numerical reasoning tests and why they help in consulting case interviews

We've often mentioned that practicing our numerical reasoning questions will help in consulting case interviews. If you have no interest in strategy / management consulting then don't bother reading this - but if you are, and you're yet to take case interviews, then you might want to read this.

A case interviews is a beast in it's own right - there is plenty of literature on the web on how to prepare - or you could just head over to one of the consulting company websites - McKinsey, BCG, Bain for example case studies. Case interviews are often an interesting mix of strategic/operational theory (should this company enter a new market? Tell me why this company's profit is declining..) combined with numerical skill assessment. Unlike standard numerical reasoning tests, case interviews will spring numbers at you in different ways. We can tell you by first-hand experience that consulting jobs will also need you to be comfortable with lots of quantitative analysis by way of tables and a wide variety of graphs.

Let's take for example a case where a company is trying to enter a new market. In the middle of the interview, the interviewer may pull out a bunch of sheets with  whole lot of graphs and ask you to interpret them. Otherwise you may be a given a table with a bunch of numbers (say competitors relative market share and segments they operate in) and you will need to absorb those numbers quickly and form an analysis. That kind of quickness requires you to be strong in numerical reasoning.

Then there are what is called as "market sizing" - a simple example is "how many golf carts are sold in the US every year?" These questions will often break down to a series of filters and multiplications, and the point of the question is to both test your logic and comfort with numbers - multiplication, division, rounding up, dealing with lots of zeros and so on.

Both these questions require comfort with quantitative analysis - you have little time, you are under pressure, and in most cases you will be rejected if you are clearly poor at dealing with numbers. For that reason, if you are poor with numerical reasoning, you should focus on getting good practice. Numericalguru is just one of those avenues.