I applied through Accenture's online application process. About a week later an HR person contacted me and explained Accenture's 6 step interview process for the MBA/JD/Masters level candidates. The first step was just talking to the HR person. She basically made sure that I understood the position I was applying for and I had the basic skill sets required for the job. Once that was done, I had 2 Skills Interviews, 1 Situational Interview, 1 Case Interview and last but not least, 1 "fit" interview. Two different senior managers conducted the skills interviews, in two separate days. Both interviews were 1:1, via phone and lasted about an hour. As the name suggests, the skills interviews were basically to find out if I had the necessary skills that were required to perform the job that I was applying for. The questions were pretty straightforward but you need to know whats in your resume and how that can be related to the job that you are applying to. Unless you can correlate that, the skills interviews could be really taunting. Also, for one of the skills interviews, I was given a mini case. I applied for the IT strategy consulting job, thus most of the questions were related to my past experiences and how I aligned, deployed, created, implemented and integrated various "IT Strategic" initiatives. The Situational Interview was with an Associate Partner, conducted via phone and lasted exactly one hour. I would not say the interview was painfully hard but it was difficult enough as the interviewer kept giving me different hypothetical situations and asked how I would deal or react to those situations. Not only that, I had to give specific examples form my work and/or school where I faced those "situations". Often the interviewer would stop me and drill down more to one specific situation and ask me additional questions. This "drilling down" can come back to bite you unless you are nimble, know exactly what you are talking about and articulate and explain the situations to the point. Once the skills and situational interviews were done, I was asked to come to on site office for two 1:1 interviews. First was a case interview with a senior partner. The person was very nice, easy going and willing to help out whenever I had a question or needed some clarification. I was actually given four mini cases, based on a single problem statement (an M&A case with Enterprise Architecture, App Rationalization and IT strategy issues). I believe the cases were given in the order of their difficulty level. Three out of four mini cases I was able to come up with definitive answers. The last mini case, the interviews and I sort of disagree on the solution. But I think that exactly the "hidden" point of the case and the interviewer tried to figure out how I would behave in a situation when there is a disagreement with the client. The last interview, "fit interview" was basically a mixture of the skills interview and situational interview, but from a interpersonal standpoint. The interviewer was a senior executive partner at Accenture and he was very nice, polite, easy going person just like all the other interviewers. I loved talking to him and at a point of the interview, it became more like a nice conversation rather a interview. I had a really good feeling coming out the interview.
All of the 6 interviews ended with enough time for Q&A. Make sure you have good questions to ask. Also, make sure you know about the company and the job you are applying to. Also, KNOW your resume!! This is a must. You will do fine if you know your resume in and out. Otherwise, the interviews could be really difficult. From a logistics standpoint, the overall process was painless. The HR person was very responsive and responsible arranging interviews and answering my questions. I have interviewed for a bunch of top-notch consulting and financial firms and without a doubt, overall, one of the best process I found was the Accenture interview process.