You might think that all the big professional services firms’ recruitment processes would be more or less the same, as they’re largely fishing in the same talent pool and looking for the same skilled personnel. According to posters on vault.com, however, there are differences, and some of them are fairly significant. Looking through reviews of interviews from the past twelve months, we’ve compiled some notes on interviewing style and sample questions for the Big Four to help you ahead of the recruitment round.
Your interview with PwC might not take place face to face – according to a recent candidate “Virtual [interviewing] is being used more and more”. Interviews include “Lots of behavioural based questions” such as “Tell me about a time you took a leadership role” or “Tell me about a time you failed”. PwC uses case studies extensively – one candidate’s interview was mainly taken up answering “What are the issues you see in this case study?”. Graduate applicants might be asked “How do you stay current on events happening in today’s world”, while more experienced recruits get experience-based questions like “What has been a challenging case you worked on?” or “Tell me about a time when it just wouldn’t work for a client?”
PWC really, really, really likes competency interview questions. These are some of the other questions you might get there.
Deloitte is also a user of virtual interviews, and according to one current employee, it “relies on either in-person or virtual interviews in which candidates (primarily current accounting or masters students) respond to behavioral questions”. These might include “What is the most meaningful experience you've had in your life?”, “How do you solve problems that arise on a team?”, “When have you worked with time constraints to meet a client's expectations?”, “Tell me a time when you've been proactive in soliciting performance feedback from a mentor or client” or “Tell us about a time where you enthusiastically led a work team through a major change initiative”.
There seems to be quite a bit of variation in candidates’ experiences with Deloitte, possibly because, according to one current employee, “Each office hires based on a ‘need’ basis”. So one recent candidate felt that “Interviews tend to be casual (more of conversations than an actual interview)”, but another one met a real tough-guy and got asked “What makes you better than all the other candidates?” and “Your GPA is less than other candidates for the same job, care to share any reason why?”
These are some of the other questions you can expect:
KPMG seems to adopt a fairly informal style. One recent campus recruit even says “there were no formal interview questions”. This probably isn’t true – just because you don’t detect the interviewer’s focused questions doesn’t necessarily mean they weren’t there – but it does suggest a more relaxed and conversational approach to extracting the information. “Tell me how you manage your school, life and extracurriculars” was one such question, with “Tell me about a time that you didn’t work will with someone and how you resolved that”.
From the other side of the room, one current employee with recruiting responsibility suggested that “We do not have a very good interview questions/case questions. We only allow behavioral questions and do allow any technical type questions. This is very different from other firms that we compete with that actually ask technical questions and have candidates complete case studies”. In context, this looked like a gripe but in fact there’s a quite well respected school of thought that holds that technical skills are not easy to assess properly in interview contexts and that behavioural questioning is much more informative. Apparently KPMG (or at least some of its offices) believes in this.
Interview questions include:
There are surprisingly few up-to-date reviews of the interview process with Ernst & Young; this might be a firm policy. What is available suggests that there are “Lots of behavioural and situational questions”, and “Very fast, informative interviews”. As well as having a somewhat more structured and less conversational approach, EY apparently believes in case studies as an interviewing technique and focuses on “personality and match with the firm”. A question which is often asked, apparently is “Tell me about a situation in which you had to exhibit leadership”.
Past questions include:
1. What are you good at?
2. What do you most enjoy studying?
3. What gives you a buzz?
4. Are you a starter or a finisher?
5. Are you into big picture or detail?
6. Describe a successful day you had recently.
7. What do you love doing in your spare time?
8. When are you happiest?
9. When you do you feel most like yourself?
10. Do you find there are enough hours in the day?
11. Have you ever done something differently the second time around?
12. Tell me about your friends.
13. Which three words would you friends use to describe you?
14. What’s your biggest weakness?
15. Have you ever wanted to stop doing something?
16. Do you think you need to be an expert to lead a team?
17. Would you say you’re organized? Would your friends?
18. Do you enjoy hard work?
19. Why do you want this job?
20. Give an example of a time you asked for more responsibility.
21. If there was a family member or friend sitting next to you, what would they tell me were your top 3 strengths and top 3 weaknesses?
22. Which books do you read?
23. Tell me about something that's not on your resume.
Photo by Jon Tyson on Unsplash
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