Advancy is hiring across roles. Want to get hired as an Advancy consultant? You’ll need to be prepared for the firm’s case interview process – keep reading for an ultimate guide to preparing for Advancy case interviews.
Florent Dhôte, a Manager at Advancy, shares what to expect for behavioral questions and case interviews, including tips and tricks to prepare and stand out.
Interested in a role with Advancy? Explore the firm’s careers website.
Advancy Case Interview Guide
MC: Japheth Mast
Florent, I’m really excited to talk with you today! For those unfamiliar with Advancy, can you provide a quick overview of the firm? What kind of work you do, what types of clients you serve, industries you focus on, etc.?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Sure. Advancy is a global strategy consulting firm that was founded over 25 years ago in Paris, France. We have close to 300 consultants around the world with our main office being Paris, and additional offices in London, Frankfurt, New York, Shanghai, Singapore, Sydney, and a bunch of other ones around the world.
We are a strategy pure player, which means that roughly half of our engagements would be working on some M&A deals with Private Equity funds or corporate sponsors. The other half would be corporate strategy projects. So that’s looking at it by the kinds of project that we do.
Then you can also look at it by the different industries that we serve. We have a very clear focus when you look at it from that angle because we basically serve – at a global level – consumer goods and retail, industrials, and Life Sciences and pharmaceuticals. These are the three main pillars that we’re working on at the global level.
In New York, we focus mostly on the last two, with our work being dedicated to chemicals and specialty materials, food ingredients and food products, and life science and pharmaceuticals. That’s why we have people on our team with a scientific background along with business graduates.
MC: Japheth Mast
Do you have a favorite industry or do you love them all equally?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
I do a little bit of everything, but my focus personally is more the Life Sciences and pharmaceuticals side of the business.
MC: Japheth Mast
You’ve shared a little about the firm. Before we dive into the benefits of working for Advancy and the case interview process, can you share your personal background and what led you to the firm?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Yeah, sure. I was born and raised in France. I received both my undergraduate degree, which was in biology, and my master’s degrees – one in engineering and another in economics – in Paris. I knew quite early on that I wanted to do consulting, which is why I went and got that second degree in economics on top of the engineering one.
At the end of my degree, I did a final internship at another consulting firm, but I didn’t really fit with the industries and the kind of projects that they did. So, at the end of the internship, I was back on the market looking for my first full time job.
Like all fresh graduates, I applied to a bunch of strategy consulting firms and the match with Advancy just happened over the course of the interviews. I’ve now been with Advancy for five years and I really feel like I found the perfect company in terms of the size, the industries that we serve, the kinds of people we hire, and who we get to hang out with for the whole day. The types of engagements that we work on are a perfect fit for me.
MC: Japheth Mast
It sounds like you genuinely enjoy who you work with and the work that you do, which can be a rare combination.
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Benefits of Working For Advancy
MC: Japheth Mast
You mentioned that Advancy, while somewhat of a smaller firm, still has global reach with offices spread across the world. What are the advantages of working for a global firm like Advancy?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Advancy is still a relatively small company, but we have been through several years of amazing growth – consistent double-digit growth – ever since I joined the company. We have had some exceptional years. For example, 50% year on year growth in 2021. 2022 was also a very good year for us.
All of that brings us to Advancy today, which I would say – and it sounds cheesy – but it does have the best of both worlds. The best aspects of a boutique consulting firm, but also the best of what a global world-spanning company can bring. You’re not just a cog in the machine, you’re not just a number. You are working within offices where you know everyone by their first name and you quickly get to work with everyone and get to know how everybody likes to work, as well as hang out with everyone during social events.
But at the same time, it is not like a 15-person boutique consulting firm, right? You do have money, resources, internal experts, processes, tools – everything you need to be comfortable doing your job and not struggle with some pragmatic aspects. We have all of the resources for our consultants to thrive and to focus on what they do best: thinking about the client’s cases and bringing value to that.
MC: Japheth Mast
I think you said it best. It really does sound like the best of both worlds. You have the resources, but you’re not just a face in the crowd.
