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Pissingintowind posted:Can't speak to engineering, but in consulting, we call these "sizing" questions. They're kind of a mini version of the case question type. They've also, from conversations/sessions with my MBA Career Services team, generally gone away. The problem was that too many interviewers were throwing them out there without much understanding of how to use them or not very seriously...and it resulted in interviewees not being sure if it was a joke question or taking them too seriously or so-on. Sometimes I'll ask someone I'm interviewing to prepare to answer a sizing question a day or two before they show up to talk, but I've found springing them on people can stop a competent prospect's interview dead. They also tend to rely on you knowing some fact or number that's "obvious", even though there are probably plenty of people who don't know how many households own cars in America or how many people live in LA or whatever... Now long-case interviews are a whole different type of bitch, and from the classmates who went into consulting they sound god awful. A friend was interviewing with Bain and had a case about a bakery that wanted to increase utilization. My friend's no slouch- about a decade of experience working at GE and a strong engineering background. He came up with a half-dozen ideas off the top of his head and did a decent job backing up each- renting out the equipment to third parties, starting a new business line, and so on. After about 15-20 minutes of this the interviewer stopped him and said "...or, they could just run a second shift?" This was a problem I heard from a couple students. These case questions can be very structured, and if you take an alternate approach to solving it from what they need the answer to be in part 1 to move to part 2, you're basically left feeling like an idiot. Furthermore, these cases usually come from actual work done by the firm. That means you're at best trying to guess their framework and solutions...which if I was interviewing at a consulting firm I'd expect to learn as I actually worked for them.
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May 2, 2013 14:00
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| # ¿ May 9, 2024 17:31 |
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