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Are you trying to learn about the BCG one way video interview?
You’re in the right place.
This past recruiting cycle, we helped 100% of our clients get through the BCG one way interview questions and landed them in-person interviews and offers with BCG.
In this article, we’ll tell you what the BCG one way interview is and how to prepare for it. We’ll also give you our 10 tips on acing the one way interview.
If you’re just getting started with consulting interview preparation, you might want to start with Case Interview Prep. and come back to the one way interview later.
If you’re ready to learn about the BCG One Way Interview, let’s get started!
The BCG one way interview is a series of 3 interview questions asked and answered via the video interview website, Spark Hire.
You won’t be speaking with a live interviewer. Instead, you’ll receive the interview questions when you log onto the site from your laptop. (You can also do it on your smartphone, but we don’t recommend that.) Spark Hire will record a video of your answers for a BCG recruiter to review at a later time.
These will be Consulting Behavioral Interview Questions, not case interview questions.
If BCG selects you to do a one way interview, you’ll receive an email with a link to click on when you’re ready to do your interview. You’ll also have a deadline for completing the interview.
When you log onto the interview portal, you’ll be given a prompt such as (“Why consulting?” or “Tell me about the best team you worked on and why it was the best?”) and given time to prepare an answer. Then you go live and answer the question.
Candidates are not timed as they prepare, but the video of their answer is limited to 2-3 minutes.
It’s similar to the interviews you see done on reality TV shows where the person is answering to the camera except in this case, there’s no one behind the camera.
The one way interview questions provide a fast and easy way to complete an early screening of applicants. A BCG consultant doesn’t need to come to campus and you don’t need to go to a BCG office to complete this interview. You don’t even need to coordinate schedules.
Spark Hire has found that for a lot of companies, this makes the interviewing process more efficient than traditional interviews. Recruiters can screen a lot of potential candidates all at once, letting them consider more applicants.
This is a plus if you’re not a top candidate in terms of grades or leadership experience because if you happen to fall in the middle of the pack, BCG might just give you an opportunity to interview. And if you get an invite for a one-way interview, you’re only one step away from an actual interview.
For BCG, the one way interview also provides an early screen to test how well candidates fit with the firm’s culture and whether the company would feel comfortable putting them in front of clients. Many candidates can solve case study questions but not everyone is as strong on the behavioral side.
In short, Spark Hire makes this the one way interview a win-win for you and BCG.
BCG one way interviews have been rolled out to the European and Southeast Asian offices as part of their first round of interviews. This rollout will continue if these interviews work well as a screening tool, so you may soon see them in other offices as well.
The BCG one way interview focuses on behavioral interview questions. Topics include:
Other questions include:
We’ve compiled a comprehensive list of common Consulting Behavioral Interview Questions.
The best way to prepare for any fit or behavioral interview is to prepare stories that demonstrate the skills and characteristics that interviewers are looking for in common questions. To prepare stories, use the ASTAR(E) format:
Yes, you’ll need several stories and preparing them will take some time. But the good news is that preparing for the one way interview will give you a head start preparing for fit/ behavioral interviews that will come later in the management consulting recruiting process. The time you spend developing your answers to common questions now will save time in the end.
Learn more about the ASTAR(E) framework in our article on Consulting Behavioral Interviews.
Focus on major themes such:
Spark Hire, the company BCG uses to manage its one way interviews, has its own tips on recording good video interviews. Check them out here.
After reading this article, we’re sure you’re well on your way to passing your first screening interview with BCG. You’ve learned: what the BCG one way interview is, how to prepare, and our 10 tips for acing the one way interview.
If you have more questions about BCG’s one way interviews, leave them in the comments below. One of My Consulting Offer’s case coaches will answer them.
Other people preparing for screening interviews found the following pages helpful:
Thanks for turning to My Consulting Offer for advice on case study interview prep. My Consulting Offer has helped almost 85% of the people we’ve worked with get a job in management consulting. For example, here is how Conor went on to get a BCG offer..
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