Case Math for Non-Math People

Key insights from the session

• A correct answer is table stakes in case math. Two candidates who both land on $100 can earn very different scores, because the one who ties the number to the client's objective and names a next step scores higher.
• Interviewers grade four things on the math portion of a case: confirming the setup, units, and a hypothesis up front; structuring the approach out loud before calculating; talking through the calculations with sanity checks; and delivering an insight with a recommendation and risks.
• Three mistakes cost candidates offers: solving the wrong problem, going quiet during the calculations, and stopping at the number without saying what it means for the client.
• George's time budget: recap in about one minute, structure in about two minutes, then solve, then spend about one minute on the insight (two to three minutes are available).
• For 2.5% of $15 million, find 10% ($1.5 million), then 1% ($150,000), then multiply by 2.5 to get $375,000. A sanity check catches the common slip of saying $3.75 million, which is 25% of $15 million.

Chapters

• 00:00 – Introduction: case interview math for non-math people
• 01:38 – Why the right answer is only table stakes in case math
• 02:57 – Where candidates lose points: silent computation and missing the so what
• 03:53 – About George Cary: ex-McKinsey interviewer and recruiter
• 05:03 – What candidates think earns points vs. what interviewers grade
• 07:19 – The 4 things interviewers grade in case interview math
• 10:15 – Candidate A vs. Candidate B: same answer, different score
• 11:26 – 3 case math mistakes that cost candidates offers
• 15:32 – How to do mental math under pressure
• 19:32 – How to find the insight behind the number
• 21:01 – What a strong case math recommendation sounds like
• 23:59 – Worked example: scaling and sizing a $10,000 monthly cost
• 30:47 – Why interviewers forgive math errors: 2 stories from George
• 34:32 – How Black Belt coaching closes case math gaps
• 40:24 – Wrap-up

Resources

• Learn about Black Belt – MC's flagship coaching program for candidates serious about landing an MBB offer – 80% of clients land at least one offer.
• Book a free consultation with Katie – ensure your background, timeline, and gap areas are a good fit for Black Belt, in 15 minutes.
• Book with George directly – eager to get started? Start 1:1 coaching with George right away.
• Mental math drills – practice the percentages and multiplication from this session a few minutes a day.

Case math questions, answered

What is case math?

Case math (also written casemath, and sometimes called consultant math) is the quantitative part of a consulting case interview. You calculate a number from the data in the case, such as a cost increase or a profit change, and then explain what it means for the client. George Cary, a former McKinsey interviewer, says interviewers grade the path to the number and the interpretation, with the right answer as the entry ticket.

What do interviewers grade on the math part of a case?

George names four things: confirming the setup, units, and a hypothesis up front; structuring your approach out loud before you calculate; talking through the calculations while catching mistakes with sanity checks; and delivering a conclusion that covers the answer, the recommended action or next step, and the risks. He calls speed "never the scoring line" and clean arithmetic "just hygiene."

Should you do case math in silence?

No. "Your interviewer can really only score what they hear," so say what you're doing as you go. George says it's fine to ask for 10 seconds to run a single multiplication, as long as you tell the interviewer and then come back to share the result. Solving in silence leaves the interviewer nothing to grade.

How do you calculate 2.5% of $15 million in your head?

Break it into pieces and keep your units next to the numbers. Take 10% of $15 million, which is $1.5 million. Take 10% of that to get 1%, which is $150,000. Multiply $150,000 by 2.5 to get $375,000. Then say the answer out loud as a sanity check, because a common slip is answering $3.75 million, which is 25% of $15 million. For speed, George recommends five to 10 minutes of math drills a day.

Do you need perfect math to get a consulting offer?

No. As an interviewer, George advocated in a decision meeting for a candidate who stumbled through some calculations, because her insights were so distinctive. She was hired and has since passed a year at McKinsey. In a second story, a coaching client said $90,000 instead of $900,000, and George did not care, because the structure and the final insight were so strong. George still gives feedback on mental math, and he recommends practicing it daily.

