Good Questions to Ask Consulting Coffee Chat
Questions for a twenty-minute coffee chat with a consultant during recruiting or before you apply. They cover the shape of a real week, staffing and travel, how promotion and feedback actually work, and what the person would tell you if the firm were not paying them.
The questions
Open any question for the note
What does a typical week look like for you right now?
Why ask it
Ask about right now rather than in general, because consultants live project to project. Between engagements they are on the beach doing internal work, and a week described that way is not the week you would be signing up for.
What are you working on at the moment, as much as you can say?
Why ask it
Client confidentiality means they will speak in categories, and the categories are the useful part: cost cutting versus growth, slide production versus modelling, on site versus remote. Someone who cannot describe their own workstream is probably very junior on a large team.
What drew you to consulting, and has that held up?
Why ask it
The second half is what keeps this from being a recruiting answer. People who say the learning curve held up but the travel did not are telling you where the trade lands after a couple of years.
What kinds of clients and industries do you spend most of your time on?
Why ask it
Offices specialize more than firm websites suggest. If every case in that office is one sector or one government client, your first two years will look like that regardless of what you said you wanted.
What's the best project you've been on, and what made it good?
Why ask it
Listen to what made it good: an unusually decent manager, a client who acted on the work, a small team. Those are the variables that determine whether a job is bearable, and they are mostly luck of the staffing draw.
What surprised you most in your first six months?
Why ask it
Nearly everyone names something structural: how much time goes into internal review, how little the analysis matters compared with how it is presented, how fast you are put in front of a client. That is the gap between the pitch and the job.
How much say do you have in what you get staffed on?
Why ask it
Firms describe staffing as a market or as a process, and the difference is enormous. Ask who actually decides, whether you can decline a case, and what declining costs you.
How much are you travelling these days, and is that typical for your office?
Why ask it
Travel norms vary by office, sector, and client, so a single person's answer needs the second half to be worth anything. Also worth learning: whether travel means four nights a week or two days a month.
What do the hours look like in a heavy week compared with a light one?
Why ask it
Averages get quoted; the range is what breaks people. A firm where a bad week means midnights and a good week means six o'clock is a different job from one that is steadily long.
How does feedback reach you: formal reviews, project debriefs, or a comment in a taxi?
Why ask it
Offering three options makes it easy to answer honestly. If real feedback only arrives at semi-annual review, you can spend six months off track without knowing it.
What does someone have to do to move from your level to the next one?
Why ask it
You are listening for whether the criteria are legible. Answers built around visible behaviours and named skills suggest a functioning system; answers built around who you know suggest the promotion process is a popularity contest.
Who has been most useful to your career here, and how did that relationship start?
Why ask it
Formal mentorship programmes are usually decorative. The useful relationship almost always started on a case, and hearing how it formed tells you whether sponsorship here happens by accident or by design.
Is the team dynamic more collaborative or more comparative when reviews come around?
Why ask it
Both can be true of the same firm, and naming review season is what surfaces it. Forced ranking changes how colleagues behave in the two months before it, whatever the culture deck says.
Can people build a specialty here, or does staffing push you to stay generalist?
Why ask it
This shapes your exit options more than your title does. A generalist path keeps you flexible inside the firm and vaguer to outside employers, and the person across the table has already felt that pull one way or the other.
Where do people go when they leave, and do they stay in touch?
Why ask it
Alumni destinations are the most honest measure of what the firm's experience is worth outside it. Whether people stay in touch tells you whether the network is real or just a LinkedIn group.
In practice, what's different about this firm and the one across the street?
Why ask it
Everyone claims better people and better culture. Push gently for something structural, like case length, team size, or how early you own a workstream, since those are the differences you would actually notice.
How much access do junior people get to partners and to the client's decision-makers?
Why ask it
This is the real difference between learning quickly and producing slides for two years. Ask when they last presented anything themselves to a client, which is much harder to answer generously than the abstract version.
What's something you wish you'd known before you signed?
Why ask it
Framing it as before you signed makes it about information rather than complaint, which is why it gets answered. Expect something about the beach, relocation, or how much the office you land in matters.
What's it like here for people who didn't come in through the usual recruiting pipeline?
Why ask it
More useful than asking about inclusion in the abstract, and answerable from experience. If the honest answer is that it takes longer to be trusted, you have learned what to prepare for.
Would you join again, knowing what you know now?
Why ask it
The highest-signal question in the set, and one you should save for last so it does not colour everything before it. A long pause before a yes is the answer.
Making the Most of Coffee Chats
Practical guidance for the conversation itself
Before the Chat
- 1Look up their path: undergraduate degree, previous employer, how long at each level. That tells you which questions they can actually answer, since a first-year analyst cannot describe promotion to partner.
- 2Pick five questions, not fifteen. Twenty minutes with follow-ups holds about five.
- 3Decide what you are optimizing for before you walk in: hours, sector exposure, exit options, or location. Otherwise you will nod along at everything.
- 4Do not ask anything the firm's careers page answers. Spending the slot on office locations or interview format signals you did not prepare.
During the Conversation
- Follow up once on every answer. The second answer is where the useful detail lives, and most people never ask for it.
- Give the awkward questions an escape route: is that typical, or was that just your case? People answer honestly when they are not being asked to indict their employer.
- Keep your own story to about two minutes unless they ask for more. This is not the interview, though what you say may be passed along.
- Notice what they will not say. A deflected question about hours or staffing is itself information.
- Ask near the end whether there is anyone else they would suggest you talk to. It is the lowest-cost way to double your access.
After the Chat
- Write down three specifics within the hour, while you still remember which firm said what. After four chats they blur completely.
- Send a short thank-you the same day that quotes one thing they said. Generic notes are visibly generic.
- Talk to people at two levels, ideally a recent joiner and someone senior enough to have survived a downturn. Their answers about hours and staffing will differ.
- If they offered to answer follow-ups, use it once with a real question rather than a check-in. That is what turns a chat into a referral.