A friend referred me for the Director IT - Richmond VA. I spoke to the recruiter, passed the numeric and verbal reasoning exams, spoke with the hiring manager, and had my power day this week. I had a 1 hour behavioral interview consisting of 3 "tell me about a time when" questions. I cant remember what they were, but you will need to think about times when you had to influence people, went against what you boss wanted, resolved conflict, had to decide which between two projects on the same timeline and budget and how to handle them. I did very well on this section, I know because my friend on the inside spoke with the guy that interviewed me. The next interview was for 30 minutes and it was with the former hiring manager, this went well, he also said that he would like to have me on his team. Next I had a break where I checked in on my current job. Next came the 1 hour case study. My case study consisted of this situation. Cap One sends out welcome packages when new customers sign up, currently they have 7-8k packages depending on a number of factors, credit rating, demographics, interest rate, ect. First question, "what is the problem with sending out this many packages". If you cant come up with reason for why this is a bad model then hang it up now and dont bother to apply. I reeled off so many the guy stopped me and said I had nailed it. Next he started talking about how they wanted to reduce the number of packages offered to between 5-10 instead of 7-10K. Question "what are the primary factors to determine in when you take on this task?" Again I reeled off a bunch of items until he stopped me and said I had plenty of reasons. All good so far. The next step is where the beginning of the end started. He gave me a sheet of paper with a list of tasks A through K I believe. Each of the tasks had the number of days it took to complete the task, and any predecessor task that must be completed. These tasks must be completed to send out the package information. He asked me to tell him how long it would take to send out a package. So I went through the tasks and came up with 30 days. I believe this was the correct answer from his feedback. Next he asked me to identify the steps in the critical path for delivery of the packages. I made one crucial mistake here. I said out loud "I need to create a picture here with a timeline for each task", but then decided to go through manually and try to determine the critical path items. Looking back I should have asked him to explain what he meant by critical path, every item has to be completed so you could make an argument they are all in the critical path. I "think" he was looking for items that elongated the process based on the next question. I know I got the critical path item wrong as I found out later on in the case. The next question he asked me is to identify the task that would shorten the time to deliver the packages if you could cut one of the items in half. Well one of the items takes 14 days and that is the obviously wrong choice "I said that out loud as well". Well once again I struggled on this, started cutting each one in half, and although I was talking out loud, I am not sure that it was good to do. I second guessed myself and probably looked like a monkey trying to make love to a football. In the end the guy doing the interview said, "can you find the critical path items if you draw a picture" and I did. I was then able to find the critical path items, and figure out the last task was the one that was the best to reduce the time to market. The shortest possible time was 26 days and you select the last task to cut in half. I burnt an entire hour this and am disgusted with my performance. They most likely had additional questions, but because I folded under pressure I did not make it to know. After I got some inside information there is no question I was more than qualified and several of the people said "he would have been great" and I am so disappointed he did not pass the case study. I have not yet received my rejection notification, but I am sure it is coming tomorrow. I find it silly that a case study that has nothing to do with the job I interviewed for will keep me from receiving on offer. I only posted this because I want to help someone else that interviews with Cap one, is very qualified, and does not have to deal with the overwhelming feeling of failure that I feel at the moment. The good news is that I still have a job that I am doing great at and a very nice suit to wear in the future. Good luck.