Consultant

Typical B-School recruiting process: go to info sessions, meet some people, write a letter that says "I loved this aspect of Accenture that I learned from discussing this with X at the info session," drop resume through school. Get contacted as being selected for interview by a Accenture consultant who is to guide you through the process. Chat on the phone with consultant, meet for coffee, email, everything you need to do and know to be prepared for the process. At some point, there was a pre-interview dinner. To be honest, the info sessions and pre-interview dinner are super awkward - you have a lot of eager beavers trying to press themselves on the few consultants/Accenture personnel that are there in the most annoying manners. They really need to bring more consultants relative to candidates. Then there is the interview itself - typical consulting case interview. My guy played hide the ball worse than others - had a stack of slides that gave background info - you couldn't even get started with your typical "I would look at X first" because then he would pull out a prepared slide that showed X - in other words, you'd start your analysis and then get interrupted with new information. At that point, you shift back into info gathering mode . . . and inevitably, that would lead to new questions. My guy also was pretty dry - so there wasn't much feeling of resonating with him. All in all, it was a somewhat dry experience - and my view is that Accenture's work and personality is a little more reserved than most others'. Everyone was notified the night of the interview about 2nd rounds.