Management Consultancy: Interview Advice

There’s a couple of ways of looking at a management consultancy interview, but ultimately the employer is going to want to see that your brain works in a way which suits both the role and the industry.

What this means is that they’re going to put you on the spot and try and get you to participate in the interview like it is a real life management situation. This is often referred to as ‘the case study’.

Relax

If you’ve got this far, it’s safe to say that you know vaguely what you’re talking about when it comes to the matters. What you’re essentially doing in the interview is the job you’re applying for, so you need to make it into a dialogue as you would with a client.

Think of it as a task you’d be doing in the job, so roll your sleeves up, forget it’s an interview and get stuck into the problem as best you can.

Take Some Time

A problem with almost any interview, not just ones for management consultancy, is that people rush in with their answers without really thinking about it, which means that their answers either peter out very quickly or they ramble with no direction.

Listen to the question, compose yourself, draw up a line of argument and then follow it through logically and practically to its concluding idea.

Conclude

Talking of concluding ideas, remember to come up with some sort of concluding statement or remark. As ever, they’re not looking for a definitive answer, but be sure to draw your points into some sort of closing statement and offer some sort of arc to your plan.

Remember what the original question was and after you’re done talking through your thought processes and analysis of the situation, draw it back to that and signpost, just like you would in an essay.

Don’t get lost

The interviewers will undoubtedly test you on the different strategies you know for dealing with a situation, and the application of theoretical knowledge into a real world scenario. It is important not to get lost in the theoretical nature of things and to move on from the initial framework into the specifics of a given situation.

Remember that this is supposed to be a re-enactment of a client meeting and if a client came to you with a real situation and you only gave them a conceptual solution, they wouldn’t be too happy. Remember to bring it back to the real as soon as you can, in any possible scenario.