BCG Intern Interview Questions, Process, and Tips for Freshers

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The first round required a systematic approach and therefore adequate preparation helped to solve this case in a structured manner.
Tips: Overall presenting ideas with logic and structure helped me.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The second round did not go well for me. Here it was easy to get lost in the many levels of the case and therefore it would be useful to attempt some quantitative cases as well. Along with this, it was important to stay calm when solving the case was hard which I was not able to do well enough.

General Tips: Prepare hard and work on exploring all possible options within a case.
Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I first found out the demand and competition in Nigeria. Also looked at the company’s capacity to meet the price requirements of the customer. Important point was that the twowheelers were used as taxi in Nigeria. This point came out when I got an answer to the amount of usage of the product as 50,000 kms annually which was very high. Price we could offer was higher than competition so I suggested changing the design to have two customers per ride than just one, there by increasing revenue per ride and thus customer’s willingness to pay higher.
Then interviewer asked questions about how to market it. I suggested a few advertising ideas like showing increase in standard of living of taxi driver due to usage of product.
Then question was how to get over the inertia that people felt in buying as no one had used our product. For this my options ranged from approaching taxi driver unions to limited number of product units in market for a free 6 month period for the user to experience the product. I also suggested a more spread out distribution within the country to increase visibility of product
Tips: The first round allowed me to look at a diverse set of options across functions such as marketing, pricing, design, etc. The good point was identifying early in the interview that the two-wheeler
was used as a taxi. Another good thing was that with each question that the interviewer put forward to reject my suggestion, I was able to give another alternative option

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I studied the value chain and understood how product complains were generated and solution provided by company. In this I found that the dealer’s engineer was responsible for checking
validity of complains and it was the dealer who got a commission for every complaint that he managed or solved. This was major point that hinted at possible collusion between customer and dealer. On further probing it was found that there was a fraud happening at the dealer’s end. The dealer was generating false complains to earn more commission. To solve the issue I suggested having a company engineer look into the complaint validity. I also suggested having a remote way of monitoring the product health.
Both these solutions were a bit time taking and costly. So a better solution from me was to monitor each product and number of complains it generated in a given period of time. If the same product generates more than normal number of complains in a period, it can hint at possible collusion and the firm can look into that complain before authorizing the warranty.
Tips: Second round was more about finding the issue rather than ideation. I was able to unearth the issue well and solution suggested was very practical according to the interviewer.


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I looked at regions where the selling price of product was high and suggested we target these regions. Looked at various costs to the dealer or seller of the cement such as inventory storage costs, etc and how we can give him incentive to store and sell our product. Basically it was about increasing the ROI of the dealer wrt costs he incurs to keep our product and benefits he receives by selling it.
Tips: Third round was more about gelling with the Partner and being calm. At times when he probed me, I was able to maintain composure.

General Tips: It is always good to be prepared with your HR answers. That is not to suggest that you cram them up. They need to be genuine and your preparation should involve having a few pointers for each answer.
Most important thing is staying calm and composed and to enjoy the process. You should come across as someone who is enthusiastic about solving problems. Isolate each interview and don’t let it affect next interviews.
It is good to have frameworks at the back of your mind for each type of case. But in the interview, try to ask good qualifying question before putting a framework on paper.
Think aloud and let the interviewer be involved with you in the process of reaching a solution.
Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Had to talk about working capital requirement through dealer terms, inventory requirement, etc.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Two parts 1) draw the decision tree about how would you look at a niche building materials business and 2) come up with a formula with clear variables to estimate the overall market size

Round: Guesstimate Interview
Experience: Straightforward guesstimate with important cuts being, % of people that consume tomatoes, type of people that will buy from such a store vs regular vegetable vendor, etc
Tips: They were not looking for exhaustively looking and covering all points, instead wanted you to reach solution immediately and then completely cover them.

General Tips: While solving cases we emphasize a lot on MECE thinking, trying to cover everything before reaching a solution. While that is important to make sure we don’t miss out on any point, on the day of interview it’s different with just 15-20 mins per interview. Try practising in such time frame closer the case within least time possible.
Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow