Have you ever wondered how to prep for the fit interview portion of a consulting interview?
Well I've got some great insight for you today.
We have 3 main types of fit questions that we'll walk you through
so that you can be ultimately prepared for what seems like the sneaky piece
of the consulting interview.
I'm Jenny Rae Le Roux, the Managing Director of Management Consulted,
and the case interview always gets the most focus in the prep process
because it's terrifying. You have no idea what they're going to ask,
you have no idea where to start, there's math, etc.
But the sneaky part of every interview,
and ultimately the deciding factor for your offer
becomes the fit interview. So for fit interview questions,
how do you prepare? There are 3 main types that you need to prepare.
The first type are direct questions. The second type,
story questions, and the third type, tricky questions.
Let me go through each one of those in turn. First of all, direct questions
these are the questions that someone is expecting you, if you're a top candidate,
to slam dunk.
These are questions like "Walk me through your resume," "Why do
you want to work for this company," and
"Why do you want to do this particular job, this type of consulting," for example.
And in those questions, they're expecting you to have perfectly thought out,
clear, linear answers.
They're meant to be 2 minutes for walk me through your resume, and 1 minute
for all of the other questions.
And walk me through your resume is meant to be a linear story that tells
from the beginning to the end how you got to where you are today.
"Why the firm" is meant to be a re-telling of some experience
that you've had with someone who's incredible inside the company.
And "why do you want to do this job?"
Well, that's meant to really explain how you came on the journey
to deciding that this is exactly what you want to do.
Firms are looking for you to have something prepared, and for
it to come across as clear and enthusiastic.
Now for story questions, we have a very specific recommendation.
We recommend that you prepare 15 stories
inside your interview. When you prepare these stories,
they're meant to be able to answer a variety of story-like
questions, such as, "tell me about a time when..."
fill in the blank. Here's an example. Tell me about a time when...
you demonstrated leadership in a team.
Tell me about a time when you used data to solve a problem.
Tell me about a time when you faced an obstacle on a project
and how you overcame it. And those
series of questions altogether pull
out from you the examples,
the illustrations of how you lead.
We build stories from 3 different categories. Academic,
leadership, and work experience. And you need
to have a balance of all of them.We also
build stories from different parts of your experience,
even if it seems like it's not maybe
as professionally relevant as some of the more recent
experiences. However, when you build stories
there is 1 key tip that we have beyond just building
the 15 stories. It's that when you're in the interview you do
release the most recent stories first
inside the interview. So you should have professional
experiences from the last 2 years
that you use to answer your first couple of questions.
The final set of questions are the ones that everyone fears.
The tricky questions. These are ones that you
never enjoy answering. Like "what is your greatest weakness?"
Or, "tell me about a professional failure," or "explain
an obstacle," or "tell me about a difficult boss
that you've had and how you handled them."
All of these are meant to demonstrate your ability
to build trust in a stressful situation.
And they're not what you think they are. They're not meant to expose
your own self-awareness. They're meant to
illustrate in your storytelling,
the way that you've faced a difficult problem, the way that you've
sized it up, and the way that you handled it
to improve upon it. They're not meant to demonstrate
perfection, and they're not meant to specifically set
the person at ease that you're a perfect candidate.
They're meant to set them at ease that when
difficult things come up, as they will
in contending with issues that you'll face as a consultant,
that you will be ready to handle them.
In summary, if you want to prepare for fit questions, there's a ton of
work that you need to do, and if you at least
start with these 3 things, preparing for the
basic direct questions, preparing for the
more advanced story questions, and preparing for the
ultimate tricky questions, you'll
at least have a good handle
on some of the key areas that you'll need to work on
when you go into the final steps of the consulting prep process.
If you want some personal advice
based on where you are, and where you'd like to go in your
career, reach out to us at www.managementconsulted.com
or on social.