Interviewing is an essential part of the job search process for most professionals in the marketing industry. Case interviews are a common interview strategy that recruiters use to assess a candidates ability to apply their skills in real-world business scenarios. Learning about what case interviews are and how to prepare for them can help you feel confident in your next marketing job interview. In this article, we describe what a marketing case interview is, outline some considerations for how to answer case interview questions and discuss some common case questions with example answers.
Learn Case Interviews in Under 30 minutes
2. One of our company’s products hasn’t been successful. If we tasked you with creating a new branding campaign for this product, what would your process be?
An interviewer might ask this question to evaluate your rebranding experience and to understand your perspective on challenging situations. When answering this question, you might focus on turning a difficult situation into a positive opportunity for growth or finding a creative solution to change the publics perspective toward your brand or product. Your answer to this question can demonstrate a positive attitude toward handling challenging situations and your ability to find creative solutions to marketing problems.
Example: “In my previous company, I had to rebrand a faulty product that had attracted a lot of negative customer reviews. We recalled the product and took the customer reviews into account as we redesigned the product and developed additional features. As part of our re-launch strategy, we addressed the previous concerns and focused on communicating our improvements to the new version of the product. The campaign succeeded and our sales increased, restoring customer confidence in our brand and promoting our reputation as a brand that accepts feedback and makes a genuine effort to improve our products.”
What should I know about McKinsey Case Interviews?
At McKinsey, case interviews often follow the interviewer-led format, where the interviewer asks you multiple questions for you to answer with short pitches.
How do you nail these cases? Since the questions can be grouped into predictable types, an efficient approach is to master each question type. However, do that after you’ve mastered the case interview fundamentals!
For a detailed guide on interviewer-led cases, check out our article on McKinsey Case Interview.
What is a marketing case interview?
A marketing case interview is a specialized type of job interview in which the candidate answers questions about what they would do in specific business scenarios. The interviewer may present a real-life marketing situation and ask the candidate how they would handle it and why. This style of interview question requires the candidate to show their skills by applying them to a realistic case. By asking these questions, an interviewer can gauge the candidates ability to solve problems, think strategically and communicate their plan and reasoning to an audience.
The three types of case-based interview questions are:
