How To Improve Your Case Interview Frameworks Using The Toothbrush Test

how can a simple toothbrush help you in

your case intervals this is not a video

on how having clean your teeth will help

you make a better impression on your

interviewer instead it's about having

great frameworks have ever noticed that

most candidates to do cases with will

have the same frameworks and the same

issues for the same case or even for

different cases have ever feared that

your interviewer might think the same of

your framers that your frameworks are

the same as everyone else that they're

generic in this video I'm gonna show you

a two-minute test so you can see if your

frameworks are the generic boring

frameworks that get most people rejected

from case interviews or if you have the

insightful specific frameworks that you

need to get an offer in a top consulting

firm also I'm gonna show you how to make

her frameworks more specific and more

insightful without needing to learn any

new frameworks any new lists of

questions or anything we call this

technique the toothbrush tests hence the

toothbrush we've created this quick test

to help candidates like you understand

if you need more insights in your

frameworks and if so how to do it I have

a previous video that shows the three

shifts that you need to make in your

frameworks so that you can quickly make

them much much better this video is a

deep dive into the second technique of

that video but before we do so have a

secret to tell you there's an art and

the science to make our structures

insightful and to show businesses

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so let's talk about the art and science

of showing businesses and being

insightful in your case injuries the art

part is where everyone focuses their

efforts these are the unique ideas and

hypotheses that only you bring to the

case that other candidates don't bring

and that are relevant so just to give

you an example let's say you're solving

an airline case and you're working on

how to increase the number of flights

per airplane so improving their

efficiency one example of a unique

hypothesis that shows great businesses

that most other candidates won't bring

up and that may be relevant to the case

is to say that when you increase the

number of flights per airplane you may

increase lost luggage and have customers

less satisfied less happy with their

service and that that increase of lost

luggage may come from

tighter operations less room for

mistakes now this is an example of a art

type of businesses you bring something

to the table that you've read somewhere

that came from your work experience that

you've seen in the case you've done so

doing more cases if done right may help

you with that but there's a science part

of showing businesses and the science

part is easier it is to be more specific

so you don't have to have read anything

you don't have to have work experience

you don't have to have done a lot of

cases to be more specific when you speak

and the reason is that this works the

reason that be more specific works is

that being generic is never insightful

being generic is never insightful if you

say that increasing flights per airplane

might cause trouble or might cause angry

customers and you don't say how it would

cause trouble why we'll cause angry

customers I don't know if you're being

brilliant or not as an introvert I don't

know if you're trying to me I

just don't understand your reasoning

because you're being too generic it kind

of sounds like you're using theory or

reading from a textbook you read in a

textbook that well more efficiency might

cause more mistakes but it don't explain

how so you're being too generic to be

useful improving the art part is hard

it's tough it takes experience it takes

time but improving the science part

which is where no one's focusing on is

easy just be more specific plus if you

focus on the art part but you're not

specific you're not telling me exactly

what you mean you're being too generic I

can't see as an interviewer the

brilliance of what you're saying

so all that effort here is going to

waste because you're not being specific

enough so be specific is the number one

thing you can do to make her structures

more insightful to show more businesses

to your interior which kind of brings me

to the next question and this question

is are your structures specific enough

when you solve a case are you doing

specific structures and if they are are

they specific enough so that you can

impress you into her so that you can get

the author if your structures are like

most candidates out there I want to

analyze customers I want to know what

are the complementary goods or products

to this product or service I want to

know the capabilities and expertise of

our competitors if her structures are

like that if they sound like they come

from a casing through a book you're just

reading out of the book then you'll not

only bore your interviewer to death but

you also likely get rejected like 95% of

the candidates who applied to McKinsey

to Bain to BCG to top consulting firms

like that now here's the good news the

good news is you don't have to forget

all the frameworks that you've learned

you have to learn new frameworks that's

not this

for a lot of candidates the solution is

to learn to be more specific as we've

discussed there is an art and science to

show inside to show businesses and while

the art part is important the science

part is easier and it's much more

impactful and it is to be more specific

but before you jump into a journey of

being more specific you first need to

know if you really need to improve that

and if you do need to improve that you

need to know how much and for that we've

developed a toothbrush test it's a

simple test that measures how specific

how insightful your structures are and

you take five minutes to learn it and

two minutes to run the test in your

