Roland Berger Case Interview 2026: Two Cases It Filmed

The sequence Roland Berger actually publishes

The firm's hints and tips page gives the shape of the process in a few short paragraphs. It is the clearest thing the firm has written about hiring, and it is easy to miss.

Two details in that table decide how you prepare. The first is the word the firm uses about the test: if you pass this test, it will invite you to a recruiting day. That is a filter standing in front of every interview, and it is not described anywhere on the site.

The second is a printed instruction that reads like a gift. If you are aiming to start as a Junior Consultant, the firm asks you to prepare a two to three minute presentation about yourself for the personal fit interview. That is a fixed deliverable with a stated length. You can write it, time it, and say it aloud twenty times before anyone hears it. Our page on the firm itself covers what goes in it.

The recruiting day also includes a session on the firm's platform structure, which it presents as useful for working out which platform suits you. Treat that as a question to arrive with rather than a presentation to sit through.

Why your process may not match that page

Recruiting at Roland Berger is run country by country. An HR team member states it plainly in the firm's own Q and A: the firm is regionally organized, and each country recruits for its own offices. Two live examples show how far that goes.

The London Junior Consultant posting for 2027 numbers five steps: screening, online tests, an assessment day paired with a case study workshop, final round case interviews, then an offer. Screening is done by a person, usually within five days. The workshop runs before the interviews and exists to prepare candidates for them, which is unusual and worth planning around. The posting also publishes hard dates and states that applications without a cover letter are not considered.

The Amsterdam office describes something else again. After a first assessment comes a Final Day. Two partners interview you, and you write a case study. You answer several questions against a clock, with a deliberately limited set of data that forces you to make assumptions. Then you present your findings to a panel of four consultants. That is a written case with a presentation bolted to it, and no global page mentions it.

Even the timing advice disagrees with itself across four pages of the same site.

The firm does agree on one figure. From submitting an application to signing a contract takes around six to eight weeks. Read your own posting and your own invitation first. Both outrank every general description, this one included.

The two cases the firm filmed, and how to use them

The case study preparation page hosts five videos. One covers dos and don'ts. The other four are two cases, each split in two parts, with consultants walking through them. The firm's own line above them is that consultants guide you through two cases and explain what really matters.

The cases are called Transit oriented development and 3D printed hip implants. The video player reports the four parts at roughly 5, 12, 10 and 11 minutes, which is where the 38 minute figure on this page comes from. The dos and don'ts video adds about 8.

We have not watched them, so this page says nothing about what happens inside them. What we can say is that they are the firm's own material, they cost nothing, and they are the only Roland Berger cases that exist in public.

Get more out of them than a viewing. Play the first part until the problem has been stated, then stop. Work it yourself, out loud, on paper, with a real structure and real arithmetic. Only then play the rest. A case you have attempted teaches something when you watch it solved. A case you watched first teaches almost nothing, because recognition feels like competence and is not.

The firm also prints its own preparation method, and it is not solo study. Ask a friend or classmate to invent a case on a topic that matters right now, then work it as a dialogue that moves step by step toward a solution. That instruction matters more than it looks. A case at this firm is a conversation with people who will feed you facts, and practicing alone trains a monologue.

What the firm tells you about working a case

The same page carries direct instructions, and they are specific enough to act on. Four lines are worth quoting because each asks for the opposite of the instinct that takes over under a clock.

On structure: work out a structure, because it points the way to the solution, and if you lose your train of thought your structure helps you find it again. On listening: pay attention to any hints the interviewers give you. On missing data: the firm often leaves details out to see how you deal with it, and would rather hear a good question than a poor answer. On judgment: concentrate on what matters, and show that you can tell important facts from irrelevant ones.

That last pair sits behind most weak performances. Candidates treat a gap in the data as an obstacle and try to work around it quietly. The firm has written that it put the gap there and wants to hear you name it.

On market sizing the firm removes an anxiety outright. Nobody expects you to know the size of the contact lens market in Southeast Asia. Familiarize yourself with basic data such as population sizes, then use common sense and make realistic assumptions. Its selection process page adds that there is not one correct way to work a case.

Translate all of that into three behaviors you can practice this week.

1. State the structure before using it. Name the branches out loud, then say which one you are opening first and why. Your structure is also your route back after a detour.
2. Ask for a missing number by name. Say what you need, why the answer changes your next move, and what you will assume if it does not exist.
3. Say which fact you are ignoring. Out of five figures handed to you, two usually do not move the answer. Saying so is the judgment the firm says it is watching for.

The entry title, and which of the two you get

Roland Berger's graduates page says you join as an Analyst or Junior Consultant. Its career stages page presents Consulting/Business Analyst as the stage a fresh graduate can start at, with Junior Consultant and Consultant above it. Both titles are real, both are entry points, and the firm never publishes what decides which one you get.

