Author: Taylor Warfield, Former Bain Manager and interviewer

Last Updated: September 22, 2026

 

The Strategy& interview process is a two-round screen that pairs candidate-led case interviews with behavioral questions, usually running four to five interviews after an online assessment and averaging 38 days from application to decision. This article walks through every stage, how the process changes by office and role, and what interviewers are scoring at each step.

 

Before reading on:

 

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Key Takeaways

 

Strategy& runs a two-round process with four to five interviews in total, and every interview pairs a candidate-led case with fit questions.

 

• An online assessment covering cognitive ability and behavior comes before any interview at most offices

 

• Round one is typically two interviews of about 45 minutes, and the final round adds two to three with directors and partners

 

• Glassdoor data updated in July 2026 shows an average of 38 days from application to decision across 571 reported interviews

 

• The case takes roughly half of each interview, and the rest covers your background and motivation

 

• Fit answers carry unusual weight here, and a generic reason for choosing the firm sinks strong case performers

 

• The exact format is set locally, so the office you apply to changes the number of rounds and the case type

 

What Is the Strategy& Interview Process?

 

The Strategy& interview process has five stages: online application, online assessment, first round interviews, final round interviews, and the offer decision. Most candidates complete four to five interviews across two rounds, each running about 45 minutes and split between behavioral questions and a candidate-led case. Glassdoor puts the average timeline at 38 days.

 

Strategy& is the strategy consulting arm of PwC, built on the Booz & Company partnership that PwC acquired in 2014. Its UK careers page puts the firm at more than 75 offices with over 3,000 consultants worldwide.

 

That structure explains the single most confusing thing about recruiting here. Each territory runs its own hiring, so two candidates interviewing the same month in London and Amsterdam sit very different processes. Anyone who tells you there is one universal Strategy& format has not read the firm's own careers pages.

 

Stage	What happens	Typical timing
Application	Resume and, in most territories, a cover letter submitted through the PwC careers portal	Response in about 10 working days
Online assessment	Timed cognitive test plus a behavioral questionnaire, typically on the SHL platform	About 60 minutes, invited within a week
First round	Two interviews with consultants and managers, each mixing fit and a case	45 to 60 minutes each
Final round	Two to three interviews with senior directors and partners of the local office	45 to 60 minutes each
Offer decision	Verbal feedback, then a written offer detailing level, office, and start season	Same day to three weeks

 

What Are the Steps in the Strategy& Interview Process?

 

There are five steps, and each one screens for something different. The application filters on academic record and relevance, the assessment filters on speed under pressure, and the two interview rounds filter on structured thinking and whether partners believe you want this firm specifically.

 

Step 1: Submit your application and clear the resume screen

 

You apply through the PwC careers portal or your campus recruiting system with a resume and, in most territories, a cover letter. Requirements are not consistent: Strategy& US states that MBA applicants do not need a cover letter, while the global MBA route asks you to name two office preferences and explain your reasoning.

 

A Strategy& resume gets a few seconds of attention, so quantified results in the top third of the page matter more than a long skills section. Recruiters are scanning for evidence you have solved something messy and measured the outcome.

 

Timing rules are worth knowing before you click submit. Strategy& Netherlands tells applicants to expect a reply within roughly 10 working days, and Strategy& UK confirms you can only hold one live PwC UK application in any six-month window.

 

Step 2: Complete the online assessment

 

Nearly every candidate takes a timed test before a human reads anything closely. Strategy& Netherlands describes a two-part assessment covering cognitive ability and behavior that runs about 60 minutes in total, and it points applicants to SHL's own practice tests first.

 

The math on the Strategy& online assessment is not advanced. What trips people up is pace, since the questions are short and the clock is unforgiving.

 

Practice under a timer rather than reading about question types. Ten timed sets beat two hours of passive review.

 

Step 3: Get through first round interviews

 

Round one is usually two back-to-back interviews of about 45 minutes with consultants, senior associates, or managers. Each one opens with a discussion of your background, experiences, and motivation, then moves into a case. Strategy&'s MBA guidance states that the case discussion takes roughly half the interview time, with the last five minutes reserved for your questions.

