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GUIDE TO THE PERSONAL EXPERIENCE INTERVIEW (PEI) 请
CaseInterview.com © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved
www.caseinterview.com Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Copyright Notice Use of this document is subject to license agreement and may not be distributed to others without express written permission. Of 关
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© 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved 请
© 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 2 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview CaseInterview.com Guide to the PEI Contents I. Background Of 关
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1. The importance of the personal experience interview 2. The components of a personal experience interview 3. The length of the personal experience interview 4. The personal experience interview timing in relation to the case interview II. Selecting your story 5. The number of stories you should prepare 6. What to look for when selecting a story 7. How far back to go on your resume when selecting a story 8. Whether your stories need to specifically match the situation that your interviewer asks about (e.g., leadership, teamwork, conflict, and entrepreneurship) III. Structuring your story 9.
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How to approach organizing your story How to create an outline of your story to practice An example of a distinctive story outline Whether to type out your story into a full-­‐length story 13. An example of a distinctive full-­‐length story IV. What your interviewer is looking for 14. What character traits do NOT matter 15. What character traits DO matter 16. How to ensure your story reflects the interview traits your interviewer is looking for 请
V. How to practice your story and what to expect during the interview 17. How to practice your story 18. What your interviewer will be doing during the interview 19. How to respond to your interviewer’s questions 20. The three most common mistakes candidates make when doing a personal experience interview VI. Appendix 21. Additional Example of an Distinctive Story 22. Personal Experience Checklist © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 3 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Part I: Background Interviews with top-­‐tier management consulting firms have two parts: the case and the personal experience interview (PEI). This is a guide on how to excel at the personal experience portion of the interview. Of 关
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1. The importance of the personal experience interview Succeeding at the personal experience interview is critical for passing an interview and obtaining an offer. When your interviewer scores your performance, the personal experience portion is often weighted equally with the case to create a single candidate score. If a candidate performs distinctively on the personal experience portion, this can make up for mistakes on the case interview. And the opposite is true as well. Candidates can be rejected while completing a case perfectly if they perform poorly, or even give a mediocre performance, on the personal experience. Successful candidates recognize the importance of the personal experience and they practice a lot. Many successful candidates spend as much or even more time practicing the personal experience as they spend on practicing for the case portion. 2. The components of a personal experience interview 请
The personal experience interview has four components. First, the interviewer asks the candidate to share an example of a personal experience where the candidate demonstrated leadership, teamwork, entrepreneurship, or overcoming a conflict. The interviewer may phrase this in different ways, such as “tell me about a time when you had to work on a team to overcome a challenge.” [Note: The interviewer is expecting you to give your answer in the form of a story. It is very important that your answer be in a story format.] © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 4 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Of 关
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Second, the candidate will give the interviewer a brief one-­‐ to two-­‐sentence summary of the story he or she plans to tell. The interviewer will either tell the candidate that the story works, or ask the candidate to pick a different story. For example, the candidate may say, “I’d like to tell you about the time when I was the leader of my school’s math team and we were competing for a prize.” The interviewer will usually say, “that story works; please proceed.” Very rarely, they may say, “that doesn’t sound like the type of story I’m looking for – do you have a different story?” Third, once the candidate and interviewer have agreed on a story that works, the candidate will tell the interviewer the story. Finally, while the candidate is telling the story, the interviewer will ask the candidate questions. 3. The length of the personal experience interview The PEI is usually between ten and fifteen minutes. Some interviewers will ask lots of questions and the personal experience portion will last longer. Others will ask very few questions and you could be done in less than ten minutes. 4. The personal experience interview timing in relation to the case interview 请
The timing is entirely at the discretion of the interviewer. The most common structure for the whole interview is: 1. Starting off with informal chat about the resume as an ice-­‐breaker – 2-­‐3 minutes; 2. Personal experience interview – 10-­‐15 minutes; 3. Case interview – 30-­‐40 minutes. Most candidates have the personal experience interview before the case, but some have it after. Don’t worry about it either way. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 5 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Part II: Selecting your story Of 关
