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Posts from the ‘videos’ Category

Nov 16

Firmsconsulting with Kevin P. Coyne
18 Comments

Leadership & Ethics

This video interview is part of a series Firmsconsulting is conducting with our client mentors, where we discuss ethical leadership: our central value.

Kevin P. Coyne is a co-founder of the Coyne Partnership, and a former director and co-leader of both McKinsey’s worldwide strategy practice and CEO transitions practice.

During a 27 year career at McKinsey Kevin advised clients on a variety of issues and across a broad range of industries – including banking, consumer goods, venture capital, industrial, telecommunications and the public sector – although his primary area of focus was corporate strategy. He has worked one-on-one with over twenty-five different CEOs on one or more of the following subjects: setting the management agenda, corporate strategy, decisions to merge or sell the company, developing a new management agenda, building an executive team and integrated change programs.

Civic leadership
Kevin has been an active leader in civic roles throughout his career. He served as an Executive Assistant and sole policy advisor to the Deputy Secretary of the United States Treasury, the second ranking department official in the Reagan Administration. In that role he advised on Brazil’s economic growth, served as an intermediary between Britain and Argentina after the Falklands war, and advised on opening Japan’s capital markets. He recently co-led several pro-bono efforts, such as: setting up the Bush-Clinton Katrina Fund, leading the Atlanta and London Olympic Games committees on several initiatives and leading the team supporting former US President Carter on the Atlanta Project helping low-income citizens.

Idea leadership
Kevin has co-written 6 Harvard Business Review articles, 12 McKinsey Quarterly articles and 2 bestselling business books, as well as many articles across influential business publications.

Kevin on values, leadership, growth and ethics

Sep 6

3 Comments

Case Interview Video, new: Roland Berger case

Roland Berger MBA level cases – senior consultant – are unusual for the types of things they can test. Many MBA candidates are surprised by the additional skills needed. Here is an example of a typical case:

“A Russian bank wants to enter the Ukraine market. You need to explain to me how you will design, structure and manage the project as well as cost the entire engagement.”

This is an actual case our clients in Toronto, Lagos and Chicago receive. While this may look like a case testing merely softer skills, it is really very creative and elegant in its ability to test both analytical and planning skills with candidates. In fact, it goes one level further than the answer-first approach to see what you would do to test that answer on a project site.

So do not be fooled.

McKinsey et al are completely obsessed with image, confidence, poise and analytical skills in case interviews. They only discuss leadership and management skills in the fit section, but do not test it. That is one area where the principle of demonstrated competency is never applied.

This case fixes that problem. To be able to answer this case, the candidate must be able to have the skills to tackle a complete McKinsey or BCG case, and then go further. A candidate would need to;

  • Explain how they will convert the hypotheses to analyses for testing. This specifically means the graphs the candidate expects to draw, with the accompanying x and y axes descriptors – the interviewer could even ask for the storyboard from these graphs and we have seen that in some Roland Berger interviews.
  • Next, the candidate must explain the data needed to complete the graph.
  • Then the candidate must determine the number of consultants, their seniority and time requirements to capture the data and complete the analyses.
  • Finally, the candidate must build a project timeline; lay the analyses in the correct order, since some parts can only be done sequentially, and determine the overall man-hours usage.
  • The cost of the project can be easily generated from the man-hours per level and the cost per hour per level against the total project time.

This approach tests to see if a candidate actually can manage a project and really understand the issues of converting analyses into project management steps. It is an excellent way to test how project-ready a candidate is. This case does not have a high pass rate.

This video about Roland Berger cases is only available to our case candidates and can be found in session six of our online case solution video library.

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Aug 30

8 Comments

McKinsey Case Interview Video, new: Learning the answer-first approach

 

Candidates should never begin their case preparation by learning the McKinsey approach. For the simple reason that if the interviewer is leading, which is the McKinsey style, how does the candidate know they would have identified the area of analysis without guidance? Those prompts from the interviewer are more important than candidates realize and many cannot solve cases without them.

So we start from the BCG approach, where the candidate must lead, and we can test their ability to prioritize issues and solve the case. Only after they can prove their skill to lead us in the analyses, we will switch and lead the candidate. McKinsey, and Bain, use an answer-first approach, sometimes called hypotheses. The problem with building hypotheses is that they are messy; it is difficult to apply MECE and application thereof usually requires some knowledge of the subject. For example, how easy is it to brainstorm the drivers of Pharma trial success if you know nothing about the industry? Not easy at all.

Most candidates build terrible hypotheses, which overlap and not really insightful We teach candidates a very clever and simple technique to build elegant, appropriate and MECE hypotheses by using the BCG style approach they have learned until now. In other words, candidates have to make just one change to the approach we already taught them, and they can use hypotheses. After this session, candidates should now be able to handle Bain, BCG and McKinsey cases.

Beyond a logical way to build hypotheses, we also teach a simple and useful technique to develop more than one key hypothesis. This is one of the most effective techniques to generate multiple relevant hypotheses.