Full transcript

Introduction: case interview math for non-math people

George Cary: But candidate A stops to get $100. And I've seen it. I've seen it in interviews. Honestly, I probably did this when I was interviewing and practicing to interview.

You take that sigh of relief. Depending on the math, it might have been a lot of calculations and a lot of work and a lot of time to get to that $100. I get you. And we're almost there. We're so close to the end of your interview. But there is one more really important piece.

Japheth Mast: One of George Cary's coaching clients said $90,000 when he meant to say $900,000, but George did not care. After five years at McKinsey running case interviews, he'll tell you that your case math score in an interview comes from bringing your interviewer along and explaining what it means for the client. Today he breaks down the three case math mistakes that cost you your offer and the system to fix them to impress your interviewer and get the offer. If you want a coach like George in your corner, Black Belt is built for that.

Link in the show notes. I'm joined here by my colleagues, Katie Neff, who's our Black Belt advisor. You'll hear from her a little bit later on. She's ex-BCG.

We've also got George Cary, today's facilitator, who's ex-McKinsey. And so I'm going to turn it over to you, George. Really excited to have you with us. Today, I know you have a rich background inside of consulting and you're passionate about case math. So I'm really excited to learn from you and see what you've put together.

Why the right answer is only table stakes in case math

George Cary: Awesome. Thanks, Japheth. So what if I actually told you – I think the surprise face would come up a lot as well. What if I actually told you that I think the math portion of the math question is not necessarily the most important part of the question?

I actually think getting the answer, the right answer, is table stakes. It's the entry ticket, not your final score. I think interviewers actually really grade your path to get to the right answer, not your final destination. We want to structure upfront.

Structure is not just in the framework question in the initial part of the case. It's also in the quantitative question. You wanna have a cohesive, a concise narrative. And most importantly, which we'll talk about today in detail, what this number means for the client.

This is not a math test. We've all taken the SAT or the GMAT, several years of algebra and geometry. This is not that. This is client service. What does this number mean for the client? And that's why the check mark on this page does not necessarily match the final score of not getting a four out of four, there was still somewhere where the points were lost.

Where candidates lose points: silent computation and missing the so what

George Cary: So let's talk about a couple areas where the points might be lost, which we'll dive into deeper in the session. But I think upfront is silent computation. So 40 seconds of quiet, even if you're doing great, correct work, but the interviewer can't follow you. No upfront setup to show the interviewer what you're gonna do, how you're thinking about the problem. No sanity check of the scale of this number, if it feels off, you don't talk about that.

And most importantly, no so what? You know, if profitability is increasing and then just stopping, what does that mean for the client? How does that connect to the question and the problem they're actually solving? So for the next hour, we're gonna practice actually getting the right answer as well as getting credit for them, not just the math part of the answer.

About George Cary: ex-McKinsey interviewer and recruiter

George Cary: So before we do that, I can do a brief introduction. So I spent over five years at McKinsey in New York. I did most of my client work in our TMT and operations practices. I also led our University of Pennsylvania undergraduate recruiting.

So I looked at resumes, I coached candidates, I conducted over a hundred of interviews during my time at the firm. And I really feel that I understand what separates a good or great candidate from a truly distinctive one. And I really try to teach candidates how to solve not just one case, but really master the art of casing. So I want this session to be less about solving one particular problem in a case and more what can you bring to all of your case interviews, whether it's for an internship or a full-time role, no matter what firm it's for.

And first, we are building the foundations of how to successfully do this. Eventually, we'll work on speed where you can do math drills and then get fancy with really creative solutions that can help our clients. So that's kind of how I think about coaching in general. And again, really happy that you guys are all here.

What candidates think earns points vs. what interviewers grade

George Cary: All right, so on this page, we can see the left-hand side has the typical candidate's internal scorecard, where the right-hand side is actually the interviewers. And notice that they barely overlap. And I think the gap of these two columns is really the point of this whole session. So let's go through what most people think earns points.

