The person deciding whether you pass a group case is not listening to the group. She has two names on her sheet, yours and one other, and a grid with five or six rows. Each time you speak she decides two things: is this worth writing down, and which row does it go in.
That is the whole exercise. Silence leaves rows blank, and a blank row cannot be scored up later however good your closing was. Talking over people fills the rows with the wrong evidence. Candidates who pass produce a modest number of attributable, classifiable moves, spread across the half hour, that a tired observer can file without effort.
Below: who still runs group exercises (fewer firms than the prep industry implies), how the scoring works, how much airtime you have, six moves that land in a row, and an exhibit trap to rehearse tonight.
Who still puts candidates in a room together
Group cases live mostly in Big Four early-careers processes and assessment centers, not in strategy-firm case rounds. Here is what the firms' own pages say as of September 2026. Your invitation outranks this table.
| Firm and process | What the firm's page says | Group element? |
|---|---|---|
| Deloitte UK, Final Stage Assessment | A 30 to 40 minute discussion of a prepared topic plus a skills and motivation interview of about 50 minutes, in person for graduates (Deloitte UK) | Not listed |
| PwC UK, virtual assessment center | A "virtual immersive assessment centre" scored against core skills and attributes; exercises not itemized (PwC UK) | Not specified |
| KPMG UK, Launch Pad | In-person half day of assessed and non-assessed activities, dated 17 November 2026 to 5 May 2027 (KPMG UK); a graduate profile on the site describes a group exercise, a written exercise, and an interview (KPMG profile) | Yes, per KPMG's graduates |
| EY UK, Experience Day | In-person event with "a range of activities and exercises" before EY assessors (EY UK); EY Australia is explicit: a group activity with two to four other students on a fictional case with no single right answer (EY Australia) | Yes |
| Bain, consulting roles | A digital assessment, then case interviews (Bain) | Not on the page |
| Oliver Wyman | Conversational and case interviews (Oliver Wyman) | Not on the page |
| Roland Berger | Interviews plus case studies (Roland Berger); recruiting is run by country (Roland Berger Q&A) | Candidate reports in some offices; unconfirmed |
Two things stand out. The Deloitte group exercise in older candidate accounts is not on Deloitte UK's current page. And the firms that do use groups describe them the way EY does: no single right answer, interest in how the group works. That is not modesty. It is the scoring sheet, described.
What the observer is doing with the pen
Assessment centers are a documented craft. The International Taskforce guidelines in the Journal of Management (2015) define the method as multiple trained assessors who observe and record behavior in simulations, classify it against the constructs being measured, and only then rate it. Assessor training calls this ORCE, observe, record, classify, evaluate: recording happens live, classifying afterward on a form listing behavioral indicators under each competency (South African assessment centre guidelines).
In the rooms I have sat in, each observer gets two candidates, sometimes three. She writes close to verbatim while you talk, because she cannot classify and listen at once. Afterward she tags each line to a row. A row with no tagged lines is "not observed," and in every integration meeting I have attended, not observed is treated as the bottom band. Nobody argues you up for what you might have said.
The rows vary by firm; the grids I have used converge on these:
| Row | Positive indicator she can tag | Negative indicator she can also tag |
|---|---|---|
| Structuring | Names the decision and the metric that settles it | Lists ideas with no decision to hang them on |
| Using data | Reads an exhibit and says what it changes | Repeats a number already on the table |
| Communicating | Two to four sentences, claim then support | Turns over a minute; restating own point |
| Working with others | Builds on a named person's point; asks a quiet person a specific question | Interrupts; takes the marker unasked |
| Driving to an outcome | Calls the time; forces a recommendation | Opens new threads in the last five minutes |
Missing from the grid: "got the right answer." The group's answer is recorded once, for the group; your score is the tags next to your name. Evidence has to be attributable and classifiable: a subject (you), a verb the observer recognizes, and ideally a number or a name.
Your airtime is about 800 words
Take the common format: 30 minutes, five candidates, four exhibits. Three to five minutes of silent reading leaves about 25 minutes of talk, or five minutes each. At a conversational 140 words a minute, parity is about 700 words. Aim slightly above it, six minutes, and your entire scored performance is about 840 words in ten to twelve turns of 30 to 45 seconds. A short memo, delivered in pieces.
| Share of 25 talking minutes | Minutes | Words at 140 a minute | How it reads on the sheet |
|---|---|---|---|
| 10 percent | 2.5 | 350 | Rows left blank; "quiet" in the margin |
| 20 percent (parity) | 5 | 700 | Enough for every row if the moves are chosen |
| 25 to 30 percent | 6 to 7.5 | 840 to 1,050 | Active without dominating |
| 40 percent and up | 10 or more | 1,400 or more | Dominance noted; the collaboration row suffers |
Those readings are my estimate, not a firm's rule. The bias underneath is better documented. A 2020 study in The Leadership Quarterly filmed 33 leaderless student groups, 256 participants, and timed every utterance in their ten-minute planning sessions. Speaking time correlated 0.67 with peer nominations for "emerged as a leader," the effect survived controls for intelligence and personality, and the authors put it at about 39 seconds of speech per additional nomination. Twenty-six participants never spoke. Those raters were peers, not trained assessors, and a grid exists to dampen exactly this. But a page with nothing on it does not get dampened into a pass.
