What Deloitte Seeks In An MBA Hire

Deloitte-logo

Could you give us an overview of your MBA recruiting and interview process? What are the steps that students should expect? How can they stay on your radar?

We have an early identification approach as it relates to all of our recruitment. We try to engage with people early on in their career. For newly admitted MBA students, we offer an opportunity to apply to participate in a three-day [summertime] summit that’s focused on building leadership and consulting skills, where they’ll also have the opportunity to network with Deloitte leadership. It’s called our Deloitte Consulting Immersion Program. That’s one of the first opportunities they have to get involved in a formal way with our organization. It allows students to gain real world consultative skills before they enter the first year of their MBA program. It’s like a pre-MBA program.

Then, in January of each year, we host the National Case Competition, which brings together teams of top talent from business schools, to compete in complex business cases and to engage with Deloitte leaders. And that’s another opportunity in early identification fashion for them to get some exposure to Deloitte.

We also have a robust 10-week summer associate internship program, that is a critical pipeline to our full-time MBA classes that we hire from.  Again, that’s another step in the early identification process.

After the internship program, we conduct the on-campus second year interview process in the fall. It has two rounds: The first round has two interviews – one of which is a behavioral interview and the other is an analytics case. In the behavioral interview [which are conducted by Deloitte’s client services professionals and partners], we are looking for people who are intellectually curious, comfortable and confident in their ability to communicate. In the analytical business case, we’re looking for a candidate’s approach to solving problems in a structured and methodical way. It’s totally OK to make a mistake. We’re just looking for how they think. It’s not about getting to the right answer in the case or by collaborating with the interviewer (and that’s fine too). We just want to see how they operate.

Based on our interest in the student from the first round results, we would then invite them to the second round. The second round has another behavioral interview and then there’s an hour-long business case and a group case.

The second round behavioral interview is very similar to the first. This is also another opportunity to talk to yet another partner. We’re looking for many of the same things as before: The intellectual curiosity, again the humility, and then the understanding of what it means to work in a client services environment.

And then we have a second round business case. This is where a candidate shows they have the ability to grasp and understand a complex problem. They have to be able to absorb a lot of information. At the same time, staying focused on the challenge to get to the right answer and not getting lost in all the details [so they can] solve the problem.

Now, let’s talk about the group case. [Deloitte] was actually one of the first professional services organizations to do a group case. We select four or five students to work together to tackle the business case. They’re each assigned a role, like CEO, CFO, etc.  It’s set up to make them just a little bit uncomfortable. We’re looking at their ability to work together as a team, to see who’ll help their colleagues. Can they present their insights correctly? Do they use their strengths to help team members who struggle? You have to realize that you’re put into a situation where you don’t know people that well. They have to quickly assess what the strengths are of each other and still tackle a business problem for a client. Performance in a group case really can impact our hiring decisions.

The final stage is really our closing process. It’s called Explore Your Opportunity (EYO). This is where candidates come in to meet additional people they might be working with and learn more about us. At this point, we’re not going to rescind our decision about making an offer. But we’re still looking for them to be engaged. [Editor’s Note: Offers have already been extended by EYO].

Questions about this article? Email us or leave a comment below.