The Berkeley Partnership Consultant interview questions

I was originally contacted by an executive recruiter over LinkedIn. Once we exchanged some initial information and determined both parties were interested, the formal three step interview process began. I first came into the Berkeley Partnership NYC office and met with a partner for around 90 minutes. It was split evenly between him asking me about my background, work experience, and motivations, and me asking him questions about Berkeley. The second interview was around 90-120 minutes and was with two partners from the London office via video conference. We spent about 30-45 minutes talking in depth about one of my client projects and then answering follow-up questions from the partners. We repeated this process twice. At the end I had 10-15 minutes to ask them questions. The third round interview was back in the NYC office, doing a case study / role play with two partners for about three hours. This involves a number of aspects including reviewing printed material about a client engagement, having a mock conversation with the client to discuss and scope the engagement, and having a mock conversation with a Berkeley partner about how to approach the client / opportunity. Overall, I appreciated the significant investment of partner time throughout the interview process and felt Berkeley was very transparent and efficient in communicating status.

Overall a very robust and comprehensive process, and one that gives you the opportunity to interview the them as much as they are interviewing you. It's evident recruitment and hiring good talent is important to them, as you'll meet a number of the firm's Partners during the recruitment process. In fact, it's almost entirely all Partners that you will meet - who I found were consistently open, transparent and very friendly during the process. The interview process consists of an initial telephone screening followed by: i1: An initial face-to-face interview with a Partner to get a better understanding of your skills, work experience and motivations for wanting to join Berkeley's. Think of this as your standard face-to-face competency based interview i2: Panel type interview where you present to a pair of Partners on two previous projects you have lead in the past. 10 minute presentation on each project followed by a 20-30 minute Q&A to dive into more detail around challenges, solutions, etc. This is then followed up by a more informal discussion about Berkeley and an opportunity to ask any questions you might have. i3: A 3ish hour Case Study interview in which you are presented with a fictional case study (though based on a real-life client example). This is conducted with Berkeley's Recruitment Lead and a Partner and is broken into a few parts: a. Introduction to and review of Case Study brief b. Roleplay exercise with the Recruitment Lead playing the "client" in order to gather further information, understand more context, etc. c. Time to assess and prepare a proposed solution / recommendation d. Playback and review proposed solution / recommendation to Partner and work with them to refine the solution together e. Playback of proposed solution / recommendation to "client" in the form of a response email f. At the end, a more informal discussion with the Partner to reflect back on the Case Study as well as the opportunity to ask any other questions about Berkeley Overall the interview process lasted around 3 months for me as Berkeley were quite flexible in accommodating dates around my very busy and unpredictable schedule – so this could have been done in a shorter or longer timescale if needed