Good news is that most of the consulting companies have pretty common personal fit questions. Bad news is that candidates may underestimate this part of preparation, although FIT questions are a very important part of the interview. So we want to share with You some basic, but the most fundamental advice for your sufficient preparation.
First, write down in advance your stories about your leadership, conflict solving skills, team skills, analytical excellence. And second, practice them by telling to your fellow students or experts. Basically, there are three main blocks of fit questions:
1. "Tell me about yourself" - Usually the interviewer begins with such a question This is an opportunity for him to learn about you, and yours is an opportunity to start a nice presentation. Chronological structure for your FIT question might take a lot of time for you to reply and thus it's very difficult to take the necessary things. So, we would recommend you to start with a summary of your background, why you are relevant for consulting (or some specific company).
Next, talk about 3-4 of your roles (may be professional, education, extracurricular). The more experienced you are the more you should speak about professional roles. It can also be the distinct roles within the same organization (Company, your responsibilities, you greatest achievements there), and also your main reason why consulting or this company.
2. "Why consulting?" or "Why company X?" - questions to check you motivation and how much you know about the company you want to join. In this case you use the following approach:
- Start with a story of how you found consulting
- Show the interviewer how the skills and experience that consulting offers can help propel you to achieve a dream that will transform the lives of a lot of people positively
- Round up by showing that you have certain base skills that you believe will help you strive in the firm and tell the interviewer that you are hoping that, through the interview, you can show that you truly possess these basic skills.
- Next the interviewer will also ask you to provide examples from your background to assess how good you are as a leader or a team player; how you can create impact and persuade people; or how you can achieve your goals
Prepare and practice personal fit interviews – they are as important as the cases.