Big 4 & Consulting Analyst Interview

These companies hire from campus through an online assessment followed by two to four interview rounds held on a single day or across a week. Amazon runs coding rounds and a Bar Raiser round built entirely on Leadership Principles stories; Microsoft and Google run DSA and design rounds plus a culture or 'Googleyness' discussion; Flipkart, Swiggy and Zepto add a machine-coding or low-level design round. Deloitte USI, EY GDS, KPMG and PwC run a group discussion or case, a technical or case interview and an HR round. Goldman Sachs, JPMorgan and Morgan Stanley run two or three back-to-back interviews that mix accounting, valuation, markets and behavioural questions; Barclays, Citi and HSBC lean on strengths-based and competency interviews. ZS and Mu Sigma run data cases and guesstimates; APM programmes run product-sense, metrics and execution rounds. ExamPilot compresses the loop into one 17-minute panel: an HR screen, a hiring-manager round in the Amazon Bar Raiser style on your real projects, a role round that talks through code, a case, a model or a product problem, a Leadership Principles STAR round, and a closing. Real loops are pass or fail per round and the hiring manager or bar raiser holds a veto; here every round is scored against the corporate rubric with feedback on the specifics and numbers you did and did not give.

1. 1

   Case structuring

   A regional hospital chain in Pune says its profits fell this year even though patient numbers rose. How would you structure the problem?

   What a strong answer covers

   Break profit into revenue and costs: revenue per patient through mix, pricing and insurance, and costs such as staff, consumables and rent. Ask clarifying questions, prioritise hypotheses with data, and state what you would check first. Avoid jumping to solutions like cut costs without diagnosis.

2. 2

   Guesstimate

   Estimate the annual market for school uniforms in India. State your assumptions and sanity-check your answer.

   What a strong answer covers

   Structure via school-going children, share in schools requiring uniforms, sets bought per year and average price, separating government and private schools. Calculate step by step and compare with a reasonable benchmark. Avoid unstated numbers or refusing to commit to an answer.

3. 3

   Data interpretation

   Here is a chart showing a company's revenue growing every year but its margin falling. What is the insight, and what is the caveat?

   What a strong answer covers

   State the headline clearly: growth is coming at the cost of profitability, possibly from discounting, mix changes or rising costs. Give a caveat such as one-time costs or accounting changes, and say what data you would ask for. Avoid only describing the chart.

4. 4

   Answer-first communication

   Give me your recommendation on whether a D2C skincare brand should open offline stores, in one minute, answer first.

   What a strong answer covers

   Lead with a clear yes, no or conditional answer, then two or three supporting reasons and a key risk with a next step. Keep it crisp and structured. Avoid building up slowly with background before reaching the point.

5. 5

   Accounting basics

   For a risk or audit-support role: what is the difference between revenue recognised and cash collected, and why would an auditor care?

   What a strong answer covers

   Revenue is recognised when earned under accounting standards, while cash may come before or after. Auditors check timing, cut-off and whether revenue is real, since early recognition can overstate results. Avoid saying they are the same.

6. 6

   Analytics case

   For ZS or Mu Sigma: a pharma client's sales reps in Tamil Nadu are underperforming. What data would you use to diagnose why?

   What a strong answer covers

   Look at territory potential, rep call activity, doctor coverage and targeting, prescriptions, competitor activity and sales trends, segmented by region and product. Form hypotheses and test them. Avoid assuming reps are lazy without data.

7. 7

   Excel

   In Excel, how would you find duplicate customer records across two sheets with slightly different name spellings?

   What a strong answer covers

   Use a unique key like phone or email where possible, XLOOKUP or VLOOKUP, conditional formatting or COUNTIF, and for fuzzy matches a cleaned helper column or Power Query fuzzy merge. Verify results manually. Avoid relying only on exact name matches.

8. 8

   Feedback

   Describe feedback from a team leader or professor that changed how you work.

   What a strong answer covers

   A STAR answer: the specific feedback, your honest first reaction, the concrete change you made in how you work, and evidence it helped, such as a better review or result next time. Show you seek feedback rather than only receive it. Avoid trivial feedback, or framing it as unfair while claiming to have grown.

9. 9

   Motivation

   Why consulting, and why our firm rather than another Big 4 or analytics firm?

   What a strong answer covers

   A genuine reason such as problem-solving across industries and learning quickly, and specifics about the firm's practice areas or culture you have learned from seniors or events. Avoid generic answers about brand or travel.

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