How a consultant prepares for an interview.

It is always difficult to prepare for an interview for a new job or assignment. Getting to know yourself is perhaps the most important thing.

If you work in the consultancy or want to apply there, be prepared for completely different questions. These are mostly personal and on your ability to understand things. So don’t expect to have to explain if you’re a team player or if you like the feature so much. The questions are about your own performance and how you handled it personally. Sometimes difficult questions, but if you can answer these questions for yourself, you are much better prepared for most interviews.

The questions

• Describe a situation when you took a risk as a professional. What was the result?
• Talk about a situation where others disagreed with your recommended schedule. How did you convince the others to carry out your planning and what was the result?
• Describe a situation where you have effectively worked as part of a team to achieve a goal on time and on budget. What was your role? What did you learn?
• Describe a situation where you have worked as part of a team, but your team has failed to reach the goal. What was your role? What did you learn? And how did you explain and defend the deviation
• How would your current boss and / or a team member describe you? What would he / she say about your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
• If you were a shoe retailer in UK and your goal is to maximize sales. What steps would you take and why? Explain your analysis.
• Talk about a creative solution you have developed for a challenging situation or problem. What was the challenge and why?
• Describe a situation within a group or team where there was interpersonal conflict. Describe how you approached the conflict. What worked and what didn’t? How did you manage the result?
• Describe a situation that you know you should have tackled differently. Why?
• Describe a situation in which you strove to achieve a goal. What obstacles did you encounter? What have you done to overcome them?
• What is the most stressful situation you have experienced and what was the result?
• Tell me about a time when you had to convince someone of your way of thinking. How did you achieve this? What was the result?

Try to answer these questions within 30 minutes. Be to the point. avoid verbosity. And above all show what your role and added value was. Then you have completed an educational exercise to present yourself. Good luck!