There are profound differences between BCG, Bain and McKinsey, both in terms of their approaches to cases and the firms themselves. In this session we take some time to discuss these differences, and the implication for the candidate’s style of working and preferences.

Clients will find this video in Session 6 of the online case solution library. The video is only available to clients of our case coaching service.

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Aug 24

14 Comments

Case Interview Solution, new: Corporate Finance

Corporate Finance cases are complex. I do not think anyone will disagree with this point. We receive several general requests a week from clients and candidates to determine if they are possible fit for McKinsey or BCG’s corporate finance teams. That is a tough question to answer without conducting a full corporate finance case and assessing performance. To solve this problem, we have created a comprehensive corporate finance case interview video. The candidate may watch this video and assess their performance independently. This is an actual McKinsey case currently used in the New York office. The detailed solutions and animations are entirely our own. We typically only make our 60 Corporate Finance Videos available to those interviewing for this practice, but have made this one video available to all clients to allow them assess their own abilities before choosing to pursue this practice.

The key lesson is that without a granular understanding of the basics of corporate finance, a candidate will never succeed in the interview. To solve corporate finance cases, a candidate must be very, very strong in conceptual strategy and finance. This case does not test arcane finance concepts. In fact, the finance techniques tested are fairly basic. However, to solve the case, the candidate must demonstrate an exceptional understanding of these concepts from the first principles. In preparing candidates for corporate finance cases we fully expect them to see the linkages between the different areas of finance, explain the limitations of the techniques and explain the practical implications of those limitations.

“Draw the WACC curve for a start-up from angel investor funding, through an IPO all the way to reaching maturity and explain the financial needs and likely financial strategy requirements at each stage of the curve?” 

This is not an uncommon question in our screening for corporate finance candidates hoping to join our program.

Corporate finance cases cover a broad area from M&A due diligence, profit maximization, financial strategy, capital markets analyses, post-merger synergy analyses and capturing etc. A lot of skills are required to operate across all these sub-disciplines of finance. At this point Firmsconsulting does not support candidates interviewing for the McKinsey Corporate Performance Center, which is a data analyses center. We only coach general hires for the corporate finance practice. Candidates interviewing for the CPC may access our training material but are not eligible to be coached.

If you want to see a complete consulting study on corporate finance, see this post we did on a recent McKinsey micro-finance engagement or our complete book, and supporting material, on developing a micro-finance recapitalization strategy for an emerging markets bank. The book, analyses and excel models for this fictitious client were so prescient that we were recently invited to present our findings to the South African Department of Trade and Industry. If you feel you are dodging heavy excel modelling by avoiding the finance practice, read this piece about the excel skills needed by liberal arts majors on general consulting engagements.

This case video is animated. Selected screen shots of the video are presented below. Clients will find this video in Corporate Finance Section of the online case solution library. The video is only available to clients of our case coaching service.

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Aug 22

10 Comments

Case Interview Solution, new: Operations Case Video

Operations cases are difficult. Most candidates struggle to generate frameworks and invariable use a trial-and-error approach to find their way through. This is a messy technique which fails most of the time. Yet, the approach to solve operations cases surprisingly sits at the core of solving estimation and IT cases. Therefore, understanding proper operations case techniques is vital.

Moreover, operations consulting is a major part of McKinsey, Bain and BCG’s business as we discussed in this overview of the difference between strategy and operations and this overview of a McKinsey supply chain project. There is a severe shortage of candidates for these practices. Remember, all consultants at the top firms are treated equally, and due to the generalist model, you will be expected to do operations and strategy projects. So entering here makes you as good as any other consultant at these firms.

The video which follows presents an elegant method to solve operations cases. This case expects candidates to have a thorough understanding of some basic operations concepts. Any MBA graduate should easily be able to solve this case. Therein is the challenge. This case does not test any complex ideas. It merely tests the most basic principles of operations, and unless a candidate understands them very well, they will fall short. Operations cases can always be reduced to a 3-step analysis of a supply chain, but this needs to be carefully presented to the interviewer. Moreover, lack of familiarity with the approach will lead to lots of wasted time. Understanding bottlenecks in operations cases is also vital. A related concept to understand is marginal cost analysis. When joined, operations cases and marginal cost cases tend to be very challenging. Operations cases tend to be very long. It is essential the candidate uses guidance from the interviewer to focus on that part which will likely generate the answer.

This case video is animated. Selected screen shots of the video are presented below. Clients will find this video in session 6 of the online case solution library. The video is only available to clients of our case coaching service.

Dec 28

New Video: Detailed explanation of solving a case interview and differences between using decision trees and hypotheses

This is the number one question we receive from the candidates, right at the start of the coaching problem. They all read about the hypotheses-led approach, and assume it is the only way to solve cases. As many know, we teach both, but highly recommend the decision tree approach. We also know how much candidates struggle to identify the key question to be solved in a case. This detailed video, with rich and detailed drawings, and lasting 76 minutes, explains the differences and provides some added guidance. It is an excellent video to watch when you are mid-way through the more complex stages of the case training, when these questions about decision trees, hypotheses, key questions etc are likely to pop up. Read more

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