competitor in the cellular phone services market is at a disadvantage relative to its larger competitors. Providing cellular phone service has high fixed costs – for the equipment that transmits calls, the retail stores that sell phones and the marketing spend that is key to customer retention. The CEO is considering acquiring a smaller competitor in order to gain market share. They would like our help thinking through this decision.

  Image credit: pxhere

Business operations.

Business operations case scenarios are questions that fundamentally relate to the running of the business itself and are more complex than market sizing questions or brainteasers. Interviewers enjoy questions like these because they allow the interviewer to see if the candidate has the ability to comprehend critical issues that pertain to running a business.

Common types of business operations questions include:

• the relationship between revenues and costs
• the relationship and impact of fixed and variable costs on a company’s profitability

Questions pertaining to business operations require the candidate to demonstrate a learned understanding of business processes and an ability to distill key issues from a lengthy amount of information. These scenarios are usually represented by the “parade of facts” case type.

A (lengthy) example of a good question:

• Your client ABC Technology is a large information technology (IT) outsourcing service provider. At the time of its creation, ABC Technology had revenues of $25 billion, 170,000 employees and operated in 70 countries.

The client (ABC) is nearing the end of a long-term contract with its largest customer, Giant Corp. The CEO of Giant Corp. has notified ABC Technology of its intent to “level the playing field” of competition for its IT-related business. The customer Giant Corp. has indicated that 100% of the business ABC Technology currently enjoys will be available for bids by ABC Technology’s competitors.

The client would like your assistance in developing a view of its business with Giant Corp. In addition, ABC Technology believes the trend to structure outsourcing initiatives by standardized service lines will continue, and therefore it views this client opportunity as a “wave of the future” that it will soon see repeated with its other major clients.

Your desired outcome is to develop a high-level engagement approach and to brainstorm what insights are needed to strengthen ABC Technology’s response to the forthcoming bid process. How would you go about it?

Market sizing

Market sizing questions are focused on establishing the size of a market in regards to annual revenue or the number of units sold. They are rather simple in design, and generally do not require the candidate to explain how to successfully compete in the market. These questions are common from consulting firms early in the consulting interview process. They are even more frequent in interviews with undergraduate students who are not so business savvy. Market sizing questions are often represented by a succinct brainteaser such as:

• What is the size of the market for mobile food delivery services in the United States?
• Discuss what is wrong with the following statistic: the Volvo is the safest car on the road because a recent study has shown that Volvos have the fewest number of accident deaths per mile driven.

Although they take their inspiration from a broader field of economic comprehension, case interview questions can be an effective technique to assess IT consultants and professionals alike. Some types and scenarios work better than others according to their content, IT is proof of this.

One of the most interesting aspects of case interviews is that once a question has been posed, there are an infinite number of directions the case can go. This affords the interviewer many angles from which to assess a candidate. It is certain that depending on the role you are hiring for, case interview questions are able to genuinely evaluate your candidate’s creative and critical thinking process. Now that you’re familiar with case interview questions, we wholeheartedly recommend the 45 behavioral questions to use during non-technical interview with developers .

We hope this gives you a solid idea of how case interview questions can be useful to your organization. If you’d like to read more on a related subject, please check out our article on work-sample interviews .

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Technical Consulting Case Interviews

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Many companies that recruit here at Bauer, including the IT consulting firms, have a case interview that is a crucial part of the interview process. Learning how to ace a case interview takes time and you should start preparing as soon as possible. The resources below will help you get more familiar with the case interview process and provide practice cases to work through.

https://pixabay.com/

What is a case interview?

According to Accenture, “A case interview is a type of job interview, used most frequently by consulting firms, that allows an applicant to demonstrate his/her ability to solve a given business problem. During a case interview, an interviewer presents a situation or case and then asks the applicant to explore the underlying causes of the problem and suggest recommendations to remedy the problem.”  The interviewer is not necessarily looking for the correct answer, rather they are looking at how you define and analyze the problem and communicate with the interviewer. For positions in IT, the case will usually be related to technology.

Vault Case Interview Guides

Vault is a free resource for Bauer students that can be found on Gateway under the External Links section on the Gateway home page. It provides multiple guides to help you prepare for your case interview and research careers in consulting.

The following guides can be found under the “Vault Guides” tab in the consulting section.

Vault Guide to the Case Interview

This guide is full of information to help you prepare for a case interview. It goes over what to expect, the different types of questions, frameworks, and has more than 50 sample cases.

Vault Case Interview Practice Guide

This guide has 27 case interview questions long with a step-by-step analysis of each case. There are 2 IT specific cases that you will want to check out.

Other guides to check out:

Vault Career Guide to Consulting

Vault Guide to the Top 10 Technology Consulting Firms, 2013 Edition

Accenture has a guide to help guide you through the case interview.  

https://www.accenture.com/t20180913t100614z__w__/us-en/_acnmedia/careers/pdf-14/accenture-fy19-case-workbook-one-accenture-technology.pdf

Deloitte also provides an interactive case prep tool on their website.

http://caseinterviewprep.deloitte.com/

Want to see more cases?

Over 1000 practice cases can be found at https://www.consultingcase101.com/ .

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Secrets to a successful case-study interview

January 9, 2023

Prepping for (and maybe fretting) the case-study interview?

While this kind of interview may appear intimidating, consider this: The interviewer really wants you to do well.

So, shake off the nerves, relax and have fun.

Tips for standing out in the case-study interview: 

• Take your time; don't rush it.  Talk through the problem. If you can't make sense of it, take a moment and allow yourself some time to process what you've been missing. If you get stuck, get creative. Don't let yourself get bogged down; rely on your ingenuity. 
• Ask questions.  You can always ask your interviewer to define an acronym or to repeat or confirm details. If the interviewer asks, “How do we achieve success?”, don’t be afraid to ask, “What does ‘success’ mean to you? Is it turning a profit? Raising the company’s profile?” When you work on a client project, you need to ask questions to figure out what the problems might be, and the same applies here. The interviewer is your biggest asset in the room. They have the information you need to “solve the case” successfully. Use them wisely!
• Be flexible.  The focus of a case-study interview may vary. So, be prepared to participate in whatever discussion the interviewer has in mind. They may spend the first half of the interview asking about your previous experience, or they may dive right into the case study at the start. The bottom line: Be flexible, and be ready to discuss the work you do and how you do it.
• Use visual aids.  Don’t be afraid to use pen and paper, sketch out your thoughts, and talk through the problem at hand if it helps you get your ideas across. What matters most is demonstrating that you can solve problems.
• Focus on impact.  Inventory the information you have, and then dive in where you can have the most impact. Don’t forget to discuss your thought process and explain your assumptions.
• Tell a story.  Your experience has helped you progress in your career and education; use that experience. For example, in a business case study, you could bring your experience as a traveler to a case about a hypothetical airline. Your individuality is important. Your unique insights will serve you well when you’re interviewing.
• Pay attention to cues.  If the interviewer says something, it probably means something. Don’t dismiss seemingly extraneous details. For example, the interviewer might say, “The case is about a retailer who wants to increase the value of a company it purchased, and the owner loved the brand when growing up.” The purpose of that detail is to indicate that turning around and selling the asset is not an option for making it profitable, because the owner is attached to it.