The same paper cites Woolley and colleagues' 2010 finding that groups with more uneven speaking turns performed worse, which is the ceiling: the group one person ran produces a thinner answer, and that person gets the blame in the write-up. The target is a band, not a maximum. Your share, slightly above, spread across the session, never the most in the room by a wide margin.
Six moves that get written down
Each is short, attributable, and lands in a known row. Four of the six, at the right moments, is a strong sheet.
| Move | When | What it sounds like | Row it fills |
|---|---|---|---|
| Frame the decision and the metric | Minutes 0 to 3 | "The board wants a close list. The test per club is whether it covers its own direct costs, not reported profit." | Structuring |
| Propose the split | Minutes 3 to 5 | "Four exhibits, five of us. Dan and I take club economics, Priya membership, you two the leases. Back in six minutes." | Driving to an outcome |
| Bring one number that changes something | Minutes 8 to 15 | "Footnote two says head office is allocated equally and fixed. That flips two of the three closures." | Using data |
| Pull in the quiet person with a specific ask | After minute 8 | "Priya, you had the membership trend. Does Marsh Lane's decline support a fix rather than a close?" | Working with others |
| Challenge once, with data, then move | When the group chases the wrong metric | "We are optimizing reported profit; the board cares about cash. Only Quayside has negative contribution. Can we test that before we lock the list?" | Structuring, Working with others |
| Call the clock and force the rec | Minutes 20 to 23 | "Seven minutes left. Proposal: close Quayside, review Marsh Lane and Eastgate, flag head-office cost. Objections?" | Driving to an outcome |
The shape matters more than the words: a claim, a number or a name, an invitation. "We should probably look at costs" has nothing to attach to you and gets no tag; "I think we need to be structured here" is all subject and no content and lands in the wrong row.
Ned's rule. If the observer could not write your last contribution down in one line and file it under a competency, it did not happen. Speak in lines that file themselves: a claim, a number, a name.
A worked exhibit trap you can rehearse
An original pack of the kind group exercises favor. Harborline Fitness runs twelve gyms in one region; the board wants to know which of its three loss-making clubs to close. Exhibit two shows the four clubs under discussion, in millions of dollars a year. Footnote two: head-office costs of 4.8 million are allocated equally, 0.4 per club, and fixed for the medium term.
| Club | Revenue | Direct costs | Contribution | Allocated head office | Reported profit |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Marsh Lane | 1.60 | 1.30 | 0.30 | 0.40 | -0.10 |
| Quayside | 1.10 | 1.15 | -0.05 | 0.40 | -0.45 |
| Eastgate | 2.00 | 1.75 | 0.25 | 0.40 | -0.15 |
| Northfield | 2.40 | 1.70 | 0.70 | 0.40 | 0.30 |
The instinctive answer arrives inside eight minutes: close Marsh Lane, Quayside, and Eastgate, "saving" 0.10 plus 0.45 plus 0.15, or 0.70 million. Someone writes 0.7 on the board and the room relaxes.
The footnote flips it. Closing a club removes its revenue and direct costs, so what the company loses is the contribution line, not reported profit. Marsh Lane contributes 0.30, Eastgate 0.25, Quayside minus 0.05. Close all three and Harborline loses 0.50 million a year, while the 1.20 million of head office that sat on those clubs lands on the remaining nine and makes two more look loss-making next year. The swing between headline and reality is 1.20 million, exactly the allocated overhead of the closed clubs, an identity that holds in every allocated-cost exhibit you will meet.
Better: close Quayside only, put Marsh Lane and Eastgate under a fix-or-exit review, and tell the board that 4.8 million of head office on twelve clubs is the real problem. In the room, about 40 seconds:
"Before we lock the three, one check. Footnote two says head office is allocated equally and fixed, so closing a club only saves its direct costs. Marsh Lane and Eastgate cover theirs, by 0.3 and 0.25. Only Quayside does not. Closing all three costs about half a million of contribution a year and reallocates 1.2 million of overhead onto the other nine. I'd propose Quayside only and a review for the other two. Priya, does the membership trend support a fix at Marsh Lane?"
Count the tags: a data catch, a restated decision rule, a proposal, a named question. Four rows in 40 seconds, and the group's answer got better. The tone that scores is "one check," not "you are all wrong."