So I'm sure a lot of you probably think, I left the interview, it was great. I got the right answer. Now, while that might be necessary or important, it's not necessarily sufficient. It's like a rectangle square.

Square is not necessarily a rectangle, type of thing, which is I totally said that in the wrong way. A wrong answer disqualifies you potentially, but a right one just keeps you in the room, right? The second thing people think is, you know, sufficient is that my math was fast. I did it really fast.

I did the calculation super fast. Well, that's great. Luckily in the job, we have Excel and calculators on our iPhones. And so speed is never the scoring line, right?

That is an area where you can show, you know, that you're good at the arithmetic, you know, but just because you're fast, doesn't actually mean you brought the interviewer along. This goes back to the silent piece, right? Where a lot of people kind of do math in silence, that's not super great client service. How did you get to that number, right?

How do we challenge certain assumptions? You know, if you multiply three different, you know, pieces to get to your final answer, the client or your interviewer might not understand what actually drove that number to be, whether it's high or low, and what it might actually do for the business if they change one of those dimensions. And then again, similarly, is I didn't fumble the arithmetic. So clean arithmetic is just hygiene.

We're not necessarily looking for somebody that doesn't make any errors in the calculation. Instead, we're looking for somebody that's resilient, that can be adaptive to feedback that the interviewer gives them. And again, can, despite whether they get the right or wrong answer, can bring the interviewer along with their thinking and get into the insights.

The 4 things interviewers grade in case interview math

George Cary: So let's talk about what's actually graded. First, confirming the setup and stating a hypothesis upfront. So restate the question, confirm units and assumptions. This is very similar to the upfront portion of the case when you're doing your framework.

You repeat things back. You ask clarifying questions, and this is super important because some firms, depending on whether it's in person or virtual, your interviewer as well, they might share an exhibit on the screen or print out a piece of paper. Other firms or other interviewers might not. And so it's actually really important, especially if they do not share it visually on a screen, let's say, like I'm doing right now, to actually confirm the numbers.

'Cause I would not want you to get the wrong answer, not because you didn't know how to do the math, but because you didn't confirm upfront what question you're answering or what the actual numbers or units are that were important. Second is to structure your approach out loud before doing the calculations, right? There's no point in doing calculations if your interviewer doesn't think that's the right approach to solve the problem. The calculations obviously are what takes the time which we'll get into.

So kind of make sure that your four or five or six steps actually get you to the answer that you need in the units, the timeframe that you need, and allow your interviewer to follow you along on what you're doing. They also might be able to provide some redirection. You can kind of tell whether it's by their facial expressions or if they're directly saying, I don't think this is the best approach. This gives you a chance to honestly redirect and have resilience to recover rather than burning two minutes doing calculations that you don't end up using.

So that's part two. Part three is to talk through your actual calculations and catch mistakes along the way. And so this is where sanity check can be really helpful. If you're multiplying millions times millions, that probably doesn't result in 100,000.

If you're multiplying 2 million times 2 million. So doing some sanity check along the way can be helpful. But actually talk through the math, the steps. And then the final and one of the most important parts is really delivering a powerful, insightful conclusion that covers what the answer is, what that means in terms of the action or recommendation or next step for the client and any risks that they might consider, whether it's pressure testing certain numbers or if they do go forward with your recommendation, what they might not be fully considering. And so a really, really comprehensive answer that feels insightful.

Candidate A vs. Candidate B: same answer, different score

George Cary: OK, so let's consider two candidates. They get the same correct answer. It's $100. Easy, right?

But candidate A stops. They get $100. And I've seen it. I've seen it in interviews.

Honestly, I probably did this when I was interviewing and practicing to interview. You take that sigh of relief. Depending on the math, there might have been a lot of calculations and a lot of work and a lot of time to get to that $100. I get you, and we're almost there. We're so close to the end of your interview.

But there is one more really important piece. Candidate B doesn't stop there. They actually interpret it. They put the number into context.

