Ever wondered what skills, knowledge, and qualities the Big 4 firms (Deloitte, EY, KPMG, and PwC) look for when hiring junior consultants? We asked actual consultants and recruiters to find out.
Note: You don't need every single skill or quality listed below to get into the Big 4. Just be able to demonstrate that you have some of them in your resume and interview and you'll raise your chances of getting in!
They're looking for future salespeople. Even if you're on a client project, you're also expected to sell, as you deliver. You're expected to win more assignments, to turn your one piece of work into an account.
Let's say you won an organizational restructuring piece – you should always be on the lookout for more pieces of work, like a recruitment piece. Then you go to your partner and see if they're interested. Automatically, you're seen as someone who's got a sales mindset.
Body language really matters. Make sure your voice fluctuates, sit up straight, vary between long and short sentences, use your hands when you talk.
This puts non-native speakers at a bit of a disadvantage. They're trying to find the right words so they don't have the capacity to think about what they're saying but you can practice. I've interviewed a lot of students who are non-native English speakers who were still compelling when they spoke.
– Consulting manager @ EY
Make sure you're a good orator (you're not monotone).
– Former junior consultant @ Deloitte
Let's say the firm ships you back from a project and you're sitting "on the bench" (you haven't been assigned to anything at the moment). You automatically become an assistant to all other projects running.
The utilization team will say "So-and-so is on the bench. Let's give her six proposals to work on." Then all of a sudden, they'll staff you to a project. And even if you're not done with those proposals, you have to go onto work on the project, while finishing the proposals in parallel.
Each of these proposals has a different team, a different partner, different client waiting. It's all about time management and multitasking while prioritizing the client. ... If you can't multitask, the job is not for you.
For entry-level positions, highlight organizational skills like balancing multiple tasks at a time and knowing how to prioritize those tasks. In our line of work, you'll often get three different things from three different managers. You need to know how to communicate and prioritize.
So when they ask you questions during the interview, you want to be able to work in responses about how you handled competing priorities. The answer isn't to cram it all in but to communicate with leadership to figure out what are the priorities.
You should also be able to communicate correct timelines. For example, if you've committed to too many things but you don't communicate when your managers can expect their deliverables, that's not great.
If during an interview, I asked someone about how they managed competing priorities, here's what I'd love to hear:
"During my internship at [company name], I encountered situations where I received multiple assignments from different managers in a single day. To navigate this, I proactively asked about timing expectations for each task, allowing me to prioritize based on their due date. I also estimated how long it would take for me to complete each assignment. When faced with competing priorities, I addressed this by raising the issue with the managers who assigned the tasks. I initiated clear communication, letting them know about simultaneous commitments and deadlines, such as XYZ being due at around the same time. This helps my manager with decisions about next steps, whether it involved reassignment, adjusting deadlines, or communicating with the other manager.”"
– Consulting manager @ EY
For entry-level, we want to see whether we can give you a newer hire to manage in a year or two. So give specific examples of teamwork. For example, you might mention how as a team lead, you:
- Make sure everyone is fully utilized for that day (has something to work on and is clear on their objectives).
- Make sure everyone has an equal amount of work throughout the day (this is a skill that we look to build up in our hires since they'll have people reporting to them in a year).
- Coach other team members or review and give feedback on their work.
– Consulting manager @ EY
Attention to detail is a big thing – everyone says they have this but they don't. If you can say "On a group project, I'm the one who does the final formatting check and makes sure fonts, spacing, terminology are all kept consistent," interviewers will appreciate it.
That's a big task we give to the Big4 hires. We don't necessarily ask them to draft content because they may not know how to do that yet, but we'll definitely ask them to check formatting.
– Consulting manager @ EY
Consulting these days involves a lot of project management work. In tech consulting, you might do tech delivery, which is basically project management, software testing, and engineering. That's also why you don't need a specific degree (I was liberal arts).
– Former junior consultant @ Deloitte
Making PowerPoints in college is actually an applicable skill!
– Former junior consultant @ Deloitte
Interviewers will appreciate it if you say things like:
- I know for deliverables, we need a lot of PowerPoints, so I know how to build nice-looking decks
- I understand outside of client work, we'll be asked to help with business-building work like proposals. I can contribute as I know how to build PowerPoint decks.
- I'm able to read a huge pile of documents and summarize them into a couple of slides.
If you mention familiarity PowerPoint, it shows you already know what's expected of you. After all, we don't expect entry-level hires to provide solutions. Just keep it real.
