Shadowing Practice: Learn Operations Case Interviews in 13 Minutes - Learn English Speaking with Video
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To land a consulting offer, you'll need to nail every single one of your case interviews.
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Operations case interviews are a very common type of case interview.
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You should expect to see at least one operations case interview in your upcoming consulting interviews,
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especially if you are interviewing at firms that have a strong operations practice.
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If you're unfamiliar with operations case interviews and don't know exactly how to solve them, don't worry because we have you covered.
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I'm a former Bain manager and interviewer, and in this video, I'll walk you through step -by -step exactly how to solve the four major types of operations case interviews.
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These are production optimization case interviews, process improvement case interviews, cost -cutting case interviews,
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and forecasting and capacity planning case interviews.
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Let's start with the first type: product optimization case interviews.
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Production optimization cases will have you determine how to increase the output or production of a factory or power plant.
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For example, ExxonMobil is looking to expand its oil and natural gas production by 50 % over the next five years.
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What is the best way to achieve this production increase?
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To solve these cases, there are two formulas you should know.
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output equals rate times time, and utilization equals output divided by maximum output.
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There are five major steps to solve a product optimization case.
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The first step is to identify and quantify the client's goals.
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Are they trying to increase production?
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Are they trying to improve efficiency?
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Try to quantify an exact number or metric that the client is aiming for.
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This will help you determine if the recommendations that you develop later are sufficient to meet your client's needs.
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Step 2 consider ways to increase the rate of production.
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There are a few different ways to do this.
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You can upgrade or improve existing equipment or machinery.
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You can remove factors that slow down existing equipment or machinery.
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You can use new technologies or you can use new production processes.
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Systematically consider each of these ideas before moving on to the next step.
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And step 3, consider ways to increase utilization.
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The second way to increase production is to increase utilization.
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Check if the machines or equipment are being used to their maximum potential.
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Are they being managed and operated every working hour?
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Are there bottlenecks that are preventing equipment or machines from being run on time?
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Moving on to step 4, consider ways to add capacity.
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The third way to increase production is to add capacity.
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Consider scaling your operations by purchasing more equipment or machinery.
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In general, you should only add capacity if you have already optimized the rate of production and utilization.
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You might not need to add more capacity to meet your production goals
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if you can improve the processes and equipment you already have.
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And finally, step five, quantify the change in production.
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Once you have gone down the three different ways to increase production, you should have a list of actions you would suggest.
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Quantify the impact of these suggestions.
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By how much will production increase?
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By how much will efficiency improve?
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The final step is to check whether your recommendations meet the goals or needs of the client.
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If they do, you are ready to deliver your case recommendation.
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State your recommendation and provide two to three reasons that support it.
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Afterwards, propose a few areas you would want to look into next if you had more time to work on the case.
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Before we move on to the next type of operations case review, please take a second to give this video a like
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and subscribe to our channel so that you don't miss any of our consulting interview content.
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You'll not only get good karma for your upcoming interviews, but you'll also be helping support our small YouTube channel.
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The second type of operations case interview are process improvement cases.
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Process improvement cases ask you to identify opportunities to improve a particular process.
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they assess your ability to break down a complex process to identify and prioritize opportunities for improvement.
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For example, Amazon is looking to improve the process in which it receives, handles, and ships customer online orders.
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How can they improve this process?
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There are four main steps to solving these cases.
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The first step is to identify the most important performance metrics.
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For the first step, decide or clarify with the interviewer what the performance metric of success is.
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Improving a process can mean many things, such as increasing throughput, quality, or efficiency.
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Step 2: Decompose the process into separate distinct components
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The second step is to break down the overall process into separate distinct components.
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you will have to use your judgment and discretion to decide the best way to decompose the process.
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A helpful way to think about components is to think about inputs and outputs.
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Each component has something that it is given, which is the input.
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From this, an action is performed to convert this to something else, which is the output.
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Step 3: Assess the people, process, and technology for each component.
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The third step is to assess the people, process, and technology for each component.
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This is known as the PPT framework.
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Do you have enough people in place?
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Do people have the right backgrounds and experiences?
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Are people properly trained and prepared?
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Are people being managed and motivated properly?
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Are the right series of steps being performed?
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Should certain steps be added?
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Should others be removed? And technology.
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Is technology being used?
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Are the right technologies being used effectively?
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Moving on to step 4: Prioritize and recommend the most important improvements.
