Bain case interviews can seem intimidating. But over the years, we’ve come up with a simple, step-by-step way to get you from “What are Bain case interviews like?” to “I’m sure I can get a job at Bain.”
We’ve helped more than 30,000 people get ready for consulting interviews. This guide is a summary of the most important things you need to know to get ready for your Bain case interviews.
Interviewing at Bain & Company for a consultant role? You’ve come to the right place. Bain is one of the top strategy consulting firms in the world so the competition for jobs is fierce. With the right preparation though, you can stand out from the pack.
In this article, we’ll cover the most common Bain interview questions – from behavioral questions about your resume, to case questions, to brainteasers. We’ll provide sample answers and tips so you can craft your own polished responses. Read on to learn how to impress your Bain interviewers and land the job!
Overview of the Bain Interview Process
The main components of a typical Bain interview are
-
1-2 resume-focused interviews: 30 minutes each. You’ll be asked about your education, work experiences, extracurriculars, and career goals.
-
3-4 case interviews: 45-60 minutes each. You’ll receive business problems and analyze data to come up with solutions.
-
1-2 personal experience/fit interviews: 30-45 minutes each. More questions about your background, leadership style, and motivations.
-
Networking receptions: 1-2 informal mixers to interact with Bain employees.
This comprehensive process allows Bain to assess both your hard and soft skills. Cases test your problem-solving abilities, while the resume and personal interviews evaluate your communication style, leadership potential, and cultural fit.
Now let’s dive into the most likely questions for each interview round.
Resume Interview Questions
Bain consultants will ask probing questions about your education and work experiences. Be ready to provide detailed examples that highlight your impressive achievements.
Common resume interview questions include:
-
“Walk me through your resume”
-
“Tell me about your responsibilities at X job”
-
“What were some successes or failures at X job?”
-
“Why did you choose your major/university?”
-
“Why do you want to work at Bain?”
Discussing Your Relevant Experiences
When describing your work experiences, focus on:
-
Responsibilities – What projects did you handle? Avoid generalizations like “consulting” and give specific examples. Quantify your impact if possible.
-
Key skills – What did you learn? Emphasize abilities like problem-solving, leadership, analytics, communication.
-
Achievements – What results did you drive? Discuss initiatives you led and their measurable outcomes.
-
Low points – What didn’t go well and what did you learn? Demonstrate reflection and growth.
Example Response
Interviewer: “Tell me about your responsibilities as a Business Analyst intern at McKinsey.”
“As an intern, I worked on teams supporting 3 client projects across healthcare and retail. For example, with a large pharma client, our mandate was to boost R&D efficiency. I built an optimization model identifying $50M in cost savings from adjusting their resource allocation and project timelines. I also helped launch a pilot analytics dashboard to improve their clinical trial forecasting and capacity planning.
Beyond analytical problem-solving, I learned how to structure client presentations and facilitate executive workshops. Challenges included navigating team dynamics when working with more experienced consultants. This taught me to proactively communicate my assumptions and seek feedback.”
Tips
-
Quantify your achievements with numbers whenever possible. Put them in business context.
-
Use short, simple statements instead of long, complex sentences.
-
Structure your response using bullets for responsibilities, skills, achievements and low points.
Case Interview Questions
Case interviews are the most important and challenging part of the Bain process. You’ll be given a business scenario and asked to analyze the data, draw conclusions, and present recommendations – all within 30-45 minutes.
Cases test your:
-
Problem solving – Can you structure a logical approach?
-
Math skills – Can you crunch numbers efficiently?
-
Communication – Can you present your findings clearly?
-
Poise – Can you think on your feet?
While every case is unique, these are some frequent question types:
Market sizing – Estimate the size of a market
Example: “How big is the golf cart market in the US?”
Profitability – Identify factors influencing profit margins
Example: “A retailer is facing decreasing profits. What should they do?”
Market entry – Determine how to enter a new market or launch a new product
Example: “Our client is considering entering the India mobile phone market. Should they and how?”
