Interview prep fatigue: What to do about it?

As a career advisor at Olin, I do a lot—A LOT—of case interview prep with students—sometimes up to four cases a day. They can be exhausting for me, so I can only imagine how exhausting the practice is for the student. It is stressful, energy-sapping, and sometimes, depending on how it goes, defeating and demoralizing.

Case interviews are the standard with the top consulting firms. Many experts say that a student should practice up to 100 cases in preparation for the recruiting season. That is a tremendous investment in time and focus. It can be tiring. So what should a student do when they find themselves facing interview fatigue? There are a few options to help pull yourself out of the doldrums, refocus, and find that curiosity for solving business problems that initially fueled your desire to be a consultant. I jotted down five—you may have others that work for you:

Take a break

There is nothing wrong with skipping a few days of case practice. Put the pencil down and turn off the part of your brain that is evaluating every situation you face with Porter’s Five Forces Model or some other consulting framework.

Read and absorb

Now could be a good time to read about how real business issues were tackled. Pick up your favorite business journal—HBR, The Strategic Management Journal, The Economist—and see how the issues were approached, what solutions were discovered, what risks were mitigated. All of this information is fodder for your case interviews.

Celebrate your successes

Most students I know have a binder full of cases and notes from their practice sessions. Take some time to review those cases you did really well on and isolate why you did so well. See how you might capitalize on those strengths going forward. Remind yourself how good you really can be at solving issues.

Don’t forget behavioral question practice

I have seen a few students focus solely on case interview questions and heavy mathematical problem-solving only to get tripped up in an interview by the dreaded “What would be your biggest weakness?” question. Use this time to review your individual stories.

Maintain your network

You have probably worked hard at building your network—so don’t let it disappear! This is the perfect time to connect and update people in your support team. Ask what they are working on or what might be happening in their companies. It is a great way to fuel your interests and curiosity again.

The bottom line to all of this: find a way to get your mojo back. You will need it to get across the finish line and land that perfect consulting job you have been working so hard to get.

This post originally appeared on LinkedIn Pulse. In addition to founding LMHAdvisors, Lisa Hebert serves as a Weston Career Center Career Advisor, specializing in supply chain, consulting, and advising Olin’s veteran student population.