This case is worth listening to and better yet, solve it together with the recording. It's a rather simple case but a few key principles were illustrated very well. The candidate is not very experienced and made a number of mistakes, but all the mistakes she made are the most frequently seen ones among candidates of all levels. I didn't have time to finish writing the script for BCG sample case so sincere apologies. I will discuss the BCG airline case tomorrow instead.

I noticed a pattern recently while giving this mock case to the candidate in the recording, and review a resume for a member in this group, that is, people tend to do more in areas they are more comfortable with or they think they should spend more time on, instead of do more in areas that needs the most attention.

If you listen to the recoding, during the delivery of the structure, the candidate spent a lot of time on sub-brunches that are not very important. When I ask her why she did so, she answered that she spent more time on them because she felt these brunches were harder/she's less clear-minded on those.

This is a mistake. The guiding principle for how much to spend on which sub-brunch is not whether you think it's hard, it is whether it is most important to solve the problem of the case.

When I reviewed the resume for another candidate, I saw that she spent a lot of space writing about her extra-curriculum activities, but very limited space for work experience. When I asked her why, she said she had more to say about the activities, and less to say about her work experience.

This is a similar mistake. Whether you have more to say about a section is not the guiding principle for writing a good resume. I went for a spinning class today. The coach of this session spent all of his time riding the bicycle really hard. He worked himself so hard that I couldn't even understand what he's shouting at us. I think this is a mistake too.

I am guessing that he's very into cycling himself and enjoy pushing himself to the limit during a class. But the guiding principle for giving a good class is not whether he invested all his time in riding his own bike. Riding his bike hard all class long may be difficult, but that's what he's comfortable with. However, this doesn't mean that he should keep doing that. No matter how difficult it is, he's staying in his comfort zone without thinking whether it's the best.

Work experience should be one of the key sections in a consulting resume. Extra-curriculum activities are great to have, but the candidate spent twice of space on it than work experience, because she has more of it to write about.