They tie it to the client's actual objective. They say what to do next. And that's the difference between an average candidate and an excellent candidate. It's the same number, it's the same math, two completely different scores and honestly, potentially two different results. And so let's really build the habit of doing the interpretation every time, which again, we'll get into some examples later.

3 case math mistakes that cost candidates offers

George Cary: Okay, so let's talk about three mistakes that actually cost people, I think, their offer. Great candidates that might not actually secure an offer even though their math was great. So you can run really clean math and still get no credit if you solved the wrong thing. So this goes back to my point about recapping the problem and structuring first to prevent this issue. And again, I know I just repeated myself saying this, but I cannot emphasize this enough because so many times people do this, not only in the math, but also in the framework.

They have a great framework for the wrong question. Or here, you have great correct math for the wrong question. So you might be solving the wrong problem. You might be missing a number or a data point.

And then you freak out. You're midway through and you freak out. All of this is avoidable if you really take that upfront time. You view it as an investment. A minute to really recap, to understand, say it out loud, talk through it with your interviewer, view it as like a problem solving session, get that confirmation, then you'll be able to proceed.

So say you set it up correctly up front, there's still ways to lose points, and that's going quiet. So if we go to the next page, then we can see that when you solve in silence, your interviewer actually has nothing to grade. And this is also a proxy of how you handle a client. I was a manager at McKinsey.

I was an entry-level consultant at McKinsey. If you come into a meeting with a client or a meeting with a partner or a meeting with just any team member, they really expect you to speak, not just to fill the air, but they value your insights, they value your thought process. If you kind of are just sitting there, again, this is not an SAT room, a testing scenario, a testing site, this is a client meeting, this is a problem-solving session. And I want you to view it that way. And so your interviewer can really only score what they hear.

And so this doesn't mean you can't take a few seconds to run the calculations individually. And say that. Say, it sounds like I'm doing this right. Do you mind if I take 10 seconds to do this multiplication and come back to you?

And then we'll move to the next step together. So you can totally understand what your preferences are, but just communicate with your interviewer. So when you've talked your way through the number, the biggest mistake, as I've said, is thinking that you're done. So, you know, again, math is important.

Absolutely. Right. But I think all the interviewers know when I was an interviewer at McKinsey, I really shifted my thinking from think how important the actual math part was. When I was a candidate, I absolutely thought that was like the most important part.

Doing the job, right? I can see every day that we don't necessarily solve problems without a calculator on a napkin under a time scenario with somebody staring you down watching you. That's not always how it happens at the job, maybe sometimes, but not always. So we have Excel in the age of AI.

We have AI to help with some data calculations and data analysis. So calculators are, of course, important, but it's not the entire process. And that's why I really, really emphasize the insights. I think it's really where you can stand out as a candidate, but really where you can stand out as a consultant, which is what they're testing.

And the job that you all aspire to have, it really is the job. And so this should be the fun part. This should be the exciting part. And so the good news is that the recap, the structure, and the solve can really come all down together to help you with your insights. And so let's build a repeatable process to drive down to the insight.

How to do mental math under pressure

George Cary: So if we go to the next step, we can see that – again, we do our recap. That's about a minute. We structure for about two minutes. And then we solve.

And before I actually get to the insight, I want to talk about solving. Because I think I've seen a lot of people freeze when it's like a million times 2 million, a lot of zeros, or multiplying by 2.5%, right? I think that this can feel really, really scary. So let's talk about it.

I think this is a big source of anxiety. So I would say I have two tips for this. Number one is to break it down into smaller pieces. Number two is to keep units next to your numbers, because every case could be different.

You could have dollars, but that could be dollars per month. You could have something multiplied by customers. It could be unique customers versus total customers. How many people – the quantity, the total quantity that they buy.

So keep units, because every case is different. And so what does this look like in practice? Let's say we're taking 2.5% of 15 million. What I do is I do what's 10% of 15 million?

I'm slow. I don't even go to the 1%. I go to 10% first. So 15 million, 10% of that is 1.5 million.

