Consulting Internship Interview Questions

I'll size it by population. Say the city has one million people. Assume about 60 percent are adults who drink coffee, so 600,000, and the average coffee drinker has about two cups a day, which is 1.2 million cups. But most are made at home, so I'll assume about 25 percent are bought — cafés, offices, convenience stores — which gives around 300,000 cups sold per day. As a sanity check, if the city has 600 places selling coffee, that's about 500 cups each per day, which is plausible for busy shops but high for small ones, so the true number might be somewhat lower.

Profit is revenue minus costs, so I'd first find out which one changed. For revenue, I'd split it into price and volume by product and customer segment. For costs, into fixed and variable, and look for any that grew faster than sales. Once I know where the drop is — say, volume fell in one product line — I'd ask why: did customers' needs change, did a competitor cut prices, or did something change inside the company, like quality or distribution? Then I'd recommend fixes tied to that cause.

I'd look at four things. First, the market: how big is it, is it growing, and do companies in it make money? Second, the competition: who's there and how strong are they? Third, the company: does it have an advantage, like a brand or a cost edge, that would help it win? Fourth, how to enter — build, partner or acquire — and what it would cost and how long it would take to break even. Then I'd make a clear yes or no and name the biggest risk.

As [role] of [organization], I led a team of six planning our biggest event of the year with a $2,000 budget. I split the work into three areas with an owner each and set a short weekly check-in. Halfway through, our venue cancelled, so I got the team together, we listed three alternatives within a day, and we moved the event without changing the date. We sold out 250 tickets and finished under budget, and two of the people I worked with ran it the next year.

I list everything with its deadline and how much it matters, then do the high-impact, time-sensitive work first. If something truly can't be done on time, I tell the person depending on it early and suggest a new plan instead of waiting until the last minute. I also break large tasks into small steps so they don't get pushed aside by quick ones. That's how I [a concrete example].

At [job or club], I wanted to move our sign-up process from paper to an online form. My manager worried it would confuse regular customers. Instead of pushing, I asked what she was most concerned about, then ran a two-week trial at one location with a paper backup. Sign-ups went up and nobody asked for the paper form, so she rolled it out everywhere. I learned that a small test answers objections better than an argument.

I like working on problems that are new each time. In my [case competition or project], I spent three weeks on [problem] with a team, and the part I enjoyed most was structuring a messy question and turning the analysis into a recommendation we presented to [audience]. Consulting would let me do that across different industries early in my career, and I'm especially interested in your work with [practice or industry] because [reason].

At [job], new hires learned by shadowing whoever was on shift, so training took about two weeks and everyone learned it differently. I wrote a one-page checklist of the core tasks and paired it with three short practice shifts. My manager tried it with the next two hires, and they were working independently in about a week. The checklist became the standard for new employees.