Growth strategy – Develop a plan to grow revenue
Example: “A pharma company’s leading drug will go off-patent soon. How can they grow?”
Let’s walk through a sample case and response:
Sample Case
Interviewer: “Our client is a bicycle manufacturer interested in growing their business. How should they approach this?”
Steps to Solve
-
Clarify the objective – confirm we want to develop a growth strategy
-
Segment the market – start broad (e.g. by region, demographics) then narrow to product types, pricing, etc.
-
Analyze market size of each segment – which segments seem most promising?
-
Identify growth opportunities – new products, customers, geographies based on highest potential segments
-
Make recommendation – summarize best 1-2 opportunities with rationale
Sample Response
“Okay, the goal here is to develop a growth strategy for a bicycle manufacturer. To start, I’d want to break down the overall bicycle market by region, demographic groups, and product types like mountain, road, hybrid bikes. This will give a sense of market size and growth trends in each segment.
Next, I’d analyze the high-potential segments more deeply – for example assessing market share of big competitors in premium road bikes or e-bikes. I’d also look at distribution channels and pricing.
This analysis should reveal the best opportunities – perhaps expanding internationally into Asia, or developing a new electric commuter bike for urban millennials. I’d recommend the client pursue 1-2 opportunities that seem well-aligned to their capabilities and have sufficient market size. To size the market potential, we could look at analogous products or use a bottoms-up estimate.
Finally, I’d outline next steps to enter the new segment. This could involve product development, marketing, partnerships, and investment requirements. Does this approach make sense? What other factors should I consider?”
Tips
-
Ask clarifying questions before diving into analysis
-
Think out loud and structure your approach systematically
-
Use layman’s terms to explain your logic simply
-
Engage the interviewer to check your thinking
With practice cases and these strategies, you can master the case portion of the Bain interview process.
Personal Experience Interview Questions
The final round involves more behavioral inquiries around your personal background, work style, and motivations. Be candid and aim to connect with your interviewer.
Some common experience interview questions:
-
“Why do you want to be a consultant?”
-
“When have you led a successful team?”
-
“How do you handle conflict or disagreement?”
-
“What are your strengths and weaknesses?”
-
“Where do you see your career in 5 years?”
Highlighting Your Fit
Focus your responses on:
-
Your passion – Why consulting and Bain? What excites you?
-
Leadership skills – Share examples of teamwork, influence, communication.
-
Self-awareness – Discuss your working style, both positives and development areas.
-
Cultural alignment – What Bain values resonate with you? How will you contribute?
Example Response
Interviewer: “What would be the hardest part of coming to Bain for you?”
“The most significant adjustment in consulting is the fast-paced environment and high expectations to deliver results quickly, especially as a new hire. In my past roles, I’ve appreciated being given time to deeply analyze problems – consulting will force me to become more comfortable framing issues concisely and making dynamic decisions with imperfect information.
However, I’m excited by this challenge. I chose consulting because I want to rapidly build experience across industries and functions. Having mentors who can teach me to prioritize and synthesize data into compelling insights will be invaluable. While the learning curve will be steep early on, I’m ready to stretch beyond my comfort zone.”
Tips
-
Be honest about weaknesses but discuss how you plan to improve.
-
Demonstrate self-awareness by reflecting on your working style and development areas.
-
Emphasize your enthusiasm for consulting and cultural fit.
How to Prepare for Your Bain Interview
With rigorous preparation, you can tackle any question Bain throws your way. Here are some top tips:
Practice case interviews extensively – Work through at least 50-100 full-length cases. Many resources exist including case books, online videos, mock interviews. Mastering structure and math skills is crucial.
**Research
3 Tip #1: Make a hypothesis at the right time
One of the questions candidates often ask us when preparing for case interviews is: “Should I use a hypothesis? And if so, when should I use one?” Some coaches such as Victor Cheng from caseinterview.com use a hypothesis all the time. But doing this in practice can feel quite artificial during your case interviews.