Then I do 10% of that, which is 1% of the 15 million. So 10% of 1.5 million is 150,000, 150k, sticking with units. They could also say 0.15 million if you want to stick with millions. Do what you're comfortable with.

So 150k is 1%. So then to get 2.5%, I just multiply that by 2.5. So that's 375,000. A lot of people, when they do this, end up saying – they don't say 375,000, which is the correct answer.

They say 3.75 million. And this is where sanity check can be really helpful, because 2.5% of 15 million, if you say it out loud, 3.75 million is not 2%, 2.5% of 15 million. So sometimes sanity check can actually be helpful. And so if you struggle here, which I think is very common, I recommend five to 10 minutes of math drills a day on this kind of mental math, right?

Through Management Consulted, we have really, really great practice math drills. You can also come up with your own questions, like when you're sitting in a car, not in the driver seat, not in the driver seat, in the back seat or the passenger seat, you can, you know, do some questions that you make on your phone calculator. That's what I did. I actually remember going to my interviews in person, and I just did mental math, like in the car, in my calculator.

While you're walking to class, while you're making dinner, while you're waiting in line, just, you know, again, what's 5% of 15 million, right? What's a million times 2 million, etc., etc. So you're building speed, you're building comfort. Also, what's really helpful is just doing live cases, right? Because a live case will always have a quantitative question. And so, you know, you'll get practice in real time too, doing it as well.

Black Belt promo: No one's got time to run through 100 cases and hope they're ready by the end. Black Belt exists to help solve that. In Black Belt, you work one-on-one with a former MBB interviewer. You work through a personalized plan addressing your specific gap areas, and at the end, you know you're ready for the toughest interviews on the planet. If you need to get ready for cases fast, Black Belt is $2,250. Learn more through the link in the description and start coaching as soon as tomorrow.

How to find the insight behind the number

George Cary: So let's zoom in on the last step, which is the insight, which takes about a minute. I would say you probably actually have like two or three minutes. And people also ask me all the time, like, George, how do you come up with these amazing insights? Like when I do cases with people and I list a bunch of things.

And while I do feel like I am special and smart, yay, I also want to remind you that unlike the framework where you kind of have to come up with your framework right after you hear the introduction, you're new to the case, you're five minutes in, for the math, you've been interacting with these numbers for 10 or 15 minutes, right? You've got the prompt, you've digested it, you've structured it, you've walked through the numbers, the interviewers probably participated a little bit. So as you're going through your calculations, I actually really recommend that you try to think about what's going on. And again, that's why the math part is not the most important.

It's what's actually going on here. And the math is just part of that. But as you're multiplying by certain things, if you multiplied by 2.5%, going back to my example that I just was using, that's a really small percentage. If we're only capturing, let's say, 2% of the potential revenue, that's pretty small.

So when I get into my insights, I can say, what's driving this to be small is the fact that we're only capturing 2.5% of the market. That's what's driving this to be small. So don't forget that you actually don't have to come up with these on the spot, right? You've been interacting with them.

What a strong case math recommendation sounds like

George Cary: So let's talk about what a good recommendation looks like. A top score comes from not just having the right numerical answer, but also deep recommendation. And what do I mean by deep recommendation? It's not just one thing, right?

That's why there's two things on this slide, for example, highlighted. It's not just, you know, $300. $300 is positive, therefore we should do it. I'm done, let's end the interview.

No, that's really, really elementary, right? Talking about what the client should do and what your recommendation is is important, but also talking about what this means for the organization, what this means for the actual problem that you're solving in the case, connecting it back to what you saw in an earlier exhibit, contextualizing the number, talking about next steps of how you would go about implementing this, talking about what wasn't included in this math that we might have forgotten. There are so many things that you can talk about. And if you're like, oh my God, that was really stressful, George, you just need like five or six different things.

You actually don't have to do all six, right? I'm just showing that there's a menu of potential options and it just depends on the case and that situation that it depends on. For example, I can give a very specific example. One of the things I mentioned that would be insightful is connecting it back to the problem at hand.

