İnterview

Congrats on getting invited to the HR interview🎉🎉

Purpose of the HR call is most likely to get to know you better and give you some info about the role and interview process.

Some typical questions will be:

• Your previous experience
• Why you are interested in consulting and more specifically consulting firm you are applying for
• What you want to achieve at the firm and long term career goal
• Some other typical HR questions: visa status/sponsorship if that applies to you

As for case interview, there are some amazing resources on this PrepLounge: https://www.preplounge.com/en/category/content

Here is the process I took:

1. Start with business school case books to get familiar with what case interview is about and what are the typical questions & frameworks (profitability, market entry, M&A, etc)

2. Find case partners and coaches when you are up to speed and have practiced a few with friends and family

3. Gather feedback, reflect and action against them when you practice the next case

Case books I recommend: UVA-Darden, CBS, HBS, Wharton

Live case examples from the consulting firm websites

Hope this is helpful and best of luck.  

Hi there,

Q: Please help me to prepare for hr and case interviews ( specially case interviews), where to begin what to do, which resources are the best?

I would recommend the following:

1. Define a calendar for your preparation. Identify how many hours you have before your interview and allocate a time slot for preparation in your calendar for each day, working on the points below. Many candidates need 100+ hours to be ready before the interview starting from zero so you can keep that as a benchmark.
2. Start reading good MBA Consulting Handbooks – you can find several for free online (INSEAD is a good one to start). Read the cases and try to apply your structure to solve them. Whenever you see something is missing, upgrade your structure with the new insights. Try to read a new case per day – in this way you will absorb better the information with constant learning.
3. After the first 5-10 cases in books/handbooks and basic theory, start practicing live. PrepLounge can be helpful to connect with other candidates for that. There is a relevant part of the interview score that is based on your communication, which you cannot practice at all if you read cases only.
4. Keep track of your mistakes and see which ones you are repeating. If so, try to identify the source of the mistake (feedback from experienced partners would be particularly useful for this). Be sure to focus on both the behavioral part and the case part during the mocks. The case part should also cover market sizing, math and graph analysis.
5. Before the interviews, be sure to prepare your questions for the interviewer  – a great way to show you prepared in advance and to connect with the interviewer for a good final impression. Ideally, try to get information on who they are and study their profile to have good questions to ask.

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

If you want to spend a few hours only instead of 100+ and cover everything mentioned above, I developed a program precisely for that. 

You can check the program at the following link to learn more:

▶ GYM Program

If you have any questions please feel free to PM me.

Good luck!

Francesco

Hi there, and congrats on making it to the HR interview stage!

To help you in preparing for the upcoming interviews, I would recommend the following:

1. General Interview Preparation

• Start by preparing your credentials for typical interview questions (i.e.: walk me through your Resume/tell me more about yourself)
• Prepare for the consulting-specific interview questions, such as why consulting, why company X.
• Prepare the questions such as “tell me a time when you led a team” that provide you with the opportunity to market yourself to the interviewer

2. Case interview preparation

Now, for the slightly tougher part of case preparation, if you have limited experience, I would recommend the following:

• Start by reading a solid case preparation book. People usually recommend Case in Point by Marc Cosentino as the Bible for consulting preparation, however, I would advise you to read Hacking the Case by Taylor Warfield, as it is more concise and to the point
• Start practicing live case interviews, whether with your peers or over here at PrepLounge, ideally with slightly more experienced candidates than you so you can benefit form their knowledge
• Ask your interviewers for feedback and try to incorporate it into your performance so you can enhance it
• Aim to do 2-3 live cases per day, depending on how far in time the interview is

Hope this answers your question!

If you need any help/clarification, feel free to reach out as I have been through this process more than once and can know how daunting it is.

Best,

Fady

Hey there,

For more targeted answers, please let us know the firm you are applying for.

If you are simply talking about the HR interview, for most firms it looks something like this:

These types of interviews are usually very different from the real case interviews conducted by consultants. They have a couple of parts:

1. HR introducing the role, the recruiting and interview logistics

2. Couple of questions to you, typical fit-style

• Why consulting?
• Why our firm?
• Guide me through your resume.
• What have you done in your previous role that would benefit us in practice / industry X?

3. Questions you might have for HR

Those interviews are usually very easy and more about the actual fit with your experience / the role and to update you further on the next steps.

If you want to prepare for cases, I propose to reach out to a coach and get a tailored prep plan. Might cost a bit but will set you up efficiently and effectively right from the start.

Cheers,

Florian

Hi there!

Which firm? They all have quite different approaches. 

With most, the first discussion with HR is not an assessment. They just want to understand whether the role is relevant for you, explain to you the recruitment process and agree on the timeline. It's also an opportunity for you to ask questions. 

My recommendation is that if you don't know what to expect from this discussion, you send a short clarification email to the recruiter to ask. 

Sharing with you some resources you might find useful for your application process:

Expert Guide: Build A Winning Application Strategy

Best,
Cristian 

Hi there,

this is likely just the introductory interview to determine if the role you are applying to is generally the right fit for you. The HR person will probably tell you more about the actual role and what they are looking for. They'll want to know about your background, motivation regarding consulting and potentially also why you chose the specific company. These types of interviews typically do not involve a case.

While this is often a rather procedural type of interview, you should still treat it as official part of the recruiting process and take it seriously. From there on out, you can expect that any type of interaction you have with the company will be used to “assess” you in one way or another.

Best

Hi there,

First of all, congratulations on the invitation!

I would be happy to share my thoughts on your question:

• To be honest, I would highly advise you to consider working with an experienced coach like myself in your situation where you essentially haven't prepared and have your interviews coming up rather sooner than later. As the most experienced coach in terms of consulting, interviewing and coaching, I would be more than happy to provide you with the required acceleration and real-life perspective to succeed in the interviews.

If you would like a more detailed discussion on how to best prepare for your upcoming interviews, please don't hesitate to contact me directly.

Best,

Hagen

There won't be a case in the HR interview. But you have to be ready to explain your motivation (for consulting and the firm) and explain how your profile would fit that company (i.e. a bit of storytelling over your resume).