Boston Consulting Group (“BCG”) is an elite global management consulting firm. Driven by nine values and more than 6,000 industry experts, the organization’s expansive capabilities help its clients gain market share and achieve transformation. In addition to maintaining a roster of leading management consultants, BCG must continually replenish its pool of new hires with the best and brightest of candidates on offer.

Of course, being an elite management consultant requires impressive academic credentials, critical thinking prowess, and harmony between the values of prospect and firm. The process of identifying top candidates—particularly when Diversity is one of the values—can be demanding, expensive, and time-consuming.

As a means of providing real-world simulation, along with a platform to attract candidates—while also encouraging candidates to opt-in and opt-out—BCG conceived of the Interactive Case Library (“ICL”), and hired Carbone Smolan Agency (“CSA”) and RubensteinTech to build it.

With two virtual case studies—one, based on helping a low cost airline carrier to remain profitable despite a recent fuel price hike; the other, around developing a pricing strategy for a drug manufacturer’s new drug—BCG challenges potential candidate to test themselves before applying for open consulting positions. Each case responds to inputs by the user, asking questions and providing feedback based on a series of multiple choice answers.

CSA designed the ICL, ensuring the look and feel remained consistent with the overall BCG brand system (also created by CSA). For our part, RubensteinTech developed the interactive software application that powers this online case experience process, delivering an engine that can be modified and extended to support additional cases in the future. The system provides real-time feedback as a user traverses each case. Upon completion, candidates view a dynamically-generated infographic ranking them against all others that have completed the exercise online. The resulting experience, optimized for desktop, tablet, and mobile users, provides a valuable guide to case analysis for competitive candidates.