The Consulting Interview Process, Round by Round

The shape of the process

Inside a single interview

Forty-five minutes, and the allocation is remarkably consistent. Five minutes of introduction and rapport. Ten to fifteen minutes of behavioural questions. Twenty-five to thirty minutes of case. Five minutes for your questions.

The case is where most of the decision is made, and the fit section is where a marginal decision is resolved. Candidates who prepare only the case are frequently surprised to be rejected after a case that went well, and the reason is almost always in the first fifteen minutes.

How interviewers actually score

Most firms use a structured scorecard with four or five dimensions, and the interviewer completes it immediately afterwards. The dimensions vary in name and are recognisably the same thing everywhere.

• Structure: did you break the problem into parts that were relevant, distinct and complete, and did you use that structure rather than abandon it.
• Analysis and quantitative ability: were the calculations right, at reasonable speed, and did you interpret the answer rather than just produce it.
• Business judgement: did the recommendation make sense to somebody who runs a business, and did you notice the thing that mattered.
• Communication: were you clear, did you signpost, did you listen, would a client be comfortable with you.
• Personal impact and drive: the fit dimension, drawn from the behavioural section and from how you handled pressure in the case.
• A single weak dimension can fail a candidate who is strong elsewhere, which is why targeted practice on your weakest one beats general practice.

Candidate-led and interviewer-led cases

Two traditions, and you should know which you are in within the first minute.

In a candidate-led case you drive: you ask for the information you want, decide where to go next, and are responsible for arriving somewhere. Silence is yours to fill. In an interviewer-led case you are taken through a series of prepared questions, each self-contained, and the skill is answering each one well rather than steering.

The preparation differs less than candidates fear. Both reward structure, arithmetic and judgement. What differs is initiative: driving a candidate-led case badly looks passive, and trying to drive an interviewer-led case looks like you are not listening.

What final rounds add

The cases are harder and less tidy, and the questions behind them are different. A first-round interviewer is asking whether you can do this. A final-round partner is asking whether they would put you in front of a client next month, and whether you would still be here in two years.

Expect more challenge and more interruption. Partners frequently push back on a reasonable answer simply to see what you do, and holding a defensible position politely scores better than folding. Expect the fit conversation to be longer and more genuinely curious, and expect your questions at the end to matter more, because a partner is deciding whether they enjoyed the conversation.

The written case and the group exercise

Not universal, and common enough to prepare for. A written case gives you a pack of twenty to thirty pages and forty-five minutes to produce a short recommendation, then presents it. It tests prioritisation above all: nobody can read everything, and the marks go to whoever identifies the three exhibits that matter.

A group exercise puts four to six candidates around a problem together. The scoring is counterintuitive and consistent: the candidate who talks most usually scores worst. What is rewarded is building on someone else point, bringing in a quiet participant, keeping the group to time and moving it towards a decision. Treat the other candidates as colleagues rather than competitors, because the assessor is watching how you would behave on a team.

Practical things that matter more than they should

• Bring paper and a pen you can write quickly with, and ask for a moment to structure. Taking sixty to ninety seconds of silence at the start is expected and reads as composed.
• Write legibly enough to turn your page around and show it. Many interviewers appreciate being shown the structure.
• Say the number out loud as you calculate, so a mistake can be caught rather than carried through the whole case.
• If you get lost, say so and summarise where you are. Recovering visibly scores better than drifting.
• Have three questions ready per interview and do not ask something answered on the firm website.