Preparing for the job you want can take time, but it’s a worthwhile investment—especially when you receive an offer.

Your ideas, ingenuity and determination make a difference. 

Find your fit  with Accenture. 

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Case Interviews for Digital and Tech

Digital and tech consulting is a rapidly growing segment of the consulting profession . New boutique consultancies spring up constantly, whilst the big players in the MBB and Big Four firms are increasingly offering specialist digital services. Consultancies thus have to recruit specialist digital consultants as well as various technical experts to be able to deliver the projects now demanded by the changing nature of business.

As you would expect, there are significant overlaps in the hiring requirements for digital consultants, technical experts working for consulting firms and those working directly in the tech industry itself. In recent times, this overlap has increasingly extended itself into the recruitment pipeline. In particular, tech firms are now often requiring applicants to undergo consulting-style case interviews .

In this article, we’ll first take a look at various aspects of digital consulting roles, before examining the distinct flavour of case interview which candidates for these jobs can expect to have to tackle. These case interviews will also often have a lot in common with the case interviews used by tech companies to filter their own applicants. As such, tech applicants will also find a lot of useful information here . (For a discussion comparing case interviews in different sectors, check out our article on case interviews in other industries )

Everything you need in one place

Digital consulting – what is it.

Digital consulting operations are called upon to fulfil a whole host of functions . These might be conducted as stand-alone projects or in conjunction with generalist consultants as part of broader engagements. Let’s take a look at the kinds of work consulting firms undertake in this area:

Advanced Analytics

• Projects will often draw on advanced methods to provide better answers to typical business issues. Thus, advanced analytics can be used to inform companies in tasks such as churn reduction, custom pricing, risk control and credit decisions.
• Advanced analytics can also be deployed in structuring and managing the data models used by companies.

Business Technology

• Consultancies are often engaged with IT strategy and other classic CTO issues.
• Consultants will also often advise on IT issues such as cloud storage, cyber security and infrastructure development.

Digital Transformations

• Consultants are often involved in the transformation of internal and/or customer facing processes.
• Often, engagements will be centred on establishing how to sell new or existing products via digital channels.

New Digital Business

• General consultants often advise companies on how to respond to market disruptions. Likewise, where the problem and/or potential solution involves a substantial digital element, digital consultants will be involved.
• Consultants can also advise on how best to bring innovative new products to market.
• Optimising digital marketing is another common subject for engagements.

Design Thinking

• Consultants will often be required to apply a design approach to management problems, such as going to market or new product releases. Similarly, they might be involved directly designing elements of new products or services.
• Consultants might be engaged to improve aspects of customer experience.

Impress your interviewer

Requirements of Roles

As alluded to above, the demands upon digital consulting as a field have required firms to hire individuals to fill various roles. As an applicant, depending upon your background, you might be unsure where you will best fit. For instance, if you have a strong grounding in computer science, you might be capable of acting as a digital consultant or in one or more technical roles. As such, we should run through the various jobs available within the digital consulting world.

Consultant in Digital/Technology

Whilst digital consultants work on projects requiring a degree of specialist background knowledge, it is crucial to remember that they are still first and foremost consultants . By this, we mean that, rather than technical specialists, it is better to think about digital consultants as effectively generalist consultants that are only deployed on a specific subset of engagements. Accordingly, these individuals will need the full gamut of consulting soft skills and should be aware that assessment of those skills via fit interviews etc will be taken very seriously.

Of course, though, to be able to do their jobs, digital consultants will require a solid understanding of the technology they are working with. Ideally, they should have a background in computer science or a closely allied area.

Data Scientist

Data scientists are tasked with supporting the consultancy’s team and client staff with data analysis and insights. They require experience in data modelling and algorithms, including in programming languages such as R, python etc.

Agile Coach/Scrum Master

These individuals will support clients in setting up and managing Agile teams to deliver projects. They will require experience in Agile methodology in different settings and covering different roles.

Experience designers will both directly help clients to develop new digital products/experiences and also in helping clients in building and managing their own design teams. Such designers will need experience with design thinking methodology and Agile.

IT Architect

IT architects are employed to support clients in architectural decision-making in the course of delivering new digital products or services. They will require good experience in IT architecture for enterprise.

Software Developer

Help clients deliver software products/services. This role will require a string background in computer science, with experience of everything from cloud infrastructure, databases, application building technologies to Agile. Experience will also be expected in applying these methods in business settings.

Example Digital Cases Studies

Let’s take a look at some representative examples of the kind of cases which you are likely to come across in Tech/Digital interviews. As well as setting out the case question, we’ll run through some quick notes on how to move towards a solution via our Problem Driven Structure method for case cracking (for more information on this method, see our articles introducing case interviews and Problem Driven Structures here). 

These are common themes for the cases given to digital consultant interview candidates . However, those applying for other roles in the digital consulting arena or indeed roles within the tech industry might receive very similar cases (perhaps with arbitrarily altered premises).

Digital Transformation Prioritisation

A major bank wants to undergo a large-scale digital transformation of its products in order to be more appealing to customers (hopefully generating more revenue) whilst also reducing its cost base. You must design a roadmap for this transformation. In particular, the bank wants to know which products to tackle first and how to generate maximum impact. They also want to know how they should go about implementing their new products/services/process.

Identify and Structure the Problem

First, you need form a clear understanding of the problem and start to break it down logically. In particular, you should:

• Ask for information about the particular products/services/processes involved. For example you might ask about profitability, costs to maintain and R&D costs.
• Ask for information about underlying systems. For instance, you might enquire abut the relevant technology, level of complexity and dependencies.
• Consider customer satisfaction for the different processes/products/services.
• Consider strategic relevance

Lead the Analysis and Provide Recommendations

Having analysed the problem, you must then devise and present a solution. Thus, you should: Prioritise based on cost efficiency and/or effort required for implementation

• Identify “quick wins”
• Market research to understand the customer base
• Idea generation
• MVP development
• Early user feedback
• Consider whether is better to add to existing products or replace entirely
• Consider whether concerns about migrating users from older products are relevant

Software Quality Improvement

The R&D department of a major bank has discovered that more than 30% of the software development division’s time is being spent fixing bugs in in-house-developed software. They wish to decrease this time so as to increase overall productivity. What do you recommend?

Identify the Structure the Problem

• Enquire as to any salient differences between products. For instance, are there differences in profitability or in the extent to which they are affected by bugs.
• Find out about the codebase. Enquire as to how many lines of code are involved, the relevant technology being used and any dependencies.
• Generally, secure data broken down by product, module etc.

You might move towards solutions including the following:

• Targeted testing: unit and/or automated user acceptance
• Code review: automated with tools or by peers
• Set team coding standards to be enforced via review
• Targeted refactoring (it would be impossible to refactor everything, as the cost would be too high)

Don't forget about being practical - tech is one of those industries where off-the-shelf solutions are abundant and can fit a number of use cases, whether it's design or coding. If you have to create a logo, for instance, you don't necessarily need a UX designer but you can head to any logo creator online  and make one.

How to get that job!

If you want to get any job in digital consulting - and an increasing number of jobs in the tech industry itself - you are going to need to reliably impress in case interview .

Case interviews in general are formidable things, but those for more specialist positions can really spook candidates . How different are they? Will the material for generalist consulting interviews be sufficient to prep or do they need to find specialist material (if it even exists)?

