Are you currently interviewing? Have you been requested to present a case study for the next round of interviews? Here are a few tips from my prep for two case studies I had to present last year when I was interviewing for a new job.
1. In both cases, based on the company’s products and services, the job role I was interviewing for, and the discussions in the initial interviews, I had a good idea of a few probable case study topics. In the time between the initial and the second interviews, I researched these topics, read up related case studies, and ideated basic premises for each topic on my own.
2. Made sure that the case studies were applicable to the business requirements/problem areas discussed by the respective interviewer in the initial interview. This was not set as a requisite by either interview board, but I decided to do it and it paid off.
3. Kept both applicable analysis, and supporting theories and facts ready. That way, I could present the analysis/ plan on paper/ whiteboard while verbally supporting the same with theories and facts.
4. I also researched many presentations and infographics on the probable topics on slideshare. This was very helpful for me. When I was asked to present using the whiteboard, I borrowed from these images and presentation ideas and the final result was a professional looking diagram that looked organized and well analyzed.
5. Made very sure I was not giving away confidential information related to any of my past employers.
6. Made notes from my ideation sessions and reviewed them the day before the interviews.
7. Did not go beyond time- in fact finished a minute or two ahead.
If you have been requested to present a case study during a job interview, my personal feeling is that the interviewers are testing you on the following:
1. You impressed the interviewers in the first round. Now they want to test you further to see if you really are that good.
2. They want to test your reaction time to issues at hand- can you come up with a workable solution quickly, or do you crumble under time constraints?
3. They want to test if your knowledge of the required topics is mostly theoretical, or application/ experience based. This should be your call- emphasize whichever is more important in your case. In my field of work, both are equally important, so I demonstrated my experience of both in the case study.
4. The interviewer will typically bring in other team members for the case study interview. Use this opportunity to present your communication and team skills- they will judge you on it!
Beware of how much info you are willing to share, though. While I had a very bad experience with the first case study presentation (the interviewer said my presentation was amazing, kept my notes, and took photographs of my graphics, but I did not get the job), the second presentation went swimmingly and I got the job.
Best of luck and hope you have a wonderful case study presentation!
