EXIL-NEGOCIOS common mistakes
EXIL-NEGOCIOS · Understand the traps and how to avoid them.
On strategy questions, the candidate picks the option that sounds most ambitious (enter a new market, diversify, invest heavily in innovation) even when the case data says the firm is a low-cost follower with no slack resources.
Strategic options are memorized as a menu of 'good moves' rather than as choices that must fit a stated position; the qualitative data in the stem gets skimmed as background colour while the options are read as standalone slogans.
What to do instead
Before looking at the options, write one line in the margin: 'Stated advantage = X; binding constraint = Y.' Then eliminate any option that contradicts either, however attractive it sounds, and only compare the survivors.
The candidate recalls a marketing metric by name but applies the wrong one: reports penetration when the stem asks about repeat purchase, uses share of wallet as if it were market share, or treats customer lifetime value as a one-period profit figure.
Metrics are learned as a vocabulary list rather than as answers to specific questions, so a familiar-sounding term wins over the one that actually fits the decision being described.
What to do instead
Define each metric in one sentence with its unit and the question it answers (penetration = % of buyers who bought at least once; loyalty = repeat rate among buyers). Say the question being asked in plain words, then select the metric that answers exactly that.
The candidate answers pricing questions reflexively with cost-plus logic, or recommends a price cut to gain share, without calculating how much volume must rise to keep contribution margin constant at the lower price.
Cost-plus is the only pricing method most candidates have practised, and 'lower price to gain share' is a plausible-sounding default that is never stress-tested numerically under time pressure.
What to do instead
For any price-change option, compute the required volume uplift (new contribution per unit vs old) before evaluating it, and state whether the scenario's elasticity or capacity data could plausibly deliver that uplift.
The candidate computes break-even in currency when units were asked (or the reverse), uses cost/price as the margin instead of (price - cost)/price, or drops the sign on a cash outflow, and then selects the option matching the flawed number.
Formulas are memorized as symbol strings without their units, and the numbers in the stem are so tidy that an incorrect intermediate result still looks like a plausible answer option.
What to do instead
Write the unit of the required answer at the top of the working (units, currency, or %), solve, then sanity-check with a one-unit example: if one unit contributes 20 and fixed costs are 2,000, break-even must be 100 units. Confirm the option is in the same unit.
The candidate treats accounting profit as cash: builds a cash budget from the income statement without adjusting for depreciation, changes in receivables and payables, or capital expenditure, and so overstates available cash.
Profit and cash are used interchangeably in everyday speech, and accrual-to-cash adjustments feel like a technical add-on rather than the core of the answer.
What to do instead
Force three adjustment lines every time: add back non-cash charges, subtract the change in working capital, subtract capex. If the question mentions a cash shortage, default to the cash view even when the stem leads with a profit figure.
On process questions, the candidate adds or averages stage capacities to get process capacity, instead of taking the minimum, and then reports the bottleneck stage's own time as the process throughput time.
Averaging feels like the fair or 'balanced' answer, and capacity and flow time are both expressed in time units, so they blur together once the arithmetic starts.
What to do instead
Sketch the flow with each stage's capacity per period beside it. Process capacity = lowest stage (circle it as the bottleneck). Compute flow time separately as the sum of stage times, and label the two answers explicitly before reading the options.
On organisational behaviour items, the candidate selects the option that matches their own workplace experience (pay and bonuses drive motivation, a difficult colleague is 'lazy') rather than the option that uses the constructs of the theory named or implied in the stem.
Personal experience is vivid and fast, while theory labels are learned abstractly; under time pressure the vivid intuition wins before the theory is even identified.
What to do instead
First name the theory the stem is testing (e.g. self-determination, attribution error, equity theory). Then choose only the option whose wording uses that theory's constructs, regardless of whether it matches your own experience.
The candidate evaluates a venture scenario by how appealing the business idea sounds, or recommends launching at full scale, instead of asking which assumption is riskiest and what the cheapest test of it would be.
Startup questions invite opinion, and the option describing a confident full launch reads as decisive and entrepreneurial; the falsification logic feels slow and academic.
What to do instead
Identify the single assumption that kills the venture if wrong (usually willingness to pay or repeat use), then choose the option that tests that assumption fastest and cheapest. Reject options that validate the idea instead of testing it.
The candidate blurs legal categories: treats void and voidable as synonyms, applies strict liability to a fault-based scenario, or endorses conduct because it is legal without addressing the separate ethical or compliance exposure the stem raises.
The terms are learned as paired definitions without the consequence attached (who can enforce, whether an act can be ratified, who bears the loss), and 'legal' is unconsciously equated with 'acceptable'.
What to do instead
For each option, label which category it invokes and its consequence before judging it (void = no effect from the start; voidable = valid until avoided). Where ethics is in play, answer legality and ethics as two separate checks and require both.
In data questions the candidate converts a change from 5% to 7% into 'a 2% increase', ignores the base rate when a test result is presented, or reads a correlation in the data as evidence that one variable caused the other.
Percentages are read as absolute differences in everyday language, base-rate information feels like background rather than the decisive number, and the compelling narrative in the stem invites a causal reading of a statistical association.
What to do instead
Restate the claim as a full sentence with the numbers spelled out ('rose by 2 percentage points, a relative increase of 40%'). For any test or screening result, write true positives and false positives as counts from the base rate before answering. For association claims, ask explicitly what mechanism or design would justify causation and reject options that skip it.