Case interviews, frameworks, recruiting
— done seriously.
Long-form articles for candidates who want more than a framework cheat sheet. Written and reviewed by former MBB consultants. New posts roughly weekly.
Case Frameworks
5 postsProfitability, market entry, M&A, pricing, and the structural moves that separate average performers from offer-getters.
How to Get Three Hours Deep on an Industry Before Your Case Interview
You do not need to be an expert in a sector to handle a case in it. You do need to know its cost structure, its competitive shape, and the three or four numbers that anchor any conversation. Here is the three-hour version.
Anatomy of a Profitability Case: A Full Walkthrough
Reading about frameworks is one thing. Watching a partner-level candidate work a case from prompt to recommendation is another. A complete walkthrough of a coffee chain margin decline — including the moves an interviewer would actually grade.
M&A Cases: A 4-Lever Framework That Actually Works
Most M&A case structures collapse into 'is the target attractive?' That is two-thirds of the answer. The remaining third — what wins offers — is in the integration math.
Math & Estimation
3 postsMental math drills, market sizing patterns, and the recovery techniques top candidates use when a number goes sideways.
Case Math Drills: 12 Worked Examples to Build Fluency
Drill articles only work if you actually do them. Twelve case-math problems with worked solutions across the patterns that show up most: percentage shifts, big-number scaling, profitability math, and 90-second market sizing.
Market Sizing: From Top-Down to Bottom-Up in 90 Seconds
Most candidates pick top-down or bottom-up and commit. The strong move is to know when each one is structurally right — and to triangulate when neither is.
Mental Math for Consulting: 12 Shortcuts You Can't Afford to Miss
Most candidates lose math points not because the arithmetic is hard, but because they are doing it the slow way. Twelve shortcuts that compound across an hour of casing.
Firm Insights
8 postsHow MBB, Big 4, and tier-2 firms actually run their interviews — and what each one is really screening for.
McKinsey Solve in 2026: Red Rock, Sustainable Future Lab, and What Actually Improves Your Score
McKinsey's digital assessment got a third module in late 2025. The good news: the underlying skills haven't changed. The bad news: most of the prep advice on the internet hasn't caught up.
Consulting Compensation in 2026: MBB, Tier-2, Big 4, and Boutique
Entry-level pay is flatter than it has been in a decade. The MBB premium is intact but the gap to tier-2 has narrowed at the top of the band, and Big 4 advisory has quietly closed a lot of ground at the post-MBA level.
Big 4 vs MBB Case Interviews: Where the Bar Actually Differs
Deloitte, PwC, EY-Parthenon, and KPMG run case interviews that look similar to MBB on the surface and are scored against materially different rubrics underneath. Here's where the gap lives.
Behavioral & PEI
3 postsPersonal Experience Interview, Why-Consulting?, leadership stories, and the soft side that gets candidates dinged silently.
After the Rejection: A Pragmatic Playbook
An MBB rejection email is not a verdict on you. It is a single data point under heavy noise. What to actually do in the 72 hours after — and how to give yourself the best shot at the next round of firms or the next cycle.
Why 'Why Consulting?' Is Where Most Candidates Lose the Offer
Three sentences in, the interviewer can already tell whether your 'Why Consulting?' answer is real or recycled. A look at what an interview-winning answer sounds like — and the four templates that quietly kill candidacies.
The 3 PEI Story Buckets (and Which You're Probably Missing)
McKinsey's Personal Experience Interview tests three things, not one. Most candidates have a strong leadership story, a weaker entrepreneurial story, and no personal-impact story at all.
Recruiting Strategy
7 postsNetworking, OCI, MBA timelines, lateral moves, and how to position yourself when you don't go to a target school.
The Consulting Cover Letter That Actually Gets Read
Most consulting cover letters are skim-read in under 20 seconds by a screener who has read a hundred this week. The ones that move past that filter are not the longest or the most polished. They are the most specific.
Networking for Consulting: 5 Cold-Outreach Patterns That Work
Cold outreach to consultants is mostly ignored — but with the right structure, response rates north of 30% are normal. Five templates and the structural rules that drive them.
International Consulting Recruiting: Europe, Asia, and the Reality of Cross-Border Moves
Each region runs its own recruiting clock with different language requirements, comp tiers, and cultural fit dimensions. A region-by-region breakdown for candidates considering offices outside the US.
Industry Trends
3 postsWhat's actually moving in healthcare, tech, financial services, and energy — and how it shows up in real cases.
The State of Consulting in 2026: AI Delivery, Flat Entry Pay, and What Candidates Should Care About
Six things are shifting at once inside the consulting industry. Most of them are being talked about loudly. A few are being talked about quietly. Candidates who only track the loud ones are missing the more important story.
What AI Case Interviewers Can — and Can't — Evaluate
Several AI case-prep tools have launched in 2026. Some are genuinely useful. Some are thin wrappers. The difference is what they can score honestly and what they have to hand-wave through.
AI in Consulting: How It's Changing the Cases You'll Face
AI prompts have started showing up in case interviews at MBB and tier-2 firms. Not as a gimmick — as a way to test whether candidates can reason about a topic the firms are betting their next decade on.
One short, useful email per week.
New case frameworks, mock interview tactics, and recruiting intel from the CaseGrade team. Built for serious candidates — no fluff, no upsell every paragraph.
Unsubscribe anytime. We never share your address.
Browse the full archive
29 articles, searchable by title. Or subscribe to the feed and skip the page entirely.