During my summer internship recruiting at Wharton, there was only one consulting job interview I bombed. And it also happened to be the easiest one.
Here is what happened.
I was interviewing with a partner at Booz Allen Hamilton, a well-known consulting firm.
The interviewer posed the following problem: One of his past clients was the Police chief of a large city in South America. And people were very unhappy with his police force and their slow response time.
How would I fix the problem?
Now normally, these case interviews follow a pretty standard drill — you take a minute or two to structure your approach, ask a few probing questions, and try to come up with an answer or recommendation.
But since I had been a police chief and the topic was so familiar, I became complacent.
So instead of taking the time to structure my problem-solving approach, I straightaway started talking. And without any structure, I was all over the place, giving out rambling ideas and suggestions.
And after having cracked much harder case interviews, I bombed the one which should have been a cakewalk.
Whenever we face a challenge, what kills us often is not the lack of knowledge or experience, but complacency.
That is how chess grandmasters lose to newbies. Major sports teams lose to unknown ones. Large armies get crushed by much smaller ones.
Complacency kills.
Never underestimate your opponent or the challenge. The day you do that is the day you lose.
– Rajan