Differences Between Paris and New York Offices
MC: Japheth Mast
You started off your time with Advancy in Paris, but I hear that you recently transferred across the pond to the New York office. Can you share two things: A) what took you to New York? B) What are some of the differences that you see between these two offices?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Let me start by pointing out that the kind of international move that I did is far from a rare thing at Advancy. It’s actually surprisingly common and much more common than you would see typically at some of the other big firms like MBB. It’s somewhat easy to do at Advancy and it’s something that we encourage because we want people to move around and see how things are done in other countries, in other offices, with other kinds of clients, etc.
Living and working abroad was something that I’ve always wanted to do. I actually had the opportunity to work abroad for a while when I was in college, doing my gap year. When I was speaking with Sylvestre, our Partner and Managing Director here in the New York office, I knew what he was trying to develop in New York, especially with a focus on Life Sciences, which was something I also wanted to work on as a continuation of what I was doing in Paris.
So, I raised my hand and the whole process was super quick and straightforward like everything at Advancy. I got the green light from the Partners in New York and Paris and we were on. I arrived in New York in early 2023. And, as for the differences between the two offices, the New York office is smaller as of now, since it was founded only four years ago. We’re getting to the five-year anniversary.
At the beginning, it was just Sylvestre, but it underwent incredible growth, going from just one person to 30 people in a little less than five years. But that’s still less than the 100 plus people that you would find in the Paris office. It definitely has that family vibe where you get to know everyone super well and you get to work with all the people on a much more regular basis. It feels like everyone in the office is a family.
The fact that it is also almost entirely focused on industrials helps bring us together a bit more because many of us are working on similar projects. And due to the small size of the office, everything is just easier. You know what everyone is working on and you always have people you know during social events and lunches or dinners that Advancy organizes. The office definitely has a small-scale family vibe that I really, really like.
Cross-Office Transfers
MC: Japheth Mast
I love the firm’s emphasis on cross cultural experiences. The ability to transition between offices or move and work across offices – is that available to anyone at the firm, from a junior consultant to someone more senior, or does that pick up when you’re promoted?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
You won’t be able to just raise your hand and ask for it one month into the company, obviously, but it’s definitely something we encourage. We actually do have some junior consultants who made that kind of move from Paris or London and are currently here in New York for a six-month move.
The way we do is that you can get to work in a different office for just one or two projects over a couple of months. Or, you can ask more officially to be detached to another office for six months, and then you can just move permanently, as I did. That’s very much something we want to make available to as many people as possible in the company.
MC: Japheth Mast
That flexibility is really incredible. It’s a great opportunity, especially for folks earlier on in their careers, to get exposure to multiple cultures, countries, etc.
Recruiting Process Overview
MC: Japheth Mast
You mentioned the incredible growth of the firm multiple times, which would tell me that the firm is hiring! Let’s talk about the recruiting and the interview process at Advancy. We’ll dive into specifics momentarily, but can you kick us off a high level overview of the recruiting process?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Candidates send their application through our recruitment website. If they are selected after the screening process – we do get 1000s and 1000s of applications every year – then we have them go through an online assessment. It’s a very basic test that tests people for numeracy and logical thinking, similar to questions you would find on the GMAT exam or other similar exams you would take when applying to business schools.
If you pass that, we send you on to a 15 to 30-minute discussion with one of our consultants. At this stage, there is no case involved. It is a very chill discussion on your background, your application, and for the consultants to also explain a bit more about Advancy, what we do, and the specificities of our work. The goal of that first stage is to check that there is a cultural fit between Advancy and the candidates, which is really important.
If you pass that, you get scheduled for two successive interviews, this time involving a case study. These interviews last anywhere from one to two hours, and sometimes even more, depending on who you have as your interviewer.
The format is pretty classic; a discussion on your background at the beginning, and then a case study for the next hour or so. The first of these two rounds is with a manager or principal, and the second round is with Sylvestre, our Partner and Managing Director here at the New York office.
MC: Japheth Mast
That’s a fairly streamlined recruiting process – there aren’t three screening calls and 14 interviews you go through. That’s a really helpful breakdown of the process.
How long does it take, on average, for a candidate to move through the process from application to offer letter?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
It’s pretty variable and depends on what time of year you’re applying. If you are right in the middle of peak recruitment season, it could take a bit longer. We usually try to keep it constrained to about a month, between the very beginning and the very end. We are aware that it’s not the easiest period for candidates, so we want to make sure that we provide as smooth of an experience as possible.
