Consultant interview questions, derived from Swiss adverts

The order below is the order of your preparation. Each point needs a situation from your own work — not the claim that you can do it, but an occasion when you did.

For Consultant: MS Office / IT in 13% of adverts, Resilience / flexibility in 12%, German in 11%. That is what gets asked, usually without the question sounding like it.

German appears in 64% of adverts, and 93% of those want fluent or native level. English follows with 60%. Expect the conversation to be held in German.

The roles are advertised above all in Zurich (39%), Geneva (10%), Basel-Stadt (8%), Bern (6%).

Consultant is the only occupation measured here where German and English sit practically level — both in well over half the adverts, both mostly at professional standard. That is not a choice between them but a double requirement: expect the conversation to start in one language and continue in the other, without anyone announcing the switch.

Almost four in ten adverts are in Zurich, followed by Geneva, and the two work differently. Zurich is financial services and industry; Geneva is international organisations and commodities. Quoting a Zurich salary band in a Geneva interview means negotiating against the wrong reference point.

MS Office sits at the top of the requirement list for consultants, and here it is exceptionally not filler. What is meant is Excel and PowerPoint at a level that gets tested during the process — at the larger firms as a timed case study. If you can model and can structure a deck, make that concrete on the CV rather than hiding it under "MS Office".

The adverts are not spread evenly across Switzerland. For Consultant, Zurich leads with 39% of adverts, followed by Geneva (10%) and Basel-Stadt (8%).

That means two things for the interview. First, anyone willing to commute into one of the stronger cantons negotiates from a better position. Second, the question about your journey to work is not small talk in Switzerland but a real test — a commute over an hour is read as a resignation risk, and raising it yourself takes the sting out of the subject.

Currently advertising are Rocken®, EY, Deloitte, among others. Looking into the company before the interview pays off more than another list of questions — the choice in this occupation is wider than most people assume.

Practically all Consultant roles are advertised as full-time. Anyone looking for part-time should raise it early: in this occupation it is the exception, and a no later in the process costs both sides time.

A last point often missed for Consultant: MS Office / IT appears in 13% of adverts, while Professional experience appears in only 7%. That ranking is also the order in which your examples should be ready — the most frequent requirement is near certain to come up, the rarest may not come up at all.