Fixing Mistakes After Your Case Interview Ends

1) Fixing Mistakes After Your Case Interview Ends

2) How to Handle Multiple Job Offers

3) What "Soft" Factors do Interviewers Notice

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1) Fixing Mistakes After Your Case Interview Ends

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Here's a question that may be on a lot of people's minds but which I haven't seen addressed on your site or in the daily

e-mails:

If you recognize a flaw or a gap in your approach or framework JUST AFTER the case interview is over, is there any value in addressing this in your subsequent thank you note to the interviewer?

For example, as I was doing the post-mortem in my head, I realized I had neglected to ask a pretty important question in an M&A case, so I was tempted to acknowledge this omission in my thank you note while explaining why it should have been addressed.

The hope would be to positively influence the interviewer's impression of my performance before he compares notes with his colleagues.

Certainly there would be no expectation of "full credit" for fixing what you should have gotten right the first time, but at the same time it's hard to imagine this would hurt.

--- My Reply ---

Would this hurt? Probably not.

Will it help, it won't.

Most interviewers are doing back-to-back interviews all day long. Once they are done and once the information is fresh in their heads, they usually meet as a group, compare notes and make decisions.

So the firm's decision to continue with you or not is generally made before anyone has had time to check their emails.

In some cases, even if the candidate realized their error before the end of the case and addressed it, often this does NOT alter the decision.

Here's why.

TIMING.

There are certain aspects of a good case interview performance that need to occur at the right TIME. Part of doing it the "right" way, is to do the right THINGS at the right TIME.

You mix the batter for the cake, THEN you bake the cake. If you bake the cake pan, bake the contents of the pan, and then you realize you forgot to mix all the ingredients in the cake pan, it is too late.

You can't just mix that ingredients now because all you have is a big mess.

The