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Selecting the right story is critical. As you go through this guide, you will learn how much work goes into structuring the story and tailoring it to meet the criteria the interviewer is looking for. But to be able to properly structure a story, you must first select the right story. 5. The number of stories you should prepare You should prepare one story for each interview you have with a particular firm, plus one additional story. Candidates usually have several interviews in a day. So if you have three interviews with a particular firm, prepare four stories. This way you will have one story for each round and a backup story, in the very rare case that your interviewer asks for a different story from the one you planned to tell. If you pass and are invited back for a final interview, to the final round, it is okay to use the same stories you used in the previous round. Some candidates will prepare seven, eight, nine, or even ten stories. This is a mistake. Imagine that you are having a typical three-­‐round interview with McKinsey. You will tell three different stories. If you prepare 7 stories, but only tell stories 1-­‐3, then all the time spent preparing stories 4, 5, 6, and 7 will have been wasted. 6. What to look for when selecting a story 请
Start by looking at your resume. Review all your work experience, internships, volunteer experience, school experience, or something outside of school such as sports or other social experiences. Pick out stories that demonstrate these four elements: 1. Leadership 2. Teamwork © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 6 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Of 关
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3. Conflict 4. Entrepreneurship 1. Leadership: Leadership means that you are responsible for the success or failure of what you are trying to do. You need to be the person making decisions and acting to achieve your goals. You don’t need to be the only person in your story responsible for success or failure, but you do need to be one of the people responsible. Example of a story with leadership: You are an officer in a University student organization and you lead the efforts to host a fundraising dinner. What won’t work: You are a member of a sports team with no leadership role. 2. Teamwork: Teamwork means that you worked with others to achieve your goal. At a consulting firm, you will be working on teams with other consultants and on client teams. It is important to show that you can work well with others. Example of a story with teamwork: You climb Mount Everest with a team of 6 friends. What won’t work: You write a research paper that is published in a prestigious journal, but you do the work yourself. 请
3. Conflict: Conflict in your story should be about how you overcame a difficulty or a challenge, such as completing a project within a tight timeline, or working with a colleague who disagreed with your approach to getting a job done. These conflicts should involve other people -­‐-­‐ perhaps someone who disagreed with your approach or whom you had to convince of your point of view. Example of a story with conflict: You’re the product manager for a consumer product and you need to convince the skeptical vice president to fund the advertising campaign needed to launch the product. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 7 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview What won’t work: You’re the product manager in the example above, but all you must do to get funding is ask the vice president, who says “yes.” Of 关
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4. Entrepreneurship: Entrepreneurship in your story should show how you did something on your own initiative. You need to be the one who creates a solution or comes up with an idea or approach that hasn’t been tried yet. If your story is of you simply executing orders from a manager, then you are not showing entrepreneurship. Example of a story with entrepreneurship: You work in the marketing department and are responsible for coming up with a new campaign to launch a product in Asia. What won’t work: You work in the marketing department and your story is about how you did what your manager told you to do. For more advice on which story to select, Part D lists the character traits that your interviewer is looking for. Pick a story where you demonstrate many of those character traits. 7. How far back to go on your resume when selecting a story Your interviewer is going to be evaluating whether the actions you describe in your story suggest you would make a good consultant. That means you don’t want to go back so far that your example is no longer relevant. It is common for candidates to use stories from graduate school or college, even if they have work experience. But avoid picking a story that is more than ten years old. For example, as a general rule, don’t use stories from high school. 请
8. Whether your stories need to specifically match the situation that your interviewer asks about (e.g., leadership, teamwork, conflict, or entrepreneurship) The interviewer will start with a prompt and ask you to tell a story that demonstrates leadership, teamwork, entrepreneurship, or overcoming a hardship. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 8 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview However, this does not mean that as you select your stories, you should have one story that is only about leadership, a different story that is only about teamwork, a different story that is only about conflict, and one more that is only about entrepreneurship. Instead, each of your stories should have elements of all these characteristics -­‐ leadership, teamwork, conflict, and entrepreneurship. Of 关
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In other words, instead of selecting your stories to match each trait, like the following example: Story 1 – Teamwork Story 2 – Leadership Story 3 – Conflict Story 4 – Entrepreneurship You should prepare your stories like this: Story 1 – Elements of teamwork, leadership, conflict and entrepreneurship Story 2 – Elements of teamwork, leadership, conflict and entrepreneurship Story 3 – Elements of teamwork, leadership, conflict and entrepreneurship Story 4 – Elements of teamwork, leadership, conflict and entrepreneurship There are two reasons for taking this approach. First, you don’t know what your interviewer will ask. It is possible that all your interviewers will ask for a “teamwork” story. If this happens, and you’ve only prepared one teamwork story, you will not be prepared. 请