Advancy Online Assessment
MC: Japheth Mast
Let’s dive into a few of these specific pieces of the process. Starting with the online assessment – I know we’re going to have people writing to us asking, “How can I prepare for this assessment?” – can you prepare for the test, and if so, can you share one or two tips for candidates?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
The assessment that we have is fairly easy to prep for because it’s a pretty standard assessment. Just take out your old exercise books from when you were preparing for business school applications, and that should set you on the right path. The provider that we use for the test will give you some links to mock tests that you can take, and we definitely recommend taking those tests.
Candidates should definitely take these tests seriously, since we end up screening out a fairly high number of candidates just at that stage of the process. It’s definitely a good idea to get some prep before you actually do the real thing because the test will require you to do math under a time constraint.
MC: Japheth Mast
It’s helpful to know that a high percentage of candidates don’t end up making it past this, it just shows to take us seriously. And thank you for the resources you provide to candidates or that the test provider provides in the form of mock tests.
Qualities Advancy Tests For
MC: Japheth Mast
After the candidate passes the assessment, there’s the behavioral screening conversation with the consultant and then another behavioral portion. Can you talk to us about what you’re looking for in candidates? What are the attributes or the qualities that you’re assessing?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
We want to hire people who are easy to work with, who are energetic, and who are happy to be there. Because let’s not lie to ourselves, the hours are long, and we’ll spend most of the day in the office together.
If you’re in an interview with me, I want to feel that you will be able to work smoothly with the team for the whole day, but also contribute to the office atmosphere and be able to joke around and have an interesting conversation during lunch. I want to make sure that, at a personal level, there is some fit between you and the team.
When it comes to the professional attributes that we are looking for, we are a very detail and data-oriented type of company. The approach that we have during our projects is very much science driven or technology driven. We’re not afraid of diving very deep into topics and spending hours and days reading through scientific articles, watching really nerdy videos on YouTube on how stuff is made or how industrial processes work, or losing yourself in the Wikipedia blackhole. That’s the kind of thing that we really do on a daily basis.
So, when I’m interviewing people, I want to hear some curiosity about how the world works. I want to hear how you always want to understand the topics that are thrown at you. I want to see some proactivity and some interest in all of these things. You don’t need to come from a scientific background. We do hire both engineers and business graduates, but we definitely want to see these kinds of attributes.
MC: Japheth Mast
You’re giving candidates the airport test without needing to spend four hours in an airport.
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Yeah, exactly.
Advancy Behavioral Questions
MC: Japheth Mast
A smile goes a long way! Do you have a standard set of questions you filter through? Do you mind sharing maybe two, or three of the most common ones that you expect to ask in every interview?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
When we run interviews, I want to check that the candidate knows where they’re heading, that they’ve spoken with consultants, that they know what the actual day-to-day job is, and that they don’t have any misaligned expectations on what we actually do and what the job is going to be about.
Most of the time, more in the US than in France, people have actually done the homework and called their friends and family who are in consulting and have a fairly accurate understanding of what the job is about.
One thing I really like to do, and I’m spilling the beans here, is ask people to tell me about a current news topic that they have read about or heard in the past few weeks, and tell me about this news topic and their own perspective on it. You do end up hearing some very surprising things; people will tell you about their favorite sports or some obscure event that happened somewhere in the world, and this allows you to get to know the person a little better. We all want to work with people who are interested in what’s happening in the world and are able to tell you about it in a concise and structured way.
That’s a good test that I’ve found to see if candidates are the kind we’re looking for during the interviews.
MC: Japheth Mast
I love that question – thanks for pulling back the curtain a little bit and revealing some of Advancy’s secrets.
One more question regarding the behavioral interviews. When we’re coaching candidates on behavioral interviews, we believe the best way to answer a question is with a story. Does that align with the format of your interviews, or is there a different type of preparation tip you’d give to candidates?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
That is a very sound piece of advice for the behavioral part of the interview. I sometimes ask people, “Would you say you are a curious person?” It’s much more compelling if you illustrate your answer with an example from your past experiences that shows that you’ve been curious and you were proactive, rather than just answering “Oh, yeah, definitely. I think I am a curious person”.
