Just finished the mini case this morning, and by the afternoon I already had the pass notification along with a scheduled power day for next week — I have to say the recruiter I got this time was way better than the last one.
While it's still fresh, let me report back to everyone. Hoping next week's power day goes smoothly.
At the start, the interviewer briefly introduced his background, had me introduce myself, and then we went straight into the mini-case. This time I got the Groupon case that a lot of people on the forum have already shared.
Background: you run a restaurant, and a Groupon-like website approaches you wanting you to sell coupons on their site. What factors would you consider in deciding whether to participate? I mainly said I'd consider whether it would be profitable, and mentioned some possible P and Q factors in there.
They gave me data: average 20 tables/day; average $30/table; VC: $0.4/dollar; FC: $100/day. Asked for daily profit.
Then, assuming you join the website, you'd need to give a 40% commission to the site, and each table can only use one coupon — asked how much each table would need to spend on average for it to be worth it.
Then asked whether you should join the website — would profit go up or down?
For the third question I only got as far as calculating the answer but wasn't sure whether to actually join or not, so I said yes, join, because it could bring in new customers and so on. When the interviewer heard that, his expression got a bit off, but he went ahead and gave me the data for the next question anyway.
Assuming you do join the website, new data: average 25 tables/day, 10 coupons used, average $36/table; VC and FC stay the same. Asked for daily profit again.
After I finished calculating that one, he asked whether I still thought joining the website was a good idea. I said, a bit awkwardly, that joining the website would make profit go down.
The interviewer asked again, why is that? At this point I still wasn't sure why, and could only say uncertainly that it might be because the coupons made costs relatively higher, eating into profit. The interviewer was nice about it and pointed me toward looking at the increase in table count and the number of coupons used, and that's when I finally landed on the answer he was going for.
Finally, he asked whether, given all that, I'd still want to continue participating.
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