So for some cases, it doesn't apply because the math question might actually be the problem that you're solving. Let's say it's profitability. So you're solving a profitability case And the math has to do with profitability. So if you get a positive number, then yay, this helps our profitability problem.

If you get a negative number, maybe we shouldn't do this, because we're already struggling with our profitability. We don't want to do something that erodes it further. But that's very different than if the case was actually about, say, customer satisfaction. We're testing the profitability of whatever initiative we're doing.

But just let's say it ends up as a positive number or a negative number. My decision of whether or not I do this is not necessarily based only on profitability. Of course, I should consider it. But I also want to consider what I'm willing to invest to fix the case problem at hand, which is customer satisfaction.

You would be surprised by how many people have amnesia, including me, about what you were talking about 20 minutes ago in the framework because you're again so locked in. I'm using the new terminology that I'm hearing from my clients now, but you're so locked in on the math that you forget that the case is not even about the topic that you're solving. So that's just one thing to think about.

Worked example: scaling and sizing a $10,000 monthly cost

George Cary: So let's actually go through an example. So if we go to the next slide. So let's suppose that your math shows that we are going to have a $10,000 per month increase in cost at one hotel in the first year. That's our answer, right?

And this is to – the reason we have an increase in cost is we're trying to improve the website, the booking website, for this hotel. So it increased $10,000 per month in cost in the first year for one hotel. That's the answer. Okay, a lot of people stop there.

They got the 10,000 per month. Yeah, I'm done. No, we're not, right? Some people stick with an elementary answer.

Well, 10,000 is a cost increase. And I don't want a cost increase. That's bad and therefore we shouldn't do it. Again, that's really elementary.

It might be the right answer, but it's really elementary. I don't care if something's just positive or negative. I care about what the client cares about it. They're willing to invest this.

If they have the money to do this, what they're prioritizing, et cetera. So that's an average candidate, both of those things. Stopping or giving a really elementary answer. So let's talk about some ways to really make this insightful and distinctive.

First, let's scale this. What do I mean by that? So $10,000 per month is $120,000 per year. A lot of times clients think annually, right?

Annualized numbers, right? So convert the number to something that the client actually thinks in, right? This could be if you get a daily number, a quarterly number, you know, how do you make it annual if that's how the client thinks about it? Also, this math was for one hotel.

Let's say the client has five hotels in this collection, in this brand. Now, we're not just talking 120,000 per year, we're talking 600,000 a year in additional cost. That's a little bit of a different frame than $10,000, right? So this is contextualizing and scaling the number.

Second is let's interpret this in the scope of the client. What do I mean by that? For George, 600,000 of costs increase? Not good.

Not good. Not happening. Can't do it. Abort mission.

$600,000. Thank you for the laugh. I appreciate it. Thank you.

Yes, come on guys. OK. OK, now I get distracted. Don't get it.

OK, $600,000 for a large chain, doing hundreds of million in revenue, rounding error. Right? Not – maybe not it is that important. Right?

Now you might not know this. And let's say you don't know the revenue or the cost structure of the client. You can state it as a hypothesis. My hypothesis is that $600,000 would not be a significant increase of their costs and impact to their profitability if we're making tens of millions in profitability.

So sizing against the client. A lot of times I get people that say that $100 or $100,000 of profit is a lot. And again, to individual people, it is, to George, it is, but to a big multinational, international, you know, organization might not be. Okay, third, let's check this number against the actual objective.

So a cost increase of $10,000 per month or $600,000 per year, only bad news if we're solving a profitability problem. Only bad news if we were given a constraint that under no circumstance can this increase our cost. Only bad news if we were given a constraint of we can only spend $9,000 per month, right? So it depends on the case, right? If the real problem here was fixing a customer satisfaction issue, right?

That's why we were fixing the booking tool on the website to make it more user friendly or make it so that people didn't get error messages. This isn't necessarily a pure cost. This is an – I would reframe this to be an investment in the business. And let's compare it to the cost of doing nothing.

