 I'm Charlie. This is Justin. We're here today to talk to you on behalf of the Office of Career Management and Fisher Consulting Globe. If you're watching this video, you're probably interested in pursuing a career in consulting and you're looking for either full-time employment or an internship for this summer. A crucial step to securing employment, whether it's for the summer or full-time, is the case interview. Now, a case interview can seem like a daunting task at first. It can seem intimidating, but it's a skill like any other. And like any skill, having live case practices is the best way to get better at it. What we're about to see is a clip and sort of best practices and tips for a mini-strategy case, which typically in a real setting would last anywhere from 30 to 45 minutes. We're now going to join Rami and Mega, who are going to show us some of those clips. Mega, Joshi. Hi, I'm Mega. How are you doing today? Nice to meet you. I'm good. Thanks. How are you doing? Pretty good. How was your day going for you today? Pretty good. I just learned last night, so it was a comfortable stay for me. Nice. How do you leave the weather in Columbus? It apparently rained last night, so you can never tell about the Columbus weather. Sorry to hear about that. Alrighty, so we're doing the case interview today, right? Mm-hmm. I'm pretty sure that you're familiar with case interviews. Yes. Just to give you a heads up. So I'm going to give you a mini-case. Sure. I'm going to read it, give you a couple of minutes to think about it, give you the chance to ask me a couple of questions, and then see what you have, what kind of recommendations you can think about. Sounds good? Yeah, it does. Alrighty. So your client is a frozen food company named Pizza Mania in the U.S. The company generates $35 billion in sales per year by selling budgeted pizza. Sure. The client is currently considering the launch of a new product, Superior Frozen Pizza. Since the economic downturn, more people have been staying in for dinner. The price of the family's Superior Frozen Pizza is $8. Did the division launch this new product? What do you think? Well, just to make sure that I understood this correctly, our client is Pizza Mania, which is based out of the U.S., and they have a primary product, which is the budget pizza. Yep. And they've been making sales to the tune of $35 billion every year, and right now they're contemplating whether they should go ahead and launch the Superior Pizza or not. So is that the only objective we're concerned with? Or is there any other objective that I'm missing? Well, that's the main objective, to see if it's going to be profitable to launch this new product, and they would like to break even in one year. Okay, great. So all right. So would you mind if I take a couple of seconds to collect my thoughts together? Sure. Yeah, take your time. Thank you. Let me know if you have any questions. We're only a minute into the interview, and already, MEGA has made use of three important success strategies. To start off, first impressions matter, and the case interview is no exception to that rule. Notice that MEGA spent some time getting to know her interviewer and build rapport with them, which gave her a chance to relax and the interviewer a chance to get to know her personality. Second, how you set up your paper for taking notes is important. You should be able to quickly reference your case objectives, client information, and recommendations throughout the case. Your notes should be concise and legible so that your interviewer can read them even from across the table. Third, once you receive all the client information, it's important to summarize and demonstrate your understanding of the case. Be sure to clarify the objectives no matter how obvious they seem. Once you've established that and your understanding is correct, ask for a minute to put your thoughts together. So let me just start with the industry. Do you have any information on the growth rate of the industry in terms of the frozen food industry? Sure. So for the budgeted pizza, unfortunately, it's declining. Now, on the other hand, the superior frozen pizza, we're seeing a 3% growth in the next couple of years. OK, I see. And from a competition standpoint, have our rivals launched a similar product in the past or in the recent times? Well, we don't have this kind of information yet. We know that we have four other competitors with 20% market share each. OK, and so we have the remaining 20%? Exactly. And at this point, we are not sure that they're going to be launching any new product. And then coming over to the company, just want to make sure that is making pizza a core competency of our company, or do we also sell other products? Well, we do sell other products. But as you can tell from our clients' names, pizza mania, most of our revenue streams come from frozen pizza. So frozen pizza is our main focus. So is the budget pizza the flagship product that we have? Yes, that's the only product that we're selling right now. That's the only. OK, great. And does our product have any unique selling proposition as such? The budget pizza, how do we differentiate ourselves in the marketplace? Right. Again, it's a budgeted pizza. I mean, you can think of the product as a commodity. So not too much differentiation going on between our product compared to the competitor's products. Sure. And from a customer standpoint, can I just ask if we have any specific customer segments that we cater to, or is it just for everybody? What do you think? Well, I guess pizza is something that everybody wants to have. OK. But I just want to understand if we catering specifically to family, do they contribute a major chunk of our towards our business? Or is it youngsters? Well, apparently, as you can tell from the economic downturn, a lot of families are staying and eating at home. So our client's main focus is families and households. Sure. OK. So with that information in place, I want to jump on to doing a break-even analysis. At this point, MEGA has begun the analysis portion of the case. So there are several important points to keep in mind. As MEGA has done, you should structure your thoughts on the page and walk the interviewer through them. Be sure to state any assumptions you've made. Don't hesitate to ask clarifying questions, but avoid asking questions that are too broad or irrelevant to the case. By using this approach, you demonstrate a loose but logical framework and explain the rationale behind your thoughts. As you're about to see, most cases will involve a data dump. So get comfortable with numbers. Each case an interviewer is unique. Some will present you with the