Advisory Services interview prep.

Behavioural questions to expect

1. Walk me through your CV / resume.
2. Tell me about your most impactful project or accomplishment.
3. Tell me about a weakness, a failure, or feedback you've received and worked on.
4. Why advisory? Why not audit, tax, banking, or strategy consulting?
5. Why {advisory practice} specifically? (e.g. why Transaction Services vs Valuation vs Restructuring?)
6. Why the firm?
7. What do you think makes the firm's practice distinct?
8. What does day-to-day life look like for an associate in this practice?

Technical concepts to master

• Three financial statements — connections you'll be probed on

  Income statement (IS) overview · Balance sheet (BS) overview · Cash flow statement (CFS) overview · Statement connections — the canonical question · Prepaid expense scenario

• Financial due diligence — how a Quality of Earnings actually gets built

  Quality of Earnings (QofE) build · Net Working Capital peg · Debt-like items + cash-like items · EBITDA bridge

• Valuation toolkit — DCF, comps, transactions, PPA

  Discounted cash flow (DCF) · Comparable companies (trading comps) · Precedent transactions · Purchase Price Allocation (PPA) — ASC 805

• Restructuring + 13-week cash flow

  13-week cash flow forecast · Liquidity runway + minimum cash · Capital structure waterfall + priority of claims · Covenant analysis + fixed-charge coverage

Practical drills

• A company has enterprise value of $500M, total debt of $120M (including $20M of finance leases), cash of $35M, accrued bonus liability of $8M, and a tax refund receivable of $5M. Compute the equity value the seller would receive at close. Walk me through it.
• You're staffed on the buy-side QofE for a $50M EBITDA software company. The CFO has told you reported EBITDA is $52M for the last twelve months. Walk me through how you'd build the QofE adjustments and set the NWC peg.
• A regional retail chain with ~$300M revenue is approaching covenant breach. Current cash is $15M, revolver availability is $25M. The CRO has hired the firm to build a 13-week cash flow and identify liquidity actions. Walk me through how you'd build the model and what you'd flag.

Smart-question anchors

• Practice-line scope + deal mix in the candidate's preferred sector over the next 12-18 months
• Associate ramp + first-year deliverable ownership — when do associates own a workstream end-to-end
• Industry specialization vs generalist staffing — how the practice handles early-career sector development
• Recent landmark deal or engagement — ask about dynamics behind one publicly-cited engagement
• Exit-pattern reality — where associates go after 2-4 years (corporate development, PE, in-house transactions)

Sourced from

Big 4 + Tier-2 deal advisory career content (Deloitte, PwC, EY, KPMG, BDO, Grant Thornton, RSM) · WSO + Mergers & Inquisitions transaction services content · AICPA + ASA valuation standards + practice aids · PCAOB + AICPA quality-of-earnings + due-diligence practice content · TMA + AIRA restructuring practice content · Glassdoor + Reddit r/accounting + r/FinancialCareers Big 4 advisory threads