Economic Consulting Interviews and Preparation

As part of my job at my economic consulting firm, I have taken many interviews for different levels, and hence this article is about how to prepare for an interview at an economic consulting firm. The point of this article is not to give you a list of specific interview questions - this will follow in a later post, but to give you an overall idea of what to expect for an interview and how to prepare for it.

Recruitment Cycles

There are different recruiting cycles that happen through the year at an economic consultancy. This includes the general graduate interview cycles that usually happen around May to August (can extend longer depending on the firm and graduation months), recruitment cycles for experienced hires which will happen through the year, and also summer internship programs. The process of hiring for experienced roles vary vastly across firms, and is a lot dependant on the role that you are applying for. The interview process for a director position will be very different from that of an associate as you can imagine. Usually the hiring process for summer interns and graduate hires are much more structured than for experienced roles. Economic consulting firms also hire from a diverse set of educational backgrounds including economics, business studies, statistics, mathematics and humanities.

The CV and Cover Letter

The applications will always require a Curriculum vitae (CV) and most usually a cover letter is always helpful to your application, if not mandatory. You CV should obviously highlight your academic achievements, professional experience and other professional certifications you might have gathered. The CV should cite your extracurricular endeavours too. The corporate landscape has changed a lot in the last decade, and extracurriculars and your interests outside of work are highly important for the hiring managers to decide how well equipped you are for the newer corporate systems. It helps them understand what all skills you can bring which can make you more desirable than the other candidates for the same position. It is very important that you structure your CV and cover letter in such a way that these extracurricular activities or hobbies connect to your professional life as well. For example, if you are a hobbyist musician, you can convey how your creative pursuits in music allows you to think out of the box when dealing with problems. Or if you are a traveller, your experience about the world can make you a better communicator who can interact easily with clients and colleagues alike.

Interview Process

Most interviews at most of the economic consulting firms consist of a minimum of two rounds. This is excluding any assessments you have to complete which might be verbal or written. An exemplary performance in the first round does not always guarantee a success in the second round, although it might be helpful for them to look past small mistakes in later rounds. So give your 100% to all the interview rounds, especially the later ones. The later rounds will definitely carry more weight in the decision, as these interviews are mostly made by decision makers themselves.

Some of the big firms will usually have one on-site face-to-face interview day, where you have four or five continuous interviews with multiple people through the day. This could happen in any of the first or second round of interviews.

Case Studies and Motivational Questions

First round interviews usually consist of a case study and general motivational questions. This will usually be your "technical" round interview, where your concepts of economics and problem solving are what they are interested in assessing. The purpose of the case study is to simulate how candidates actually think on their feet. The important part is thinking out loud, so that the interviewer knows what you are thinking and how your problem solving process is structured. Don't be silent! That is some of the most common mistakes during these case study interviews. The final answer doesn't matter as much as how you reach that solution, and what your reasonings for that approach is.

An example of a case study question can be - Two clothing brands are conducting a merger. One is a more expensive brand, and the other one is a more affordable brand of clothing. What are the potential competition concerns that a competition authority can raise with this merger, and how can these competition concerns be assessed with respect to this merger? This is an example question, but think this through and imagine yourself in that situation.

Motivational questions usually deal with questions like "Why do you want to work here?", or "What are your strengths and weaknesses?" etc. These are common questions asked across different industries, and many examples of such questions can be found online. For graduate roles, one of the most common questions asked is "Why are you interested in economic consulting, compared to other consulting industries?". You should definitely have a convincing and inspiring answer to that question. If it is an interview day (with the whole day split out into multiple interview sessions), usually around two rounds will be motivational interviews usually taken by managers or partners. Other rounds will mostly be technical (case studies, economic concepts etc)

Clear Communication

Being a consultant is a lot about being articulate and clear in communicating complex topics in the simplest manner. You interact with a lot of clients and lawyers on a daily basis, so it is very crucial that you are able to convey complex concepts in layman terms. For example, if someone asks you - "Imagine I am a judge with no significant economics knowledge. Explain what a regression analysis is to me." - It is no small task to be able to put extremely technical concepts in basic simple terms, and this is something you should practice to do throughout your career.

Interviews are Highly Competitive

Economic consulting is a fairly competitive industry. As I mentioned in my previous post about economic consulting firms, there are very few economic consulting firms compared to general business consulting firms. So these positions are highly competitive, and most have very low acceptance rates. This might not be an accurate measurement but an estimation - Around 20% of the applicants could get a first round interview, 50% of those 20% might get through to the second round interview, and 50% of those appearing for the second round interview might get a final offer. That means effectively, economic consulting firms have around 5% acceptance rate. There are a small number of firms, and a very large number of applicants - especially at the graduate level.

Referrals to Get Ahead of the Competition

One common and effective way to get ahead of your competition when applying for economic consulting jobs is to get a referral from someone who already works in that company. You should proactively connect with people on LinkedIn, have conversations with them and properly understand about the firm and the requirements of the job, and if the conversation goes well - ask for a referral. It is important to establish a relationship with those who you speak to before you ask for a referral. If you randomly message someone on LinkedIn and say - "Hi, my name is X. I saw a job posting for your company Y. It would be great if you could refer me to the post." - I don't know about you, but most people would just ignore that message. But if you put in the time and effort to make the other person understand and believe that you would be a suitable candidate for the role, he/she will surely refer you to the position. Economic consulting firms value referrals a lot since the candidates who are referred to are of higher quality. So a lot of firms incentivize employees with referral bonuses if the candidate that they referred end up getting hired.

Does Your University Matter?

Economic consulting firms usually have a distinction between "Target" and "non-Target" universities. Target schools get the benefit of the consulting firms conducting recruitment sessions, webinars etc in those schools. Non-Target schools usually have to be a but more proactive to get that attention.

Target schools are also like a first level screening process, especially if the number of applicants are too much for detailed screening. The name of a target school being present on the CV does make a good first impression at the initial employee filtering stage. This is because of the often misplaced assumption that the target schools might have higher quality students, hence better future economists, than non-target schools. But this trend has undergone a decline in the recent years. A lot of other factors are important in assessing a student these days than their university, and a lot of the firms do acknowledge that. So these days, being from a non-target school might still not make you disadvantaged, especially if you proactively take effort in getting the job - like connecting with people on LinkedIn and obtaining referrals as I mentioned in the previous section.

In our experience of recruiting, a lot of people are hired from non-target schools, and are really brilliant - often surpassing their colleagues from target schools. And your university doesn't matter once you are in the interview rounds, especially after your first round interviews. Interviews are usually highly meritocratic, at least from my experience of hiring. So schools mostly only matter to get you through the door, for that first interview.

So hopefully you have got a slightly better idea of what interview process is like for an economic consulting role. I will be writing more on specific interview process in coming articles, so keep following for more on that.

Keep learning!