 

The UK runs the most distinctive first round I have seen at any tier 2 firm. Candidates sit one unstructured case interview of about 45 minutes and one structured case interview where they receive a slide pack modeled on a real client project, with roughly 10 minutes to review it before proposing recommendations.

 

Amsterdam goes further in the opposite direction. Its published process includes a practice case with a consultant and a buddy assigned to you before interviews begin, which is unusually candidate-friendly for strategy recruiting.

 

Step 4: Pass final round interviews

 

Final rounds are run by senior directors and partners of the local office. Expect two to three interviews in the same fit-plus-case format, with at least one weighted heavily toward motivation and fit. The Amsterdam process lists three 60-minute second round interviews with senior consultants.

 

One rule catches MBA candidates every year. If you interviewed for several offices, you can only advance to the office you ranked first, so state your top preference to each interviewer before the first round begins.

 

Cases get less structured at this stage. Partners hand you a vaguer prompt, push harder on your assumptions, and care more about whether you would be credible sitting in front of a client next month.

 

Step 5: Receive your offer decision

 

Strategy& US tells MBA candidates to expect an offer decision within three weeks of the interview day, with the written offer arriving by email about a week after the verbal one. The letter specifies your level, office location, and target hire season.

 

Several European and Middle East offices move much faster. Assessment day formats often deliver feedback the same afternoon, and successful candidates sometimes get a verbal offer before they leave the building.

 

How Long Does the Strategy& Interview Process Take?

 

The Strategy& interview process takes about 38 days on average from application to decision, based on Glassdoor data covering 571 reported interviews and updated in July 2026. The same source rates the interviews as average difficulty with a very positive candidate experience.

 

That average hides an enormous spread. The same data set shows graduate analyst hires moving through in an average of 1 day, while strategy consultant roles average 210 days, which is the difference between a fixed campus assessment day and an experienced hire waiting on a staffing need.

 

The reported stage mix also tells you what to prepare for. Around 13 percent of candidates report a skills test, 12 percent report a presentation, 10 percent report a personality test, and 8 percent report a reasoning test, so the process is broader than a pure case loop for a meaningful share of applicants.

 

How you enter matters too. Roughly 57 percent of reported candidates applied online, 26 percent came through campus recruiting, and 8 percent came through an employee referral.

 

A Strategy& referral compresses the front half of the timeline more than anything else you control. It rarely skips the assessment, but it moves your resume to the top of a recruiter's queue instead of the middle.

 

How Does the Strategy& Interview Process Vary by Office and Role?

 

The number of rounds, the length of each interview, and the case format all shift by territory. Below is what four Strategy& regions publish about their own processes, drawn from their careers pages rather than candidate reports.

 

Office or track	Rounds and interviews	What makes it different
US MBA (Advisory)	One round of three virtual interviews	Run by the practice team, and every interview has both a case and a behavioral component
UK (London)	Two rounds, two back-to-back interviews in round one	Includes a structured case with a slide pack and about 10 minutes of review time
Netherlands (Amsterdam)	Two rounds of three 60-minute interviews each	Buddy assigned and a practice case with a consultant before round one
Middle East	Three to four 45-minute interviews	Every session includes a real-world case discussion drawn from live engagements

 

The US MBA format is the one most candidates get wrong. Preparing for two rounds when your office runs a single three-interview day means you pace your energy badly and treat the first conversation as a warm-up.

 

Role matters as much as geography. A Strategy& internship application runs through the same funnel but with more emphasis on the assessment, while experienced hires sometimes sit a third round that undergraduates never see.

 

Ask your recruiter directly how many rounds you should expect and whether any interview involves pre-read materials. They answer this question routinely and it costs you nothing.

 

What Types of Case Interviews Does Strategy& Use?

