Bain & Company interview questions

I networked with a couple of people at Bain and got the interview through an employee referral. Since I applied through my school, however, I interviewed at the same time as many other candidates in my school, so I did not participate in the off-cycle hiring process, which is supposedly harder. When I arrived in the office, I received a folder with the backgrounds of the consultants that would interview me. It's important to read through them as you'll know who you'd be approaching. Also, both my interviewers gave me cases that they had worked on. The first round consisted of two 30-min one-on-one case interviews in the office. We started with a few typical fit questions like "Why Bain, why consulting, tell me about this experience on your resume, why make the transition from your background (life sciences) to consulting, etc." Then we moved on to the case. The first one was about non-profit work that the consultant had done and would not fit any frameworks. It started with an estimation question and was followed by some qualitative questions. I think I did hit on all important points and built a great rapport with the interviewer, who was a young AC and pretty cool. The second interview was with a more senior consultant and started with similar fit questions. He asked me about my office choices. Then we worked on a case study about a pet food supplier in which the consultant had been involved. It fit a profitability framework and I did not have much trouble finding the problem driving down revenues and profits. I did struggle with the last part of the case which was proposing a solution to the client. Since the consultant had actually worked on that project there was one specific solution he was looking for and it took me some time and some hints from him to get to it. I interviewed today and haven't heard back yet obviously, but I'm not sure if I'll be invited to a second round given my hesitancy with the second case. I would bet that they're looking at outstanding performances as that the cases were not unusually hard. I hope that they account for the fact that the solution to the second case was not obvious after analysis and it was a bit more about guessing. Let's see. Overall I had a great experience and a good impression about the company and the people working there. They were all very professional and friendly. I even got the opportunity to have a mock interview in the office the day before the actual interview without even asking for it.

Initially I submitted online, and through the school. They emailed to notify us of first round interviews. The interviews consisted of 2 case interviews with 2 different people. Each case interview was fairly straightforward seeming, but it was important to look at the big picture, what the numbers mean. It was important not to get flustered when the interviewer pointed out mistakes or missed aspects.