Second, regardless of what your interviewer asks, a strong story will show all these elements. Your story will get more points if you show each trait than you would get if you only focused on one of them. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 9 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Part III: Structuring your story At this point, you should have three or four stories selected. Now, you need to structure the stories to make them distinctive. Structuring the story is what separates a good story from a great story. Of 关
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9. How to approach organizing your story The first step to structuring your story is creating a brief summary. Do this by putting your story into the situation, complication, and resolution framework. Situation: The situation is the context. What was your job? When was this? Where were you? Who were the other characters in your story? Complication: The complication is the conflict. What made the situation difficult? What challenges did you have to overcome? Resolution: The resolution is what you did to overcome the challenge. How did you act? How did you work with others to become successful? Example #1: Situation – I was an investment banker and my team needed to complete a due diligence for a major acquisition. Complication – The partner was out sick, and the client changed the timeline, so I had to lead a team to get the diligence done in half the normal time. Resolution – I convinced my team to stay late and recruited people from other teams so we could finish in time. 请
Example #2: Situation – I was the event manager for a large outdoor concert venue. Complication – The day of one of the largest concerts of the year, we found out that our main event canceled on us. Resolution – I put together a team and we found a backup band that was just as successful, and all the attendees were happy. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 10 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Do this for all your stories. As part of the outline process explained in the next question, you will replicate the “situation, complication, resolution” format throughout each story. 10. How to create an outline of your story to practice Of 关
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Now that you’ve selected your story, and created an initial situation, complication, and resolution summary, it’s time to put that story into a detailed outline. Below is the recommended structure you should use for your outline. Notice that this structure takes the situation, complication, resolution framework and replicates it several times. After you set up your context, you will give examples of interpersonal conflicts that you had to resolve. Interpersonal means there was another person involved. The best way to show that you will be a good consultant is to show that you can work well with other people. That is why your story needs to revolve around interpersonal conflicts, and how you resolved them. 请
Structure for outline: a. Initial context (between 30 seconds and 1 minute) i. Discuss your role, where you were, and when this took place ii. Discuss the challenge that you had to overcome iii. Describe the other people who were involved in the story b. First interpersonal conflict (between 1.5 and 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge iv. Describe the resolution c. Second interpersonal conflict (between 1.5 and 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge iv. Describe the resolution © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 11 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Of 关
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d. Third interpersonal conflict (between 1.5 and 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge iv. Describe the resolution e. Resolution (30 seconds or less) i. Describe how your story ended This outline uses three separate conflicts (parts b, c, and d). You don’t have to have three examples, but you should have at least two and no more than four. Using more than four examples will mean that you won’t have time to go into sufficient details for each of the interpersonal conflicts. As you create your outline, check your story to make sure that it demonstrates teamwork, leadership, conflict, and entrepreneurship (as explained in question 6), and you will also check that you are demonstrating the character traits your interviewer is looking for (which we will review later in question 15.) 11. An example of a distinctive story outline Below is an example of an outline for a distinctive story. The content is italicized next to the outline structure. The situation, complication and resolution of the story are: Situation: I was a soccer coach for my business school’s soccer team. 请
Complication: Our team was terrible, and we were in danger of losing all funding. Resolution: I recruited star players, convinced the dean to increase our budget, and helped our team win games. The more detailed outline for the story is: a. Initial context (30 to 60 seconds) i. Discuss your role, where you were, and when this took place: I was the soccer coach for my business school’s soccer team while I was a student at Vanderbilt Business School in Tennessee. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 12 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview 请
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ii. Discuss the challenge that you had to overcome: Our team was losing most of our games, and we were at risk of losing funding from the school. iii. Describe the other people who were involved in the story: To overcome this, I worked with Lina – our best player, Professor Finkel – our faculty advisor who controlled the funding, and Crystal – the best soccer player at the school who wasn’t playing on our team. b. First interpersonal conflict (1.5 to 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story: Our best player was quitting the team. ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge: Lina was our best player – she was a second year student having trouble finding a job. iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge: I helped Lina network so she could find a job, and in turn she kept on playing. iv. Describe the resolution: Lina stayed on the team. c. Second interpersonal conflict (1.5 to 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story: Our team had a small budget and we needed more money to pay for uniforms. ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge: Professor Finkel, the faculty adviser, was skeptical of our request for money because we didn’t have a lot of players. iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge: I built a detailed budget and projection for Professor Finkel to show him we could get a lot of players if we increased our budget. iv. Describe the resolution: Professor Finkel gave us the funding we needed. d. Third interpersonal conflict (1.5 to 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story: Our team needed another great player to start winning games. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 13 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Of 关