We discuss these issues in some depth in our article on case interviews in other industries . The relevant takeaway, though, is that case cracking relies on the same fundamental skillset, regardless of the particular context of the case . Thus, whichever industry you are applying for, you should be spending the overwhelming majority of your prep becoming a case cracking generalist , only honing in on specific common tropes from your chosen sector at the very last, running up to your interview.

With all this being the case, good quality prep material designed for general consulting interviews is perfect to form the core of your preparation .

Now, this might sound promising enough, but the problem now is generally finding good quality prep material . The quickest google will soon show that there is a whole industry based on selling outmoded, highly-dysfunctional “framework” approaches to case solving. However, despite the fabulous promises that are made of them, these systems let down thousands of diligent candidates every year , who pour in many hours into learning the relevant sources cover-to-cover, only to come up stumped at interview.

The fundamental issue is that the approach embodied in frameworks is anathema to the way any self-respecting consultant or high-level professional would ever actually approach their work . No wonder frameworks then fail to solve case studies based on real business problems.

At MyConsultingCoach, we have made it our mission to correct this problem by developing prep material designed to teach you how to solve cases in the same way a real consultant would . The core of this is our four-step Problem Driven Structure method of case cracking, which is effectively a distillation of the seven-step approach used by McKinsey on real engagements . This method then sits at the centre of a whole gamut of other resources to give you everything you need to prep for any case interview. Let’s take a closer look:

Prep the right way

Our case method.

Our MCC Academy case interview course was developed with a single goal in mind – to help candidates succeed by teaching them to think, act and communicate like a world-class strategy consultant . After completing our course, you’ll be equipped not only to ace the interview process, but also to hit the ground running on day one of the job.

The idea of getting hired by acquiring the fundamental skills associated with the job might seem obvious. However, our approach is actually in stark contrast to the old-fashioned case interview systems mentioned above.

These other methods simply have you memorise perhaps a dozen “standard” frameworks. This short list of generic recipes is supposed to allow you to answer any case question the interviewer comes up with. This is in spite of the fact that that cases will be based on real engagements, where major firms were forced to call in consultants as they couldn’t solve the problem in-house… In short, frameworks are unlikely to give you correct answers .

Our unique Problem Driven Approach allows you to tackle each case on its own merits, developing a bespoke solution to capture all of the problem’s unique complexities – just like a real consultant! We equip you with everything you need to know , starting from the ground up. Specifically, we can support you in:

• Understanding business fundamentals: Get your mini-MBA with our Marketing, Strategy and Economics, Accounting & Finance modules
• Learning how to crack cases: Identify the problem, build a bespoke problem driven structure, lead the analysis and how to provide recommendations.
• Accelerating your approach with our building blocks: Master profitability analysis, competitive dynamics, pricing discussions, among others to let you deal with recurring themes in cases without restricting you to simplistic frameworks.

Our coaching sessions

Coaching from a real MBB consultant can help even the best candidates pinpoint their weak points and turn them into strengths. As well as helping you master case studies, a coach will give you a new self-awareness of your profile and how best to position yourself for an MBB offer. Just as importantly, they will give you the confidence to know for sure you can succeed against such a formidable challenge!

Join thousands of other candidates cracking cases like pros

Candidates who sign up to our free services are 3 times more likely to land a job in one of their target firms . How?

• We teach how to solve cases like consultants , not through frameworks
• Our Meeting Board lets you practice with peers on 100+ realistic, interactive cases.
• Our AI mentor creates a personalised study roadmap to give you direction.
• All the advice you need on resume, cover letter and networking.

We believe in fostering talent, that’s why all of the above is free .

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Lewis C. Lin

Amazon.com bestselling author.

Case Interview Questions for Tech Companies  provides 155 practice questions and answers to conquer case interviews for the following tech roles:

Business Development

• Supplier or Vendor Management
• ...and Product Management

QUESTIONS COVERED IN THE BOOK

Here are some of the questions covered in the book:

• Create a marketing campaign for Microsoft Office 365.
• Write a media statement to respond to Uber mischaracterizations voiced in a taxi leader’s newspaper op-ed.
• Describe how Apple’s supply chain works. What challenges does Apple face on a day-to-day basis?
• What’s the bottleneck for an Amazon Robot Picker? And what is the capacity of the assembly line, in units per hour?
• During the holiday season, Amazon customers shipped 200 orders per second. Amazon’s data science team discovered that the average number of orders waiting to be shipped was 20,650. How long did the average Amazon order wait to be shipped?
• What should Apple consider before implementing a shop-in-shop store for Best Buy?
• If you projected a $500M expense and the variance came in at $1M, what are some of the explanations for why that is happening? Be prepared to give more than three scenarios.
• A car dealer partner wants to stop doing business with Uber. What should you do?
• How would you identify university faculty to source content for an online university?
• If you could open a Google store anywhere, where would it be and why?
• Give your analysis of several recent acquisitions that Google has made.
• What top metrics would you track for the Tinder online dating app?
• If 1,000 people opened the Uber app during one hour, how many cars do you need?

Product Management

• Let's say we wanted to implement an Amazon Mayday-like feature in Gmail. How would that work?
• How would you any Microsoft product to a restaurant?

Lewis C. Lin, former Google and Microsoft executive, has trained thousands of candidates to get ready for tech interviews, using his proven interview techniques. Lewis' students have received offers from the most coveted firms including Google, Facebook, Uber, Amazon, Microsoft, IBM, Dell and HP.

Lewis has a bachelor's in computer science from Stanford University and an MBA from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.

He's the author of several bestsellers including Interview Math ,  Rise Above the Noise  as well as Decode and Conquer .

HERE'S WHAT PEOPLE SAY ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Got the Amazon offer, with an initial package that was ~$100K more than what I currently make at [a top 5 tech company]. It’s a dream job for the role of Principal Product Manager for a [special project]. – Q.K.

Just signed the offer for a Google product marketing manager role. Your tips helped me relax and concentrate, so the time went by quickly even though it was really a tough interview. – D.E.

I had my in-person interviews down at Facebook last week and got my offer letter the next day! You were definitely a huge help in preparing for the interviews. – L.S.

GET THE FIRST CHAPTER FREE

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The Secret Push That Could Ban TikTok

U.s. lawmakers have long worried that the chinese government could use the app to spread propaganda..

Hosted by Sabrina Tavernise

Featuring Sapna Maheshwari

Produced by Will Reid ,  Rachelle Bonja and Rob Szypko

Edited by Marc Georges and Liz O. Baylen

Original music by Marion Lozano and Dan Powell

Engineered by Chris Wood

Listen and follow The Daily Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Amazon Music

American lawmakers have tried for years to ban TikTok, concerned that the video app’s links to China pose a national security risk.

Sapna Maheshwari, a technology reporter for The Times, explains the behind-the-scenes push to rein in TikTok and discusses what a ban could mean for the app’s 170 million users in the United States.

On today’s episode

Sapna Maheshwari , who covers TikTok, technology and emerging media companies for The New York Times.

Background reading

A tiny group of lawmakers huddled in private about a year ago, aiming to bulletproof a bill that could ban TikTok.

The TikTok law faces court challenges, a shortage of qualified buyers and Beijing’s hostility .

Love, hate or fear it, TikTok has changed America .

