50 Consulting Behavioral Interview Questions to Prepare For
Consulting behavioral interview questions, also known as consulting fit interview questions, are used by consulting firms to dive deeper beyond what is listed on your resume.
Consulting behavioral questions ask you to draw upon a time or experience in the past in which you demonstrated a particular skill or trait. Examples of behavioral questions include:
- Tell me about a time when you used data to solve a problem
- Give a time when you disagreed with your manager
- What accomplishment are you most proud of?
- Describe a situation in which you handled conflict while working on a team
- What is a piece of feedback you have received from a former supervisor or colleague?
Consulting fit questions allow interviewers to understand you better on a deeper, more personal level. From this, interviewers can make an assessment on whether you would be a great fit for the role or firm.
Consulting behavioral questions are commonly asked, so you should expect to be asked at least a few of these questions during your interviews.
What Consulting Behavioral Questions Assess
Consulting behavioral interview questions assess three different things.
Future performance or success: Behavioral questions use past behavior to determine future performance or success. Since the candidate draws upon previous experiences and actions they have taken, interviewers can get a sense of how the candidate would perform on the job.
Communication skills: Behavioral questions assess how well candidates can communicate. Does the candidate explain their experiences clearly and articulately? Does the candidate keep their stories concise?
Personality and cultural fit: Fit questions can reveal a candidate’s personality and cultural fit with the firm. In answering behavioral questions, candidates show characteristics, such as being confident, humble, friendly, or collaborative. Candidates can also reveal the values and morals that they believe in.
Taking these three things into account, you should focus on demonstrating the following three qualities:
- Show evidence of impressive, tangible accomplishments
- Communicate clearly, concisely, and confidently
- Demonstrate your personality and values
You can show evidence of impressive, tangible accomplishments by quantifying your accomplishments and explaining the impact of your work.
Don’t just explain what you did and how you did it. Explain the impact and effect you had on the organization. What was the magnitude of the impact? How many people were affected? How did this impact annual revenues or costs?
You can work on your communication skills through practice. The more behavioral questions you practice answering, the better you will get at telling stories about your past experiences. You will stumble less often when speaking and sound more confident.
You can show how your personality and values fit with the consulting firm by drawing upon experiences that best fit with the culture and values of the firm. By conducting research on the consulting firm you are interviewing for, you should have a sense of what traits are valued.
For example, if the consulting firm values collaboration, focus on drawing upon experiences in which you worked on a team or with multiple teams. If the company values innovation, focus on drawing upon experiences in which you changed the status quo.
How to Best Answer Consulting Behavioral Questions
There are hundreds of different behavioral questions you could get asked. Preparing specific answers for each potential behavioral question is not practical or feasible. Instead, use the following approach, which is much more efficient and effective.
Prepare 6 – 8 different stories drawn upon your past professional and personal experiences. Select experiences that are the most impressive, impactful, or unique.
Additionally, ensure that your stories are collectively diverse. For example, you don’t want to have eight stories all about leadership. Instead, have at least one story for each of the following themes:
You may have some stories that can fit under several themes.
When asked a behavioral question, mentally run through your list of prepared stories and select the story that is the most relevant.
You may need to adapt, reframe, or tailor your story to ensure that it emphasizes and focuses on the theme that the specific behavioral question is asking for.
When you get asked another behavioral question, mentally run through your prepared list of stories and select the story that is the most relevant that you have not shared yet.
This strategy for behavioral questions has three main advantages:
- You only need to prepare 6 – 8 stories instead of hundreds of stories for the hundreds of potential behavioral questions
- Your mind will not go blank during an interview because you will always have a prepared list of stories to share
- You will only be sharing the most impressive, impactful, or unique experiences that best highlight your traits and accomplishments
Next, we’ll discuss the best way to structure your stories.
Structuring your answers to behavioral questions is crucial because it keeps your stories concise and helps you focus on the key messages that you want to deliver.
The simple but effective structure I recommend candidates use is the STAR method, which stands for Situation, Task, Action, and Result.
When telling a story, go through each of these points.
Situation: Provide a brief overview of the situation and any context that is needed to understand the story better. Keep this section as concise as possible to make more room for the Action and Result sections, which is where you want to spend most of your time.
You may want to answer the following questions:
- When was this?
- Where were you?
- Who was involved?
Example: Last year, I was working at Airbnb in their strategic planning & analysis group. I worked primarily with the customer experience team, who was responsible for overseeing customer support.
Task: Describe what you were asked or required to deliver or achieve. Again, try to keep this section concise to spend more time on the Action and Results section.