What's going to be the churn that we have, the lost revenue, the poor reviews that we get from having a really clunky, out of date website? And then also, let's extend the time horizon. So I said that this is a $10,000 increase per month in year one. What if that's all one-time cost?

What if that's upfront CapEx? What if that's one-time training or installation cost? Year two might be flat or positive, right? Maybe it's negative in year one, but potentially positive and cost savings in year three onward, right?

Say that out loud rather than stopping at the year one number. So if there's any kind of fixed cost in your calculation or one-time cost to do an investment, think about what that means in the context of your answer, because those costs go away in the long term. So think about the run rate impact. And so close with distinctiveness, where you have some of these insights, but you also say the next step or the risks.

So for me, I would say what we found is that this costs about $10,000 per month at one hotel, which is equivalent to $600,000 across our portfolio of five hotels. Now, given our objective in this case to solve customer satisfaction, I would advise the CEO and the chief marketing officer and the chief technology officer to actually invest in this customer satisfaction improved website to fix the dissatisfaction that we saw, potentially in the exhibit, is being driven from our website. And so I would recommend that we actually invest in this tool. Now, I'd pressure test how much of this cost is one time in recurring.

I would pressure test how we're going to fund this. Do we have cash on hand? Do we need to do financing? Do we need to take money from other initiatives and understand what the payback period is as a next step.

Why interviewers forgive math errors: 2 stories from George

George Cary: And so let me conclude with a story before I pass it to Katie. I actually have two stories. One is an interviewer and then one is a coach. And so when I was at McKinsey, I used the same case when I conducted interviews.

Very efficient of me. And I once interviewed a candidate whose math was not perfect. They stumbled through some of the calculations. They definitely weren't the fastest.

But what blew me away was their insight. They got to an answer and they immediately answered, what does this tell us? What's the business implication? Connected the math back to the broader problem and the correct math.

Like I corrected her math as we were going along and she was resilient. She kind of recovered, right? She understood what was going on as I explained it. And her insights were so distinctive that, again, because I used this case for every person I interviewed with, I actually started using this insight when I gave feedback to other candidates.

In the decision meeting, we did not talk about her ability to not be able to multiply 1,000 times 1,000. Instead, I really advocated for how rich her insights were. So yes, for her final round, of course, I gave her feedback on brushing up on her mental math, having a cleaner structure, have those insights come out even more cleanly. But the math does not need to be perfect, right?

It's about trying to embed recap, structure, solve, and insight into something really, really meaningful. The second story literally happened today. And that's why I was supposed to share one story. But I'm sharing two because something happened today.

I literally had a client who structured the math up front, walked through his approach beautifully, and he genuinely solved this in a very novel way. I kind of was like, I don't think this is gonna work. And I was like doing the math on the side because again, I use a lot of the same cases. So I've done this case with a lot of my current manager consultant clients, and I've not done it this way.

But he found a novel and more efficient way to do it. Right? He combined a few of the steps. And I was really, really impressed.

I'm actually going to use this going forward. He made a minor mistake with his zeros. He said 90,000 instead of 900,000. And then he immediately said, insert bad word here when he realized it.

But as an interviewer, I really did not care. This mistake was irrelevant compared to the fact that he was actually really novel in his structuring, that he was novel. He eventually got to the amazing insights. And that's the point.

So I'm not saying don't practice getting the zeros, right? You absolutely should, right? And I gave him that feedback. But I think that over indexing on these small mathematical errors is missing the bigger opportunity.

How can you structure up front in a novel way? How can you walk your interviewer through in a clear way? How can you conclude with a really powerful insight, right? And so that's why that was literally happened today.

I was blown away by this experience, both as an interviewer and a coach. And it was different parts. Somebody had blew me away with the insight, and she just passed a year at McKinsey. The person that got hired, she blew me away with her insights. This person blew me away with actually their structure and how they walked me through it. So targeted practice and insights, no pun intended, from a coach can really help make a difference here.