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ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge: Crystal was the best player in school, but she had family problems so she didn’t want to take the time to play on the team. iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge: I created a special practice schedule that allowed Crystal to play part time. iv. Describe the resolution: Crystal agreed to play. e. Resolution (30 seconds or less) i. Describe how your story ended: Our team was able to keep playing and purchase the uniforms we needed, and we won the championship my final year of business school. 12. Whether to type out your story into a full-­‐length story Most candidates find it helpful to type up the entire story, as though you were writing an essay. This is a lot of work. But there are three reasons why this can be helpful to perfecting your story. First, you can test the length of your story. A story should be between 700 and 900 words. If it’s longer, you probably won’t have time to get through all your points when accounting for the time the interviewer will take asking questions. Second, you can go through the full-­‐length story and make sure that you are meeting the criteria (discussed in Part D). Third, typing up your entire story is a great way to practice. This will help you remember your points and lead to a better performance on interview day. 13. An example of a distinctive, full-­‐length story 请
Below is an example of a distinctive full-­‐length story, based on the outline from section 11. A. Initial context During my second year of business school, I was the coach of our school’s graduate girls’ soccer team. My job was to lead the team to compete in tournaments and make sure we had support from our university. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 14 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview The challenge was that our team was performing poorly. The prior year, we only won one game out of twelve. The school was considering cutting our funding. And to make it worse, our best player was quitting. I had to turn our team around, start winning games, and convince our university to continue funding the program. Of 关
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To do this, I worked with Lina, our star player, Professor Finkel, the faculty adviser, and Crystal, an athlete who I convinced to join the team. B. First interpersonal conflict This first problem I had to solve was keeping our team from getting worse. Our best player, Lina, told me she was quitting. And we needed her – she scored half of our goals the prior season. If we lost Lina, we would continue to get worse. I scheduled coffee with Lina to understand why she was quitting. I wanted to better understand her frustrations and see if I could change her mind. Lina told me the reason she was quitting was not because we were losing games. Instead, she was concerned with finding a job after graduating. She had been missing networking events to practice, and she knew that finding a job was more important than sports. 请
This was surprising. I didn’t know Lina was having trouble finding a job. First, I told Lina that whatever happened with soccer, I would introduce her to my network and help her job search. Then, I asked if she would stay if we created a special arrangement. Lina would only practice weekends, and could skip evening games whenever they interfered with her job search. Lina loved the idea. She could stay and pursue employment. She agreed to keep playing. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 15 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview C. Second interpersonal conflict Our team relied on funding from the school to pay for uniforms and travel expenses. Our funding was in jeopardy, and if we lost funding, we would have to end the program. Of 关
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Professor Finkel was our faculty adviser, and he helped vote on the budget for each school program. We needed him to advocate keeping, and even increasing, our funding. With more funding, we could replace our outdated uniforms and worn-­‐out equipment. This might attract more players. I asked Professor Finkel for his help. He told me we didn’t have enough players or success to justify funding. After all, there were many other school programs looking for the same funding source. No amount of arguing would change the Professor’s mind. So I decided to take a different approach. I asked him what he would need to see about our program for him to believe that it was worth more funding. He told me he wanted to see a plan to show how the funding would allow our team to succeed. I went home and created a spreadsheet that showed the improvement our team was already making that season. I made projections to show that we had more participation than other clubs. I also did an analysis showing that with more funding, we could recruit more players, and continue to improve. I presented the analysis to Professor Finkel. He was impressed. He had never seen a student put together a presentation like this. 请
He decided to retain our current funding, and even increase it by 10%. D. Third interpersonal conflict We started winning games. But we were still not a great team. We needed more talent. There was one student who was not on our team that had a reputation for being an exceptional athlete. Her name was Crystal and she was a first-­‐year student who had previously played collegiate soccer. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 16 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview I emailed Crystal asking if she would join. She said no. I decided to find out why. So I took Crystal out to lunch, and asked what it would take to get her to join the team. Of 关
