The most underrated edge in consulting interview prep

If you only have a few weeks before interviews, stick to the basics. Do the drills, practice mental math, learn how to structure. (And if that's you, check out the other posts on this site for practical tips.)

But if you're reading this with six months or a year to go, you have an opportunity most people waste. You can build something that makes every single case easier and, frankly, makes you better at the job if you get it: you can build real business awareness.

Why business awareness matters

That sounds abstract, so let me make it concrete. When I was interviewing candidates, my favorite cases to give were always in industries people didn't know much about, and the ones that weren't intuitive (think insurance, banking, pharma). Those cases forced people to think. You could not rely on a memorized framework when the business model itself felt unfamiliar.

Here's the thing: those cases aren't hard if you've built even a basic mental map of how different businesses work. Take insurance. If you've never thought about the industry before, a question like "How should this company improve profitability?" feels overwhelming. Where do you start? But if you've read even a couple of good pieces about insurance, you know the fundamental equation: insurers make money by pricing risk correctly. Everything else flows from that. Suddenly the case feels manageable. You'd ask if claims are coming in higher than expected. You'd think about underwriting discipline, pricing segmentation, retention. You're not scrambling for buckets; you're reasoning from something real.

And it's not just insurance. Maybe you've read about Nike's decision to cut wholesale partners and push harder into direct-to-consumer. That gives you an instinct for how distribution choices affect margin and brand control, an instinct that would help in a case about a retail client. Or take Netflix moving into gaming. If you followed that story, you've absorbed something about platform economics and the fight for engagement, which could easily show up in a diversification case.

Now imagine doing this for six months: two articles a day. That's more than 300 stories. Some will stick. Patterns will emerge. You'll start to recognize the trade-offs companies face over and over: growth versus margin, control versus reach, risk versus return. When those trade-offs show up in a case, you won't be guessing. You'll have seen them play out in the real world.

So where do you start?

Pick one good source and make it a habit. I personally read and recommend The Wall Street Journal. A close friend of mine swears by The Financial Times. You can supplement with strong local publications if you like (e.g., AFR is the best source for Australian-specific business news), but few will match the breadth of the big global ones. I also subscribe to quite a few Substacks from independent journalists. Many of them are excellent, but they require more curation, so they're not where I'd start.

If you like audio, podcasts can be a great supplement. Acquired is my favorite (I just went to their live event in New York with Jamie Dimon recently), and Business Breakdowns is another good one. Both dig into the strategy behind companies in a way that sticks far better than a headline ever will.

But here's the key: don't just skim. The value isn't in knowing headlines, it's in noticing patterns. When you read about a company making a big move, pause and think about the why. What problem were they solving? Was it about cost, growth, or control? Even a few seconds of reflection will start to build the muscle.

The payoff

Over time, you'll see how those themes show up everywhere. Customer segmentation, for example, isn't just a luxury consumer goods problem. Banks segment customers for credit risk in the same way airlines segment for pricing. Supplier dynamics work the same way: whether you're a car manufacturer or a coffee chain, you care about supplier concentration and switching costs. The industries look different on the surface, but the underlying questions are often identical.

Make this a habit and interviews feel different. You stop thinking about cases as puzzles to solve and start approaching them like real business problems. You're no longer leaning on a structure you crammed the night before. You're leaning on judgment that's been compounding for months (if not years).

And that's the real point. If you do this, interviews stop being about memorized structures. They become a test of something much more valuable: how you think. And that's what the job really demands.