Getting Cases

Introduction

By this point you should know how to go about solving a case, and have put together your case group as well. The only thing remaining to do is therefore get a bunch of cases, and get good at solving them. Let's therefore have a look at what goes into practicing case solving, and some recommended practises in the space.

Source of Cases

This here is not a case book, but is just my notes on how to go about consulting case prep. Most of the resources you will find in the consulting case interview preparation space is the opposite. They will not guide you step by step through the process of preparation, but will do a much better job of providing you with a wealth of cases to practise, along with proposed solutions to guide your practise. Some of the case books that you could use, in an Indian context are:
- Day 1.0 - The IIT-Madras case book
- Case Interviews Cracked - The IIT-Bombay case book
- Your own B-school's latest case book
- Case in Point - A US perspective
Case books are a good place to start reading some cases during the early stages, for you to get a sense of how the solution might be structured. I wouldn't recommend that you spend a lot of time just reading though. It is usually more useful to practise by doing, even, or maybe especially if you're bad at doing at first. If you have read a case from a book, give that case to a friend, and in return ask them for a case that you have neither done, nor read. Everyone's arsenal of cases increases, so that they can give someone or the other a case which they haven't done yet, in exchange for the same. Cases given to you by a friend will make up the bulk of your preparation, and doing these cases as if you're in an actual case interview is an absolute must.
One of the higher quality sources of cases will be from your buddies. On the one hand the cases themselves will be different from the set of cases that are popular amongst your batch, which is using the same set of resources. But more importantly, they will be better equipped than your average batchmate, when it comes to giving you the case, as well as at evaluating your performance accurately and providing actionable feedback. Try to do as many cases as you think can reasonably be done with your buddies, and make sure to pick up actionable feedback and work on the same.

Number and Distribution of Cases

Now that you know where you can get cases from, how many do you need to solve before you're an expert? There obviously isn't a foxed answer to that, so let's have a look at what parameters to look at in order to take a call on the same:

- Across case types -

You definitely need to have done a few cases of each type, otherwise you're leaving yourself unprepared for that kind of case altogether. I would say that 3 cases of each type is a bare minimum, but I wouldn't feel comfortable until I have done 3 cases of each type reasonably well.

- Across people -

Make sure that you're receiving cases from a wide range of people, not just your case group and buddies. By doing cases with a larger audience, you ensure that you're ready for new styles of giving cases, and that you aren't doing well just because the people you know assume you're smart and help you through. Try to ensure that you have done cases with at least 3 people whom you haven't extensively done preparation with.

- A bare minimum -

I don't really like rules of thumb which aren't structured with clear reasoning as to why that rule of thumb holds good. Simply putting the above 2 rules together, would say that it would be very difficult to be a good case solver in under 20-25 cases. For some people that number might be larger, because of the distribution of cases across the above 2 rules.

- Ability to structure -

In any type of case, or type of situation in a case, you must have the confidence that you can structure and breakdown the problem as required. Across the cases that you're doing make sure that you are comfortable structuring all situations. If you're not, solve cases which are centred around areas that you're not comfortable with, and learn.

- Understanding of the space -

You might sometimes find that you just don't know how to ask the right questions or structure cases based out of a certain industry or other space. First, read more about it, and fill your knowledge gaps. Then try to solve a case or two, to test out your understanding.

- Confidence -

On the whole, if you feel confident that you're solving cases well, and can repeat the performance in an interview, you're good to go. Just do a few cases to maintain that confidence till the interview day. If you don't yet have that confidence, find out what areas you're not confident about; just doing a lot of cases won't solve the problem.