BCG interview process and practice questions

Behavioral questions

1. Tell me about a time curiosity made you dig further into a problem than you needed to.

   A good answer covers

   • What caught your interest and why you kept going
   • What you found that others had missed
   • How it changed the result or your thinking

2. Tell me about a time you came up with an unusual solution to a problem.

   A good answer covers

   • The problem and why the usual approaches didn't work
   • Your idea and how you tested it
   • The outcome and what you learnt about creative problem solving

3. Describe a time you helped a team work better together.

   A good answer covers

   • What wasn't working and how it showed
   • What you did to change it, including listening to others
   • How the team's results improved

4. Tell me about the achievement you're proudest of. What drove you?

   A good answer covers

   • Why it was hard and what was at stake for you
   • What you did, in the first person, over time
   • The result and why it matters to you

Role and technical questions

1. A coffee chain's new stores are less profitable than its older ones. How would you find out why?

   A good answer covers

   • Comparing revenue (footfall, spend per visit) and costs (rent, staff, supplies) between old and new stores
   • Checking location, store age and local competition before blaming execution
   • The likely cause and what the chain should do about future openings

2. A car maker is deciding whether to launch a subscription service for its electric cars. How would you assess it?

   A good answer covers

   • Who would subscribe and why, compared with buying or leasing
   • Revenue per subscriber against the costs of cars, servicing and lower resale values
   • Risks, a recommendation, and a small pilot to test demand

3. Estimate the yearly demand for school notebooks in Bengaluru. Talk me through your assumptions.

   A good answer covers

   • Starting from the number of school pupils, by age group
   • Notebooks per pupil per year, with round numbers you say out loud
   • A final figure, a sense check, and the assumption that matters most

4. A client's costs are 70% of revenue, and it wants its margin up by 5 points next year with flat revenue. Roughly how much must costs fall, and where would you look?

   A good answer covers

   • The maths: costs must go from 70 to 65, a cut of about 7%
   • The biggest cost areas first, then quick wins versus structural changes
   • Whether the target is realistic, and the risks of cutting too fast

5. A software company can enter one of three new countries first. How would you decide which?

   A good answer covers

   • Criteria: market size and growth, competition, ease of entry, fit with the product
   • Rough numbers for each country and how they compare
   • A clear choice, the main risk, and what you'd check first

6. For a technology role: how would you help a retailer decide whether to build its own recommendation engine or buy one?

   A good answer covers

   • What the retailer needs: scale, speed, control over data and customer experience
   • Cost, time and skills to build versus licence cost and limits of buying
   • A recommendation, often starting small, and how success would be measured

Why BCG? Fit and HR questions

1. Tell me about yourself and what brings you to consulting.

   A good answer covers

   • Your background in two or three lines, focused on what's relevant
   • One achievement that shows how you solve problems
   • What draws you to consulting now

2. Why BCG, and why consulting?

   A good answer covers

   • What you want from consulting work, shown by something you've done
   • Something specific about BCG you learnt from its people, work or events
   • How it fits your longer-term goals

3. What would you want to learn in your first year here, and how would you know you're growing?

   A good answer covers

   • Two or three specific skills you want to build
   • The kind of projects or industries you'd seek out
   • How you'd use feedback to track your progress

Tips

• BCG's case guidance asks you to clarify assumptions, show your thinking and summarise your recommendation at the end; practise all three out loud.
• Don't force a memorised framework onto the case; build a structure for the specific problem in front of you.
• If the interviewer nudges you mid-case, take it, adjust, and say how it changes your thinking.
• Prepare a story for each quality BCG lists: integrity, curiosity, creative thinking, collaboration and drive.
• BCG offers a free job simulation, OneDay@BCG, on its careers site; it's a useful way to see the kind of work cases are based on.
• Practise mental maths with percentages and growth rates, and round sensibly as you go.