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She told me that while she loved soccer, she didn’t have the time to commit because she was dealing with a family emergency. Her mom was getting treatment for a serious disease, and she was going to have to spend a lot of time home with the family. I told Crystal that I understood and that supporting her family should be her priority. But I asked her how much of a time commitment she could give to the team. Crystal said there was no way she could commit enough time to play in the games. I decided a different approach. I asked if instead of playing in the games, would she be willing to occasionally come to our practices to give advice? Crystal loved the idea and agreed. She wanted to build her leadership skills, and she would be happy to help our team perform better as a part-­‐time assistant coach, even if she wasn’t playing in games. E. Resolution With Lina staying on the team, the increased budget, and Crystal helping to coach, our team did great. We won eight out of ten games that season. 请
This story as typed is about 850 words, and takes a little over five minutes to read. This is the right length for preparing your story. Even though the whole personal experience portion of the interview will last 10 to 15 minutes, you need to account for back and forth discussion with the interviewer and potential questions, which are discussed later in Part E. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 17 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Part IV: What the interviewer is looking for Your interviewer is looking for whether your story shows you have the character traits to be a good consultant. Of 关
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This section is focused on traits that your interviewer is looking for, why those traits matter, and how you can demonstrate the traits when telling your story. Before getting into the five traits that your interviewer is looking for, it is important to understand what two traits the interviewer is not looking for. 14. What character traits do NOT matter A. Being smart Most candidates assume that they need to tell a story that demonstrates they are smart. After all, consultants at top-­‐tier consulting firms are smart. It seems natural for a candidate to tell a story that focuses on intellect. However, only a fraction of candidates make it to the in-­‐person interview stage for a top-­‐tier consulting firm. If you have an in-­‐person interview with a top-­‐tier firm, you have already passed a resume or school-­‐screening test and your interviewer assumes that you are smart. If your story is focused on showing your intellect, you are missing a chance to show the interviewer that you have the other character traits that matter. 请
B. Being accomplished Like being smart, most candidates assume they need to tell a story that demonstrates accomplishments. But your past accomplishments are irrelevant to your personal experience interview. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 18 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Many consultants at top-­‐tier firms have impressive accomplishments. They may be former Olympic athletes, star stock-­‐traders, or brilliant researchers. But remember that top-­‐tier consultant firms also hire candidates straight out of college or graduate school. Many of these new consultants will have limited work experience, and outside of internships, this could be their first job. Of 关
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Past accomplishments also do not necessarily show that the candidate will be a good consultant. You may have successfully published scholarly articles in the most prestigious academic journals. But at a consulting firm, your success will not be based on getting published. That accomplishment is largely irrelevant to your future performance as a consultant. After all, a junior consultant can override a senior partner if the junior consultant can make a better argument. 15. What character traits DO matter Instead of focusing your story on demonstrating intellect and accomplishment, you should try to tell stories that demonstrate the following character traits: A. Empathy B. Creativity C. Persuasiveness D. Humility E. Ability to Motivate Others 请
A. Empathy As you explain your conflict, it is important that you show empathy for the person you are having a conflict with. Empathy means understanding why the other person feels the way they do. Clients trust consultants who demonstrate empathy. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 19 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Example: Of 关
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My colleague George opposed my plan to launch the product in Brazil. He told the investment team it was a bad idea. I decided to sit down with George and understand why he thought that way. It turns out, George had a lot of experience, and he had seen other product launches in Brazil fail. He believed that we didn’t have enough support from our executives. I learned a lot from talking to George, and I decided to change my approach, so we wouldn’t face the same problems he had seen in the past. B. Creativity You want to show your interviewer that you can come up with solutions on your own. Example: As the team leader, I had to make sure that all our team members were working hard. But one team member, Stephen, refused to come to meetings and wouldn’t participate. I tried to talk to him about why he didn’t want to participate, but he wouldn’t give me a clear answer. I decided to work with my other teammates and create a scorecard for attendance and performance on our team. Whoever came to a meeting would get a point, and whoever turned in their project on time would get a point. Sure enough, once Stephen saw the scorecard – and saw that his score was low – he started participating. 请
C. Persuasiveness and ability to influence others You need to show your interviewer that you can convince other people to do things that they don’t want to do. This is one of the most important skills for a consultant. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 20 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Example: As the manager of a car rental store, I needed to convince our corporate vice president to increase our advertising budget. With more of a budget, we could increase sales and reach our targets. The vice president opposed this request. Of 关