You may want to answer the following questions:
- What were you asked to do?
- What was the goal or objective?
- Why was this task important?
Example: I was tasked to determine whether the incremental $10M that Airbnb spent on initiatives to improve customer satisfaction had a positive return on investment. This was important because Airbnb was focused on cutting unnecessary costs to achieve better profitability.
Action: Explain what steps you took to handle the task or to meet the goal or objective. Make sure that the actions center around what you specifically did. Do not focus too much on speaking to what your team did because it takes away from your accomplishment.
You may want to answer the following questions:
- What steps did you take?
- How did you take these steps?
- Why did you take these actions?
Example: I used SQL and excel to analyze over 700K customer data points to create a model forecasting how much happy customers spend per year versus unhappy customers.
I collaborated with data science, customer experience, and finance teams and persuaded them to give me their support and buy-in. I also performed competitor and industry benchmarking to validate the results further.
Result: Describe the outcome that your actions had, quantifying the impact and effect you had on the organization. Additionally, you can describe your key takeaways from this experience and how it impacted or influenced you as a person.
You may want to answer the following questions:
- Did you meet the goals or objectives?
- What was the outcome and impact of your actions?
- What did you learn from this experience?
- How did this experience help you grow and develop?
Example: In the end, I determined that the customer satisfaction initiatives had a negative 20% return on investment. I presented the findings to the CFO and to my 30-person strategic planning & analysis group, who all supported my recommendation. My work would save Airbnb $10M per year moving forward.
Throughout this process, I learned how to work with multiple cross-functional teams and how to persuade stakeholders to get their buy-in. This experience also further reinforced my perspective on using data to make intelligent business decisions.
Common Consulting Behavioral and Fit Questions
Now that you know an efficient strategy to answer any consulting behavioral and fit question, you should become familiar with all of the different types of behavioral questions you could get asked.
Below is a list of over forty different consulting behavioral and fit questions. This is not meant to be a comprehensive list of all behavioral questions, but the list will provide you with a clear idea of the different categories of behavioral questions.
Leadership questions
- Give me an example of a time when you had to lead a team
- Tell me about a time when you took on a leadership role
- Describe a situation in which you had to motivate someone
- Tell me about a time when you showed initiative
- Give me an example of a time when you went above and beyond the call of duty
- Tell me about a time when you had to be adaptable
Teamwork questions
- Describe a time when you had to make an individual sacrifice for the good of the team
- Tell me about a time when you worked on a highly effective team. What made the team so successful?
- Give an example of a time when you were part of a team that did not work well together. What were the reasons for this?
- What is the typical role that you take on a team?
- Can you tell me about your most recent experience working with a team?
- Give me a time when a team member wasn’t doing their work. What did you do?
Problem solving questions
- Tell me about a time when you used data to solve a problem
- Describe a difficult or complicated problem that you faced. How did you approach the problem?
- Tell me about a time when you had to make a decision but did not have all of the information you needed
- Describe a time when you had too many things to do. How did you handle this?
- Give an example of a problem you solved in a unique way
Resilience questions
- Describe a situation in which you handled conflict while working on a team
- Give an example of a time when you tried to accomplish something but failed
- Describe a situation in which you made a mistake. What did you do about it?
- Tell me about a time you failed to meet a deadline. What things did you do to fail? What did you learn?
- Give an example of a time when you had too many things to do. How did you handle this?
- Talk about a setback you had at work. What did you do?
Integrity questions
- Talk about a time when it was challenging to be honest
- Tell me about a time when you found out a colleague was doing something wrong. What did you do?
- Can you give me a situation in which you thought it was better to be dishonest?
- Describe a time when you followed a rule that you didn’t agree with
- Can you describe a time when a colleague questioned your honesty? What did you do?
Decision making questions
- Walk me through the steps you took to make an important decision you made at work
- Tell me about a time when you had to make an immediate decision without having all the information you need
- Give me an example of a time when you made a decision that wasn’t popular
- Describe a decision that you regretted making. Why did you regret it?
- Give me a time when you had to make a difficult decision
Communication questions
- Describe a time when you had to give a presentation without any preparation
- Talk about a time when your communication failed. What was the problem? How did you handle it?
- How did you communicate with your previous bosses?
- Give me an example of a time when you gave a speech or presentation for your job
- Tell me about a time when you communicated with an unresponsive person
Interpersonal skills questions
- Give a time when you disagreed with your manager
- Describe a time you disagreed with a teammate
- Tell me about a time when you had to persuade someone on a particular course of action
- Give an example of a time when you mentored someone
- How have you maintained relationships with your former managers and coworkers?