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Advancy Case Interviews – How to Prepare
MC: Japheth Mast
This has been really enlightening. I’m excited to now get into the case study side of things, which is what many candidates spend many hours and nights preparing for.
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
As they should!
MC: Japheth Mast
Should candidates expect a case in one of the industries that Advancy specializes in? Or do you test more for skills rather than content knowledge?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Let me get this out of the way – we do not test for industry knowledge in case interviews. And all the more because we have that laser-focus on industrials. It wouldn’t be very fair to expect undergraduates to arrive here and know everything there is to know about the chemicals industry or the pharmaceuticals industry. We test skills and mindset, and the resistance to stress, rather than industry knowledge.
When it comes to the kinds of cases that we do, it depends on your interviewer. Some interviewers don’t necessarily take their cases from actual projects that we’ve done, but personally, I do. You can expect some Life Sciences case studies if you ended up having me as an interviewer, but I don’t expect you to know how the pharma industry works. I expect you to have some common sense and to know how the patient experience works and what a pill looks like. The rest of it is just asking the right questions and having a quick mind and sufficient training.
MC: Japheth Mast
You mentioned common sense as something you’re looking for. What are some of the other key skills that you’re looking for in a top candidate?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
One great piece of advice that I’ve been given on case studies is to make sure you understand what the company in the case does. Get away from the generic copy-paste frameworks from the books and try to be specific. To be able to achieve that, you need to understand what the company does.
It’s not enough to just stay at the surface and understand “they make drugs.” Okay, but what kind of drugs? And at which step of the value chain are they positioned? Who are their clients? What is their business model? How do these guys make money? What kind of market do they sell in? How can I segment that market? How can I be more specific and make sure that the questions that I will ask are to the point and will be specific to the issue that this company is facing? This is the kind of mindset that I want to see in candidates.
Another thing is being comfortable and quick with numbers, as well as being able to juggle different orders of magnitude, because I am going to throw a lot of numbers at you during the case. I want you to be organized, keep a cool head, write it all down in a structured way on your paper and then be able to leverage a piece of information from the beginning of the case and a piece of information from the end of the case together to make sense of the whole thing, and derive conclusions out of that.
The third piece of advice I would give is the following. We want to see proactive people, we want to see doers. So don’t just answer the questions or just tick boxes on your list of questions that you got from your case books. Try to put yourself in the shoes of a consultant and try to solve the problem.
When going through the calculations, when you put together several different pieces of information, try to think about the “so what?” What does this mean for the overall question that I’m trying to crack here and how can I move the case forward without needing the interviewer to ask me follow-up questions or point me in the right direction.
These three aspects – understanding the company, being comfortable with numbers, and being proactive in the case study – are things we’re looking for in candidates.
MC: Japheth Mast
Our readers can’t see it, but you’re getting a little fired up talking about this, which I love!
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Fortunately, it’s not only about being passionate about doing case interviews the right way. But, it’s also because we don’t do this kind of recruitment exercise randomly. We do it because it’s a fairly good representation of what the actual job is going to be. The skills that I just listed are the ones that I will want to see in my junior consultants during the projects. If you have these skills, you will thrive on the team, and you will find a lot of intellectual satisfaction in the projects.
MC: Japheth Mast
What I’m hearing you say is that if candidates absolutely dread doing any sort of case prep, there’s a chance this might not be the right career for them, but if cases are something that they enjoy and find intellectually stimulating, there’s a pretty good chance that they would enjoy and find fulfillment in the job as well.
Let’s talk about the math. Should candidates be prepared for at least one math problem in any case at Advancy?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Yes. Some of my coworkers who run the interviews have very math-driven cases where you’ll find yourself doing calculations the whole way through. Mine are a bit lighter on the math, but you will have to think about numbers.
We were talking about common sense a bit earlier during our conversation, and that’s something I want to see, especially relating to numbers. Common sense and critical thinking. If you end up with the American pharmaceuticals market size being $2 billion, I want to see yourself pause and say, “Oh, wait, maybe there’s something wrong because this definitely sounds too low to be true.”