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So I decided to make a proposal to the vice president. I proposed that if we didn’t increase sales after spending more on advertising, I would be willing to lower our advertising budget for next year. The vice president was impressed with my proposal, and he knew that we had a strong incentive to make the advertising work. Other ways of using influence include: -­‐ Appealing to logic -­‐ Asking for a personal favor -­‐ Appealing to other leaders who are higher ranking -­‐ Changing the proposal to make it more attractive. D. Humility and self-­‐awareness Show your interviewer that you are willing to self-­‐examine your own actions. 请
Example: After my manager told me that she didn’t like my idea to cut prices on our products, I decided to re-­‐run the numbers to make sure it made sense. After all, my manager had a lot of experience, and it was possible that I missed something in the calculations. It turns out the manager was right. Cutting prices would not have increased sales. I went back to the manager to see if we could come up with a different idea for increasing sales. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 21 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview E. Motivating others to work Tell your interviewer how you involved others in your work and kept them motivated to work towards a common goal. Of 关
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Example: After I explained the opportunity to the board, I decided to ask for their advice on how we could make the project even more successful. I spoke with each board member one-­‐on-­‐one, and by involving them in the discussions, they decided to become active team members and help us launch the project. 16. How to ensure your story reflects the character traits your interviewer is looking for After you have written up your story, go back and make sure that each of these traits are reflected within your story. If they’re not, change your story to focus on a different interpersonal conflict. And if that doesn’t work, then you should select a different story where you did exhibit these traits. You don’t need to exhibit all of these traits in each of the three or four interpersonal conflicts. However, in a distinctive story, you will demonstrate these traits at least once. A. Empathy B. Creativity 请
C. Persuasiveness D. Humility E. Ability to Motivate Others © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 22 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Part V: How to practice and what to expect during your interview 17. How to practice your story Here are three tips for practicing. Of 关
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1. Record yourself Record yourself telling your entire story – which should be about five minutes long, and then transcribe what you hear. Look for opportunities to be more succinct. Make sure you’re hitting the criteria discussed in Part D. 2.
Tell your story to others You can practice the personal experience portion with someone who has no experience in consulting, and it can still provide a valuable perspective. Anyone can give you basic feedback, such as whether the story is interesting to listen to. 3. Show, don’t tell As you practice, take out adjectives and conclusions. Let your interviewer make the conclusions. For example, instead of “telling,” or stating your conclusion, e.g.: Our team did fantastic and we had a very successful year. You should “show”, e.g.: 请
We won 9 out of 10 games and the conference championship. And let your interviewer conclude that it was a successful year. This is particularly true when you are describing yourself. Instead of “telling,” e.g.: I am very good at persuading other people to help and get involved. You should “show”, e.g.: I showed the vice president how our project could result in record profits, and she decided to join the team to help. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 23 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview 18. What your interviewer will be doing during the interview Your interviewers will have a score sheet that lists the criteria to pass an interview. During this part of the interview, they will likely be looking down at their paper and taking notes. Their notes will be their assessment of how your story matches up to the criteria. Of 关
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You should expect a lot of questions. They will be asking you to go deeper into the story. Examples of the types of questions that you will likely get are: -­‐ Why did you do that? -­‐ What were you thinking when you took that action? -­‐ What do you think they were thinking? -­‐ Why do you think they did that? -­‐ Did you consider alternate approaches to your actions? Each interviewer will be different. A huge part of this depends on your interviewer’s personality. Some will ask lots of questions. Others may only ask one or two. 19. How to respond to your interviewer’s questions You should immediately answer the questions posed, even if in your prepared interview, you would have gotten to that answer later in your story. For example, imagine that one of the conflicts in your story involves a colleague who refused to work with the team. You are planning on discussing this colleague at the end of your story. 请
The start of your interview goes like this. Candidate: I’d like to tell you about a time when I was a manager at a pharmaceutical company and I had to lead a team to market a new drug. We had a short timeline, insufficient funds, and some problems with team members. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 24 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Interviewer: Sounds like a great story. I serve a lot of clients in the pharmaceutical industry. Now tell me – on this team, did you have any colleagues who didn’t think the new drug could be a success? You might be thinking – “yes, but I’ll get to that later. First, I need to talk about the Vice President who we had to convince to give us enough funding.” Of 关
