1st Round vs. Final Round

Question:

Later this week I'm going to have the last round of interviews with BCG but I was wondering if they where different from previous rounds. In the first round I got two business cases and a few questions of personal experiences.

What is your advise?

My Response:

In my experience as both interviewee and interviewer, the rounds are pretty similar from the interviewees perspective. As an interviewer, we generally don't interview any differently on 1st vs. final round. Perhaps in first round we might ask a few more general questions about your career motivations that we might not ask in later rounds.

Behind the scenes though final round discussions can be a little different. Since it's a final, final decision, the team is looking for a strong if not 100% agreement on your performance. In contrast, if you did pretty well in 2nd round but maybe had trouble in just one minor area, an interviewer might say…. good enough for 2nd round… I'll let the final round team make the final decision.

For the final round team, the criteria is the same but the expectations are a little higher. For the interviewee, just expect more of the same.