Charles River Associates Management Consultant Interview Questions
& Process

It was a group interview over zoom, lasting multiple hours. There were about 5 people in each group with one facilitator. It was kind of hard to get your points across because of the other people, and you didn't want to sound like you were repeating yourself. You had to pick a random number and that would give you an interview question, so everyone had different ones.

I interviewed for an associate consultant role in life sciences on the West Coast, specifically for post-PhD candidates. The process involved 6 interviews and one at-home presentation. The cases were typical for life sciences, with some being more quantitative and others more qualitative. One case involved a hypothetical drug launch where we went into detail about the different aspects and how to determine demand, payer attitudes, and provider opinions. Some interviews felt rushed, and it seemed like the interviewers weren't enthusiastic about fitting the interview into their schedules. The presentation was interesting, but the follow-up questions weren't very engaging. Overall, the entire experience felt unprofessional. The final offer wasn't competitive compared to other life science consulting firms. Given this and my interview experience, declining the offer was an easy decision.

Applied and then had a phone chat with a recruiter after about 2-3 weeks. It was a good talk, nothing weird. Then, about a week later, I did an online aptitude test. It was pretty easy and I think I did well, finished everything. A week or two after that, I had a phone/case interview with a consultant. I liked chatting with them. The case was about a pharma company looking to buy/develop a drug for a certain illness and what factors to consider for the drug and market. We also looked at some bar graphs about how bad diseases are. The job search then paused for 2 months, but the recruiter kept in touch. After that, I had an in-person interview which involved behavioral and case interviews, plus a presentation. The planning for this part was a mess. I first got an email to give dates for an interview in San Francisco, sent them off, and heard nothing for a week. I followed up and found out the interview was set for that same week but in a different city, no explanation. Because I had another meeting, I had to reschedule. I got the final interview schedule about a week before it happened. They wanted a presentation, but gave no guidance on what to present, and I never got a reply when I asked. The interview itself felt okay, except for one interviewer who aggressively asked me why I wanted to be a consultant. I said I was interested in working with pharma companies to figure out big issues and find solutions. He shot back that I could just work for a pharma company then. When it was my turn to ask questions, I asked him why he got into consulting. He said he thought pharma pricing consulting was like black magic and he wanted to do black magic. Aside from that, the other interviews were fine. Two weeks later, I got an email saying they found better candidates, which was a surprise given my background. I did notice that out of about 50 employees I saw, none were African American, so maybe it was discrimination, but that's hard to prove.