Once, we were looking at whether banks made money on demand drafts (DDs). DDs are costly. 90% of a bank’s costs are people-related, and it takes a fair bit of time (hence people) to process DDs. If you pay for DDs in cash, it costs even more because the teller has to count the notes. To recover this cost, banks charge a fee. The fee increases with the size of the DD. A DD for Rs 10,000 may cost Rs 50, while one for Rs 100,000 may cost Rs 200. ...
Structuring a case Most importantly, smile, be confident, and relax. After the interviewer has explained the case, I like beginning with “Could you tell me something more about…” First, it buys time to think about the situation. Second, you get to find out more. More often than not, the case description alone is completely inadequate to make a stab at the case. I follow this up with the objective: what am I supposed to do in the case? Sometimes, we need to ask. Sometimes, we need to state and clarify. Either way, I prefer to determine the objective upfront. I would also clarify the role of the interviewee and the interviewer. Is the interviewer acting as the client and the interviewee as the consultant, for example? ...
First Round On Saturday (25th November 2000), I dress up in my best suit (only suit, really), and find my way to the Green Park station for an interview with the Boston Consulting Group. Of course, being terribly conservative, I arrived an hour early, so it was time to walk around Green Park and have a look at the Buckingham Palace, while singing “I have confidence…” from Sound of Music. The walk did lift my spirits a bit. There was this tiny poodle that was busy licking a bulldog. The bulldog didn’t seem to mind, though it was large enough to eat up the poodle. Then the poodle’s owners picked it up, and walked away. The poodle was reluctant though. It just hadn’t finished licking the bulldog. After about 5 minutes, the bulldog (and owner), were about half-a-kilometer away, when the poodle was finally let down. Being the determined creature that it was, it ran ALL the way to the bulldog, and proceeded to lick. The bulldog, right through, was wearing a puzzled expression on its face, as if to say, “Are you sure you don’t want me to smack this little white fluff?” ...
I had my first case interview today. Four of us (3 exchange students and one LBS MBA grad) sat together and tried giving each other cases. It’s an excellent learning experience. Had I gone in for a case interview without this preparation, I’d have flunked. Our class on Financial Analysis was good fun – and an exposure to yet another illustration of internationalism. Prof. Higson (in his perfect British accent) mentioned that he was part of a programme on TV for some society of animals. (Not as a caged animal that looked sorry, he assured us. He was talking about stocks – no idea why.) We were discussing the ‘Body Shop’ company (the one that sells natural cosmetics), and apparantly this company was blacklisted by the programme, for failing to be ‘animal-friendly’. Prof. Higson was mentioning that one of the reasons for Body Shop’s success was the British obsession with being kind to animals. He suggested that, therefore, Body Shop may not have been as successful elsewhere. ...
Well, apparantly LBS has just had its lecture theatres (LTs) newly made! Which is why they look so good, I hear. At least, the Professors keep commenting about how new the LTs are, and how they’re unused to it and all that. This afternoon, Pallavi, another exchange student, an MBA 2001 student and myself, got together and ran a series of mock interviews. LBS’ consulting club has some very good material on case interviews. ...