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For the fourth and final step, you will prioritize the most important improvements.
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Which improvements best improve the performance metric of success?
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You may need to score
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and rank each of the opportunities you have identified to prioritize your ideas in a quantitative and defensible way.
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You can assess each improvement opportunity on the impact, ease of implementation, and cost.
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Once you have selected your top ideas, deliver a clear and concise recommendation.
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State your recommendation and provide two to three reasons that support it.
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Propose a few next steps that you would look into if you had more time.
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Moving on to the third type of operations case interview, which are cost cutting cases.
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Cost -cutting cases ask you to help a client meet its budget goals by identifying opportunities to reduce costs or save money.
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For example, Airbnb is looking to cut costs in order to increase profitability.
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In which areas should they cut costs and by how much?
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There are five steps to solving any cost -cutting case.
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The first step is to quantify the client's goals.
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Are they looking to reduce costs by a million?
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10 million or 100 million?
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This will help you track your progress throughout the case and help you prioritize which ideas to pursue.
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Step 2: Break down costs into its components.
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The next step is to break down costs into its respective components.
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Exactly how these costs are broken down will vary by case.
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For example, costs could be broken down into fixed costs and variable costs, but they could also be broken down by geography, process, product, or function.
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Ask the interviewer for the breakdown of costs
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that makes the most sense given the nature of the client's business and operating model.
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Step 3: Identify the business critical expenses
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These are expenses that need to be paid or else the company cannot exist or operate.
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You should not cut costs from business critical expenses, so this step will help you narrow down where to focus your attention on.
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Step 4: Start looking at discretionary spending from largest to smallest.
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After removing the business critical expenses from consideration, the remaining costs are discretionary spending.
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This type of spending is not necessary to keep the company afloat but helps to improve or grow the company.
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These are the costs that you will focus on cutting because the company can still function and operate afterwards.
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Start with the largest amount of discretionary spending and move downwards to the smaller amounts.
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For each cost element, consider what benefits they provide to the company
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and how these benefits compare to other benefits that other discretionary spending provides.
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And finally, step five prioritize cost -cutting opportunities, and provide a recommendation.
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Once you have systematically assessed all of the different discretionary spending elements that you could potentially reduce spending on, it is time to prioritize what to keep and what to cut.
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Once you have narrowed down a few recommendations, check whether these changes will help the client meet their goals.
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If they do, provide your final recommendations for the case.
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Provide two to three reasons that support your recommendation and propose next steps you would look into if you had more time.
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We'll move on to the fourth and final type of operations case interview.
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These are forecasting and capacity planning cases.
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Forecasting or capacity planning cases will have you help a company determine how much product to produce
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or how much inventory they should hold.
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For example, Apple is planning to launch its new and latest version of its iPhone.
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How many iPhones should they produce this year?
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There are four steps to solving any forecasting or capacity planning case.
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The first step is to identify the client's goals.
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Are they trying to maximize profit, revenues, market share, customer satisfaction, or something else?
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The specific goal
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that the client has will heavily influence how you should think about determining the optimal level of production or inventory.
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Step 2: Estimate customer demand.
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The next step is to estimate customer demand for the product.
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There are many ways that you can do this.
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You can use company historical data to predict upcoming demand, You can look at demand curves of similar products.
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You can assess market and competitor trends.
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Or you could look at customer survey data on purchasing habits and spending.
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your interviewer will likely have information in one of these areas.
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Use this data to predict what the expected customer demand will be.
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Step 3: Understand Underage and Overage Costs.
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Next, you need to know the underage and overage costs that relate to carrying or producing too little or too much product.
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Companies make trade -offs between carrying too much inventory and carrying too little.
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The primary advantage of carrying too much inventory is that the company can meet customer demand if it is higher than expected.
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However, there are several disadvantages to this.
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If customer demand is lower than expected, the company will be holding onto inventory that it cannot sell.
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This is costly because unsold products take up space in warehouses.
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These costs are known as storage costs.
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Additionally, as time goes on, the company's inventory may begin becoming obsolete.
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New products and technologies may make the company's leftover products no longer desirable.
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As a result, companies may need to sell leftover products at a steep discount to clear their inventory.
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The primary advantage of carrying too little inventory is that the company will not have leftover products.
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the company can ensure that none of the products they sell will need to be discounted and sold at a loss.
