A&M Restructuring

I have an Alvarez & Marsal restructuring first round coming up after an HR screening call this week. I haven't cased, market sized, or even touched RX technicals at all. Realistically, how cooked am I, and can I come back from this? What should I be ready for when it comes time for the first round?

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Well, is this for SA or full time? That changes the situation significantly. If the former, a lot more forgiving (which is why their intern pay is nothing amazing); you get grilled over the internship, and A&M doesn't give returns unless they think you've proven yourself over the internship program. Focus on being a likeable & coachable person I'd say. If the latter, most likely cooked, just give it your best shot. 

A little anecdote, I applied to their ft RX positions a couple years or so ago, didn't make it, but one thing I was told was that the hiring process is wildly inconsistent, which is to say in some offices interviews are extremely easy, and in others much harder. Likely a product of the field not being as well known / popular back then which equaled less applicants so less of a need to have super stringent filtering. Those who applied typically tended to know people in the industry or be extremely interested in the industry. The situation's massively changed now, but I'm not sure if it's been enough time for the above advice to be outdated. They need some time to best learn how to handle a much larger applicant pool, so you might still benefit. 

All this to say you have a 50/50 of BSing it through the process as a summer analyst, and they judge you over your 10 weeks or so as an intern; but as a full time applicant it's brutally difficult so best of luck. 

 

Assuming this is for SA bc that’s all they’re hiring for right now.

With that being said, based on what I’ve heard from friends at the firm:

  1. Hiring process is not consistent, and varies by location
  2. Summer analyst hiring = more forgiving, FT hiring= absolutely brutal
  3. As a SA, not much beyond study typical RX IB technicals as well as strategy cases. They won’t typically ask you RX consulting cases since it takes decades to build up knowledge on those. They focus a lot on behaviorals. Also, unlike IB where many things are templatized, RX consulting is very much a matter of learning throuugh experience… you can’t “read” this stuff. So, they’re trying to assess your coachability and interest above all, which is how behaviorals tie in.
  4. Unfortunately the questions asked are extremely variable as well and you won’t find many of them published online so try to be well rounded
  5. This is very much hearsay but I believe they hire like 2-3 summer interns per office for restructuring…so less than 50 across the country. You should defo still give it your best, you could absolutely be one of the few that make it. Compared to RX IB, that’s generally less per office, but the consulting firms have more offices so more overall. Across all RX consulting firms and all RX IB firms, it’s a similar amount (maybe slightly higher for consulting). 
 

For an SA role at A&M, technicals are just the baseline. They aren’t looking for a calculator; they want a problem solver who survives the 'Partner Test'.

​Focus on this:

​Operative over Financial: Skip the standard market sizing. Focus on 13-Week Cash Flow (13WCF) and working capital levers.

​Mindset: In RX, you deal with chaos. Show Implicit Competence by staying calm when you don't have all the data.

​The Goal: Be the solution to the Partner's stress, not another task on their list.

​Check my recent post on the Partner Test for the mindset shift you need to stand out from the other grinders."

 

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