- Was there ever a time you didn’t get along with a colleague? What did you do?
Other questions
- What is your greatest strength?
- What is a piece of feedback you have received from a former supervisor or colleague?
- What do you see as your weaknesses?
- What is an accomplishment that you are proud of that is not on your resume?
- What is something we should know about you that is not on your resume?
- Why should we hire you?
Examples of Answers to Consulting Fit Questions
Example #1: Describe a time when you went above and beyond the call of duty.
While working at Apple in their AppleCare business, I was responsible for analyzing data to identify opportunities to improve customer satisfaction.
While looking through survey responses, I realized there was an opportunity to use the tremendous amount of data that Apple had to predict which customers were likely to cancel their AppleCare subscriptions.
Apple could focus on retaining these customers by sending them discount codes for renewal. I raised this point to my director and proposed taking on this project.
Outside of my regular job responsibilities, I pulled over five years of purchasing data for over 10 million customers to create a logistic regression model. I verified my model with data scientists and got the buy-in of members of the AppleCare strategy team.
In the end, I determined that Apple could increase revenues by $100M by targeting the top 10% of customers that were most likely to cancel and sending them discount codes.
I presented my results to the head of AppleCare, who approved testing this promotional campaign to a few cities. My director was appreciative of me going above and beyond what was required in my role.
Example #2: Describe a time when you had to motivate someone.
While working on a customer service improvement project for Amazon, I led a four-person analytics team. The goal was to analyze recent customer survey data to identify ways to improve customer service.
I distributed work according to each person’s interests and expertise. After a few weeks, I observed that three members worked productively and effectively while one member, John, was consistently delivering work that was both low-quality and late.
Realizing that this was a potential motivation issue, I sat down with John to understand what the root cause was. The problem was that the analytics team had recently shifted to using an analytics software called Tableau.
John found Tableau difficult to set up and use, so he was unmotivated to switch from using Excel, which he was an expert at. As a result, Excel could not handle the millions of rows of data, causing poor work quality and delays.
To motivate John, I set up three one-on-one Tableau training sessions with him to walk him through the setup of Tableau. I demonstrated how it could save him time because it performed computationally intensive calculations much quicker than Excel.
Afterward, John began liking Tableau. He became excited to learn about what other features of Tableau could save him time in his other projects. His performance significantly improved and he began consistently delivering high-quality work on-time.
“Walk Me Through your Resume” Question
In addition to consulting behavioral and fit interview questions, you may also be asked the “walk me through your resume” question.
This question is most commonly asked at the beginning of the interview, so you should prepare for this question carefully to make a great first impression with the interviewer.
In asking this question, interviewers are looking to learn two things:
One, they want to get a quick overview of your work experience and achievements. Often, interviewers don’t have the time to look through your resume before the interview.
Two, they want to understand why you are suited for the role and why you are interested in working at the company. The “walk me through your resume” question is a quick way to assess this.
Therefore, in answering this question, follow this strategy:
- Start with a strong opening statement that summarizes your areas of expertise and number of years of experience
- Highlight your most relevant and impressive experiences and accomplishments, starting with the most recent
- Connect your experiences to why you’re interested in consulting and the firm and why you would be a good fit
Let’s take a look at a few examples of how candidates walk interviewers through their resume.
Example #1: Walk me through your resume.
I am a marketing and strategy professional with over five years of experience in media and e-commerce.
I spent the last two years working at Activision Blizzard, where I led social media marketing. I planned and executed marketing campaigns that led to over $1 million in sales. I also developed a marketing strategy that lowered customer acquisition costs by 15%.
Before that, I spent three years working at LinkedIn in their ads team. I ran customer surveys and focus groups to identify key customer pain points for ad purchasers. From this, I launched over fifty tailored email campaigns that had a 25% higher conversion rate than previous campaigns.
Given my experience in data-driven marketing and strategy, I believe I would be an excellent fit for McKinsey’s Marketing and Sales practice.
Example #2: Walk me through your resume.
I am a senior at Duke University, majoring in electrical and computer engineering with a passion for technology.
Last summer, I worked at IBM as a business development intern. I collaborated with over ten sales members to generate over $700K in potential sales leads.
Before that, I worked in a biology research lab that focuses on using machine learning to identify potential tumors from ultrasound images. I worked on a project to improve tumor identification algorithm accuracy by over 50% for select use cases.
I want to continue building out my skills and know that Bain would be the best career option for me to learn a lot, take on increased responsibilities, and make a meaningful impact on the world.
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