Slalom Consulting Project Manager Interview Questions & Reviews

Interviewed Jul 2010 in Seattle, WA (took 1+ week)

I was contacted by a VP to see if I was interested, had a 1:1 interview with him, and was then invited in for a group interview with a director and a couple managers. I decided after the group interview that I wasn't interested, and they didn't contact me again.

My 1:1 interview with the VP was great, and I left really excited by the opportunity. We talked about a lot of different areas of work I could contribute to, and he had some great visual aids to show what their culture and work processes were like.

The group interview was a different story. It was like I was talking to "Stepford" people. It was clear that if you were going to fit in there, you were going to have to look a certain way, talk a certain way, and have a certain attitude about customers. I talked to a Director and a couple project managers. It was clear that none of them had prepared for the interview, and I just got a bunch of generic questions. The questions were designed to figure out whether I would fit in to their culture and way of thinking, not whether I could do great work for their customers. If you give an answer to a question that's anything out of the ordinary from what they expect or have heard before, you'll get strange, confused looks.

Slalom gets great reviews as a place to work, and it might be, if you just want to do generic consulting. I didn't get the picture that this company stood for anything more than billing hours to customers. I didn't see any evidence of a culture of innovation or passion for customer success. They talk a lot about being "great consultants", but from what I could tell, being a great consultant meant looking and acting the part, and doing nothing that the customer doesn't explicitly ask for or expect. If you're looking for innovation, personal growth, or a job where you can delight customers with extraordinary work, I would look elsewhere.