Scoring the same 30 minutes for two candidates
Two common profiles in the Harborline room, on the 1 to 4 scale most grids use. The scores are mine, not any firm's.
| Row | Candidate A: 11 minutes, 15 turns | Candidate B: 5.5 minutes, 7 turns |
|---|---|---|
| Structuring | Two-minute framework speech on revenue, cost, and "strategic fit." Score 3 | Named the test at minute four: covers direct costs or not. Score 3 |
| Using data | Summed the reported losses to 0.7; missed the footnote. Score 2 | Caught the footnote; showed the 1.2 swing. Score 4 |
| Communicating | Turns averaged 45 seconds, three over a minute; restated own rec three times. Score 2 | Turns of 20 to 40 seconds, each a claim with support. Score 4 |
| Working with others | Took the marker unasked; talked over Raj twice; asked nothing. Score 1 | Asked Priya for the trend; built on Raj's point by name. Score 4 |
| Driving to an outcome | Called the time; delivered the closing. Score 3 | Called the time at minute 20; offered a one-line synthesis and let A present it. Score 3 |
| Total | 11 of 20 | 18 of 20 |
A was not stupid, and the group's answer was right because B fixed it. A still scores 11 because his collaboration row is a 1 with two negative tags beside it, which is very hard to argue against in the integration meeting. A third profile: the candidate silent for fifteen minutes who then delivers a beautiful closing. That sheet reads 1, 1, 3, 1, 3. Nine. The closing was real; so were the blank rows.
On a video call (PwC UK's assessment center is virtual, as is EY's Experience Day for summer interns) the scoring is identical and attribution is harder, so make it easy: open turns with a name, swap interruptions for a raised hand and a four-word chat signal, and take the shared document early, narrating as you type.
Rehearse the moves this week
You cannot practice the social load of a group room alone, and CoachNed does not pretend otherwise; its cases are one interviewer and one candidate. What you can build alone is what makes the six moves possible: a private structure and a fast exhibit read, so that when your turn comes you have a number, not a feeling.
The assignment: one live voice case at /interview, reading your structure and synthesis scores in the debrief; ten exhibit reads at /drills/charts, saying aloud in one sentence what each chart changes about the recommendation; three 30-second synthesis reps at /drills/synthesis. That is the "bring one number" move and the "call the clock" move, drilled in isolation.
Then borrow humans. Give three classmates the Harborline table, make one the observer with the five-row grid and two names, run 20 minutes, rotate. The observer's notes will teach you more about your habits than any guide, including this one.
Everything on CoachNed is open for seven days, no card; then $120 for a recruiting season or $49 a month. CoachNed is independent and not affiliated with Deloitte, PwC, KPMG, EY, Bain, Oliver Wyman, Roland Berger, or any other firm named here.
Frequently asked questions
Do McKinsey, BCG, and Bain use group case interviews?
Not in their published processes. Bain's hiring page describes a digital assessment then case interviews, and neither McKinsey's nor BCG's public interview pages list a group exercise. Treat claims that MBB runs them as folklore unless your invitation says so.
How much should I talk in a group case interview?
Slightly more than your even share, never the most in the room by a wide margin. With five candidates and 25 minutes of discussion, about six minutes in ten to twelve short turns spread across the session.
Should I volunteer to be the scribe or timekeeper in a group exercise?
Timekeeper, yes: calling the clock is a scorable behavior. Scribe only if you keep speaking; a silent scribe fills no rows. On a video call, typing the shared recommendation while narrating it is the one form of scribing that helps.
What if the group reaches the wrong answer?
Challenge once, with a number, then move with the group. Observers score the challenge and how you handled the disagreement, not whether you won. Prosecuting for five minutes turns a positive tag in the data row into a negative one in the collaboration row.
Sources
- Early Careers Assessment | Deloitte UK — Final Stage Assessment as a topic discussion plus a skills and motivation interview; no group exercise listed. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Assessment and selection process | PwC UK — a virtual immersive assessment centre as the penultimate stage. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Application process | KPMG UK — Launch Pad as an in-person half day, with 2026 to 2027 event dates. Checked 2026-09-24.
- KPMG UK graduate profile, Technology Engineering — a graduate's account of a group exercise at Launch Pad. Checked 2026-09-24.
- How to apply | EY UK — Experience Day exercises in front of EY assessors. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Student program application hub | EY Australia — group activity with two to four other students, no single correct answer. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Interviewing | Bain & Company — digital assessment then case interviews. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Interview preparation | Oliver Wyman — conversational and case interviews. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Selection process | Roland Berger — interviews and case studies. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Q&A with our team | Roland Berger — recruiting organized by country. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Testing the Babble Hypothesis (MacLaren et al., 2020), Binghamton University ORB — 33 groups, 256 participants, a 0.67 correlation between speaking time and leader nominations, about 39 seconds per nomination, 26 silent participants, and the Woolley et al. (2010) citation. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Guidelines and Ethical Considerations for Assessment Center Operations (Rupp et al., 2015) — multiple trained assessors observe, record, classify, and rate behavior. Checked 2026-09-24.
- Best practice guidelines for the assessment centre method in South Africa (5th edition) — the ORCE sequence and structured rating forms. Checked 2026-09-24.