structures and know how much more

insightful you need to be and how to do

that so the toothbrush test is a simple

but powerful test so that you can know

with 95% confidence how insightful your

structures are how much businesses are

you bringing to the table you can do

that without paying for an expensive

coach and more important you can do that

before you get that feedback all telling

you that you didn't get the offer you

were not going to the next round because

you weren't inside for them so you can

use the toothbrush test when practicing

and the test is pretty simple you just

count the number of issues the number of

bullet points in your structure in your

issue tree that could not be used as

phrased in a case on a completely

different industry for example the

toothbrush industry and that's where the

name of the test comes from if you can

use these issues in our case on

toothbrushes and your cases on something

else then these issues do not pass the

test so let's just give an example let's

say you're solving a case on the

automotive industry and you ask about

the capabilities and resources of your

competitors when you phrase it like that

it doesn't pass

toothbrush test because you could ask

the same thing in the case on the

toothbrush industry so if you had a case

on the toothbrush industry you can say

well I want to know the capabilities and

the resources of my competitors what

that means is that your structure is not

specific enough so here's what you could

do instead you could say well I want to

know the capabilities and the resources

of our competitors the main capabilities

that I'm looking for here are RNG

capabilities and the marketing

capabilities and the main resources that

I'm looking for are manufacturing and

supply chain resources we're asking for

the same general thing but I made it

much more specific and now I cannot use

the same phrasing the same specificities

in a case in a different industry and

what that makes is that that brings

inside to the table it shows the

interviewer you're thinking about that

specific problem and it shows you're not

just memorized and reading in your mind

from a case interval book once you've

done that with one issue in our

framework you can do that with other

issues in your framework and you can do

this test with all the issues in your

framework and if you do that you're

gonna find a percentage of issues that

did pass this test that were so specific

that you could not use them in a case in

a different industry that's her

toothbrush test score your TTS now why

the hell would you do that you do that

so that you can measure how specific you

are and if you're doing well enough from

experience we've observed that if you

get a TTS up at least 40% so four out of

ten issues are so specific that you

could not use in a case in a different

industry then that's kind of the minimum

to be perceived as insightful to be

perceived as bringing businesses to the

table what you're really aiming for here

is 60% if six out of ten issues that you

bring

are specific enough for that client for

that industry for that case then we're

talking about a candidates that is gonna

be perceived by most interviewers

it's pretty insightful as bringing

businesses as knowing what they're

talking about now does that mean that

the art part doesn't count does that

mean that the quality of the issues that

you bring to the table don't matter no

that's simply a guideline but what it

means is that if you're not bringing

most of your issues with specificity

enough to show the quality of your

business sense of your insights then

your interviewer is never gonna see this

and honestly if six out of ten issues

that you bring to the table are very

specific you're probably gonna have at

least one or two of them so specific and

so different from what other candidates

are saying that you're likely to hear

back that Wow that issue that you said

in your framework is something that I've

never heard before and I've applied this

case over 100 candidates in your

feedback call so let me show this in

practice by bringing you a few examples

actually I'm bringing a couple of

examples one of a structure that is

common to a lot of candidates with a

very low TTS and one of a structure with

a 40% is yes just so you can see the

difference so suppose you got this case

in a case interview should a global

insurance company enter the African

market now I'm gonna show you a typical

framework of a beginner someone who has

done 10 to 15 cases basic structure 3

C's plus the product category if you go

through and read all the issues and

we're gonna do that with a few of them

in the next few minutes it's almost a

copy-paste of case interview books now

that's okay when starting out just to

get a hang of how to do cases but it's

not okay to go to an interview going

with such generic issues as

once in this framework and not

frustrates me is that is when I see

candidates and I see many of them who

focus on just doing more cases and then

after the thirtieth case or their

fortieth case there's two three

frameworks like this generic categories

generic issues because they didn't focus

on skill building anyway let's analyze

this I'm gonna have for each issue if it

passes the toothbrush test and I'm not

gonna do it every single issue so that

I'm not wasting my time or your time

here but I'm gonna look at each issue as

if it were used in a case for which the

question were should a toothbrush

company enter the African market and

because insurance is completely

different than toothbrushes if the

issues worked for both they're too

generic so let's examine each issue

issue number one how large is insurance

market in Africa and how much does it

grow does disease should pass the

toothbrush test nope I mean of course

there's the word insurance there but if

I exchanged it with how large is the

toothbrush market in Africa and how much

does it grow it doesn't pass the test

