Member-only story
I’m really good at pulling ideas out of thin air. Most people are. But, this can be a problem.
Like any good first-year at college, I applied to a lot of clubs. One of these clubs was called Phoenix Development Fund — a nonprofit consulting group.
In my interview, I had the pleasure of completing a case interview. The case related to expanding a University’s global presence by adding a campus in India. The prompt took a couple minutes to read. The information was dense, and I quickly jotted down some key notes.
When they stopped talking, I did what I thought you should always do when solving a problem. I asked questions. And I did it pretty rapid fire. I was on an information acquisition tirade as my interviewers kept telling me that they didn’t have the data I was looking for.
As a curious human, I was pretty proud of my strategy. But, it was only when I asked from feedback from my interviewers that I could see where I had some faults. Namely, I was too quick to dive into grabbing information and trying to piece apart a solution before I chose a direction.
In information-sparse times, asking a bunch of questions is a great strategy. Today, though, it probably isn’t.
Information is everywhere. I can find out pretty much anything at anytime. Simply exploring data to find…