 

Strategy& uses candidate-led cases, meaning you decide what to explore and which analyses to run rather than following the interviewer's prompts. The firm's own guidance tells candidates to summarize the prompt in their own words, state a simple structure, get the interviewer's agreement, then work through it out loud. Cases are typically drawn from real client engagements the interviewer worked on.

 

Because the firm sits inside PwC's Deals practice in several markets, commercial due diligence and value creation questions appear more often than at a pure strategy house. Expect these case types:

 

• Market sizing: estimating demand for a product, service, or segment from the ground up

 

• Market entry: assessing whether a client should move into a new geography or category

 

• Growth strategy: finding where a mature business can add revenue without new capital

 

• Profitability: diagnosing a margin decline through a revenue and cost breakdown

 

• Deals and diligence: judging the commercial merits of an acquisition target

 

First round cases frequently open with a sizing question, and candidates report prompts like estimating the market for a manufactured product or a professional services category. A clean market sizing answer here buys you credibility for the rest of the conversation.

 

The cases run quant-heavy compared with most tier 2 consulting firms, and the deals exposure is a large part of why.

 

Having coached hundreds of candidates one on one, the pattern I see is that people lose offers on arithmetic confidence, not on framework choice. That is why case interview math deserves the first block of your prep time.

 

Some offices add a slide-based or written case interview where you review materials and present recommendations. If you want to learn case interviews quickly, my case interview course walks you through proven strategies in as little as 7 days.

 

What Do Strategy& Interviewers Score in the Case?

 

Strategy& publishes its own case scorecard, which is rare and worth reading before you build a prep plan. The firm states plainly that interviewers focus on your approach and way of thinking rather than the final number. Six behaviors show up across its regional careers pages:

 

• Understand the question: restate the prompt in your own words before structuring anything

 

• Build a simple structure: the firm explicitly says the simpler the framework, the better

 

• Stay hypothesis-led: form a view early and test it instead of exploring every branch

 

• Work your numbers: do the arithmetic out loud so the interviewer can follow your logic

 

• Articulate your assumptions: name what you are assuming and why it is reasonable

 

• Synthesize your findings: take a stand and recommend next steps even with thin data

 

Two of these are worth extra attention. Strategy& tells candidates that once the interviewer endorses a structure, they should stick to it and refer back to it, which means abandoning your case interview frameworks mid-case reads as disorganized rather than flexible.

 

The other is pacing. The firm's Middle East case guidance tells candidates to move through their structure at a speed that covers every element they promised at the start, and to pause periodically so the interviewer can course correct.

 

Take the redirection when it comes. Interviewers give hints because they want you to pass, and candidates who argue with a nudge lose points they will not get back.

 

What Questions Does Strategy& Ask in Interviews?

 

Every Strategy& interview opens with fit questions before the case, and the firm publishes what it scores. Amsterdam lists three areas: how you develop yourself and stay steady under pressure, how you lead and work within a team, and your motivation for consulting and for this firm specifically.

 

The questions that come up most often are predictable, which is exactly why weak answers stand out:

 

• Walk me through your resume

 

• Why consulting, and why this firm over a tier 1 competitor

 

• Tell me about a time you led a team through a difficult situation

 

• Describe a time you faced significant ambiguity and how you adapted

 

• Why this office, and what ties you to this city

 

That last one is not small talk. Because Strategy& staffs locally rather than globally, interviewers screen hard for candidates who will still be in that city in three years.

 

The Strategy& behavioral interview ends more candidacies than the case does, which surprises people who prepared for McKinsey, BCG, and Bain first. My fit interview course covers 98% of consulting behavioral questions in a few hours.

 

How Do You Prepare for the Strategy& Interview Process?

 

Give yourself six to eight weeks and split the time between math, structure, and fit stories. Below are the six moves that separate candidates who convert from candidates who almost do.

 

Tip #1: Do timed math drills before you touch frameworks

 

Strategy& cases lean quantitative and the online assessment is a speed test. Twenty minutes of mental math every day for three weeks changes your interview performance more than reading another case book.

