Interview Prep session by ATK

After the success of the Mckinsey workshop, the Consulting Club continued its series of interview centric information sessions with a session from the A.T. Kearney (ATK) team, conducted on Saturday 2nd December 2006. The session was conducted by Saurine Doshi, Supratim Banerjee, Anshu Gupta and Kunal Malani.

The ATK team gave a brief overview of the firm and highlighted the features which differentiate ATK from the other Consulting majors. The speakers illustrated the differences by recounting their own experiences and emphasizing on the service delivery methodology followed by the firm. The focus of the session was interview preparation from the point of view of cracking ATK interviews. The following are the most important qualities that ATK tries to assess in the candidates through the interviews:

• Strong intellectual capabilities
• Ability to work in ambiguous environments
• Intellectual capital development
• Long term partner potential

The candidates are evaluated on certain broad aspects viz, – problem solving skills, personal qualifications, and client impact potential. Supratim also emphasized on the fact that everyone in ISB has come in with experience and hence the firm gives a lot of credence to a candidate’s prior work ex. The interview procedure is designed in a way so as to assess the candidate’s flare for consulting and whether he/she will be an appropriate fit for the firm or not. One question that is frequently asked on the interview is “Why ATK?” The candidates need to carefully think through this and assess whether their skill sets and qualifications are a good fit with the firm’s culture and how best they can leverage upon their own experience and proficiency in order to differentiate themselves.

The session ended with the ATK team conducting mock interviews with volunteers. After the interview, the team provided their feedback and perspective on how good or bad the interview was and what are the key areas of concern that need to be worked upon. As in the Mckinsey case session, the mock interviews were immensely useful not only to the observers but also the volunteers themselves as they got a thorough understanding of what they need to do and how they should go about doing it, in order to crack ATK interview.