"Why Consulting?" How to Answer It in Under 90 Seconds

Sep 25

12 min read

"I want to do consulting because I like solving problems and I want exposure to a lot of different industries." A junior at Georgetown said that to me on a first call last spring, and then waited for me to tell him it was good. It's the answer roughly half the candidates I hear give, nearly word for word, and it's the reason "why consulting" is the fit question that quietly ends more MBB candidacies than any case ever does.

I'm Stephen Turban, founder of WSG. I answered this question myself in McKinsey's interviews, then sat on the other side of it as a consultant, and I now coach undergrads through the fit interviews at McKinsey, BCG, Bain, and the tier 2 firms. Interviewers ask "why consulting" in every single round, and they've heard the problem-solving line so many times that it registers as silence.

This guide gives you the structure for a 90-second answer, a bank of reasons that hold up and the ones that don't, three full sample answers for different backgrounds, and the follow-up questions the interviewer will ask next.

Your answer should tell the same story as your cover letter, so it is worth building both from the same material using the template here. At McKinsey the fit portion goes well beyond one motivation question, and the Personal Experience Interview guide here explains how to prepare for the deeper version.

What are interviewers listening for when they ask why consulting?

Three things. Whether you understand the operational reality of the role: working in tight 3- to 5-person project teams, conducting primary stakeholder interviews, synthesizing raw client data into financial and operational models, and structuring executive-level storyboards.. Whether your reason is yours, meaning it's tied to something you did rather than something you read. And whether you'd stay long enough to be worth training, which is why "exit opportunities" is a disqualifying answer even though everyone knows exits are real. A "why consulting" answer works when each reason is attached to an experience the interviewer can ask about.

How long should your answer to why consulting be?

Sixty to ninety seconds, which is roughly 150 to 220 words spoken at a normal pace. Under 60 seconds sounds unprepared, and over 90 sounds rehearsed. The structure below fits the time with room to breathe.

1. The question is a test of self-knowledge, not enthusiasm

Interviewers don't ask why consulting because they need convincing that consulting is good. They ask because the answer reveals whether you know yourself and know the job. A consultant who took the offer for the wrong reasons burns out in a year, and the firm eats the training cost. So the interviewer is running a quiet check: does this person understand what they're signing up for, and do their stated reasons match the way the work actually feels?

When I was preparing for McKinsey, the version of the answer that finally worked wasn't the one with the best reasons. It was the one where every reason came with a story I could tell for two minutes if asked. That's the whole trick. Generic reasons can't be probed, so the interviewer learns nothing from them; specific reasons can be, and the probing is where they decide.

Interviewers score "why consulting" on whether they could ask a follow-up about each reason and get a real answer.

2. The 90-second structure: one line, three reasons with evidence, one line on the firm

Here's the shape. It works for any firm and any background.

One sentence of thesis. What consulting gives you that the alternatives don't, stated plainly. "I want the job where I'll learn to take a problem nobody has structured yet and turn it into a recommendation, and consulting is the only entry-level job that does that every few months."
Two or three reasons, each tied to a specific experience. Not "I like teamwork," but "The best work I did in college was a four-person project for a food bank where we cut their delivery costs by a fifth, and I want to do that with better tools and better problems."
One sentence on why this firm, linking a practice area to an insight from an internal conversation: 'Your healthcare practice is why I prioritized this office; when I spoke with a consultant here about their provider turnaround work, their point about pairing data analytics with hospital floor implementation confirmed that this is where I want to build those skills.

Timing: about 10 seconds on the thesis, 20 seconds per reason, 10 seconds on the firm. If you're at 90 seconds and still talking, cut a reason. Two strong reasons beat three with one weak one.

Thesis, two or three reasons with evidence, one line on the firm: that's the answer, in 90 seconds.

3. The reasons that hold up, and the ones that don't

Every reason for consulting sits on a spectrum from "true and specific to you" to "true and said by everyone," and interviewers reward the first and ignore the second.

Reasons that hold up, when tied to evidence:

The learning rate on unstructured problems. Consulting hands you a new industry and a new question every few months, and you're expected to be useful in the first week. Works if you can point to a time you got up to speed on something fast and did real work with it.
Working in small teams with senior people early. A first-year consultant sits in rooms with client executives and partners in month one. Works if you've done a project where the client or the stakeholder was real.
The skill of structuring. The specific ability to take a vague question and break it into pieces a team can attack. Works if you've done a case competition, a research project, or a club consulting engagement where you had to build the structure yourself.
Implementation and tangible outcomes. Bain explicitly differentiates itself around 'results, not reports' (and equity-tied incentive fees in corporate work), so candidates who emphasize seeing recommendations driven through change management align directly with firm messaging.
A concrete industry or capability anchor. While MBB hires undergraduate Business Analysts and Associates into a generalist pool, grounding your interest in a specific sector (e.g., energy transition, advanced manufacturing, or digital transformations) proves you read industry literature, provided you emphasize wanting a broad generalist foundation first.