 

Tip #2: Build a specific answer to why this firm

 

Name a practice, a published report, or a person you spoke with. Interviewers are explicitly checking whether you are using them as a fallback, and a generic answer about culture reads as exactly that.

 

Tip #3: Practice reading a slide pack against a 10-minute clock

 

If you are interviewing in the UK or any office that uses pre-read materials, this is the skill you are least likely to have rehearsed. Pull any consulting deck, set a timer, and force yourself to state three findings and one recommendation when it stops.

 

Tip #4: Run live cases out loud with a partner

 

Candidate-led cases punish silent thinking. You need reps where somebody interrupts you, challenges an assumption, and forces you to keep talking while you recalculate.

 

Tip #5: Commit to one office and know it

 

Research the sectors that office actually serves and the people who work there. Since advancing past first round is tied to your stated office preference, hedging costs you a real advantage.

 

Tip #6: Use the recruiter and buddy you are given

 

Several offices assign you a consultant contact before interviews. Candidates who ask that person what the cases look like walk in with information their competition does not have.

 

What Mistakes Cost Candidates a Strategy& Offer?

 

Four mistakes account for most rejections I see at this stage of recruiting, and none of them involve raw intelligence.

 

• Treating fit as a formality: strong case performers get cut here more often than at any comparable firm

 

• Preparing for the wrong format: assuming two rounds when your office runs a single three-interview day

 

• Going quiet during the math: interviewers cannot score reasoning they never hear

 

• Skipping the recommendation: running out of time before taking a clear position on what the client should do

 

The fix for the last one is a habit, not a skill. Reserve the final three minutes of every practice case for a recommendation, and state it even when your analysis feels incomplete.

 

The Strategy& interview process rewards candidates who prepare for their specific office rather than a generic consulting funnel. Start by confirming your exact format with your recruiter, then build your prep around timed math and a reason for choosing this firm that no other applicant could give.

 

Frequently Asked Questions

 

How many rounds does the Strategy& interview process have?

 

Most Strategy& offices run two interview rounds with four to five interviews in total. Round one is usually two interviews of roughly 45 minutes each, and the final round adds two to three interviews with directors and partners. The US MBA track is the exception, since Strategy& US describes a single round of three virtual interviews run by the practice team.

 

How long does the Strategy& interview process take?

 

Glassdoor data updated in July 2026 puts the average Strategy& hiring process at about 38 days across 571 reported interviews. Strategy& Netherlands tells applicants to expect a response within roughly 10 working days of applying, and Strategy& US aims to give MBA candidates an offer decision within three weeks of the interview day. Timelines swing widely by role, from an average of 1 day for graduate analyst hires to 210 days for strategy consultant roles.

 

Is the Strategy& interview process hard?

 

Glassdoor rates Strategy& as an average-difficulty interview with a very positive candidate experience, based on 571 reports updated in July 2026. The cases are quant-heavy and candidate-led, so the difficulty comes from driving the analysis yourself under time pressure. Roughly 13 percent of candidates report a skills test and 12 percent report a presentation stage, so the format is broader than a standard case loop.

 

Does Strategy& use written case interviews?

 

Some Strategy& offices do. The UK first round includes a structured case where you receive a slide pack and about 10 minutes to review it before recommending a course of action. Other offices use a longer written case or presentation exercise in the final round, so confirm the format with your recruiter rather than assuming.

 

Are Strategy& cases candidate-led or interviewer-led?

 

Strategy& cases are candidate-led, so you decide which areas to explore and which analyses to run. This matches the format used at BCG and Bain rather than the interviewer-led style at McKinsey. Strategy& guidance tells candidates to summarize the prompt, state a simple structure, then work through it out loud while pausing for course correction.

 

Can you reapply to Strategy& after a rejection?

 

Yes. Strategy& UK allows candidates to reapply for any PwC UK role six months after an unsuccessful application. The same page notes you can only hold one live PwC UK application within a six-month window, so applying to Strategy& and another PwC team at the same time is not possible. Policies differ by territory, so check your local careers site.

 

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