data without you asking, while others will expect you to ask for the specific data within key areas. When the interviewer does give you a data dump, make observations about the data and walk the interviewer through your calculations. Explain to them what you're thinking and how you're going to approach it. Once you've done your calculations, you need to draw some insights rather than just providing them with the numbers that you've come up with. I'm going to ask if you had more information on the cost structure for the new pizza that is to be launched. Can you be more specific? What kind of cost structure you're talking about? Sure. When I say cost structure, I mean two things. One is the fixed cost, things like equipment, capital investments that you have to make to manufacture that pizza. And the second piece would be the variable cost. That includes material, labour, things like transportation and procurement that would be used to manufacture one unit of that pizza. Yeah. Actually, we do have some information. Let me hand you this chart. Take a couple of seconds and tell me what strikes you out of the chart. Sure. Well, the first thing that jumps out of this data is the difference in the profit margin between the superior and the budget pizza. From what I see here, the profit margin out of the superior pizza is 1.5 times that of the old budget pizza. Okay. So we know that the profitability is higher in the new pizza. Secondly, I don't want to walk you through the calculations. Is there anything else that strikes you other than the profit margin? Well, yes. Another thing that strikes me is the number of units of budget pizza that we sell every year. We sell about 8.7 billion units. That's a significant number. That's a huge number. Okay. So that does jump out. Okay. Let's move on to the... Okay. You were talking about break-even. Sure. So let me just walk you through my calculations. So as we know, I'm just writing the profitability equation, the classic profitability equation here, which is profits are equal to revenue minus cost. So since we're doing the break-even analysis, our profits would be zero. So I'm just trying to equate revenues with costs. So in order to get revenues, we know the price of the superior pizza, which is $8. And let's say we make an assumption that, say, we sell X number of superior pizzas to break-even. So the equation is 8x is equal to the total cost, which is fixed cost, which I see is 69 million. And the variable cost, which is 3.6 times X. And as I get to solve it, we see that we need to sell about 15.6 million units of superior pizza to break-even. And when you look at the number of pizzas that we've sold in the past every year for the budget pizza, which is in billions, I do not think this should be a big stretch. Okay. Yeah, I can agree with you. But what do you think about the price? For the superior pizza, we are charging double the price. Do you think the customer would be willing to pay 8 bucks? Well, given the fact that the economy is in an upswing trajectory right now, and also the fact that the superior pizza would be targeted specifically towards the premium customer segment, I personally, I have a feeling right now that it would be a good price point. However, I would recommend that we go ahead and run a pilot project, say in three different locations, with different price points, and then try and do a pricing based on the data that we have. But essentially, at the end of the day, we will be using value-based pricing for our pizza. So does that make sense to you? Okay, so if I hear you correctly, I'm talking about value at pricing and pilot test. I think that's a good idea. Well, the case interview is more about your logical approach to the case than your final answer. How you make your recommendation makes a big difference. The ability to synthesize is critical for a consultant. When you're asked to conclude, you need to review your initial objectives, findings, restate your approach, and make a final recommendation. Don't attempt to summarize everything. You have less than a minute for this last piece of the case. As Mega did in her case interview, pick two to three points and touch upon them. Whatever you do, be confident in your recommendations because this is the last impression that you're going to leave with your case interviewer. So let's assume the CEO finds you in the hallway and asks you what you think about the superior frozen pizza. What would you tell him? All right. Well, the initial analysis suggests that Pizza Mania should go ahead and launch the superior frozen pizza given that they have the right price point in mind after having run the pilot project. And we feel that that's the right way to go because of two reasons. Firstly, we don't doubt the ability of Pizza Mania to be able to sell 15.6 million pizzas given the fact that they sell 8.7 billion budget pizzas every year. And secondly, even if the newly launched pizza does cannibalize the existing pizza, which is the budget pizza, even then, we're in good shape because the profit margin for the superior pizza is 1.5 times the old pizza. So with that, we highly recommend that you go ahead and launch the superior pizza. So that's about it. That's great. Great. That's it. We enjoyed my time and good luck for the rest of the day. Thank you so much. Thanks for your time. Before coming to Fisher, I was a senior consultant. The reason why I joined consulting is because it's a fast-paced learning environment. You don't only have to demonstrate that you're a knowledgeable professional but also that you can maintain performance under pressure and you will be tested on this during your case interviews. A common trait among consultants is that you don't only have to be a good communicator but you have to be a good listener. Learn how to carry a conversation, let it flow, don't interject. In return, you will have more information to work with and you will definitely have a much better understanding of the case that you're being asked. So what you just observed is a mini-strategy case broken up into its individual parts. While you may not get this exact type of case, the best practices and the methodologies in the case can be applied to any strategy case that you're approached with. Reading lots of cases is important because it'll give you an idea of the types of problems that frequently pop up. But try to remember that you are being interviewed and evaluated on the way you think and who you are as a person, not the end answer that you arrive at. Be yourself and have fun because if the interviewer can picture themselves working with you in the future, you make yourself a very difficult candidate to pass up.