We had a quick chat with Wesley Haigh, a physics student at the University of Warwick who has recently been offered a Software Developer Analyst role at PA Consulting. He shares his story on how he secured this sought after graduate role.
I’m passionate about software development and having spent a year in a software company before university, I knew I wanted to go back into the industry.
I chose PA Consulting because I found their representatives very friendly and rather than having a robotic application process, they made it really chilled, personal and accommodating.
What can your peers expect from the application process?
It was a very quick process - I was invited to an assessment centre not long after the initial online application and telephone interview. There were four of us there on the day, all vying for different positions. We were split into twos - while two undertook the case study exercise, the other candidate and I had our interviews and then we swapped.
As I was going for the software role, I had a coding interview with someone from PA Consulting's IT department. I had to do a bit of programming and was given a few scenario questions so they could get an idea of how I work.
This was followed by was a mock consulting case study. The assessors weren’t looking for perfection; they just wanted to see how I understood the task and dealt with it. They were all very understanding.
After this, we did a case study as a group followed by a final one on one interview with a senior consultant which lasted an hour. My interview was more of a structured chat, designed to find out why I wanted to be a Software Developer Analyst at PA Consulting.
Overall, I loved the atmosphere on the assessment day as it was so relaxed. I felt comfortable being myself and got a good sense of what it would be like to work for them.