Reasons that don't:

"I like solving problems." Every job solves problems, so the interviewer hears nothing.
"Exposure to many industries." True, and said by everyone, and it can sound like you don't know what you want.
Exit opportunities, private equity, business school. Everyone knows; nobody wants to hear it in the answer. Naming exits in a "why consulting" answer signals you're already planning to leave.
Money, prestige, travel. Real considerations, wrong room.
"I'm not sure what I want to do yet, so consulting keeps options open." Honest, and it's the reason the firm will worry about you.
Anything about the firm's brand or "culture" without a specific.

A reason for consulting counts only if you can name the experience that taught it to you.

4. Attach every reason to evidence the interviewer can probe

The difference between a reason and a claim is a story underneath it. Here's the same reason before and after.

Before: "I want to work on unstructured problems because I find that the most engaging kind of work."

After: "Last summer I spent ten weeks at a regional bank in a strategy role, and the assignment I got was 'figure out why our small business deposits are shrinking.' Nobody had a structure for it. I built one, pulled branch-level data, and found that two branches accounted for most of the decline because a competitor had opened next door. That ten weeks is the reason I'm here: I want to do that kind of work with a team that's done it a hundred times."

The second version does three things. It tells the interviewer you've done consulting-shaped work. It gives them a follow-up question they'll want to ask ("what did the bank do about it?"). And it makes the reason yours, because nobody else has that story.

The evidence doesn't have to be an internship. A case competition, a research project with a real question, a campus consulting club engagement, a nonprofit you ran, a job where you fixed a process. Consulting-shaped work is any work where you took an unstructured problem, built a structure, ran numbers, and gave someone a recommendation.

Every reason needs a story with a number in it, and the story is what the interviewer will actually ask about.

5. Three full sample answers

Each of these runs about 80 to 90 seconds out loud. The details are invented, but the shapes come from students I've coached who got offers.

An economics major from a large state school, interviewing at McKinsey:

"I want the job where I take a problem nobody has structured and turn it into a recommendation a decision-maker can act on, and consulting is the only place that happens every few months at 22. Two experiences got me here. Sophomore year I led a four-person team in a campus consulting club on a project for a regional food bank, figuring out why their delivery costs were rising. We built a route-level cost model, found that a third of the routes carried a tenth of the volume, and they consolidated routes and cut costs by about 20 percent. That project taught me I like the structuring part more than anything else. Then last summer, in a strategy internship at a regional bank, I got a question with no structure, why small business deposits were falling, and found that two branches explained most of it. I want to do that kind of work with a team that's done it a hundred times.McKinsey specifically because of the scale of the firm's client impact; after speaking with a Business Analyst in Chicago about their state-level infrastructure work through the SHaPE practice, I saw how McKinsey pairs macroeconomic rigor with on-the-ground operational execution.

A computer science major, interviewing at BCG:

"I've spent three years learning to build things, and the projects I cared about most were the ones where the hard part was deciding what to build, not building it. Consulting is the job that lives in that deciding step. My clearest example is a senior project for a campus dining service: they asked for an app, and after two weeks of interviewing staff we told them they didn't need one, they needed to change their ordering schedule, and that change cut food waste by about 15 percent. I want to do that with harder problems and better data. I'm also drawn to the technical side of the work at BCG specifically. A mentor who is an Associate in the Boston office walked me through how generalist strategy teams collaborate directly with BCG X to bridge machine learning pipelines with boardroom decision-making, which is the exact intersection I want to operate in.

A finance major with an investment banking internship, interviewing at Bain:

"I spent last summer in an investment banking group, and I'm grateful for it, but the moment I realized I wanted consulting was in the second month, when we finished a valuation and the client asked what they should do about the business. That question went to their consultants, and it was the only question I wanted to answer. Since then I've done a semester of cases and a club project for a local retailer on store staffing, where we found that shifting hours from weekday mornings to weekends raised sales per labor hour by about 12 percent. What draws me to Bain is the emphasis on commercial pragmatism and its home-office staffing model. When I spoke with an Associate Consultant in New York, she described working directly on commercial due diligence within the Private Equity Group (PEG) alongside post-merger integration, seeing deals both evaluated and executed.

All three answers share a thesis in the first sentence, two reasons each with a number, a named conversation for the firm, and nothing about exits, prestige, or "problem solving" in the abstract.

A sample answer is only useful if you replace every detail with your own, and the three above show where the details go.

6. Tailor the last line to the firm, and be honest at tier 2 and boutiques

The "why this firm" line at the end is short, and it's where candidates either prove they did the work or reveal they didn't.