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However, there are several disadvantages to this as well.
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If demand is higher than expected, not all customers will be able to purchase the company's product.
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These are loft sales for the company.
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Additionally, this can lead to a poor customer experience and unhappy customers.
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Some customers may even decide to purchase a similar product from a competitor.
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By having insufficient inventory, companies allow competitors to take customers and market share away from them.
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Knowing how much overage and underage costs are will inform you whether to produce
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or carry more or less product than the expected customer demand.
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And finally, step four: determine the optimal production or inventory level.
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Now that you understand customer demand, overage costs, and underage costs, you can make a well -informed decision on how much product to produce or carry an inventory.
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You may need to set up an equation to calculate the optimal production or inventory level that maximizes profit, revenue, or whatever goal the client has.
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Once you have determined the optimal number or range, deliver your final recommendation for the case.
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Provide two to three reasons that support your answer, and propose potential next steps you would look into if you had more time.
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You now have all the tools you need to solve any operations case interview.
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If you're looking for a step -by -step shortcut to learn case interviews quickly, check out our comprehensive case interview course and books.
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Links are in the video description below.
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we teach the most robust, effective case interview strategies in the least time consuming way to save you hundreds of hours of prep time
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and help you land multiple consulting job offers.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This C1 speaking lesson is built on the video “Learn Operations Case Interviews in 13 Minutes”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: step, cost, interview, production, product. This video has 165 sentences and 2142 words to shadow. The speech runs for 12:58. The speaker talks at a natural 165 words per minute, close to everyday conversation. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| recommendation noun | /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/ | An act of recommending. |
| prioritize verb | /pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/ | To value, do, or choose something first, or before other things. |
| assess verb | /əˈsɛs/ | To determine, estimate or judge the value of; to evaluate; to estimate. |
| discretionary adjective | /dɪsˈkɹɛʃəˌnɛɹi/ | Available at one's discretion; able to be used as one chooses; left to or regulated by one's own discretion or judgment. |
| quantify verb | /ˈkwɑn.tɪˌfaɪ/ | To assign a quantity to. |
| overage noun | /ˈəʊvəɹɪd͡ʒ/ | A surplus of inventory or capacity or of cash that is greater than the amount in the record of an account. |
| underage adjective | /ˌʌndəɹˈeɪd͡ʒ/ | Not yet a legal adult; still a minor. |
| utilization noun | US, Canada, and Oxford British English standard spelling of utilisation. | |
| interviewer noun | /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/ | One who interviews. |
| optimization noun | /ˌɑptəmaɪˈzeɪʃən/ | The design and operation of a system or process to make it as good as possible in some defined sense. |
| consult verb | /ˈkɑnsʌlt/ | To seek the opinion or advice of another; to take counsel; to deliberate together; to confer; to advise. |
| metric adjective | /ˈmɛt.ɹɪk/ | Of or relating to the metric system of measurement. |
| optimal adjective | /ˈɑptɪməl/ | The best, most favourable or desirable, especially under some restriction. |
| propose verb | /pɹəˈpəʊz/ | To suggest a plan, course of action, etc. |
| forecast noun | /ˈfɔːkɑːst/ | An estimation of a future condition. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| break down verb | To stop functioning. | |
| check out verb | To record the departure or withdrawal of someone or something (such as guests, employees, books, etc.). | |
| go down verb | To descend; to move from a higher place to a lower one. | |
| set up verb | /ˌsɛt ˈʌp/ | To make ready for use. |
| slow down verb | To decelerate. | |
| take up verb | To pick up. |
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being managed · being run · is given |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | have already optimized · have gone · have identified |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | given, which is · else, which is · interview, which are |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 11 contractions and reduced forms, such as don't, you'll, you're. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, discretionary /dɪsˈkɹɛʃəˌnɛɹi/, optimization /ˌɑptəmaɪˈzeɪʃən/, machinery /məˈʃiːnəɹi/, preposition /ˌpɹɛpəˈzɪʃən/
- Long words — get the stress right: recommendation /ˌɹɛkəmɛnˈdeɪʃən/, prioritize /pɹaɪˈɒɹ.ə.taɪz/, discretionary /dɪsˈkɹɛʃəˌnɛɹi/, optimization /ˌɑptəmaɪˈzeɪʃən/, competitor /kəmˈpɛt.ɪ.tɚ/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like recommendation, prioritize, assess.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.