When interviewing with McKinsey, Boston Consulting Group (BCG), or Bain & Company, many candidates struggle BIG TIME with analyzing tables and charts/graphs. They have trouble with prioritizing when there is a lot of information, and they have a hard time to come up with non-obvious insights.

The first thing you should do when presented with a table or chart is to take time to properly scan the information provided. In fact, you should ideally have a “standard phrase” such as

…which steps we need to take to determine X” (if the interviewer has asked you a concrete question like “How to derive XYZ from this data?”)

…how we should proceed” (if the interviewer just gave you the chart but asked for no concrete analysis)

This is a very frequent Achilles’ heel with candidates! It is a pretty widespread problem that candidates tend to put themselves under time pressure and start talking before even having properly looked at the chart! The consequence is that you are not crisp in your messages, you’re just “wobbling around”, starting sentences without knowing how you will actually end them, etc. This leaves a very bad impression!

Interviewers at MBB actually TEST for whether you have the maturity to take the space that you need in order to conduct a proper analysis! 

Just understand it from the interviewer’s perspective: as a project manager, the last thing I want to have on my team is a young colleague who tends to talk before thinking! This would represent an enormous risk in client interactions and can undermine credibility of the whole team, or even the whole firm!

What leaves a much better impression is to confidently announce that you will need a moment to

Another reason for taking time is that it allows you to verify/clarify your understanding of the information given. Very often, e.g., unit abbreviations are not entirely clear (or even lacking!). Taking a moment after receiving the chart will allow you to scan these elements and clarify their meaning with the interviewer – before you start discussing observations and insights!

This is tightly related to the previous point of taking adequate time. Oftentimes, candidates do not pay attention to what is actually shown on a chart, hence they are not properly grasping the parameters and what they actually describe! A couple of habits are important when reading a data table or chart. 

The key messages (the ones that are relevant for the client’s question) within data and charts are usually found amongst the following:

Let’s look at each of these points.

Ususally a simple comparison of values (comparing one number or group of numbers to the others - often a bar or a line chart), e.g.,

Here, a key observation could be: 

Here, a key observation could be: 

Here, a key observation could be: 

Here, a key observation could be: 

Remember our example about the two scenarios - Outsourcing vs. In-House production. At the surface, we saw that outsourced production is significantly cheaper:

However, if we do the breakdown and split the production cost into the different sub-segments, then we might see something like this:

For Outsourcing, the decrease in total production cost is mainly driven by decreases in labor cost and material cost. However, these decreases are partly offset by significant increases in logistics costs which occur if we decide to outsource. 

And such shifts remain completely hidden if we only look at global average numbers! This is why breakdowns oftentimes lead to very important observations.

Now let's assume we receive the following chart:

A poor way of dealing with this chart would be to only concentrate on observations. E.g., looking at this chart and saying:

This is NOT an insight! This is just an observation - but it is NOT contextualized! It is essentially just reading out what you see here. But it is not relating it back to the case context and to what the client has asked.

So what do we mean with "contextualizing the chart"?

We know already that the client's goal is a return on investment of at least 50%. And we know that the acquisition price is 500m EUR. So we can infer that the goal (50% RoI) will be achieved if the client could re-sell the target company for at least 750m EUR. 

So if we link this now to the information on the chart, we may realize the following:

We see that 750m EUR company value would be achieved if the target company is brought to an annual EBIT of more than 125m EUR. So if the client is confident that they can bring the target company to this EBIT level of 125m EUR per year, this deal would make financial sense for the client!

THIS is an insight! Because it relates clearly to what the client has asked, and what we need to find out in order to answer the client question!

Insights and findings should always be communicated in a top-down way! When analyzing a chart, this means:

Let’s look a bit closer at the first two points: communicate insights, and then give the reasons. This is what is widely referred to as “The Pyramid Principle”. Here is a depiction. 

We just discussed the difference between observations and insights - observations usually SUPPORT the central insight of a chart. And these observations in turn are rooted in the actual data and information that can be found on the chart you have been handed.

If you, as an applicant at one of the big strategy consulting firms, would like to learn how you can can build this skill of interpreting charts and data in an absolutely superior way, then feel free to apply for a free initial consultation with us. In this free session we will find out whether we can help you, and if so, how we can help you to reach your goal of joining a firm like McKinsey, BCG, or Bain & Company. 

Within the last years, we have helped more than 350 people to receive job offers from the three MBB companies! On average, every single week, two of our clients are signing an employment contract with either McKinsey, BCG, or Bain.