At McKinsey, frame your rationale around the firm's global knowledge network and broad impact. Connect your answer naturally to one of the PEI pillars (Personal Impact, Entrepreneurial Drive, Inclusive Leadership, or Courageous Leadership) so your fit narrative reinforces your behavioral stories.

At BCG, candidates who mention the more open, intellectual style of the case work and the firm's analytics and digital side tend to land, if they have a specific. BCG views business problems with an intellectual, hypothesis-driven lens that values creative customization over rigid corporate playbooks. Mentioning BCG X, BCG Green, or specific Henderson Institute thought leadership carries immediate weight

At Bain, the results emphasis and the team culture are real differentiators. A named conversation with an Associate Consultant, or a specific about the private equity practice if that's where you want to be, works. "A Bainie never lets another Bainie fail" is a phrase you'll hear from the firm; quoting it back is fine only if you can say what you saw of it.

At tier 2 firms and boutiques, the interviewer knows you may have applied to MBB. Don't pretend you didn't apply to MBB, and don't apologize for it. Give a real reason the firm fits: Oliver Wyman's financial services depth, L.E.K.'s life sciences work, ZS for pharma, Analysis Group for economics-heavy litigation work. "I want to do healthcare strategy, and ZS does more of it than anyone" is a stronger answer than anything a generalist could give an MBB interviewer.

The last line needs a practice, a person, or a project attached to it, and at a specialist firm the specialty is the reason.

7. The follow-ups, and how to answer each one

The interviewer will push on your answer. The common follow-ups and the shape of a good response:

Why not investment banking? Give a real difference, not a criticism. Banking focuses on financing, valuation, and capital transaction mechanics. Consulting examines the underlying operational machinery: product-market fit, unit economics, supply chains, and organizational health. I want to build operating businesses, not just finance them.

Why not a startup or an operating role? "I want to learn the structuring skill from people who've done it many times before I try it on my own." Interviewers like candidates who plan to build something eventually, as long as it's not next year.

What do you think a first-year actually does? Be accurate and unglamorous. Owning a specific workstream: gathering and sanitizing messy operational data, running financial and scenario models in Excel, conducting plant or department-level expert interviews, structuring synthesized slides for the weekly client steering committee, and keeping the team’s problem-solving tracker moving Candidates who describe the job as "advising CEOs" lose credibility.

What would make you leave consulting? Honest and forward-looking: "If I found a problem I wanted to work on for five years instead of five months." Not "private equity."

Where else are you interviewing? Name peer firms in the same tier or geography honestly (e.g., 'I am also in the process with BCG and Bain'), but state clearly why this firm's specific office, practice alignment, or team dynamic makes it your top choice. Never say 'nowhere else,' which signals low demand, and never list unrelated backup industries.

Every follow-up is the interviewer checking whether the answer was real, and a candidate who prepared the stories underneath it has nothing to fear.

8. Delivery: practice out loud, time it, and let it sound spoken

A "why consulting" answer read from a page sounds like a cover letter; the version that works sounds like a person explaining something they've thought about.

Write the answer out once. Then stop writing and start saying it, with a timer, until it comes out under 90 seconds without sounding memorized. Change the wording a little every time so you're rehearsing the ideas, not the sentences. Record one attempt and listen for the things everyone does: starting with "so," listing adjectives, drifting past 90 seconds, and ending without the firm line.

Then have a friend ask you the follow-ups from section 7 in a random order. If a follow-up stumps you, the reason it's probing wasn't real enough, so fix the reason, not the delivery.

Rehearse the ideas until they're yours, and the wording will take care of itself in the room.

9. Say this, not that

Why consulting?

Don't say: "I love solving problems and want exposure to many industries."

Say: "I want the job where I take a problem nobody's structured and turn it into a recommendation. Two experiences taught me that's what I want: [story with a number], and [story with a number]."

Why this firm?

Don't say: "Your culture and your reputation."

Say: "Your healthcare practice, and a conversation with [name] in the [city] office in October about a hospital project that's exactly the work I want."

What about exit opportunities?

Don't say: "I'm planning to go to private equity after two years."

Say: "I'm here to learn the structuring skill from people who do it well, and I'd want to stay as long as the problems keep getting harder."

Why not banking?

Don't say: "Banking is just Excel and the hours are worse."

Say: "Banking answers what a business is worth. Consulting answers what it should do next. I want the second question, and my banking summer is what showed me that."

The Georgetown junior from the opening rebuilt his answer around a club project where his team found a nonprofit was losing a quarter of its donations to processing fees on a platform it didn't need. Ninety seconds, two stories, a named consultant at the end. He got the Bain offer in the fall. "Why consulting" is the easiest question in the interview to prepare and the hardest to fake, and the candidates who treat it as seriously as the case are the ones who get through the final round.