About 80-90% of our day is spent doing client work and that deliverable usually comes through as a PowerPoint to summarize what's been done so far. Sometimes it'll be an Excel (if we need to do testing) or Word (to draft a report). The other 10-20% working with different partners to pitch projects to different clients.
So you really need to know how to make nice-looking PowerPoints that are presentable for a client. A lot of times, we'll have new hires (or even industry hires) and we'll ask them to build us a couple of slides and they'll be very basic. We do train but it's a nice thing to highlight if you already know how to make things client-ready and presentable. It's not just about content but also about packaging.
– Consulting manager @ EY
I've heard this as feedback at the roundtables (where we discuss who to hire): It helps when a candidate comes across as genuine. I've heard of people getting rejected when candidates give a lot of BS answers and try to bluff their way through the interview. If you don't know something, don't pretend you know. Say something like "This isn't something I'm too familiar with but if I were to take a guess ..."
– Consulting manager @ EY
Imagine you're working for PwC. After you come back from a project, you're assigned to another project in Germany. You meet your team, you learn some basic German, you're all excited about the project. You go off to Germany, and the first 1-2 months, you're working with the client.
But all of a sudden, the client might say: Don't be on site next week. Your partner will contact you.Then your partner may tell you, "You're no longer on this project. The client didn't like you. So you're flying out tomorrow." This kind of stuff happens all the time, so if you're not a person who handles change well, this can be very disruptive mentally. You can have anxiety.
I always worked on different teams. It's just because of how we staff people on projects: whoever's available gets staffed on a project. So you're always working with different managers, partners, etc. It's very dynamic. So flexibility is a good skill to have. since everyone's different. You can't get too used to having the same team since that'll change every couple of months.
– Consulting manager @ EY
Once you enter, your "client" is not just the clients you're assigned to. Your client is also the firm. So let's say I work for Deloitte – my clients are those assigned to me by Deloitte and also the partners and coaches I work with, and other internal people (let's say in marketing or HR). Everyone works with everyone. There's also a utilization team that makes sure I'm performing (that my utilization rate is 80% or above) – I need to impress them too.
You're constantly proving yourself to everyone and selling yourself. Naturally, you become a salesperson. You're selling yourself to the team, to the coaches, selling yourself to the client. You HAVE to be a people person.
It's like a university campus but in the corporate world. So they become your family, your friends. Part of our performance management framework is how you manage your relationships internally. It's an obligation – even if you meet all other parts of the framework," you'll be called in if you're not meeting this part of it. They'll ask why you're not interacting with your colleagues.
You become the company. It's not for everyone.
During the interviews, don't be nervous or scared. You need to act like "you need me." You need to have confidence without ego.
Honestly, half the time, as long as they [the candidate] sound confident, they'll pass the case interview. It's about how you present yourself.
There are a lot of really technical candidates, but they're not confident; they're monotone. You'd take the candidate who sounds better. Which is unfortunate but presence really matters when you're doing interviews.
But there's a limit of course! You can't get everything wrong and say stuff that's totally off. But it gives you a bit of an edge if you can be confident.
Luckily, the Big 4 don't expect students to have much technical knowledge. They mainly want to make sure you're smart and can learn on the job.
I did software testing for the first six months but didn't have any interview questions about how do you do software testing.
– Former junior consultant @ Deloitte
That said, you can still impress interviewers by having some basic knowledge of industry trends and the type of work that's done at the firm.
It doesn't hurt to highlight technical skills, for example, if you understand certain accounting techniques, can do data analysis or data clean-up, or understand Macros, SQL, or can write Python.
Below, I'll attach a list of skills and backgrounds that we look for. Note we don’t expect students to come in as experts in these areas, but these would be good conversation topics to show they have some basic knowledge or interest.
Think of them as "helpful buzzwords"! I would suggest students pick a few that they are interested in to show, "Hey, I know these are areas that are hot in the industry now," and be able to show they’re being proactive about it.
For example, if a student were to tell me about how they’re reading up about how AI affects the banking industry as companies look to enhance their processes and controls with AI, I would be very impressed that they’re even aware of it.
- Agile
- Blockchain
- Data integration
- Data visualization
- Inclusive intelligence
- Robotic process automation
- WAM - Financial products
- Artificial intelligence
- Cybersecurity
- Data platform
- Design thinking
- Information strategy
- Transformational leadership
- WAM - Wealth management
- BCM - Investment banking & capital markets
- Data architecture
- Data science
- Digital Insurance
- WAM - Asset Management
– Consulting manager @ EY
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