BCG holds yearly presentations on our campus to recruit PhD candidates for jobs in consulting. This year, they also heavily advertised a program for PhD candidates called "Bridge 2 BCG", which was meant to be a three-day introduction to a career in consulting. I applied to "Bridge 2 BCG" and was wait-listed, then rejected, when a spot did not open up. Later, after obtaining interviews at other top-tier consulting firms, I informed my recruiter about my interest in BCG and was granted an interview.
First, I was invited to a mock interview workshop with a networking reception on a Friday the week before my formal interview was scheduled. The mock interview consisted of a non-evaluative group case interview, which was a very pleasant experience overall.
A week later, I showed up for my real interview. Upon sitting down with my first interviewer, I noticed that her copy of my resume was six-months-old. I had submitted a recent resume to the recruiter, but this did not make it into my file and the old resume from my "Bridge 2 BCG" application was present instead.
My first interviewer started by informing me that she obtained an MBA from a prestigious school and that management consulting was an obvious path for her to take. She then proceeded to grill me on my background, what I did for my PhD research, and why I would choose to get a PhD at all if I now wanted to be a consultant. I felt that her line of questioning was very accusatory, and I felt that she was neglecting the fact that BCG came to my campus every year specifically to recruit PhD candidates. Only after this charade did we begin the case interview, although it was entirely clear by this point that she was not interested in me working at BCG.
My second interviewer was much more pleasant, but seemed entirely unprepared to give a case interview. He was clearly making up the case off the top of his head. At some point he rattled off some equally arbitrary data that was just as confusing as whatever structure--if any--he had imposed on the case he was giving.
The following Tuesday I got my entirely expected "no" answer from the recruiter. The recruiter was outstanding in his commitment to professionalism and openness. He took special care to share my interview feedback with me, and I commend him for that. However, my interviewers--both of them--clearly were not interested in me from almost the moment I walked into the room with them. One of my interviewers even went so far as to say to me, "I don't know why a PhD would be interested in consulting, don't they all want to go into academia?" (This was during my interview.)
Although the support staff at BCG were great, the interview experience itself was a decidedly negative one for me.