Business Strategy & Performance Topics
Business strategy, competitive analysis, market opportunities, and strategic innovation. Includes market research, competitive positioning, and business planning.
Business Strategy and Change ROI
Evaluation of the candidate's ability to connect change initiatives to business strategy, quantify expected and realized return on investment, and communicate value to senior stakeholders. Candidates should describe frameworks for building a business case, selecting measurable outcomes and leading indicators, modeling cost and benefit scenarios, setting success criteria, and tracking value after deployment. Interviewers will probe assumptions, sensitivity analysis, and how the candidate influenced investment decisions.
Situation Analysis and Strategic Thinking
Analyzing complex business situations and applying strategic thought processes to identify drivers, risks, and opportunities. Includes structuring ambiguous problems, stakeholder mapping, diagnosing root causes, developing hypotheses, outlining options, assessing implementation risks, and recommending measurable actions. Candidates should demonstrate frameworks for situational assessment, logical reasoning, and how to surface key assumptions to inform strategic decisions.
Case and Business Frameworks
Techniques for structuring analytical and persuasive responses to business problems in interviews and real world settings. Covers the end to end approach: clarifying the situation and objectives, scoping and prioritizing issues, forming a hypothesis, and building a logical, mutually exclusive and collectively exhaustive breakdown or issue tree. Includes common case interview frameworks such as profitability analysis, market entry, pricing, growth and operations, as well as business case components like problem statement, proposed solutions, cost benefit analysis, financial metrics such as return on investment and payback period, implementation plan, risk identification and mitigation, stakeholder impact, and success metrics. Emphasizes quantitative estimation and back of the envelope calculations, qualitative considerations such as competitive positioning and customer impact, synthesis into a clear recommendation, and communication techniques for telling a compelling business story under time pressure.
Company and Industry Knowledge
Demonstrate a well researched understanding of the target company and the industry in which it operates. This includes the company mission and business model, core products or services, customer segments, revenue and financial health signals, recent strategic initiatives and transformations, market position and competitive landscape, and any recent news or earnings commentary. Candidates should be able to articulate how the company creates value, current organizational or technology challenges the company faces, and thoughtful questions about strategy, capital allocation, growth opportunities, or competitive advantages. For senior or role specific interviews, show how your skills and experience align to the company priorities and industry dynamics.
Measurement Strategy and Frameworks
Covers how to create and apply structured measurement approaches that connect activities to business outcomes. Candidates should be able to define leading and lagging indicators, build measurement frameworks and dashboards, baseline current performance, set targets, choose appropriate KPIs, and design attribution and reporting approaches. Includes thinking about vanity versus meaningful metrics, frequency of measurement, sampling and data quality considerations, and how to use measurement to drive learning and course correction across programs or initiatives.
Business Acumen and Strategy Alignment
Demonstrates the ability to understand core business drivers and translate them into coherent organizational and human resources strategies. Candidates should show how they analyze strategy, market dynamics, financial implications, and competitive positioning, and then derive implications for organizational design, workforce planning, talent acquisition, change management, culture, and performance management. Expect examples of aligning programs and change initiatives to business outcomes, prioritizing initiatives based on impact and feasibility, engaging cross functional stakeholders, and measuring success through relevant business metrics. This topic covers both translating business strategy specifically into HR strategy and the broader task of aligning organizational strategy and change efforts to deliver planned business results.