Company Context

NorthPeak Advisory is a 3,000-person strategy and operations consulting firm serving Fortune 1000 clients across healthcare, retail, and industrials. The firm hires 250 entry-level consultants annually and has seen strong demand in digital transformation projects, but utilization pressure and rising attrition have made recruiting quality and candidate fit more important. You are advising the recruiting leadership team on how candidates should be evaluated when discussing their ability to work in a consulting environment, and how the firm should shape its interview process to better identify strong consulting-fit signals.

Strategic Situation

NorthPeak's leadership believes many candidates can answer technical or analytical questions well, but struggle to demonstrate readiness for the realities of consulting: ambiguous problem solving, client communication, teamwork under pressure, travel expectations, and rapid learning. The firm wants a clearer, more consistent way to assess this in interviews because first-year consultant attrition has increased and client satisfaction on junior staffing has softened. The decision is whether NorthPeak should redesign its consulting-readiness interview approach and what candidate profile it should prioritize.

Data Points

Additional internal findings from 180 recent hires:

• Candidates rated highly on "structured communication" had 18% lower first-year attrition.
• Candidates with prior client-facing internship or leadership experience reached target utilization 2 months faster on average.
• Interviewers currently use 7 different definitions of "consulting fit," creating inconsistent evaluation.
• Training budget available for interview redesign and interviewer calibration: $500,000 over 12 months.

Deliverables

1. Define what "ability to work in a consulting environment" should mean in a practical, assessable way for NorthPeak.
2. Analyze the root causes of the current hiring and retention gap using the data provided.
3. Recommend whether NorthPeak should redesign its interview and evaluation process, and what dimensions it should prioritize.
4. Propose a go-to-market style rollout plan for the new assessment approach across recruiting teams and interviewers.
5. Identify the key metrics NorthPeak should track to determine whether the new approach is working.

Constraints

• The firm must implement any changes before the next recruiting cycle in 6 months.
• Budget is capped at $500,000.
• Interview process length cannot increase by more than 15 minutes per candidate.
• Recruiting leadership wants a solution that can be used consistently across offices in North America and Europe.