Intuition
A case interview is a business problem with the answer deliberately removed. The interviewer hands you a messy situation ("a regional airline is losing money, why?") and watches how you think your way toward an answer rather than whether you already know one.
Think of it like a cooking test where they hand you a fridge full of random ingredients. They are not checking whether you memorized a recipe. They want to see whether you can look at what you have, decide on a dish, and cook it without panicking.
Framework
Every case is really testing four things at once:
- Structure — can you break a vague problem into clean, logical pieces?
- Analysis — can you do the math and read the data without errors?
- Judgment — do your conclusions actually make business sense?
- Communication — can the interviewer follow your logic the whole way?
A weak candidate jumps to answers. A strong candidate makes their thinking visible at every step.
Worked Example
"Should a coffee chain add delivery?" A weak start: "Yes, delivery is growing." A strong start: "Let me structure this around three things — the size of the delivery opportunity, whether our economics work once we add delivery fees and commissions, and how it affects our existing in-store experience. Can I start with the economics?"
Same question. The second answer already sounds like someone you'd trust in a client meeting.
Pitfalls
- Reciting a framework name instead of adapting to the actual question.
- Going silent to do math — the interviewer can't follow you.
- Answering before you've structured the problem.