How Black Belt coaching closes case math gaps

George Cary: And our Black Belt program through Management Consulted is really about finding the gaps that you have very in an individualized way and spending the sessions with a coach working on them. But also we have a magnitude of materials, including the math drills that I mentioned before that could be really, really helpful for preparing for the math section and also casing and interviews holistically. So I'd like to pass it to Katie. She graciously shared her slides with me and sat on this call for 40 minutes. You know, who is our Black Belt advisor and honestly, a great treasured friend of mine who previously worked at BCG to show you how our program can help candidates close their gaps. So Katie, over to you.

Katie Neff: Thanks, George. Well, that was a really great session. And not only am I ex-BCG, but I'm also a Black Belt alum. So this session is near and dear to my heart because I have bitter sweet memories of Thanksgiving and Christmas practicing my math because that was really my gap at the time.

But this is – Black Belt is really just a double down on what George said. Black Belt is a way to help you find your most impactful gaps and in a systematic way, change the outcomes. And that's 80% of our Black Belts get an offer, get at least one offer. And we see candidates time after time, just really unclear on how to get started and we give you that structure.

And it does lead to more offers. So, you know, whether it's math here or any other gap, we see more broadly like three main gaps that cost candidates offers. And that's, we've designed Black Belt to fix these gaps. And this is about having a system, right?

If you don't have a system, what does that mean? It's just chaos and overwhelm. Structured prep means you know what you need to focus on. You have clear direction.

If you don't have accountability, like showing up to see a coach every week or every other day, then you'll procrastinate because we all procrastinate. And these milestones of meeting with a coach mean you want to show up better than you were last time, that you've worked on something. And this lack of accountability – and I skip feedback, sorry – and the feedback – if you don't get feedback from a coach, what does this mean? Feedback from your friends, peers, have they been there? This is really not as great because they have not been in that seat as an interviewer.

They don't have the track record of helping candidates succeed through this process your coaches have. So what does this cost and what is it worth? Well, Black Belt is $2,250 outright. That is just how much it costs.

And against a first year salary, it is not so expensive, right? 100K to 200K, which clearly increases your chances of landing an offer. While the cost of failure is much higher, doing it yourself, if you know that you don't know, it will feel economical not to invest now, but the cost is unclear chances and potentially re-recruiting going through this entire process again or aiming lower than you really wanted. So Black Belt is really a resource. It's a bundle of resources that we tailor to you for candidates who are ready to commit, who candidates who want to do the work.

So it's not for everybody. So I just want to be really clear on who we do serve. We are serving candidates who are not just exploring consulting casually, but who know this is what I want right now. This is the career path I'm aiming for right now.

And if you are not receptive to feedback, then Black Belt would be a little painful because coaches give you tough love. So you're willing to take that feedback and work on gaps. And also recognize your strengths. Your coaches will tell you where you're strong as well.

And if you're not ready to commit the time, then this is also not for you because it is about sessions with a coach, but there is a lot of time spent on your own building those skills, practicing drill after drill. George mentioned, you know, doing drills, like five to 10 drills a day for areas that you're struggling. So we see candidates succeed when they act before landing the interviews, forces them to get support. If you have an interview right now, we can still help you.

It is not too late. We can help you, but it will be a little bit more stressful for you. But if you don't have an interview yet and you are ready to commit and you want that expert support, then check out Black Belt. You can scan the QR code here, see what we have to offer. And if you're not totally sure if you're the right fit, you can book a call with me, which is that little blue QR code as well.

Wrap-up

Japheth Mast: You land the offer when you turn the math answer into a recommendation the client can act on. If mental math is your gap, Black Belt can pair you with an MBB coach who will drill it with you until it's automatic. If this session took some of the fear out of case math for you, can you do me a favor and hit subscribe wherever you're listening or watching. In addition, leave a comment or a review to help smart people find their way here. Thanks in advance.

What Black Belt members say