Mock Case Interview Preparation as a Side Hustle
Have you tried interviewing your friends in the case interview format? How about getting paid for it?
The problem
When applying for a consulting job, consulting firms always give you a case to solve.
It is a business case that has to be approached seriously and one cannot just ‘wing it’.
Even with the vast preparation materials available, there is no better way to prepare for the case interview than to practice with a real person.
Unfortunately, experienced interviewing buddies are hard to find.
The solution
What if there was someone who would be available to play the role of the interviewer in a mock case interview? People would surely pay a good amount to improve their chances to get that consulting job, right?
You could be that person!
Target customer
People preparing for the case interview are your target customers. Generally, these would-be university students – Bachelor, Master, and especially MBA students.
I believe MBA students would be the perfect client for you as they are well-off (as MBAs are rather expensive). Moreover, about 1/3 of the MBA students are trying to get into consulting, so they will be interested in what you are selling.
How to start this as a side hustle
The first prerequisite to being successful is to know your case interview and be good at examining, guiding, or confronting the interviewee.
You simply need to prepare several scenarios (e.g. two to three cases) and you can interview (and charge) a person two to three times. Obviously, you can’t repeat the same case. But you don’t need to prepare 50 cases. Nobody is going to come to you 50 times in a row.
It is important to understand that you don’t need to be a good actor or anything like that. You could be very good at grilling the other person and that would be sufficient to help them with developing coping mechanisms against… grilling at the case interview, thus helping them.
You will need an online platform where you can do this.
You’ll definitely require a place to have a video and charge for your services. You could also benefit from a website to be able to showcase your services. There is more than one solution to that, but I’d recommend you use 3veta , as it is the go-to solution for meeting clients online.
Extra thoughts
Once you have your own website (built with 3veta, of course) you should start marketing yourself. The best place to start is from your friends and friends of friends. Post your newly created website on social media and see if that brings any interest.
Find case interview groups on the internet, and these could be Facebook groups, LinkedIn groups, subreddits. This is universally applicable, but may well be a start. Group topics that could be of interest are: university student groups – especially MBA groups; and certainly anything related to consulting or even better – case interview preparation.
Try offering a ‘free mini case interview’ with someone to show them your skills and prove to them why they should pay you.
Convince a buddy to do a free mini case interview with you. Record it as a video and automate the process from the previous point. It is less personal but definitely more scalable.
Don’t do ads. It will not be worth it.
Do you think this is a good idea?
I’m sure I’m missing something, so do let me know in the comments 😊
Need help starting with this idea? Feel free to reach out to me on LinkedIn or directly on my email: iliya@3veta.com.
Looking to start a side-hustle but that’s not right for you? You can find a whole list of similar side hustle ideas here.
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Don’t do ads, not worth it 😂 - share more please!