Hello, I have a meeting with a consultant from Bain and Company this week. What question do i ask him about the firm?

Hello, 

I would use this opportunity to understand the job better through someone's personal experience, rather than trying to impress the person. 

Whenever I'm trying to understand someone else's job, I ask some of the the following questions 

- What were their motivations when they joined that company? 

- Were these expectations met? What are the things that they love about their job and what are the things they wish they had known before? 

- How does their day look like? What are some examples of problems that they are working on?

- What were your most/least interesting/impactful projects? 

- What are the growth (and career) prospects in that sector? 

I hope it helps. 

Best,

Réka
 

Be comfortably prepared with:

 1) Why Consulting

 2) Why Bain

 3) Why this role

 You need to have your story ready, and convince them you are passionate + serious about joining Bain AND that you are an impressive candidate that they would want.

 Furthermore, make sure you know the company. I.e. What the service ops practice does, the Partners that run it, what some of their recent insights/projects have been, what the job looks like day-to-day, etc.

In Terms of Specific Questions

 It's hard to tell you "ask x question". Rather, you need to show that you're engaged, inquisitive, insightful, and curious. Your questions should combine what he/she is saying with insights/knowledge of your own, to then form new hypotheses/questions. Ideally you even prompt their thinking/reflection a bit as well. Basically, your questions/discussion are actually an opportunity for you to show them how you think.

You can ask some quetions specific to the office, but make sure you're not asking silly questions that you should have found out before from some research! Demonstrate your interest, competence, and likeability.

Hi there,

This call is more of an initial screening, no need to have detailed/specific questions in mind. You just need to have an enjoyable conversation with your interviewer for him/her to let you in the interview pipeline - the safest way to go about it is to ask him/her about himself/herself (people like to talk about themselves)

• What for you was the deciding factor for choosing Bain?
• How was your journey with Bain with so far? Do you see yourself going all the way to Partner?

If you want to ask about the office, you could ask questions pertaining about the specifics of that office vs. Bain global (because you don't want to ask questions that have their answers available of the web)

• What are the top 3 industries that your office is focusing on? And what is the fastest growing industry for your office?
• How does your office compare to other Bain offices around the world? what are the differentiating factors?

I hope this helps

Khaled

Hi there,

I would avoid to ask questions about the firm. Instead, you should try to ask questions related to the experience of the person in the firm. People love to talk about themselves.

Generally speaking, good questions should:

1. not be related to something you could easily find online or that shows you don’t know much about consulting
2. not be related to the firm per se (eg how is XYZ in Bain), but to the experience of the consultant (How did you find XYZ in your experience as a consultant?)
3. be related to a positive experience (eg avoid to challenge the consultant on his/her future. Instead, let him/her talk about successes in the past)

Best,

Francesco

Hi Anonymous,

The main idea is making the most of the very limited face time available with your interviewers. As a consequence, questions probing personal insights from your interviewers make sense to learn more about the firm ... and that might even lead to some interesting insights. Some questions I am thinking of are e.g.

• Where exactly do you see the competitive advantage of Bainvs. their competitors?
• Which three things turned out to be different after joining Bain than what you expected in advance?
• ...

Hope that helps - if so, please be so kind and give it a thumbs-up with the green upvote button below!

Robert

Hi

There are a lot of other topics that you can touch upon including Bain's culture, the culture in the particular office you are applying to, global trainings, the industry and project exposure of the office you are applying to, etc. 

I would try to think about what is important for you to know about when potentially joining a consulting firm (just avoid embarrassing questions about comp, travel policies, etc.). 

-A

Hello,

This meeting will give you the opportunity to prepare the fit part of an upcoming interview and more specifically to help you answer the question "Why Bain"?

You can ask him questions on : the organization of the office, the internal initiatives in which you could recognize yourself (eg associations for the protection of the environment, organization of festive events etc ...) or on the international tranfers process.... 

So on the day of the interview you can be really specific about your motivations for Bain.

I hope this helps you. David

Hello!

On top of the insights already shared in the post, the "Integrated FIT guide for MBB" has been recently published in PrepLounge´s shop (https://www.preplounge.com/en/shop/tests-2/integrated-fit-guide-for-mbb-34)

The Q&A at the end, for instance, is considered by most part of the FIT. However, it´s a grey area, and it´s not evaluated

It provides an end-to-end preparation for all three MBB interviews, tackling each firms particularities and combining key concepts review and a hands-on methodology. Following the book, the candidate will prepare his/her stories by practicing with over 50 real questions and leveraging special frameworks and worksheets that guide step-by-step, developed by the author and her experience as a Master in Management professor and coach. Finally, as further guidance, the guide encompasses over 20 examples from real candidates.

Feel free to PM me for disccount codes, since we still have some left from the launch!

Dear A,

Ideally, there are questions hat could show your intrinsic interest in the company, person, or both ideally. So one of the greatest question could be for example the following:

"Now, look at your career XX long, what is the one project assignment, by looking back, makes you very proud of accomplishing smth great?"

Why did you choose Bain in you life?

Which project you're working on?

Hope it helps,
Good luck,
André

A lot of great points are covered here. Below are questions I always found thoughtful when candidates asked me about the role

1. How does my role differ from others on the team and how do I get ownership of my work

2. What impact have I had in this job and what has it taught me

3. How do I deal with the challenges of the consulting life - especially handling senior clients as a young graduate

4. What is the mentorship model like? How easy does the firm make it to find mentors? How did I find my mentor?

5. What did I wish I know before I joined McKinsey

6. What makes me excited to come to work every morning

All the best with the call,

Udayan