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The guesstimate question is a usual type of question that you can expect to be asked when interviewing for a position at a consulting firm.
What will you be asked to do
A typical guesstimate question will require you to estimate a number by doing a rough “back of the beer coaster” calculation. You are supposed to reach a final answer by using a series of narrowing assumptions.
Your assumptions should have a sound basis and you should explain the logic behind your assumptions, however it is not important that your assumptions be 100% accurate.
What is being assessed
Your response to the guesstimate question will help the interviewer evaluate your strengths in the following areas:
- professionalism and ability to remain level-headed when placed in a tricky situation;
- creativity and sound judgement in being able to come up with plausible assumptions;
- logic and structured thinking; and
- numerical skills and level of comfort with doing basic arithmetic in your head.
The guesstimate question is quite different from the kind of interview questions that you are probably used to. For the guesstimate question, it is better to arrive at the wrong answer with good assumptions and clear logic than to know the right answer because you saw it on the Discovery Channel last week.
Examples
Here is a list of example guesstimate questions to give you an idea of the kind of questions to expect:
- How many births are there in America each day?
- How many petrol stations are there in Sydney?
- How many bottles of wine are consumed in France each month?
- How many cups of tea are drunk in England each day?
- How far does the average Premiership footballer run in a single game?
- How much does Mount Kilimanjaro weigh?
- How many pounds are spent on haircuts in the UK each year?
- How many ping-pong balls will fit inside a 747?
- How many weddings are performed in China each year?
- How many men’s suits were sold in the United States last year?
- How many tennis balls fit in a swimming pool?
- What is the annual size of the golf ball market in Japan?
- Estimate the total revenues obtained from the movie Avatar.
- What is the size of the market for mobile phones in America?
- How many white cars are there in Australia?
- How many people are buried each year in England?
- What is the annual market for apples in America?
- What is the annual revenue of Harrods in London?
- What is the market for bicycles in America?
- How many taxis are there in New York?
A person who wants to work on their leadership ability should work on their self-esteem.
The job of a leader is to persuade and inspire. A leader needs to develop and persuasively convey a clear vision of what their organisation plans to do, and to inspire and empower the people who work for that organisation to contribute towards making that vision become a reality.
A leader with high self-esteem will be able to do that job more effectively. There are at least three reasons for this:
- A leader with a low self-esteem may feel the need to prove that they are right, or feel the need to take credit for any success achieved by the organisation. This kind of behaviour is unlikely to inspire and will not encourage people to give their best efforts;
- A leader with low self-esteem is more likely to hire other people with low self-esteem because they are intimidated by people with more confidence than themselves; and
- High self-esteem contributes to high performance. This view is supported by Nathaniel Branden, author of The Six Pillars of Self-Esteem
, who has identified six practices that result from (and contribute towards) high self-esteem:
a. living consciously;
b. self-acceptance;
c. self-responsibility;
d. self-assertiveness;
e. living purposefully; and
f. personal integrity.
A leader who operates at a high level of consciousness, self-acceptance, self-responsibility, self-assertiveness, purposefulness, and personal integrity, that would certainly be inspirational.
World GDP is growing at 4% per year, how long will it take for world GDP to double?
Your company’s revenue is growing at 10% per month, how long will it take for your company’s revenue to double?
There is a simple rule of thumb that you can use to figure out roughly how long it will take for something to double, given an expected growth rate.
The Rule of 70
This rule of 70 can be described by the following equation:
If the world’s GDP is growing at 4% per year then global GDP will double in about 17 years.
If your company’s revenue is growing at 10% per month then revenues will double in about 7 months.
We all know the old marketing adage, “sex sells”. The marketing approach is quite simple: link sex directly or indirectly with the product or service that you are selling. It may be a certain brand of cola that we end up buying, but it was sex that we were after.
Sex is a base level physiological need on Maslow’s hierarchy of needs. As a base level need, sex is a desire that people will seek to satisfy even if other low level needs such as employment, shelter or safety have not been met. Quite simply, sex appeals to us all.
Putting sex to one side, people also have higher level desires that we may want to appeal to. As we discovered in the previous post, there are three simple pleasures which people require for a life of happiness (whether they know it or not):
- Friendship: we want to belong to a community with which we can identify. We want to be cared for and cared about. We want to be missed when we are not around;
- Freedom: we want independence from the demands of others. We want control over our own lives and the ability to make our own decisions; and
- Thought: we want to understand the world and the nature of the challenges that we face. Understanding may not remove the challenges themselves, but it will help to remove the anxiety that often accompanies the confusion, displacement or surprise which result from our lack of understanding.
As the examples below demonstrate, marketing firms are well aware of the opportunities presented by being able to effectively target people’s forgotten needs.
1. Friendship
It may be a certain brand of alcoholic beverage that we end up buying, but it was friendship that we were after.
2. Freedom
It may be a certain brand of luxury car that we end up buying, but it was freedom from the demands of our daily lives that we were after.
3. Thought
It may be a certain brand of personal computer that we end up buying, but it was a desire to think differently and understand the world that we were after.
