I remember being in the same position you are in right now. How do I prepare for my Deloitte Consulting interview, or any management consulting interview?
There are thousands of articles online. I remember spending hours searching through forums and reading a variety of articles all night wasting sleep. The first thing everyone usually recommends is Case In Point right? Yup, I remember reading that. It was not that helpful for me. Case In Point trains your mind to put any case into a set “framework” – I disagree with this approach based on my experience. Interviewers like to have fun sometimes and throw you a curveball that requires you to quickly adapt and develop your own framework on the spot. Well, if you are relying on your Case In Point training, you probably will scramble for a bit.
Let’s get right to it. These are the resources I used to help me become second nature with consulting case interviews. These are also resources I’ve recommended to many people who have been successful in the interview process.
Table of Contents
How to Prepare for the Case Portion
Books To Read:
Case Interview Secrets by Victor Cheng. This is the first thing you should read. Victor makes consulting simple and gives a great introduction throughout his book.
He essentially narrows everything to 2 frameworks, which can be used in combination with each other or separately. It makes it easy to tackle any case that is thrown at you. In extremely rare cases, you will get a case that does not fit these 2 frameworks. This is where you’ll need to rely on your practice and critical thinking skills.
Newspapers:
- Wall Street Journal
- The Economist
- Bloomberg
For those of you without a business background, regularly reading one of these publications will enhance your business vocab and your general business knowledge. When the interviewer asks how to increase margins, you’ll want to understand what type of margins? By reading these publications it’ll help you understand the case better, which will help you tackle it quicker.
Once you have business knowledge, I’d like you to pick companies from your readings and do a quick analysis on them in your head.
What is the business? How do they make money? What does their supply chain look like? Do they have issues today? How would you fix those issues? What competitors do they have? How does their operational structure look? Where do you think they’ll be in 5 years? Why?
By doing this quick exercise over and over, you would have done 3 things:
- Understand business operations
- Start developing your own hypotheses on what can be improved
- Learn about a lot of different industries
- Know what questions you should be asking in your interview
- Anticipate and see most business issues, that way you won’t be thrown off in any case
Video/Recordings:
Victor Cheng is killing it with his resources, but for real, if you are serious about breaking into consulting. My favorite resource was his program, Look Over My Shoulders. After understanding his general frameworks from his book, using his LOMS program was critical to my success in my Deloitte Consulting interview.
LOMS is recordings of Victor interviewing numerous candidates. He pauses the recordings to show where a mistake was made and what should have been said instead. He also has multiple candidates who do the same case so that he can show the differences between a star candidate and a weak candidate.
To really get the most out of this program, I used to pause the recordings when he would ask the candidate a question, and then I would say my answer out loud, then unpause to hear the candidate’s response and Victor’s feedback. That is the key to the LOMS program.
I used to listen to them on the way to school in the car every day, during my breaks, etc. For those of us who don’t have a case buddy to run cases with in person all the time, this is a great resource because you can practice alone anytime.
Friends, Colleagues, and Consultants:
Like they say, live practice is the best practice. I really enjoyed the flexibility of the LOMS program, but it was important to put my skills to the test in a live case. Having a friend do a live case with you is great practice. There are sample cases online that anyone can help you with (it tells the interviewer what to read to you).
If you are in college or your MBA program, there are a lot of classmates who are going through the same process. Meet up with them to also practice live cases. Also, interviewing people helps with your own case skills.
I also had real-life consultants do mock interviews for me. This is as real as it gets because they usually are using company resources (real cases). I reached out to them through a traditional cold email. If you are not sure how to do that, check out my networking article.
How to Prepare for the Behavioral Portion
During this portion of the interview, the interviewer will be asking themselves, “If we got stuck at the airport together, would I enjoy their company?”
Your Story:
Your story needs to be crisp, sharp, and so natural that it is genuine. Do not sound like it is memorized. I am not going to go into the details of story prep for this article, but make sure you are so comfortable with it that if you were interrupted in the middle of it, you could naturally pick it right back up. These 2 minutes are the most important part of your interview.
- Make sure it is under 2 minutes
- Make sure it answers the question “Why consulting?”
- Do not put the interviewer to sleep with your story
- Do not be monotone – the more comfortable you are with your story, the more engaging you can make it with your changes in tone
The Standard Behavioral Questions:
In my Deloitte Consulting interview, these were the questions I was asked. Keep in mind that your behavioral questions can be different. Make sure you have 2 stories prepared for each of these questions, they dig into each story and ask for another scenario usually. Keep it concise – what was the situation, what tasks/actions were taken, and what was the positive result.
- Tell me about a time when you worked in a team and faced an obstacle, how did you overcome it?
- You are working in a group and one of your team members is not doing the work that was assigned to him, what would you do?
- Why didn’t you do Investment Banking?
- What are 3 things your friends would say about you if I asked them?
- What is your biggest weakness?
- Tell me about your biggest mistake? How did you overcome it?
- What’s an example of when you had to work under pressure?
- How do you motivate your team members?
Questions to Ask Your Interviewer:
Come prepared with smart questions for your interviewer. Here are my tips for these.
- Only ask questions you actually want the answer to
- Make sure these questions are not a yes/no answer
- Don’t ask the obvious stuff: pay, work-life balance, etc
My Deloitte Consulting Interview Structure:
First Round:
- 30-minute case interview (Phone)
- 30-minute behavioral interview (Phone)
Superday:
- 30-minute in-person case interview
- 30-minute behavioral in-person interview
- 1-hour group case interview
If you have any questions, please let us know in the comments below!