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But this is the wrong approach. You should be flexible and be willing to jump around in your story. The top priority is to follow your interviewer’s lead. Be willing to go out of order in your story, if that is what the interviewer wants to do. This is something to practice, too. When you practice your story in front of a friend or colleague, ask them to feel free to interrupt you with any questions they might have. 20. The three most common mistakes candidates make during the personal experience interview First, candidates take too long to set up the story. Candidates will often spend two to three minutes on the initial context of their story. This means they lose time they could have used to discuss interpersonal conflicts and demonstrate the character traits the interviewer is looking for. A candidate should spend no more than one minute setting up the story. Second, candidates focus on what the team did, instead of what they personally did. Although it is important to talk about your team during your story, you need to focus on your own actions -­‐-­‐ not the team’s actions. For example, instead of saying: 请
As the investment team, we presented a proposal to our board to increase our level of investments in medical products. Say this: As a member of the investment team, I was responsible for the beginning of the presentation to the board where I would advocate for increasing the level of investment in medical products. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 25 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Third, candidates spend all their time talking about only one interpersonal conflict. A story that only involves one other person will be inadequate. You need to make sure that your story includes multiple people. Of 关
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In conclusion, remember that your personal experience interview is your opportunity to show that you can work well with others. You can demonstrate that you’re the type of consultant that other consultants will want on their teams. 请
Select, structure, and practice your story in a way that shows you have overcome difficulties or conflicts by demonstrating the traits the interviewer is looking for, and you’ll have set yourself up for success. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 26 of 32 Additional Example of a Distinctive Story Part I: Situation, Complication, Resolution Of 关
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Situation: As an analyst for an investment bank in New York City, my team needed to complete a prospectus for an important client. Complication: My manager was sick, so I needed to lead the team to complete the prospectus in a short time frame. Resolution: I convinced my fellow analysts to stay late to work on the project, recruited a vice-­‐president with subject matter expertise to join our team, and convinced a colleague to help us complete the model in time for the project deadline. 请
Part II: Detailed Outline a. Initial context (30 to 60 seconds) i. Discuss your role, where you were, and when this took place: I was an analyst at CCR -­‐ a large investment bank in New York. ii. Discuss the challenge that you had to overcome: I was on a team that had to develop a prospectus for an important client, but my manager was sick and couldn’t help us out. iii. Describe the other people who were involved in the story: To overcome this, I worked with George and Sarah – two fellow analysts on my team, Ricardo – a vice president at our bank, and Stephen – one of our quantitative experts. b. First interpersonal conflict (1.5 to 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story – The deadline was too short for our team to get the project done. ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge – George and Sarah were fellow analysts who recognized that there wasn’t enough time for us to get the prospectus done, and they wanted to ask for a deadline extension. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Guide to the Personal Experience Interview 请
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iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge – I asked them to stay late and worked with their vice president to make sure that their willingness to work late would lead to a bigger bonus at the end of the year. iv. Describe the resolution – George and Sarah both agreed to pull an all-­‐nighter to get the prospectus done on time. c. Second interpersonal conflict (1.5 to 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story – Our team didn’t have enough industry expertise and it was taking too much time to keep asking experts for help. ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge – Ricardo was a vice president at the bank who was an expert in the client’s industry, but he was not working on our team. iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge – I offered to help Ricardo on future projects and to speak with his son about attending Harvard University if he would help us on this project. iv. Describe the resolution – Ricardo agreed to help our team and worked with us until the project was complete. d. Third interpersonal conflict (1.5 to 3 minutes) i. Give context to one challenge that took place in your story – We had nearly completed the prospectus but our financial model had serious problems. ii. Describe the other person who was presenting the challenge – Stephen, one of the bank’s quantitative experts, reviewed our model and found problems. iii. Describe what you did to overcome the challenge – I convinced Stephen to take ownership and help us fix the model. iv. Describe the resolution – Stephen decided to help our team and fixed the model in time for the deadline. e. Resolution (30 seconds or less) a. Describe how your story ended – We completed the prospectus in time and helped the client obtain financing. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 28 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Part III: Full story A. Initial context Of 关
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After college, I was an analyst for CCR, an investment bank in New York City. I was on a team responsible for creating a prospectus [an analysis that advertises the value of the company] for an important client. The client needed the prospectus in three days. The challenge was that my manager was sick, and I had to lead the project. To do this, I worked with my fellow analysts George and Sarah; Ricardo, a vice-­‐
