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Sample Interview Questions: Consulting
Question: Our client, ABC Airlines, is losing
to consider a country or region of America
money. Why?
where the cost of labor is lower.
Answer: Remember to consider the firm’s
actions as well as external market forces such as
Question: Your client is a major airline that
the competitive environment. Questions include
wants to reduce the amount of money it
asking whether other airlines are losing money,
spends per passenger on food service,
or suffering drops in profits. If so, why? Causes
ticketing, and baggage handling. What would
might range from a rise in the cost of fuel, to the
you advise?
need to replace most of ABC’s fleet due to
Answer: Benchmarking is one good starting
stringent new government regulations, to a
point for this type of case. You would certainly
general slump in the economy that reduces the
want to know (or at least be able to estimate)
number of tourists and causes business
how much other airlines spend on each
customers to tighten their belts.
passenger for food service, ticketing, and
baggage handling. Are your client’s costs in each
Question: Your client is trying to decide
of these areas high or low for the industry?
whether or not to invest in a helicopter
company. You have been asked to assess the
You would also want to examine “best practices”:
long--term attractiveness of the helicopter
which airlines have the lowest costs in each of
market.
the three areas of food service, ticketing, and
Answer: Since this case is primarily asking for
baggage handling? What are they doing right,
an industry analysis (is this an attractive
and how can we emulate it?
industry?), Porter’s Five Forces is one
framework useful in formulating your
For a more in--depth approach, check out the Vault
recommendation
Guide to Case Interviews
Question: You are head of a large American
corporation. Your company must build a new
paper plant. You must decide which country
to build the plant in. What factors would you
consider?
Answer: Analyze your supply chain. Where do
you incur your costs? If your paper
plant is highly automated, it might make more
sense to build it in America or another
developed country where you have access to
skilled labor. If, on the other hand, your paper
plant requires thousands of employees, you may
want