What the seat involves is published, and it is worth reading for interview purposes. Junior Consultants and Consultants conduct market research, interviews and client workshops, analyze what they find, and build the presentations. Our Junior Consultant page goes through what that first year asks for.

Requirements vary by office in the same way the process does. Amsterdam invites master's level graduates with high grades for junior consultant roles. The London posting asks for a 2:1 equivalent or above and at least eight weeks of work experience, counting part time jobs, volunteering and academic projects. The global FAQ speaks only of an undergraduate degree.

One line from that FAQ is worth carrying into the room. Half of the firm's consultants have backgrounds in engineering, natural sciences, social sciences or the humanities. A non business degree is not a gap to apologize for here, and the fit interview is not the place to treat it as one.

A case worked in five moves

Roland Berger cases come from real client work, so the arithmetic is ordinary and the framing is industrial. Here is a full pass with a number carried through, of the kind you can say out loud in six minutes.

1. Play the objective back. "A components manufacturer has seen operating margin fall from 11% to 7% over two years while volumes held. We want the margin back and a view on how fast. Is the goal margin recovery, or absolute profit?"
2. Ask two questions that change the structure. Did selling prices move, or only costs? Is this one plant or the whole network? Two answers, and every branch after them is different.
3. Build from the arithmetic. "Margin is price minus unit cost, times volume, over revenue. With volume flat, the movement is in price or in cost per unit. I would split cost into materials, labor and plant overhead, then check whether the drop is spread across plants or concentrated."
4. Run the number aloud, without a calculator. Revenue of $420m at 11% is about $46m of operating profit. At 7% it is about $29m, so roughly $17m has gone. If material cost per unit rose 6% on a material base of $190m, that is about $11m, which is two thirds of the fall. Round hard and say so.
5. Recommend in the first sentence. "Attack material cost first, because it explains about two thirds of the margin loss. Evidence: a 6% rise on a $190m base is near $11m of a $17m fall. The risk is that the increase is an index pass through you cannot renegotiate, so I would check contract terms before opening supplier talks."

That close runs four sentences: the call, the number, the risk, and the next step. Move three is the easiest of the five to skip, and it is the one the firm's own instruction about structure describes.

What the firm measures, and what we measure

The firm says it looks at approach, openness and drive, and it explicitly plays down the perfect case solution. That is honest and it is also unmeasurable as written. Below are the dimensions our own grader scores, with the weight each carries out of a hundred.

Where candidates lose this process

1. Treating the online test as a formality. The firm writes if you pass it. It stands in front of every interview for permanent roles.
2. Skipping the self presentation. Two to three minutes, asked for in writing, for the personal fit interview. It is the most rehearsable thing in the process.
3. Reading a general guide instead of the posting. London numbers five steps. Amsterdam ends with a written case and a panel. Your posting is the authority.
4. Applying to London without a cover letter. The posting says such applications are not considered.
5. Watching the firm's case videos before attempting the cases. Recognition is not preparation.
6. Working around a missing number. The firm removed it deliberately and says it prefers a good question to a poor answer.
7. Using every figure handed to you. Telling important facts from irrelevant ones is stated as part of what is assessed.
8. Recapping before recommending. Answer first carries 35 of 100.

The first four come from how this firm runs hiring and are fixed by reading two pages carefully. The last four show up at every firm, which is why a drill diagnosis is worth more than firm specific study once you know the rules. The drills on how an answer is assessed cover the case mechanics that do not vary by office.

What Roland Berger does not publish

What is in the online test. No sections, no question count, no time limit, no vendor. The London posting writes online tests in the plural and stops there. Any list of its contents is a guess.

Any pass threshold, for the test or for any later stage.

How many case interviews you will face for permanent entry. The only count the firm publishes, one personal fit interview and two case interviews, appears in its German FAQ and describes the internship selection day. Applying it to graduate entry would be an invention.

How long a case interview lasts. No page we read gives a figure.

Whether the London case workshop exists elsewhere. It appears in one posting for one intake. Nothing else mentions it.

Any compensation number. The FAQ promises an attractive starting salary and bonus and gives no figure, in any market.

What is inside the case videos. We list them because the firm hosts them. We have not watched them, so watch them at the source and judge for yourself.

What changed on the Roland Berger page

We correct in public and date the correction, so a reader coming back can see what moved and why.

29 September 2026. The version published on 24 September carried no source register and had never been read against the firm's own pages. Two claims in it are gone.

It said Roland Berger's screening steps could not be described because we had no way to verify them. The firm lists those steps on a public hints and tips page and numbers five of them in a live London job posting. The steps had been sitting in the open the whole time. Nobody on our side had opened the page, and the sentence dressed that up as restraint.

It said the firm opens its graduate track at Junior Consultant, and argued from there that a Business Analyst grade does not exist at Roland Berger. The graduates page states in one sentence that you join as an Analyst or a Junior Consultant, and the career stages page shows Consulting and Business Analyst as a stage a fresh graduate can enter at. Both titles are real, and the firm never publishes what decides which one you are offered.