business analyst (consulting)

Got an invitation to apply (through career services at my university) to go to a recruitment dinner. You had to send a motivation letter, CV and grades and I got a confirmation a week later.

At the dinner the partners informed us that everyone present was automatically invited for the first round of interviews if we wanted to. This made a lot of sense since they screened the CV's and motivation letters for the dinner as they would for 1st round iv.

3 rounds of iv's followed pretty quickly. 1st round was 1 face-to-face iv with a consultant with a heavy emphasis on the case (numerical reasoning, market sizing...). 2nd round was 1 iv with a partner (again quite case-heavy like first round) and then a 2nd case iv where I got a written case and 30mins to prepare some slides. Then had to present to the same partner + a manager. They ask a lot of questions in rapid succession (stress test). 3rd round was 2 face-to-face ivs, both with partners. The first partner did not even bother doing a case, just a general discussion on my CV and then simply about the consulting industry in general. The second partner was also the head of recruitment and staffing. He did a small 15min case and the rest was CV and probing for interests.

Got a principal on the phone a week later telling me I got an offer and I stopped by to discuss the package and sign the contract (got a bottle of champagne from the partner that I did the 2nd round with) and that was that.

2nd round was by far the most difficult. Especially the written case because of the time constraint (case was 3-4 pages). Reading the case alone takes 10mins+ then you have to reason, re-read some parts, calculate AND design some slides on a flip-over. The slide design in my case was almost non-existant. After that iv I really thought that I messed it up. During the questioning it became clear that I used a wrong method. What I think that saved me was simply admitting that, in hindsight, the other method was better and being coachable! I had to recalculate some NPV's (not easy without calculator and being under stress ;-) ) But again showing coachability and rolling with the punches can save the interview in such cases. Classic, oral 1 to 1 case interviews you can prepare for perfectly (books like case in point, classmates...). However very few books or other prepping materials help you with these written cases. I assumed (wrongly) that it would be similar, well... it wasn't.