you can use the same phrasing just

changing of course the industry in the

other case so you're not bringing

anything specific to the table what are

the customer segments and how price

sensitive they are if you guest know you

guess right you can use that for every

case so you shouldn't use that phrase

like that in any case I mean you can use

a few times but you need specificity to

bring more to the table how do customers

decide between insurance providers again

no you could have said how do customers

decide between toothbrush brands which

is the equivalent and you would

not be inside who because it's just not

specific enough

what distribution channels do they use

you guessed it

no now I'm not gonna waste more of your

time here I'm just gonna show all these

and the answer to almost all of this is

no because I basically copy pasted this

from a case interview book but there's

one that has a yes so let's analyze that

what types of insurance services do we

offer for example industry insurance

automotive insurance house insurance

life insurance etc now if I've said what

types of toothbrush do we offer then

would be too generic right if you just

said the first part then it's too

generic but because I give examples to

the introvert I show to the introvert

that I know there is industry insurance

that is automotive issues there is life

insurance and that that matters to the

case I'm showing them that I'm thinking

about this problem so I got a yes on the

toothbrush test so here's one insight

one way to get more specific is to give

examples now the rest of this issue of

this structure is really really boring

if you want to pause the video and read

it you're gonna see it's a copy-paste

it's boring it's saying nothing about

insurance it's saying nothing about

Africa it's saying nothing about global

companies it's just a copy-paste from

the case interview book and that's why

this framework gets a toothbrush Scott

asked for a TTS of eight percent only

one out of 13 issues passes the test so

here's a this is a framework that's

typical beginners it's okay when you're

a beginner it's not okay to go to a case

interview like that we can and and one

way to indicate that is that the

toothbrush tester is just too low eight

percent as I've said you're aiming for

at least 40% preferably Amy for sixty

percent

or higher now let's go to another

structure let's go examine another

structure with a 40% TTS a 40%

toothbrush test score so you can see

what the bare minimum looks like let's

jump right into the case so suppose the

case question was a private jet

maintenance company wants to enter the

airliner maintenance market

how'd you help them decide if they

should do so so here's the structure and

this is a framework that resembles that

of an experienced candidate with a few

months of practice under your belt so

it's a bit more sophisticated than the

other one it's one that would probably

be pretty impressive for first round

interviewers but not guaranteed to so

let's do the same drill imagine this is

a case on a toothbrush manufacturer

trying to enter a market and notice that

here we're entering the mechanics of

scoring at TTS so you can do the same

with your own framers I'm gonna go

issue-by-issue on this one because it's

gonna be a lot more interesting that the

other one which was pretty generic so

let's talk about the customer thing

first and then competition and then

company and notice that the categories

are pretty standard here but the

specifics of the issues makes this

framework strong so first one how large

is the airliner maintenance markets and

how much does it grow so this obviously

does not pass the toothbrush test it's a

pretty generic way to phrase it it's a

generic issue you could do that for

toothbrushes as well what are the shares

of each market segments for example

urgent versus preventive maintenance

maintenance by type of job so for

example maintaining the wings of the

airplane or the landing

a gear by type of aircraft so what are

the shares of maintain the market by

type of aircraft so this passes the

toothbrush test because I gave specifics

I told them I want to look at these

specific market segments not necessarily

just these ones but I'm giving you

examples that are specific to the

airline maintenance industry how do they

contract the service how do our

customers contract the service and what

drives their loyalty so here it's a man

I'm not really sure if it passes the

toothbrush test or not I mean toothbrush

customers they don't contract a service

and I guess some manufacturers are some

toothbrush companies are worried about

customer loyalty but this is obviously

much more important for aircraft

maintenance but I mean a lot of

industries they work on your contracts

and are driven by loyalty so I'm not

really sure I mean it I'm leaving it at

that how can we bargain power over

leader Airlines so this is again a man I

mean in toothbrushes you don't need

bargaining power over your clients but a

lot of industries need bargaining power

so not really sure if it passes the test

or not giving at that and later we're

gonna see I'm gonna calculate the score

without considering this so let's move

on to the next one how many competitors

are there and what is their market share

this does not pass the toothbrush this

in which segments is each competitor

strongest and why again does not pass

the toothbrush test

what are your largest contracts our

competitors have with major airlines and

what are their terms and conditions so

this one passes the toothbrush test

because I'm not only talking about

contracts in general I'm talking about

terms and conditions with major airlines

so I'm actually

want to know in this market what are the

terms and conditions and I'm sure in the

interview that I know that these terms

and conditions are important because

depending on how you write up a contract

for maintenance the profitability and

