Spotlight for Career Services Professionals

When it comes to helping students land their dream jobs, employers and career services offices should form a partnership, with each bringing their expertise to the effort. One area that employers can help career services is with preparing students for case interviews.

“In general, career services professionals are excellent at prepping students for interviews,” says Ryan Robinson, senior campus recruiter with Capital One. “As employers’ selection processes continue to evolve, we want to help career services stay current. We think that case interviewing will continue to increase in popularity, and employers need career services to help students get ready for this type of interview.”

Case interviews, he explains, are radically different from traditional interviews, which seek to understand candidates’ past experiences and how these candidates performed in different situations.

“The purpose [of behavioral interviews] is to gauge how their past performance would translate into future performance in the available role,” Robinson says. “With case interviews, candidates are not asked to draw on past experiences; rather, they are presented with a business scenario and are asked to consider different variables that could impact recommendations. Calculations are often required, and candidates will draw conclusions based on the limited data that is available.”

Adds Kelsey Indorf, campus recruiting manager for Capital One: “The purpose is to gauge candidates’ comfort with data, with incorporating new info, with drawing reasonable conclusions, and with making sound business recommendations.”

Robinson and Indorf recommend that career services practitioners position themselves to help their students with case interviews by:

• Making sure that they, themselves, are comfortable with case interviewing so that they can help students get ready.
• Talking to priority employers about their selection process. If it includes case interviews, ask for more info about the type of case, prep materials that could be shared, what makes a student successful, and more.
• Offering mock case interviews and enlisting the help of employers that conduct case interviews to serve as the interviewers, and provide insight and feedback.
• Investing in industry-recognized case prep materials, such as books or practice guides, so that students are well-versed in casing.
• Talking to students about and preparing them for case interviews as early in their academic careers as possible.

“Students who are comfortable with the format are best able to demonstrate their skills when it’s time to engage with an interviewer,” Indorf notes. “For students, familiarity and practice with case interviews can be the key to landing their dream job.”

Ryan Robinson and Kelsey Indorf will discuss case interviews during their presentation titled “Helping Students Land Their Dream Jobs” at the 2018 NACE Conference & Expo.