Consulting careers
Consulting hires for one specific way of thinking, and it tests for it in a format you can practise.
Consulting sells structured thinking by the week, and everything about the career follows from that business model. The pyramid shape means people are expected to progress or leave. The project rhythm means intensity comes in bursts with genuine gaps between them. And the hiring process tests one specific thing — whether you can decompose an unfamiliar problem out loud — because that is the product.
The case interview is unusual among selection methods in being almost entirely trainable. It has published criteria, a recognisable format and a well-understood preparation path, and candidates who practise properly improve dramatically over a few weeks. That is unusual and it is worth exploiting: few other interview formats reward preparation this directly.
What preparation cannot decide is whether the work suits you. The parts that make people leave — travel, imposed timelines, and the distance between recommending something and seeing whether it worked — are structural rather than incidental, and they are worth weighing before the offer rather than during year two.
Key terms
- Up or out
- The convention that consultants progress within a defined window or leave, usually with support and often into a client organisation. It exists because the pyramid staffing model requires attrition from the middle, not because the firm is dissatisfied with the individual.
- Case interview
- An interview where you reason through a business problem out loud with the interviewer. Scored on structure, quantitative comfort, insight and communication rather than on reaching a specific answer, because most cases do not have one.
- Structure
- The stated breakdown of a problem into a few relevant parts, announced before any analysis begins. Distinct from a framework: a structure is built for the case in front of you, while a framework is a template applied to it, and interviewers can tell the difference immediately.
- Market sizing
- A case format asking you to estimate a quantity with no retrievable answer — how many of something exist, how large a market is. Scored on the visibility of the assumptions and the arithmetic rather than on the final figure.
Frequently asked questions
What do consulting firms actually look for?
Structured reasoning under observation, comfort with numbers, the ability to draw a conclusion rather than report findings, and communication a client would tolerate in a room. The case interview tests all four directly. Academic record and prior experience mostly determine whether you reach the case; the case determines whether you get the offer.
Can I enter consulting from another industry?
Yes, and experienced hiring is a substantial route into most firms. Industry experience is an asset because it gives you a practice area where you already know something clients do not have to explain. The case interview still applies, and career changers often prepare less for it than graduates do — which is the most common reason a strong experienced candidate fails.
How is consulting different from an internal strategy role?
Breadth against depth. Consulting gives you many industries, many problem types and dense feedback, but you leave before the recommendation is implemented. An internal strategy team gives you one organisation, fewer problem types and considerably more accountability for whether the thing actually worked. Consultants who exit into strategy roles frequently cite that last point as the reason.
Is the travel as demanding as people say?
It varies more by practice and by current staffing than by firm, and it has shifted considerably as remote work has become normal. It remains the most common reason people leave, which makes it worth asking about specifically — what the current model is for the practice you would join, not what the firm's stated policy is.