the dynamics of the business is

completely different now this would be

much better if I gave examples of terms

and conditions but not necessarily this

already passes what are the barriers to

entry in this market for example getting

contracts with major airlines regulatory

permits being present in several

airports again the examples when here if

I just say barriers to entry might as

well read from michael Porter's book and

then the consulting firm might as well

higher markup Michael Porter is much

smarter than me but if I give specific

examples of what could be barriers to

entry in this industry again not

necessarily all of them but just

examples of things that I would

investigate if I were in a real project

this is much more specific its

insightful it shows businesses

I'm sure the interviewer that I know

that for an airline maintenance company

to operate well they need to be present

at the airports you need to have

regulatory permits and things like that

let's move into company do we have

expertise and the licenses to do

airliner maintenance yes why well again

the licenses thing is most important

expertise is important as well but the

key here is bringing together expertise

and licenses along with specific

airliners so notice the wording an

airliner is a different type of aircraft

than a private jet and I need to have

expertise I need to have the permits the

licenses to do that kind of maintenance

and this shows some businesses at least

shows that I'm aware that it's

completely different to do maintenance

from four

type of aircraft or for the other can we

adapt our operations to our customers

schedules yes hugely important

scheduling is so important in the

airline business if I'm working on a

private jet I can do maintenance

overnight I can do maintenance on the

weekends when the rich owner is not

using the aircraft or even the

corporation I mean they don't use it

full-time however in the airliner

business I need to know if I can do this

maintenance quick because they would be

expecting that from me as a maintenance

provider the quicker I make the

maintenance the more they can fly their

planes the more money they make that's a

key purchasing driver for them if I

explain this later her even better but

just mentioning schedules will make her

interviewer say wow this is something

that not a lot of candidates mention and

it's really important I know it's

important because I've worked in their

line industry I'm not talking about me I

mean I did do consulting projects for an

airliner but I'm talking about what's

going on in your interviewers head can

we build the sales team required to get

the job no I mean sales is important in

this business

it's nice that you were aware of it

you're not gonna have a sales team in a

toothbrush manufacturer but you can talk

about sales teams in pretty much any

business that has salespeople so nice

issue to bring up important issue to

bring up as many of the issues that did

not pass the toothbrush test in this

case in this framework but does not pass

is not specific enough to differentiate

yourself and one thing to notice we

don't have to have all the issues passed

in the toothbrush that Square I mean

just happy forty to sixty percent is

enough and you can just bring the other

issues in a generic way no problem

well our cost structure allow us to be

contact competitive I'll let you guess

that and the answer is

of course nope so again not a lot of

insights to the table not a lot of

specificity but important you should to

bring up as well if your cost structure

cannot allow it to be competitive then

you should not enter this market now

this is a structure with a toothbrush

test score of 40 percent so it's roughly

what you want perhaps a little bit more

specificity would be okay I think this

structure would actually impressed

engineer because of the art parts

there's so much insights on the airline

business schedules types of maintenance

contracts and licenses things like that

so the art part here makes this 40

percent be worth actually a little bit

more but you don't need to know all

these specific things what you need is

to give examples what you need is to

explain what you're doing what you need

is to bring up issues that only makes

sense in this industry now if you want

to see a framer that scores 90% on the

TTS so that you can see what a top

performance looks like

then check on my website crafting cases

comm slash toothbrush it's the original

article that I wrote a few months ago on

this technique and you can read there

you can read the analysis and these two

frameworks are also there so that you

can learn a little bit more about them

also I'm gonna be making a video on me

changing a mediocre structure into a

very strong one and one of the

techniques that I use is this one I make

the issues more specific I'm gonna put

the link of that video on the screen and

also there are two other techniques that

I use in that video to make the

structure stronger which are the

techniques that I mentioned in the video

on the three shifts to quickly make our

frameworks more powerful and much much

better now before I finish this video

some questions and answers here that

bring a lot of

concern to people so for questions and

answers that may alleviate some concern

on using this first straight from the

comments in our original article at

Crafton cases dot-com / toothbrush I

guess that in order to make a good

structure one must know about various

industries my fear is that my banking

structure that is too specific I end up

forgetting something important if your

generic and not specific then you're

forgetting everything that's important

so I believe that this feeling of

riskiness is true I also felt that as a

candidate but that shouldn't stop you to

be more specific so one way to deal with

it and to mitigate this risk is to say

the generic thing first and then say a

few specific things that I would look at

