Mercer Investments Consulting Interview

So I have a second round interview at Mercer for an internship in their Investment Consulting group. I have done my homework on Mercer and MMC and know where I would like to be placed (NY or Chicago). I have been looking around online for questions that they might ask in the second round but have come up with nothing. Are there any questions that Mercer generally asks in 2nd rounds? All previous internships I've had were very informal so the formal recruitment process is foreign to me. Thanks for the help in advance.

 

I've gone through the process in the Chicago office and it was mostly fit. This was a few years ago, but the questions were pretty much vanilla fit/behavioral type questions. I would be surprised if you got anything beyond the rudimentary finance questions asked at many of these interviews. Search for some previous threads on this website, I know I've contributed to a couple regarding the interviewing process at mercer. Maybe a few of the other posters in those previous forums can shed some light on the more current process.

Good luck

 

Granted, I don't work in the Investment side of the house, but my interview at Mercer was 2 phone interviews. Then a couple weeks later I met with 5 people who ranged from Senior Consultants to Principals. Mostly fit, a few technical questions and case specific (Your client calls you and says x, what do you do?), then I had a 1 on 1 with the office head then lunch with her and two other principals. It took them like 4 weeks to get an official letter sent over after the recruiter told me I had the job. HR in MMC can move very slow.

Best of Luck, let me know if you get the gig and accept it

 

Went through final rounds with Mercer's HC division and it was pretty much what hartfordwhalers84 said. Almost entirely fit and behavioral. Seemed like they were just looking to find someone who will fit well with all of the current employees. My interview consisted of: 2 cases (1 quant and 1 qual), 1 diagnostic math test that was designed so you cannot finish in time (think basic SAT's), 2 fit interviews.

 

Mercer is mainly a talent/hr consulting firm - you wouldn't be doing very much quantitatively focused with the except of executive comp consulting. Think more so talent consulting/HR transformation/organizational transformation etc. I think executive comp consulting is highly valuable and has many quantitative aspects, so if you do get the offer try to get staffed on as many projects as you can. I honestly think the talent consulting/hr transformation stuff is mostly fluff, and not hugely valuable if you want to pursue a career in high finance. However, there is still a huge market for that kind of consulting and if you like the work, making your way up to partner level will still be quite lucrative.

Switching into McKinsey would be highly difficult. Remember, Mercer is a consulting firm, and whether they like to admit or not, most of the consultants there would rather be at a MBB or quite frankly, any top management/strategy consultancy (think Parthenon-EY, LEK, Oliver Wyman, Booz Allen, AT Kearney, Monitor Deloitte etc). Exit opps for management consulting is much better and more broad, compensation is also higher. I think getting into any top tier MC would require a lot of networking from Mercer.

Getting an MBA would be your best bet. Mercer still has a great brand name and I'm sure getting into a top 20 MBA school would not be that difficult, granted your college GPA isn't awful. M7 MBA is a different story, but depending on your GMAT/undergrad GPA, you still may have a decent chance. Going into banking after b-school is really dependent on yourself - if you're willing to grind hard for interviews and network your ass off, i'm sure you'd be able to get some decent offers. Maybe not BB, but definitely interviews for decent MM/Boutiques.

No idea about salary, guessing it starts off at around $60-$65k, depending on city. Bonus will most likely be non-existent for the first few years, at least compared to banking.

 

Went through the full interview process last year. No technical, all fit. The only weird question I was asked was how would I make a hot dog stand profitable. I wouldn't worry about it.

 

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