There are a lot of ways to listen to The Daily. Here’s how.

We aim to make transcripts available the next workday after an episode’s publication. You can find them at the top of the page.

Special thanks to Sharon Otterman .

The Daily is made by Rachel Quester, Lynsea Garrison, Clare Toeniskoetter, Paige Cowett, Michael Simon Johnson, Brad Fisher, Chris Wood, Jessica Cheung, Stella Tan, Alexandra Leigh Young, Lisa Chow, Eric Krupke, Marc Georges, Luke Vander Ploeg, M.J. Davis Lin, Dan Powell, Sydney Harper, Mike Benoist, Liz O. Baylen, Asthaa Chaturvedi, Rachelle Bonja, Diana Nguyen, Marion Lozano, Corey Schreppel, Rob Szypko, Elisheba Ittoop, Mooj Zadie, Patricia Willens, Rowan Niemisto, Jody Becker, Rikki Novetsky, John Ketchum, Nina Feldman, Will Reid, Carlos Prieto, Ben Calhoun, Susan Lee, Lexie Diao, Mary Wilson, Alex Stern, Dan Farrell, Sophia Lanman, Shannon Lin, Diane Wong, Devon Taylor, Alyssa Moxley, Summer Thomad, Olivia Natt, Daniel Ramirez and Brendan Klinkenberg.

Our theme music is by Jim Brunberg and Ben Landsverk of Wonderly. Special thanks to Sam Dolnick, Paula Szuchman, Lisa Tobin, Larissa Anderson, Julia Simon, Sofia Milan, Mahima Chablani, Elizabeth Davis-Moorer, Jeffrey Miranda, Renan Borelli, Maddy Masiello, Isabella Anderson and Nina Lassam.

Sapna Maheshwari reports on TikTok, technology and emerging media companies. She has been a business reporter for more than a decade. Contact her at [email protected] . More about Sapna Maheshwari

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The ghosts of ‘Wintel’: What leaders can learn from the diverging paths that made Microsoft a $3 trillion powerhouse and flatlined Intel

Steve Jobs wasn’t accustomed to hearing “no.” But that was the answer from Paul Otellini, CEO of Intel . 

It was 2006, and Intel, the global king of computer chips, was bringing in record revenue and profits by dominating the kinds of chips in hottest demand—for personal computers and data centers. Now Jobs wanted Intel to make a different type of chip for a product that didn’t even exist, which would be called the iPhone.

Otellini knew chips for phones and tablets were the next big thing, but Intel had to devote substantial capital and its best minds to the fabulously profitable business it already possessed. Besides, “no one knew what the iPhone would do,” he told The Atlantic seven years later, just before he stepped down as CEO. “There was a chip that they were interested in, that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more, and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it.”

Otellini, who died in 2017, was a highly successful CEO by many measures. But if that decision had gone the other way, Intel might have become a chip titan of the post-PC era.  Instead, it gave up on phone chips in 2016 after losing billions trying to become a significant player. As he left the company, Otellini seemed to grasp the magnitude of his decision: “The world would have been a lot different if we’d done it.”

Meantime, some 800 miles north, in Seattle, Microsoft was struggling to find its role in a tech world dominated by the internet, mobile devices, social media, and search. Investors were not impressed by its efforts. No one could have foreseen that years later, a few key decisions would set the company up as an AI powerhouse and send its stock soaring. There was a time not so long ago that Microsoft and Intel were both atop the tech world. They were neither competitors nor significant customers of each other, but what New York University’s Adam Brandenburger and Yale’s Barry Nalebuff deemed “complementors.” Microsoft built its hugely profitable Windows operating system over the years to work on computers that used Intel’s chips, and Intel designed new chips to run Windows (hence “Wintel”). The system fueled the leading tech product of the 1990s, the personal computer. Microsoft’s Bill Gates became a celebrity wonk billionaire, and Intel CEO Andy Grove was Time ’s 1997 Man of the Year.

Since then their paths have diverged sharply. Microsoft in 2000 was the world’s most valuable company, and after losing that distinction for many years, it’s No. 1 again. Intel was the world’s sixth most valuable company in 2000 and the largest maker of semiconductors; today it’s No. 69 by value and No. 2 in semiconductors by revenue, far behind No. 1 TSMC (and in some years also behind Samsung ).

A Fortune 500 CEO makes thousands of decisions in a career, a few of which will turn out to be momentous. What’s easy to explain in hindsight—that Microsoft would be at the forefront of AI, that Google would become a behemoth, that Blockbuster would fade into obscurity—is never preordained. Often the fateful decisions are identifiable only in retrospect. Nothing more vividly illustrates this than the parallel stories of Microsoft and Intel. The case study of what went right and wrong at those two giant corporations offers a master class in business strategy not just for today’s front-runners at the likes of Google, Open AI, Amazon , and elsewhere—but also for any Fortune 500 leader hoping to survive and thrive in the coming decade.

Wintel’s origin story

The two companies were founded a mere seven years apart. Intel’s founders in 1968 included Robert Noyce, coinventor of the computer chip, and Gordon Moore, who had written the seminal article observing that the number of transistors on a chip doubled every year, which he later revised to two years—Moore’s law, as others later called it. Andy Grove was employee No. 3. All three are still regarded as giants of the industry.

Bill Gates famously dropped out of Harvard to cofound Microsoft with Paul Allen, a childhood friend. They were excited by the prospects of creating software for a new concept, the personal computer, also called a microcomputer. They launched Microsoft in 1975. 

The two companies’ paths crossed when IBM decided in 1980 to produce a PC and wanted to move fast by using existing chips and an existing operating system developed by others. It chose Intel’s chips and Microsoft’s operating system, profoundly transforming both companies and the people who ran them. IBM’s size and prestige made its design the industry standard, so that virtually all PCs, regardless of manufacturer, used the same Intel chips and Microsoft operating system for decades thereafter. As PCs swept America and the world, Intel and Microsoft became symbols of technology triumphant, glamour, success, and the historic bull market of 1982 to 2000.

Then everything changed.

The reign of Gates and Grove peters out

In October, 2000, Fortune ran an article with an illustration depicting Gates and Grove as monumental Egyptian sphinxes. The headline: “Their Reign Is Over.”

The reasoning: “Gates and Grove attained hegemony by exploiting a couple of key choke points in computer architecture—the operating system and the PC microprocessor,” the article explained. “But in the new, more diverse IT world wired together by universal internet protocols, there are no such obvious choke points to commandeer.”

Thus began a multiyear identity crisis for both companies. Intel’s PC chips and Microsoft’s PC operating system and applications remained bountifully profitable businesses, but both companies and their investors knew those were not the future. So what was? And who would lead this new era?

In January of 2000, Gates stepped down as CEO after 25 years, and Steve Ballmer, Microsoft’s president and a college friend of Gates, took his place; Gates remained chairman. Two days later, Microsoft’s stock rocket ran out of fuel. On that day the company’s market value hit $619 billion, a level it would not reach again for almost 18 years.

Grove was no longer Intel’s CEO in 2000, having handed the job to Craig Barrett, a longtime company executive, in 1998. But as Intel’s visionary and most successful CEO, Grove remained an important presence as chairman of the board. His health was becoming an issue; he had been diagnosed with prostate cancer in 1995, and in 2000 he was diagnosed with Parkinson’s disease. Intel’s stock roared until August, when the company’s market value peaked at $500 billion. It has never reached that level since.