are this this in this so for example I'd

look at barriers to entry a few that

come to mind or this this and this which

is exactly what I did in my examples in

my second example with the 40% TTS so

don't use this as an excuse not to be

specific because if your generic then

you're not saying anything of value

question number two doesn't it take too

much time to present your framework when

you're so specific yes in the beginning

but that shouldn't stop you from being

specific because the biggest time waster

is is to be so generic that you're gonna

be rejected you're gonna be wasting your

time you're gonna be wasting your

interviewers time so with time as you

practice being more specific you will be

able to judge what specific things are

the most important to say and which

issues which bullet points to leave

generic and which ones to be specific

about of course in the other example

extended a lot my instance just to

explain to you each point and give

several examples of specific things to

mention but you don't need to do that in

your interviews you can become

time-efficient as you practice this but

in your mock case interviews I suggest

you not to worry too much about time

even if you take ten minutes to present

your framework it's better to take time

and have a good job done then to try to

be quick at first and be so generic that

you're going to be rejected anyways

you're going to be wasting an hour of

you and hour of your interviewers

of the firm that's interviewing you not

a nice situation to be in question

number three I just did an interview at

McKinsey at bay at BCG but I don't know

the tts of my structure should I be

concerned

now the toothbrush test score is

something that Julia and I have

developed to help you improve during

your practice your interviewer probably

has never heard this term before they're

probably not measuring oh he said five

specific issues and six generic issues

so I'm not gonna pass him that's not

what's going on in their mind we've

developed this test because we've

noticed that on a lot of candidates are

generic when they say things and almost

every consultant when they say things

are pretty specific they give examples

they say specific terms from an industry

and if you notice the way they speak

you're gonna notice that too so this is

a true for you to practice and improve

not for you to assess whether you did

well in a real case or not

Machel number four what if my case is on

the toothbrush industry well then you

can use the SBTs or this two bars test

squad basically so the part of this test

is to know if the issues the way you

phrased your issues are specific enough

so that they couldn't be used in a

completely different industry and sure

if your cases on the toothbrush industry

you can compare it with a steel bar

industry case or something completely

different the point is you should be

specific to that industry and actually

in the original article in our website

the 90 percent TTS structure I did it on

purpose on the hair care industry

because it's an industry that's so

similar to the toothbrush industry in

many aspects that you need to be very

specific but some issues can be similar

to the truth brush industry because then

the important things so you're not

similar to a case on the steel industry

or the mining industry or the automotive

industry now here are some next steps

for you to implement this into your case

practice now what I suggest you to do is

if you tend to write down the cases that

you do in a notebook and if you don't

you should be doing it but if you tend

to do that gets the last three to five

cases that you've solved and try to

score your TTS in those cases now

there's one ones that is important and

that is that what's important is how you

communicate it's the bullet point in a

real interview on a waste your time

writing the the issues with all the

details because you waste so much time

with that it's okay to just write down

the generic thing and say the specifics

when you communicate so if you've

written down the generic version and

you're not sure if you said in the

specific way then you can score your

next three frameworks and then you could

record your communication of those

frameworks you can record their cases so

you can do that but the important thing

is to get three to five cases score your

TTS your toothbrush test score and see

how insightful how specific you were in

those cases if you've scored

consistently below 40% then you should

be working on being more specific now if

your score is consistently above 40% or

even better above 60%

you shouldn't worry too much about it

you can go on to look for other things

to improve on but it's still nice to be

aware that being specific is a way to

generate insight to show business sense

and if you are pretty specific you're

sure being pretty specific and you still

got a feedback on insightfulness on

businesses only then you should work on

the art part now if you really want to

improve your TTS or your case interview

skills in general I think you'll love

our free course in the fundamentals of

case introduced there you'll find

through different techniques and

practice examples exactly how to make

our structures more specific more

insightful and thus how to really stand

out from other candidates in the

practice examples I'm going to show you

Julia and I actually are going to show

you the specific issues that are really

important for each specific case or

framework so that you can learn how to

really think like a top management

consultant that's the only way to really

get an offer to maximize your chances of

getting an offer to get access now just

visit crafting cases Khan / free course

I'll be there waiting for you overall if

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haven't thought of and hope you really

liked this video and I'll see you in the

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