Why 'Why Consulting?' Is Where Most Candidates Lose the Offer
Three sentences in, the interviewer can already tell whether your 'Why Consulting?' answer is real or recycled. A look at what an interview-winning answer sounds like — and the four templates that quietly kill candidacies.
Every consulting interview opens with some version of the same question. Why consulting? Why now? Why our firm? It is the lowest-effort question for the interviewer to ask and the highest-stakes question for the candidate to answer. By the third sentence, the interviewer has formed a strong prior on whether you are serious.
The reason this question filters so hard is that the bad answers all sound the same. They cluster into a few templates that have been said in front of partners thousands of times.
The four templates that lose offers
1. The "I want to learn" answer
"I want exposure to lots of industries and a steep learning curve." Every candidate says this. It is true, and it is also completely undifferentiating. Anyone could say this. It contains no information about you specifically.
2. The "smart people" answer
"I want to work with smart, ambitious people." This signals you have looked at consulting from the outside but not from the inside. Smart people work everywhere. The interviewer is wondering why you specifically need this set of smart people on this specific kind of work.
3. The "exit options" answer
Even when not stated explicitly, this is detected within seconds: "consulting is the best launchpad for the next thing." The partner across the table has spent 15 years committed to this career. Hearing that you see it as a stepping stone, however diplomatically phrased, is a slow no.
4. The "client impact" answer
"I want to drive impact for clients on real business problems." Generic, recyclable, and lacking specificity. If you cannot name the kind of problems and the kind of clients, the answer evaporates.
All four templates share one feature: they describe consulting in the abstract, not consulting in your life. A real "Why consulting?" answer is autobiographical — it explains why this career is the next step for you, given what you have actually done.
What a strong answer looks like
A useful structure: connect a specific past experience to a specific future. "In my last role I did X. I noticed that the thing that energized me was Y. The career that puts Y at the center of the work day is consulting, because Z. And I want to do that at this firm specifically because of W."
Concrete example: "At my last engineering role I shipped product features quickly, but the decisions about which features actually mattered were happening in a different room. The meetings I most wanted to be in were the ones translating customer pain into prioritized roadmaps. I want a career where that translation work is the entire job. That is what consulting does at the strategy level — and what your firm especially does in healthcare, which is where I want to spend the next decade."
The diagnostic question
Read your current answer out loud. Then ask yourself: could any other candidate also say this? If the answer is yes, you have a generic answer. The fix is not to write more eloquently — it is to put more of yourself into it.
Three things to anchor on
- One past data point. A moment where you experienced what consulting offers, even briefly, and reacted well to it.
- One forward thesis. What you actually want to spend your next 5–7 years doing, and how this career structure enables it.
- One firm-specific reason. Why this firm, not just any of the three on your list. This requires research — a specific practice area, a person you spoke with, a recent publication.
Three sentences. Forty-five seconds. Specific to you, specific to the firm, defensible under follow-up. That is the bar — and the candidates who hit it pass through this question and into the case while everyone else is still spelling out template four.
The 3 PEI Story Buckets (and Which You're Probably Missing)
Once 'Why consulting?' is solved, the McKinsey PEI is what fills the rest of the behavioral half.
One short, useful email per week.
New case frameworks, mock interview tactics, and recruiting intel from the CaseGrade team. Built for serious candidates — no fluff, no upsell every paragraph.
Unsubscribe anytime. We never share your address.
Keep reading
All articles →The Week Before Your First-Round Interviews: A 7-Day Checklist
The last week before a first round is for consolidating, not cramming. A day-by-day plan covering your final mock, logistics, firm refresh, interview-day routine and the notes to take afterwards.
Clarifying Questions: What to Ask, What Not to, and When to Stop
Clarifying questions are the first thing an interviewer hears you think. Learn the four jobs they do, the test that separates a good question from filler, what not to ask, and when to stop and start structuring.
Delivering a 90-Second Fit Story Out Loud
A story that reads well can still fall apart when you say it. Here is a five-beat structure with a word budget, a fully worked example, and the drills that turn a good story into a clean ninety-second answer.