president at the bank; and Stephen, who worked on CCR’s quantitative team. B. First interpersonal conflict My first challenge was convincing George and Sarah, two other analysts, that we could get this job done in time. I know that this would have been a hard project to complete on time even with our manager, so it was going to be near impossible with a smaller team. I needed George and Sarah to be fully committed and to believe that we could get the project done. This meant we would have to work overnight to gather data to understand the fundamentals of the company. I knew that asking two analysts to stay overnight was a significant request. I asked George and Sarah to come to my office and told them how grateful I was to be on their team. I showed them a timeline for what we needed to get done. 请
George told me it was impossible, and we would be better off asking for an extension. But I knew that the client needed this done by the current deadline to meet their objectives. I asked one of the bank’s vice presidents to join the meeting and to get her perspective on whether we could finish in time or needed an extension. I knew George and Sarah respected this vice president and would listen to her advice. © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 29 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview The vice president reviewed my draft timeline and told us, “I think you can get this project done, if you’re willing to work late hours.” That was the motivation George and Sarah needed. They knew this vice president was on the compensation committee and helped determine year-­‐end bonuses for analysts. Of 关
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After the vice president suggested meeting the deadline, there was no more complaining. C. Second interpersonal conflict Another challenge was that no one on our team had expertise in manufacturing – our client’s industry. To complete the prospectus, we needed to do significant research on the industry and reach out to industry experts. This was taking too much time. We were spending nearly half of our time trying to get in touch with the right experts and not enough time drafting the prospectus. I knew that one of the bank’s vice presidents – Ricardo -­‐ was a former chief operating officer of a global manufacturing firm. If Ricardo would give us a few hours of his time, we could get the prospectus done quickly. The problem was that bank vice presidents don’t typically join projects just because an analyst like myself asks them. They are the ones who assign projects. I called Ricardo and asked for five minutes with him to tell him about what we were working on. He agreed to talk. I explained to Ricardo that we needed his expertise to get the prospectus done in time. Ricardo said that he didn’t have time to devote his evening to working with us. He already had dinner plans with his son who was going through a stressful college application process. 请
I knew that Ricardo’s son was trying to get admission into Harvard, where I graduated from, so I made a proposal to Ricardo. If Ricardo would work with us for a few hours, I would meet with his son to give him tips on what the Harvard admissions office was looking for. Ricardo said he was impressed with my idea, and told me that we had a deal. D. Third interpersonal conflict © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 30 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview We had almost completed the prospectus when Sarah noticed a problem. Some of our calculations seemed off. I asked one of CCR’s quantitative experts – Stephen -­‐ to review the model. We sent the file to Stephen, and he immediately spotted problems. It turns out that some of our formulas were off and it was affecting all of the numbers. Of 关
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Stephen said that this needed a lot of work. I knew that if we were going to get the project done in time, we would need Stephen’s help. The problem was that at CCR, the quantitative experts were on loan to several teams, and it was unlikely Stephen would have the time to work with our team on such a tight timeline. But I knew from past conversations with Stephen that he was interested in changing roles in the bank. He wanted to become a generalist – the same role that I had. I told Stephen that if he helped us with this last-­‐minute project, I would work with him to train him on how to become an analyst. He was excited by my offer and decided to work with our team to get the model done in time. E. Resolution With the extra help from Ricardo and Stephen, we were able to complete the model in time, and helped the client to obtain funding. 请
© 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 31 of 32 Guide to the Personal Experience Interview Personal Experience Checklist As you select your stories, have you: Of 关
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! Created enough stories so you have one more than your number of interviews? For example, if you have three interviews, do you have four stories? ! Selected stories with examples of leadership? ! Selected stories with examples of teamwork? ! Selected stories with examples of conflict? ! Selected stories with examples of entrepreneurship? ! Selected stories that are more recent than high school? As you structure your stories, have you: ! Summarized the situation, conflict, and resolution of each story? ! Created a detailed outline that includes each interpersonal conflict? ! Written out your full story so it’s around 850 words? As your review your stories, do you have examples of: !
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Empathy? Creativity? Persuasiveness and an ability to influence others? Humility and self-­‐awareness? Motivating others to work? 请
As you practice your story, have you: !
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Recorded yourself and listened to the recording? Found areas of your story that you can shorten to be more succinct? Told your story to others to get their feedback? Improved your story by “showing, not telling” – that is, letting the interviewer conclude your accomplishments, instead of explicitly stating them? © 2017 Springboard, LLC All Rights Reserved www.caseinterview.com Page 32 of 32