But most significantly, 2000 was the year that the internet began to seem like it just might make Wintel irrelevant. 

At Intel, Barrett responded with acquisitions, many of which were in telecommunications and wireless technology. In concept, that made great sense. Cell phones were going mainstream, and they required new kinds of chips. “Craig tried to very aggressively diversify Intel by acquiring his way into new businesses,” says David Yoffie, a Harvard Business School professor who was on Intel’s board of directors at the time. “I would say that was not his skill set, and 100% of those acquisitions failed. We spent $12 billion, and the return was zero or negative.”

In the lean years after the dotcom balloon popped, Barrett continued to invest billions in new chip factories, known as fabs, and in new production technologies, so Intel would be well positioned when demand rebounded. That is a hint to one of the most important lessons of the Wintel saga and beyond: Protecting the incumbent business, even in a time of transition, is almost impossible to resist. That course usually sounds reasonable, but it holds the danger of starving the company’s future. As the great management writer Peter Drucker said: “If leaders are unable to slough off yesterday, to abandon yesterday, they simply will not be able to create tomorrow.” 

‘We screwed it up’

At Microsoft in the 2000s, “it was not at all obvious what would happen with the shape and volume of PCs, with operating system margins, or the future of applications like Word or Excel,” says Ray Ozzie, a top-level Microsoft executive from 2005 to 2010. “There was significant internal debate at Microsoft and in the industry on whether, in the future, the PC was dead, or if it would continue to grow and thrive.” Maybe Word, Excel, and those other applications that resided on your hard drive would move to the internet, like Google Docs, introduced in early 2006. In that case Microsoft would need a new business model. Should it develop one? Some executives thought so. But no one knew for sure.

During this period, Microsoft was hardly a model of corporate innovation, and succumbed to what often happens when successful companies are disrupted. Ozzie explains: “When you are rolling in resources and there are multiple existential threats, the most natural action to protect the business is to create parallel efforts. It’s more difficult to make a hard opinionated choice and go all in. Unfortunately, by creating parallel efforts, you create silos and internal conflict, which can be dysfunctional.”

As competing teams fought for primacy, Microsoft missed the two most supremely profitable businesses since the PC era: search and cell phones. Those misses were not fatal because Microsoft still had two reliable, highly profitable businesses: the Windows operating system and the Office suite of apps. But in Drucker’s terms, those were yesterday businesses. Investors didn’t see substantial tomorrow businesses, which is why the stock price went essentially nowhere for years. Missing search and cell phones didn’t threaten Microsoft’s existence, but it threatened Microsoft’s relevance and importance in a changing world, which could eventually damage the company’s appeal among investors and the world’s best employees. The reasons for those crucial misses are instructive.

In 2000 Google was an insignificant internet search startup with no clear business model, but it had an inkling that selling advertising could be profitable. We know how that turned out: Google’s 2023 ad revenue was $238 billion. The model was entirely foreign to Microsoft, which made tons of money by creating software and selling it at high prices. Charging users nothing? Selling ads? Microsoft had never run a business at all like Google’s. By the time Google’s model had proved itself, Microsoft was hopelessly far behind. Today its Bing search engine has a 3% market share across all platforms worldwide, says the StatCounter web-traffic analysis firm. Google’s share is 92%.

Microsoft’s failure in cell phones was, in a large sense, similar—the company didn’t fully grasp the structure of the business until it was too late. The company assumed the cell phone industry would develop much like the PC industry, in which sellers like Dell combined Intel’s chips and Microsoft’s software in a final product. But Apple’s starkly different iPhone business model, in which it designs its own chips and writes its own software, was an enormous hit. The other big winner in the industry, Google’s Android smartphone operating system, likewise ignored the PC model. Instead of selling its operating system, Google gives it away to phone makers like Samsung and Motorola. Google makes money by putting its search engine on every phone and by charging app makers a fee when users buy apps.

Bill Gates acknowledges that Microsoft’s miss in cell phones was life-changing for the company. Looking back on his career in 2020, he said: “It’s the biggest mistake I made in terms of something that was clearly within our skill set.”

Intel also lost the mammoth cell phone opportunity, and in a similar way. It couldn’t adapt. Intel understood the opportunity and was supplying chips for the highly popular BlackBerry phone in the early 2000s. The trouble was, Intel hadn’t designed the chips. They were designed by Arm, a British firm that designs chips but doesn’t manufacture them. Arm had developed a chip architecture that used less power than other chips, a critical feature in a cell phone. Intel was manufacturing the chips and paying a royalty to Arm.

Understandably, Intel preferred to make phone chips with its own architecture, known as x86. Paul Otellini decided to stop making Arm chips and to create an x86 chip for cell phones—in retrospect, “a major strategic error,” says Yoffie. “The plan was that we would have a competitive product within a year, and we ended up not having a competitive product within a decade,” he recalls. “It wasn’t that we missed it. It was that we screwed it up.”

Groping for a megatrend

Just as 2000 was a turning point for Intel and Microsoft, so was 2013. Broadly they were in the same fix: still raking in money from the businesses that made them great; getting into the next big opportunities too late or unsuccessfully; groping for a megatrend they could dominate. Their stock prices had more or less flatlined for at least a decade. Then, in May 2013, Paul Otellini stepped down as Intel’s CEO. In August, Steve Ballmer announced he would step down as Microsoft’s CEO.

Succession is the board of directors’ No. 1 job, more important than all its other jobs combined. The stakes are always high. How the Intel and Microsoft boards handled their successions, nine months apart, largely explains why the two companies’ storylines have diverged so dramatically.

Under Otellini’s successor, Brian Krzanich, Intel kept missing new-chip deadlines—ironically failing to keep up with Moore’s law even as competitors did so—and lost market share. The company gave up on smartphone chips. After five years as CEO, Krzanich resigned abruptly when an investigation found he had had a consensual relationship with an employee. CFO Bob Swan stepped in as CEO, and the production troubles continued until, by 2021, for the first time in Intel’s existence, its chips were two generations behind competitors’. Those competitors were Taiwan’s TSMC and South Korea’s Samsung.

In crisis mode, Intel’s board brought back Pat Gelsinger, an engineer who had spent 30 years at Intel before leaving for 11 years to be a high-level executive at EMC and then CEO of VMware . As Intel’s CEO he has announced an extraordinarily ambitious and expensive plan to reclaim the company’s stature as the world leader in chip technology.

Microsoft’s board spent almost six months finding Ballmer’s successor under worldwide scrutiny. At least 17 candidates were publicly speculated upon. British and Las Vegas bookies offered odds on the eventual winner; Satya Nadella, who recently marked 10 years as CEO, was a 14-to-1 long shot. 

Nadella has arguably been the best corporate succession choice, regardless of industry, in years or perhaps decades. Under his leadership the stock finally broke out of its 14-year trading range and shot upward, rising over 1,000%. Microsoft again became the world’s most valuable company, recently worth $3.1 trillion. Gelsinger, with just over three years in the job, can’t be fully evaluated; industry experts wonder if he’ll be Intel’s Nadella. But both CEOs offer useful examples of how to move a company from the past to the future.

