I passed my resume to a colleague that is a consultant in Deloitte. She forwarded it to a recruiter that reviewed it and called me for the screening interview about two weeks later. The recruiter was extremely informative and responsive to questions about the structure of the org, the progression of career path, etc. The recruiter asked about what kind of work I would be interested in doing, if I was opposed to travel, and explained how the company reviewed employees. The recruiter then set me up for a technical phone interview with a manager in the organization that I was interviewing with.
I got the call from the technical interviewer that same week, where he went into depth about my technical experience, but most of the questions were software development cycle related. As I worked in aviation, the two are very different, but I could speak to my functional skills. His feedback from my interview was then passed to the recruiter, which was shared with me. I still had many questions, so the recruiter volunteered to set up another call with an employee that had a similar background as I had, and was working in the area I was interviewing for to get a better feel of what he learned and what he liked. I highly recommend requesting to speak to a person in the group you’re going for; it’s immensely helpful in getting an understanding of what you may be doing.
The recruiter was extremely communicative and responsive through telephone and email. Most correspondence was through email where they laid out the schedule of the in-office interview which was to be conducted by three interviewers. The first was a senior partner that was to evaluate my “knowledge and experience in areas such as engagement management, implementation methodology, proposal preparation and business development in a consulting, project-driven environment.” The second was a manager that was to “work to gain a deeper understanding of your technical experience specific to Information Management.” This interviewer also gave me the case interview (which was pretty easy if you do their practice ones on their website). The third interviewer “focused on the projects you have worked on in the past from both a technology and industry perspective.” He also evaluated my team competency. Each interview was approximately 45 minutes each, back to back, where the interviewers rotated around you. At the end of each one, the interviewer allowed you to ask questions.
To be honest, the interviews were a bit tough. The first interviewer was very stern and asked some offhanded questions that I sincerely wasn’t expecting. The focus was really on if I understood that industry is significantly different than consulting in that your actions and decisions severely reflect on the firm. The case interviewer was much more laid back, but after working through my case, drilled deeper in asking questions about process that only consultants would really know. So I was at a loss for questions about contracts and renegotiation. However, he was very responsive to the answers I did give given my nonexistent consulting experience. The third interviewer was also more laid back, but again, quite a few questions that dealt with consulting principles or practices came up. I gave answers that were from my perspective being in industry and speculated on how it would be different as a consultant. I thought I did terribly, but apparently, I did well.
I got a call about an hour after the interviews from the recruiters who gave immediate feedback on my performance in the interviews. The recruiter said that the interviewers liked me and my background a lot, and though I needed to learn a bit about the consulting world, they were willing to teach me. They wanted me to come on board immediately. After that conversation the recruiter discussed salary and benefits, and I tried to negotiate for higher. She took my counter back to the approval office, but unfortunately, due to my lack of consulting experience, she was unable to move more. I accepted the offer more because of what the experience could teach me over time and the advancement potential.