The process took 1 day. I interviewed at ZS Associates (Chicago, IL) in May 2010
Interview
Applied on-line, received e-mail about 3 weeks later offering a phone interview. First there was a 30 min fit interview, pretty much just walking through my resume. Then there was a 30 min case question. The night before they sent an e-mail with a bunch of unlabeled charts and graphs. The case revolved around those graphs and I was asked some pretty specific quantitative questions. Like, calculate the 2nd derivative of an equation...I was not prepared. Got a call back the next day (less than 24 hrs) saying thanks but no thanks.
I pretty much blew the quantitative part though so it was not a surprise.
Went through the typical HR call in the initial stage; I felt that the interviewer was disinterested, but still proceeded to mention that the team will schedule an interview with me by end of the week.
I followed up a week after when they initially mentioned I can anticipate to hear back from the team. The process entailed 2 stages, with the initial stage online, and the second stage in person.
Interview comprised of 5 rounds,
1) HR phone screen for role alignment
2)Technical discussion with Senior Consultant (tools, data engineering/SQL)
3)Hiring Manager round (technical + behavioral)
4)Project presentation on an end-to-end pipeline (with Senior Manager & Associate Principal)
5) Final discussion with Principal
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
Tell me about the project you worked on where you created an end-to-end data pipeline
It was very streamlined and structured. Three rounds and the first round was the most difficult one, this was followed by a case study and two rounds testing my technical capability followed by a fitment round.
Associate Consultant applicants have rated the interview process at ZS Associates with 3.5 out of 5 (where 5 is the highest level of difficulty) and assessed their interview experience as 65% positive. To compare, the company-average is 68.2% positive. This is according to Glassdoor user ratings.
Candidates applying for Associate Consultant roles take an average of 25 days to get hired, when considering 47 user submitted interviews for this role. To compare, the hiring process at ZS Associates overall takes an average of 18 days.
Common stages of the interview process at ZS Associates as a Associate Consultant according to 47 Glassdoor interviews include:
Phone interview: 23%
One on one interview: 21%
Presentation: 15%
Group panel interview: 12%
Skills test: 11%
Background check: 10%
IQ intelligence test: 4%
Personality test: 3%
Other: 1%
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