Nadella orchestrated Microsoft’s dramatic turnaround by taking an outsider’s look at the company and making big changes with little drama. He began by making Office apps (Word, Excel) compatible with Apple iPhones and iPads—heresy at Microsoft, which regarded Apple as an archenemy. But Nadella realized the two companies competed very little, and why not let millions more people rely on Office apps? The move sent a message to the company and the world: The Microsoft culture’s endemic arrogance would be dialed down considerably. Interoperating with other companies could now be okay.

That was largely a new business model at the company, with many more to follow. For example, Nadella bought LinkedIn , a player in social media, which Microsoft had entirely missed, and later bought GitHub, a repository of open-source code, which Microsoft had previously despised. Both deals and several others have been standout successes. 

More broadly, Nadella brought a new leadership style for a new environment. In a company known for vicious infighting that could paralyze action, he settled long-running debates over major projects. For example, in 2016 he sold the Nokia cell phone business that Microsoft had bought a year before he became CEO, acknowledging that the company had lost the battle for phones. “People don’t quite grok why things have blossomed under Satya,” says a former executive. “His superpower is to make a choice, eliminate conflict, and let the business blossom.”

At Intel, Gelsinger also introduced culture-defying changes. The company had risen to dominance by designing leading-edge chips and manufacturing them with industry-leading skill. Amid that intense pride, the idea of creating a separate foundry business—manufacturing chips designed by others—was anathema. Yet under Gelsinger, Intel has created a new foundry business while also relying more on other foundries, including TSMC, the world’s largest chipmaker, for some of its own chips—a double shock to the culture. 

Getting a long-established company with a titanium-strength culture to adopt seemingly strange business models as Nadella and Gelsinger did can be painfully hard. Often only a new CEO can bring the openness necessary to make it happen. The same problem arises when a company needs to update its corporate strategy. Microsoft had been seeking and debating the next big thing for years, but Nadella saw that the company didn’t need to find a potentially huge new future-facing business. It already had one: Azure, its cloud computing service. Amazon Web Services was and is the industry leader, but Azure has grown to a strong No. 2 because Nadella has given it abundant capital and some of the company’s brightest workers. He also made an unorthodox investment in OpenAI, creator of ChatGPT, commiting $13 billion to the company starting before it was famous. Now Azure offers its customers OpenAI technology. In Drucker’s terms, it’s a big, thriving tomorrow business. 

Gelsinger changed Intel’s strategy even more radically. He bet heavily and successfully on billions of dollars from the U.S. government. Via the CHIPS and Science Act, Intel could receive up to $44 billion in aid for new U.S. chip factories the company is building in coming years. “As I like to joke, no one has spent more shoe leather on the CHIPS Act than yours truly,” he tells Fortune. “I saw an awful lot of senators, House members, caucuses in the different states. It’s a lot to bring it across the line.” 

A key insight is that for a major company with a history of success, like Microsoft and Intel, moving beyond an outmoded strategy and fully embracing a new one is traumatically difficult and sometimes impossible. For years both companies tried and failed to do it. A related insight: Doing it is easier for Nadella and Gelsinger because they have the advantage of being “insider outsiders,” leaders with deep knowledge of their organization but without heavy investment in its strategy; Nadella was working on Azure, not the Windows operating system or Office apps, long before he became CEO, and Gelsinger’s 11-year absence from Intel gave him license to rethink everything.

A larger lesson is that, in the stories of these two great companies, succession is the most important factor. Considering that Microsoft on the whole has fared better than Intel over the past 24 years, it’s significant that over that period, Microsoft has had only two CEOs and Intel has had five. Most people study the CEO when explaining a company’s performance, but they should first examine those who choose the CEO, the board of directors.

Looking back at these stories, asking “what if” is irresistible. What if Paul Otellini had said yes to Steve Jobs? What if any of Intel’s or Microsoft’s CEOs had been someone else? What if Intel, under a different CEO, had developed a successful GPU, the kind of chip that powers today’s AI engines (it tried)—would you ever have heard of Nvidia? Bill Gates said in 2019, “We missed being the dominant mobile operating system by a very tiny amount.” What if that tiny amount had shifted slightly? Whose phone would you be using today? 

It’s all endlessly tantalizing but of course unknowable. The value of looking back and asking “what if,” is to remind us that every day leaders are creating the future—and neglecting their duty if they don’t learn from the past.

5 lessons from the Wintel case study:

1. Success can be a company’s worst enemy. The great management writer Peter Drucker said every company must “abandon yesterday” before it can “create tomorrow.” But in a successful company, every incentive pushes leaders to protect yesterday. Intel and Microsoft struggled for years to create their tomorrows. 2. Leaders must be open to business models that seem strange. Whether giving away software or manufacturing chips designed by others as a separate business, both Microsoft and Intel faced competitors doing things differently.  3. Get everyone on the same page. Debate is healthy up to a point, but at Microsoft it continued far too long until Nadella became CEO and set clear priorities. At Intel a series of CEOs backed differing solutions to its declining business, which prolonged a muddled strategy.  4. Succession is the board’s No. 1 job, more important than all its other jobs combined. Everyone knows it, but some boards still do their job poorly. If they make a mistake, none of the other lessons matter. Considering that Microsoft has come through the past 24 years better than Intel, it may be significant that Microsoft has had only two CEOs in that period while Intel has had five. 5. Failure isn’t fatal. The Wintel story is a pointed reminder that all companies, including the best, suffer failures and fall into crises. There are no exceptions. The leaders of any company, even the grandest, must always be ready to engage the skills of organizational rescue, and know that even that can be part of greatness.

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Hacking the Case Interview

Capital One uses case interviews to identify promising candidates to hire for many of their business roles, including their business analyst, data analyst, and strategy analyst roles.

In a Capital One case interview, you’ll be placed in a hypothetical business situation and asked to develop a recommendation or answer to a business problem.

Capital One’s use of case interviews may be surprising to some people because case interviews   are typically used in consulting interviews. Capital One is a bank and financial institution, not a consulting firm.

However, there are two reasons why Capital One uses case interviews.

The first reason is that compared to other traditional banks, Capital One likes to position itself as a data company that happens to be in the financial services industry. There is a heavy emphasis on using data to drive business decisions. Therefore, case interviews are an effective way to assess problem solving and quantitative thinking.

The second reason is that Capital One hires a lot of former consultants from top consulting firms such as McKinsey, BCG, and Bain. A lot of the business divisions at Capital One are run by former consultants who run their teams like a consulting team. Capital One wants to hire people that can do the same type of work that consultants do .

For business analyst, data analyst, and strategy analyst roles, there are typically two rounds of interviews. 

• Capital One first round interview : one 30-minute case interview. There will be minimal time for any behavioral or fit interview questions.
• Capital One final round interview : three to four 30-40 minute interviews. One interview will be focused on behavioral or fit interview questions while all the other interviews will be focused on Capital One case interviews.

In order to receive your Capital One job offer, you will need to nail all 3 to 4 of your case interviews.

If you have an upcoming Capital One case interview, we have you covered. In this article, we'll go through in detail:

• What qualities do Capital One case interviews assess?
• Differences between Capital One and consulting case interviews
• How to solve Capital One case interviews
• Capital One case interview tips
• Capital One case interview examples
• Recommended Capital One case interview resources

If you’re looking for a step-by-step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, enroll in our case interview course . These insider strategies from a former Bain interviewer helped 30,000+ land consulting offers while saving hundreds of hours of prep time.

