Question:

I love the site and the content that you provided. I was hoping if you had the time to decipher my final round interview. Thanks in advance for any help!

So I had a final round recently (3-30 minute interviews, 2 cases 1 market sizing).

So for one case interview, most of the focus was on fit and background, he even went on to test me on my technicals in finance and economics (where is inflation going and how do you calculate cost of capital), luckily I got through that with ease. Then when it came to the case he goes “oh you have 12 minutes left for the case” (usually fit/background takes less than 5 minutes). He then goes on to describe the case for literally 3-4 minutes giving me less than 10 minutes to do the case. To shorten things I ran out of time trying to solve the problem.

My Response:

Depending on the firm, this interviewer might have been the “fit” interviewer…. with a few small questions to test specific things. Hard to tell. Or he could have been an inexperienced interviewer and unaccustomed to managing time very well.

2nd Question:
The other interview I thought was weird was the market sizing case (and I usually like those). He asked me to estimate how much revenue a sports arena generates during the playoffs. I break it down by seating, pricing, concessions, souvenirs and get my total. Now usually this is the end of it, just getting to it and showing your logic. But then he goes on to ask me what about the secondary market(like an auction) and to put a premium on the ticket sales and to calculate the new total revenue. Then he goes to ask me about capacity and if there was only 65% capacity, so I did that as well. Last he asked me if I were to take 2M of sales / 23M what would that be, I sadly ran out of time at this point.

My Reply:

Some inteviewers will add twists to estimation question to see if you’re flexible in your analytics. I find it unusual that both interviewers would take this kind of approach in the same final round, and not sure why they would do this.