It is possible to use a hypothesis to help you decide what kind of new drink Coca-Cola should release next year, but it doesn’t add much value. To begin, you could say something like, “I think Coca-Cola should come out with a new diet orange juice next year because people are becoming more health conscious.”
But, this would be nothing more than a wild guess at the beginning of a case. This is why a lot of candidates are uncomfortable using a hypothesis driven approach. A hypothesis is most often used by consultants when they are trying to figure out why something is going wrong.
For instance, when they are trying to understand why the profitability of a company has decreased. The root-cause could be many things: lower price, lower volume, higher variable costs, etc. In these situations, using a hypothesis is very helpful because it helps consultants stay focused and test all the possible sources in a methodical way until the real problem is found.
So, we suggest that you do the same thing in your cases and only use hypotheses in framework exploration questions where you want to find the cause of a problem.
1 Bain interview process
Bain uses up to four steps in its recruiting process:
- Resume and cover letter screening
- Bain maths tests (South America only)
- First round interviews
- Second round interviews
First, recruiters will look at your resume and assess if your experience matches the open position. This is the hardest part of the process; 90% of candidates don’t make it past this point.
If you want to make sure your resume and cover letter are perfect for the job you want, you can use these free guides.
You can also get feedback from our team of former MBA recruiters, who will tell you what achievements to highlight (or not highlight), how to improve your bullet points, and more.
Bain also uses maths tests to screen candidates BEFORE interviews in some countries. There are two Bain maths tests. The first one is a lot like the GMAT. It has 15 questions on critical thinking, data sufficiency, and problem-solving, and you have 25 minutes to finish them.
The second one has 15 questions and two business cases with text, graphs, and tables that you have 45 minutes to answer.
According to our information, these tests have only been used in South America so far. For instance, Bain Brazil seems to actively be using these tests at the moment (2018). But we havent seen them being used in North America, Europe or Asia yet.
Once you make it to the interview rounds, Bain will use three tools to assess your application:
First round interviews at Bain are typically carried out by junior consultants and managers. Finally, if you make it to the second round, you will be interviewed by partners of the firm. They will then make a decision about your application.
In both the first and second rounds of interviews, you will first be asked one or two fit/PEI questions, which will take about 10 minutes. After that, you will be asked case questions, which will take about 35 minutes. We will talk more about what to expect from Bain case interviews and fit/PEI questions below.
In some countries, like the US, UK, and Russia, Bain also uses written cases in its SECOND ROUND interviews. For written cases, your interviewer will give you a set of five slides that are already filled in. You have 90 minutes to analyze a 20-page business document and fill them in. Then you will have 30 minutes to show and talk about your 5 slides with an interviewer.
You can download a sample Bain written case here (top of the page). In addition, Bains written case interview advice can be found here.
Consulting Case Interview by Bain Associate Consultant
How many interview questions does Bain & Company have?
Glassdoor has millions of jobs plus salary information, company reviews, and interview questions from people on the inside making it easy to find a job that’s right for you. Bain & Company interview details: 2,957 interview questions and 2,819 interview reviews posted anonymously by Bain & Company interview candidates.
How does Bain & Company interview process work?
On Glassdoor, you can share insights and advice anonymously with Bain & Company employees and get real answers from people on the inside. I applied online. I interviewed at Bain & Company Appears to be 3 stages. Prerecorded interview, whereby you are required to answer 3 – 5 questions in a recorded manner, with 3 mins response per question.
What is the Bain & Company hiring process?
The Bain & Company hiring process typically begins with an initial CV analysis, followed by a series of assessment tests. Candidates who pass these stages will then undergo multiple rounds of interviews, which may include case studies, behavioral questions, and discussions with various team members.
What should I know before applying to Bain?
Before applying to Bain, you should know why you want to work for the firm and have a strong opinion about it. This question is commonly asked during interviews, and having a clear answer demonstrates your genuine motivation and fit with the company’s values. You will also need to answer this question to write your cover letter.
