Accenture Business Strategy - Case Interview Prep

Question

Hi all, I'm preparing for an interview with Accenture's business strategy practice in the US. There are two questions to seek your advice:

1. Does this practice do real strategy works?

Is anyone here familiar with this practice? The HR told me that this unit does 70% “typically strategy works” while 30% is more focused on “digitalization”. However, “strategy” is very broad and generic. I'm keen to know whether they do real strategy works, or most of the projects are more comparable to those at big four (i.e. more implementation stuff, smaller scale, narrower topic) instead of typical strategy firms.

2. How to prepare for case interviews with this practice?

I've checked the interviewer's background and she focuses on “digital transformation”. Under such a context, how could I better prepare for the case interviews - would it be typical strategy cases that we see in case books? Should I equip myself with specific knowledge of digital transformation topics? I'm not familiar with digital transformation at all.

Would appreciate your advice. Thank you!

Answer 1

Hi there!

These are great questions.

Let me take them one by one.

1. Does this practice do real strategy works?

Strategy, not strategy - it's not really black and white.

Yes, Accenture does strategy work.

Yes, they also tend to be mostly focused on IT-related topics (this is generally what Accenture is known for).

However, they rarely do the high-level strategic stuff which tends to go to MBB.

In the end, it doesn't really matter - in the sense that if your plan is to do heavy strategy work, you could just lean towards those types of projects once you're in Accenture and then mid to long-term move into MBB.

2. How to prepare for case interviews with this practice?

It's great that you know the background of the interviewer.

Here are two cases that were written based on McKinsey interviews which are ‘digital’ cases:

https://www.preplounge.com/en/management-consulting-cases/interviewer-led-mckinsey-style/advanced/digital-lab-at-leta-bank-mckbcg-digital-261

https://www.preplounge.com/en/management-consulting-cases/interviewer-led-mckinsey-style/intermediate/glowmobile-goes-digital-mckinsey-first-round-280

They should give you a good understanding of what to expect in terms of topic, depth of expertise needed and what the interviewers are looking for.

Last but not least, don't expect that just because the interviewer does digital transformations, all the questions are going to be from digital. Expect anything.

Best of luck with your upcoming interview!
Cristian

Answer 2

Hi there,

1. Does this practice do real strategy works?

Yes, absolutely!

I also recommend you keep networking to learn more about their types of projects, approach, etc.

2. How to prepare for case interviews with this practice?

Two things:

Prepare “normally” - still learn all of the fundamental skills for casing
Add in digital topics

Preparing Normally

https://www.preplounge.com/en/articles/pitfalls-case-interview-preparation

https://www.preplounge.com/en/articles/dos-and-donts-in-a-case-interview

Digital Cases - Based on Real Projects

https://www.preplounge.com/en/management-consulting-cases/interviewer-led-mckinsey-style/advanced/mckinsey-digital-bcg-platinion-oil-gas-upstream-technology-196

https://www.preplounge.com/en/management-consulting-cases/candidate-led-usual-style/intermediate/bcg-yodaphone-195

https://www.preplounge.com/en/management-consulting-cases/candidate-led-usual-style/intermediate/bcg-platinionmck-digitalmonitor-experienced-hire-tech-practice-roma-solutions-240

Answer 3

Hello,

To answer your questions:

1. Yep, they absolutely do real strategy work, and they are particularly known for their digital-related work. I also definitely recommend networking with people there as you go through the recruiting process to learn more about the kind of work they do.

2. I think Ian's advice is spot on here! Prepare as you would for a case interview at any large consulting company (so yes, work on typical strategy cases), and devote some time to focusing on cases that deal with digital transformations.