What Qualities do Capital One Case Interviews Assess?

Capital One case interviews assess four main qualities: logical and structured thinking, quantitative skills, communication skills, and business judgment.

Logical and structured thinking : Capital One looks for candidates that are organized and methodical problem solvers.  

• Can you structure complex problems in a clear, simple way?
• Can you use logic and reason to make appropriate conclusions?

Quantitative skills : Capital One looks for candidates that have strong analytical skills to solve complex business problems and make important business decisions

• Can you read and interpret data well?
• Can you perform math computations smoothly and accurately?
• Can you conduct the right analyses to draw the right conclusions?

Communication skills : Capital One looks for candidates that can communicate in a clear, concise, and persuasive way.

• Can you communicate in a clear and concise way?
• Are you articulate and persuasive in what you are saying?

Business judgment : Capital One looks for candidates with strong business instincts that help them make the right decisions and develop the right recommendations.

• Do you have a basic understanding of fundamental business concepts?
• Do your conclusions and recommendations make sense from a business perspective?

Differences between Capital One and Consulting Case Interviews

There are three main differences between Capital One and consulting case interviews. Capital One case interviews focus on quantitative analysis, Capital One allows calculators, and Capital One cases may require some basic understanding of their financial products.

1. Capital One case interviews focus on quantitative analysis

Traditional case interviews have a balance between answering qualitative questions and solving quantitative problems. Capital One case interviews almost exclusively focus on the quantitative aspects of case.

Let’s consider a case interview in which you are trying to decide whether a friend should open up a mini-golf course as an investment.

In a traditional case interview, you would look into both qualitative and quantitative factors to make a recommendation. You would look at the market attractiveness, the competitive landscape, your friend’s capabilities, and the expected profitability.

For a Capital One case interview, you will focus almost exclusively on the expected profitability. Your framework would look at the expected revenues and expected costs of opening a mini-golf course to see what annual profits would be.

If annual profits are high, you would recommend opening a mini-golf course. If annual profits are negative or low, you would not recommend opening a mini-golf course.

In a Capital One case interview, you may cover some qualitative factors at the end of your calculations when you are discussing risks, but the qualitative factors will not be a critical component of solving the case.

Since most Capital One case interviews come down to setting up and solving math equations, they can be simpler and more straight forward than traditional consulting case interviews.

2. Capital One case interviews allow a calculator

Another big difference between Capital One case interviews and traditional consulting case interviews is that Capital One allows candidates to use calculators.

While this may sound like this makes the case interview easier, that is not necessarily the case. Since you are allowed to use a calculator, you’ll typically be dealing with bigger and messier numbers during a Capital One case interview.

While traditional case interviews use round numbers that are easy to work with, Capital One case interviews use large and more precise numbers. This makes some calculations too tedious to solve by hand, which is why you are allowed to use a calculator.

3. Capital One case requires may require familiarity with financial products

Traditional case interviews don’t require any specialized knowledge in order to solve the case. You do not need to research any industries beforehand.

While this is generally true for Capital One case interviews, it does help to be familiar with how basic financial products work. In your final round interviews, you may be given a case focused on credit cards or checking and savings accounts.

If you understand how these financial products work, you’ll have an easier time with the case interview and the interviewer will not need to explain as much background information to you.

Here are the basics of what you should know.

Credit cards generate revenue through an annual fee, interchange, and interest.  

• An annual fee is a fee that the cardholder must pay in order to keep the credit card active
• When a cardholder uses their credit card at a merchant, the merchant pays the credit card company a small percentage of the transaction amount. This is known as interchange and covers the cost of transaction and the cost to handle fraud.
• Credit card companies charge interest on balances that are not fully paid off at the end of the billing cycle.

The major costs of credit cards are service costs and charge offs.  

• Service costs include the costs to keep the credit card active and the costs to provide support to the cardholder
• Charge offs occur when a cardholder can no longer pay their credit card debt and the credit card company fails to recover the amount of money the cardholder has borrowed on the credit card

Checking and savings accounts are simpler to understand. The bank makes money by lending a portion of the money that customers have deposited into their accounts. They give customers a small amount of interest for their deposits.

The interest rates that banks charge for loans are much higher than the interest rates that the bank pays to customers for their deposits, which is how banks make money.

How to Solve a Capital One Case Interview

There are six steps to solving a Capital One case interview:

• Take notes on the case background information
• Synthesize the information and verify the objective of the case
• Ask clarifying questions
• Create a framework
• Perform calculations
• Discuss the implications of your answer
• Deliver a recommendation

1. Take notes on the case background information

Capital One case interviews begin with the interviewer giving you the case background information. Let’s say that the interviewer reads you the following information:

Interviewer : As an investment, your friend is considering opening up a mini-golf course. Should they do it?

As the interviewer reads you the case information, take notes. It is important to understand what the objective is.

2. Synthesize information and verify the objective of the case

After the interviewer finishes giving you the case information, confirm that you understand the situation and objective. Provide a concise synthesis like the following:

You : To make sure I understand correctly, our friend is considering opening up a mini-golf course as an investment. The goal of this case is to decide whether they should open up a mini-golf course.

Interviewer : Exactly. That is correct.

3. Ask clarifying questions

Next, you’ll be able to ask clarifying questions . Try to limit your questions to only the most critical questions that you need answers to in order to solve the case.

You : Before I begin structuring a framework, can I ask what our friend’s financial targets are for the investment?

Interviewer : Your friend is hoping to make at least $200,000 in profit in the first year.

4. Create a framework

Next, lay out a framework for how you are going to solve the case. A framework is simply a tool that helps you structure and break down complex problems into simpler, smaller components.

For this Capital One case interview example, your framework may look like the following:

You : To determine whether or not our friend should open a mini-golf course, we will need to calculate the expected annual profit. To do this, we need to calculate expected revenues and expected costs.

To calculate revenues, we need to estimate how many people will visit the mini-golf course per year. 

We can calculate this by estimating the number of people that come per hour and multiply this by the number of hours per day the mini-golf course is open. To annualize this, we can multiply by the number of days per year the course is open

If we know the number of annual visitors, we can multiply by the price that the mini-golf course charges for admission to get total annual revenue.

To calculate costs, we need to add up all of the different costs associated with running a mini-golf course. The major costs that come to mind are construction costs, rent, and staff costs to operate the mini-golf course. There are also other minor costs such as the costs of golf balls and golf clubs.

Interviewer : That approach makes sense to me.

5. Perform calculations

Once you have presented your framework to the interviewer and the interviewer has approved of your approach or given you feedback, you will move onto doing calculations.

When you are performing calculations, make sure you are walking the interviewer through each step. You do not want to be doing calculations in silence.

By walking the interviewer through each step of your math, the interviewer can easily follow what you are doing and provide suggestions or further information to help you.

Interviewer : Let’s move onto the calculations. I have the following information for you.

You : Let’s calculate revenue first. The mini-golf course is open 12 hours per day.

From 10AM – 5PM, the mini-golf course gets 10 visitors per hour. This gives us 70 visitors over seven hours. From 5PM – 10PM, the course gets 50 visitors per hour. This gives us 250 visitors over five hours. So, the mini-golf course gets 320 visitors per day.

