Not improving at case interviews

I feel similar, maybe even worse.

It's a misconception that 'practice makes perfect'. Actually 'practice makes permanent', it sounds as if you are not practicing well. Some suggestions:

• Are you recording feedback from these practice interviews? Have you focused on rectifying the problems identified?
• What do you mean 'too much info'?. The frameworks mean that you should be able to quickly identify the most relevant factors and then it's a case of hanging the information you are given off that framework.
• It's also interesting to hear you 'feel slow'. The way a case should work is you outline your structure at the start and then follow it. Are you doing this? Maybe a more structured approach would help?

I haven't trained for these interviews but I think that my advice applies nontheless: Quality over quantity - Learn something new each time you practice instead of just going at it again and again. Write down where you had problems. Figure out why. Work to improve it for your next session.

Chin up - Don't be too hard on yourself when you fail something you should have known. Focus on why you failed, work on all your weaknesses.

Reassess - After you've practiced a number of times, go through your notes and see where you improved and where you keep failing. Keep working on your weaknesses, but also dig even deeper and figure out WHY you are repeating your mistakes.

Finally, try not to be too nervous or overwhelmed. Take a deep breath, try to concentrate. With time you should become better at sorting out relevant information and working under pressure.

Just doing a high number of cases doesn't contribute to any amount of success unless those practices are high quality ones in which you receive meaningful feedback and actually attempt to improve based on that feedback. I have found that most candidates only require around 10 quality practice case sessions to feel prepared for their interviews. The best practice partner for cases aren't your peers that are also going through recruiting, they are people that have already been successful in the recruitment process like current analysts at MBB. With that said, here is some general advice for case interview prep: - Break the case interview into its components: framework, reading figures, market sizing, quantitative questions, creativity questions, and synthesis/recommendation. Most people are good at some of these components and bad at the others. Instead of doing 50 cases where you struggle with the same components, figure out what you're good at and what you're bad at. Work on improving your weaknesses. If you're bad at math, doing 50 cases where you keep messing up math is not helpful. Instead, you should have tailored practice for your math skills before doing more cases. - Keep a case journal of every case that you've done and all of your learnings from each case. Candidates that I have coached found that reading through this before doing each new case and 1-2 hours before their interviews was incredibly beneficial. - Develop a structured way of thinking. The biggest thing that sets extraordinary candidates from just "well-practiced" ones is the ability to incorporate structure into their thinking. This isn't something that comes naturally. This is something that comes with consistent, purposeful practice. You should get to a point where you are able to make new, flexible frameworks for every new case problem and also communicate your answers to questions (even creativity and math questions) in a structured way. - Practice with people that know they're doing. Again, the number of cases doesn't matter. It's the quality of the practice. Run one case with an analyst that works at MBB and you'll realize that their feedback was probably much more helpful than you running 10 cases with a friend.

Preplounge and practicing with peers is tricky - they will not give you a right feedback. Some of these interviews is actually not even useless - they are harmful for your real life interviews. I learned that the hard way last year.

Write down your feedback from the MBB interviews, read Case in Point thoroughly, practice with consultants (there are several good websites for that), practice your structuring and chart-reading skills on rocketblocks.me

Since you mentioned that structuring is one of your problem; I'll try to share as it's one of my prior feedback too:

• Try to learn more about different industries - familiarity helps you to prioritise different drivers to include in your framework.
• Practice creating frameworks spontaneously on daily decisions on where to eat, up to cases included in news - this will help you to think quickly (and creatively) and it really helped me for my case interviews.

Goodluck! I can share a resource on industries - just PM me.

You are the dumbest cop on the force, George. The dumbest.