Tips from Bain New Hire

Question:

I’d like to thank you for your invaluable work, both the tutorial and the LOMS program. Before I found your website I only used Case in Point (Marc Cosentino).

I have a scientific background, so I’ve been preparing my interviews for about three months, I practiced a lot of cases alone and I got through the LOMS program six times.

Yesterday, I got an offer following a Bain interview with an office in Western Europe.

I have some notes for your newsletter:

1. In the first round, I had only one estimation question, no “real” cases. They were mainly motivation interviews.

2. In the second round the cases, were candidate-led and all with custom issue tree, so practice it.

Thank you again, and I look forward to your first year consultant newsletter.

I naturally did the donation to Kidpower.

My Reply:

Congratulations on your Bain offer, and thank you for your donation to KidPower.org

I’m glad the Case Interview Secrets video tutorials and Look Over My Shoulder were useful to you.

One thing I want to highlight is the amount of time you invested in your preparation with LOMS and on your own.

While I do get some emails from people who practiced only a little and got an offer, the norm is that the people who get offers by and large spent a lot of time preparing.

Time spent on preparation is very highly correlated with getting offers (and I don’t think it is a stretch to argue the relationship is causal, not just correlated).

For the benefit of others reading this, I will continue to mention that it is best to prepare with a mix of live practice interviews and self-practice, such as with Look Over My Shoulder.

But, many people do not have access to a qualified practice partner and the next best alternative is to do what you did — additional practice on your own and additional repetition with LOMS.

The general rule of thumb is to get as much practice and preparation time as possible — any way you can get it.