The course is open 360 days per year, so 360 days times 320 visitors gives us 115,200 visitors. If each visitor pays $15 for admission, that is $1,728,000 in revenue per year.

Looking at costs, rent is $24,000 per month or $288,000 per year. 

There are 12 staff members at all times. They work 12 hours per day at $12 per hour. This gives us $1,728 in staff costs per day. Multiplying this by 360 days, this gives us $622,080 in staff costs per year.

Adding construction costs, equipment costs, rent costs, and staff costs gives us a total cost in the first year of $1,525,080.

Therefore, profit in the first year is $1,728,000 minus $1,525,080, which is $202,920. 

6. Discuss the implications of your answer

When you have finished your calculations, discuss the implications of your answer. How do the results of your calculations help you answer the overall case question? What are other considerations you should take into account?

Interviewer:  How would you interpret your answer?

You : Since profit in the first year is $202,920, this just meets our friend’s financial objective of reaching $200,000 in profits in the first year.

However, I noticed that construction costs and equipment costs are a one-time fixed cost. Although there will probably be future maintenance costs, our friend would not incur $615,000 of these costs again in the following years. I’d expect profits in year two and beyond to be much larger than the first year.

I also noticed that the mini-golf course employs 12 people at all times. Is there a reason for this? I’m wondering if there are opportunities to use machines to replace some of the repetitive and manual tasks that these employees do. This may further increase profits by decreasing costs.

7. Deliver a recommendation

At the end of the Capital One case interview, the interviewer will prompt you for a recommendation. Make sure to structure your recommendation so that it is clear and easy to follow. You can use this simple, but effective structure:

• State your recommendation
• Provide 2 – 3 reasons that support your recommendation
• Propose next steps

Here is an example of what a recommendation could look like:

Interviewer : Thanks for all of the work that you have done so far. What is your final recommendation?

You : I recommend that our friend should open up a mini-golf course. There are two reasons that support this.

One, the mini-golf course is expected to generate $202,920 in profits in the first year. This meets our friend’s financial objective of having at least $200,000 in profits in the first year.

Two, profits in year two and beyond will be much higher because our friend will not incur another $500,000 in construction costs or $115,000 in equipment costs. There will still be maintenance and repair costs, but profits could be as high as $817,920.

For next steps, I’d want to determine if our friend has the capabilities to successfully run and operate a mini-golf course. I’d also want to look at competitors to see how strong they are. They may try to take away visitors and revenues from our friend’s golf course.

Interviewer : Thanks for the recommendation. This concludes the case interview.

Learn the basics of Capital One case interviews in 30 minutes

We've summarized all of the basics of case interviews in a 30-minute video below. We highly recommend that you watch the video in its entirety.

Capital One Case interview Tips

Follow the five tips below to avoid making common mistakes in Capital One case interviews.

Tip #1: Share your thinking and reasoning out loud

Many candidates make the mistake of not communicating what they are thinking or doing. Remember, you get no credit for great ideas if they are not communicated to the interviewer.

When creating a framework for the case interview, walk your interviewer through it. When performing math calculations, walk your interviewer through each step.

For each decision that you make, communicate why you are making that decision so that the interviewer can understand the approach and rationale that you are using.

This way, the interviewer can give you credit for your ideas and thinking. Additionally, the interviewer may offer you suggestions or guidance to help you solve the case. The interviewer cannot provide you with support if they do not know what you are thinking or planning to do.

Tip #2: There is not always one correct answer

Like most case interviews, there is not always one correct answer. For the same Capital One case interview, two candidates can give completely opposite recommendations and still both receive job offers.

Although math calculations typically only have one right answer, there are many ways to interpret the final figure that you have calculated. As long as your recommendation is supported by data and evidence, your recommendation will be accepted by the interviewer.

Tip #3: Stay organized when working with a lot of data

Capital One case interviews will have a lot of data and information in the form of tables, charts, and graphs. When working with a lot of data, it is important to stay organized.

Make sure you do your calculations on a separate sheet of paper to keep your calculations separate from your notes and framework.

As you calculate different numbers, circle important numbers that you are likely to use over and over again. This makes your numbers easier to find and will prevent you from having to recalculate a figure that you have already calculated.

Draw a box around your final calculated answer to distinguish it from your other numbers and calculations.

Tip #4: Check your units

Make sure to check the units of the data you are working with.

Capital One case interviews often include data that have different units. For example, revenue may be given in terms of revenue per week while costs may be given in terms of costs per month.

Whenever you perform calculations, make sure the numbers are in the appropriate units. Working with the wrong units will make your answer wrong by orders of magnitude.

Tip #5: Know how to use a calculator quickly and efficiently

Capital One case interviews are one of the few interviews where you are allowed to use a calculator. You will most likely need to use the calculator during the interview when you are given large numbers that are tedious to calculate by hand.

Capital One is strict on only allowing standard, non-scientific calculators. Therefore, become familiar with using this type of calculator, which can only perform basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

These calculators have much less functionality than scientific calculators, so it may take some practice to get used to using them.

Capital One Case Interview Examples

Capital One provides a video explaining their case interview process. They also provide examples candidates answering case interview questions. The video is embedded below:

Below are some Capital One case interview questions that candidates have received in the past.

Example #1 : An arcade is considering whether they should be open on Tuesdays, the day of the week in which they typically see the lowest number of customers. We'll start by brainstorming the primary drivers of revenue and costs for an arcade and then calculate expected profits on Tuesdays to make a decision.

Example #2 : What is the typical annual profits of a movie theater? Let's brainstorm what the major sources of revenues are and what the major cost items are. Afterwards, I'll provide you with some data to calculate annual profit.

Example #3 : Let's calculate the average profit per credit card opened. What are the major revenue sources stemming from credit card use? What are the major costs?

Example #4 : A new credit card that is launched typically sees a spike in charge-offs (money lost because the credit card owner cannot make their payments) after 6 to 9 months of launch. What can banks do to: 1) reduce the amount of charge-offs and 2) reduce the spikiness of when they happen?

Recommended Capital One Case Interview Resources

Here are the resources we recommend to learn the most robust, effective case interview strategies in the least time-consuming way:

• Comprehensive Case Interview Course (our #1 recommendation): The only resource you need. Whether you have no business background, rusty math skills, or are short on time, this step-by-step course will transform you into a top 1% caser that lands multiple consulting offers.
• Hacking the Case Interview Book   (available on Amazon): Perfect for beginners that are short on time. Transform yourself from a stressed-out case interview newbie to a confident intermediate in under a week. Some readers finish this book in a day and can already tackle tough cases.
• The Ultimate Case Interview Workbook (available on Amazon): Perfect for intermediates struggling with frameworks, case math, or generating business insights. No need to find a case partner – these drills, practice problems, and full-length cases can all be done by yourself.
• Case Interview Coaching : Personalized, one-on-one coaching with former consulting interviewers
• Behavioral & Fit Interview Course : Be prepared for 98% of behavioral and fit questions in just a few hours. We'll teach you exactly how to draft answers that will impress your interviewer
• Resume Review & Editing : Transform your resume into one that will get you multiple interviews

Learn Case Interviews 10x Faster

Complete, step-by-step case interview course. 30,000+ happy customers.

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