Preparing for an interview at Keystone requires a deliberate focus on both quantitative preparation and industry-specific knowledge. You should not expect standard consulting cases; instead, prepare to engage deeply with technology-focused business scenarios and economic principles.

Your interviewers will evaluate you across several key dimensions:

Quantitative & Analytical Rigor – Keystone relies heavily on data-driven insights. You must demonstrate exceptional comfort with numbers, economic data, and structured analysis. Interviewers will look for your ability to perform quick mental math, structure complex calculations, and interpret data trends accurately.

Structured Problem-Solving – When presented with an ambiguous case, your ability to break it down into logical, mutually exclusive, and collectively exhaustive (MECE) components is critical. You must be able to guide the interviewer through your framework step-by-step without getting lost in the details.

Economic & Tech Intuition – You should possess a strong foundational understanding of digital platform dynamics, network effects, marginal costs in software, and multi-sided markets. Demonstrating that you naturally think about how tech ecosystems operate will set you apart.

Communication & Presence – BAs must translate complex quantitative findings into clear, persuasive narratives. You will be evaluated on how articulate you are, how well you handle pushback on your assumptions, and your ability to maintain a collaborative tone throughout the case.

The interview process at Keystone is rigorous, highly structured, and designed to simulate the day-to-day intellectual challenges of the job. Candidates typically experience a multi-stage journey that begins with initial screening and culminates in an intensive final round.

Your journey will generally proceed as follows:

The process begins with an application review, often initiated through on-campus recruiting platforms or online submissions. If selected, you will start with a preliminary phone screen with a recruiter to discuss your background and motivation. This is quickly followed by a first-round technical screen, which typically consists of a behavioral discussion and a standard 30-minute phone case focusing on market estimation or basic business strategy.

If you pass the initial screen, you will move to a second round, which often involves a more complex phone case led by a senior consultant or manager from another office. The final stage is an intensive, full-day interview process at one of Keystone's primary offices (such as Boston, San Francisco, or Seattle). This final round runs from morning until late afternoon, consisting of several back-to-back interviews with analysts, associates, and partners. These interviews are heavily case-focused, punctuated by brief behavioral check-ins and a lunch with current team members to assess cultural fit.

The timeline above outlines the standard progression from your initial application to the final offer decision. Most candidates complete this entire sequence within three to six weeks, depending on the recruiting cycle and office location. Use this timeline to pace your preparation, ensuring you are fully practiced in case structuring before your first phone interview.

To stand out in the Keystone interview process, you must master the specific areas where the firm focuses its evaluation. Your performance in these domains will dictate your progression through the rounds.

Technology & Platform Cases

This is the core of Keystone's strategic work. You must show that you understand how modern technology firms create, capture, and distribute value.

Be ready to go over:

• Multi-sided Platforms – How platforms manage pricing, incentives, and interactions between different user groups (e.g., buyers and sellers, developers and users).
• Network Effects – Direct and indirect network effects, how they drive scale, and how they create barriers to entry.
• Data Monetization – The economics of data collection, privacy considerations, and how data assets translate into competitive advantages.
• Advanced concepts (less common) – Multi-homing costs, platform disintermediation, and API ecosystem strategies.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "A food delivery platform wants to increase its market share in a highly competitive city. Should they subsidize the consumer side or the restaurant side of the market?"
• "How would you evaluate the strategic threat of a major search engine entering the travel booking space?"

Market Estimation & Quantitative Guesstimates

Keystone cases frequently require you to estimate market sizes or operational volumes to test your comfort with ambiguity and numbers.

Be ready to go over:

• Top-down vs. Bottom-up Structuring – Choosing the right approach based on the limited information provided.
• Sanity Checking – Validating your final estimates against real-world benchmarks to ensure they are realistic.
• Sensitivity Analysis – Explaining how changing your key assumptions would impact your final output.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "Estimate the daily data storage requirements for all active users of a major global microblogging platform."
• "How many electric vehicle charging stations are needed to support a mid-sized US city?"

Economic & Legal Strategy

Because Keystone is a premier expert witness firm, many cases simulate legal and regulatory challenges faced by tech firms, such as antitrust inquiries or patent disputes.

Be ready to go over:

• Market Definition – How to define the relevant market in digital spaces where services are often free to consumers.
• IP & Patent Valuation – Determining the economic value of a specific technology patent in a complex product like a smartphone.
• Competitive Harm & Damages – Structuring an analysis to calculate financial damages from anti-competitive behavior or breach of contract.

Example questions or scenarios:

• "An independent app developer claims that a major app store's commission fees are monopolistic. How would you structure an economic study to determine if these fees are fair?"
• "How would you calculate the economic damages suffered by a tech company whose proprietary source code was leaked by a competitor?"