MC: Japheth Mast
No calculators allowed, correct?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
That’s right. In terms of pragmatically how the interviews happen, the first interview with the manager or principle will be over video. The last round will be with Sylvestre in our offices.
Let’s be real – sometimes I’m not able to check if as a candidate, you’re using the calculator out of the camera’s scope, but I can hear the keys click when you type on the calculator, and you will be a bit too fast to be credible.
By using a calculator, you’re doing yourself a disservice because when you do end up with Sylvestre for the last round, you won’t be able to use a calculator, so you need to be able to calculate in your head on your paper in a quick and reliable way.
So, do your prep work. Do your math drills. It’s not very difficult – we’re not going to ask you to calculate very difficult fractions or equations. It’s all basic math. All the more reason to prepare.
MC: Japheth Mast
It’s not that the math is super complicated. It’s that you have an interviewer waiting on an answer, and you have time pressure, and a job offer on the line. That’s what makes case math difficult.
Maybe you can pull on your own interview prep back in the day, but do you have a few case prep tips or methods that you have found to be helpful for candidates?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
I’ve been recommending Victor Cheng’s book, Case Interview Secrets. I really like his book, because he doesn’t give you pre-made frameworks for every single kind of case that you may run into, because if you go along that road, you will end up with 17 frameworks that you need to memorize.
I compare this book to Lego bricks. You’ll be able to pick and assemble in a custom way to answer the specific question that you’re being asked. We want you to be specific to the topic and not be parroting some off-the-mill, template frameworks. Having your bag of little bricks that you will assemble to specifically answer the question is definitely a good way to make sure that you’re as specific as possible.
MC: Japheth Mast
No firm wants a candidate to regurgitate memorized frameworks. It’s not how the job works.
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Exactly.
MC: Japheth Mast
That’s really helpful, Florent. Is there anything else that you think candidates need to know about case interviews at Advancy?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
One final piece of advice that I could give would be to try to have fun. Think of the whole thing as a game and get into the problem and try to solve it. We love nothing more than seeing candidates getting all excited about the topic. We love when you reach the end of the interview, and they still have 10 questions on “Oh, was it real project? How did it go? What was the actual answer? How did you guys go about it in real life?” That is really the mark of genuine interest in the job and in the kind of projects that we do, so I really love to see that.
MC: Japheth Mast
You can’t manufacture that interest and enjoyment of the process.
Before getting into some of the specific roles and the types of backgrounds that do well at the firm, can you quickly speak to networking. For example, candidate A versus Candidate B. Candidate A has talked to a couple of folks at Advancy, Candidate B hasn’t talked to anyone. Does that make a difference in the process? And would you recommend that folks do their due diligence on the networking side before getting to the interview stage?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
I think it does make a difference. In the first place, for the candidate themselves. If they make the effort of reaching out to our consultants and spending 20 minutes on the phone with them, they will get a heads up on what we do, and the specificities of Advancy – our scientific or even nerdy approach to our projects, the focus that we have in terms of the industries we serve, the very short projects we work on (they rarely last longer than a month).
It’s worth it for the candidate to make sure that this is what they want, and that this is the kind of environment in which they would want to work.
In regards to what it means for recruitment, of course we look more favorably on candidates who have gone to the length of speaking with one or several people in the New York office, and who come in and right away know more than the rest of the candidates about the company. They can say, “I heard this and that from this person and here’s what I found interesting and that’s why I want to join Advancy…” This is definitely a good way to set yourself apart.
Advancy Hiring Now
MC: Japheth Mast
Advancy is hiring – can you speak to the types of roles the firm has available and the types of backgrounds that tend to do well at the firm? You mentioned engineering, business majors, and so on, but is there anything else you’d like to add?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
We are pretty open when it comes to the background of people who join us. We have a bit of everything. We have people who have studied in the US, we have people who have studied abroad. We have undergraduates, we have MBA graduates, we have PhDs on our staff. As long as you think that this would be a good fit for you, don’t hesitate – reach out, apply, and we’ll be happy to consider your application.
MC: Japheth Mast
Wonderful. In your mind, why should people consider taking a second look at Advancy? How would you summarize what’s great about the firm?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
You’ll get to work on very interesting projects. One of the pros of being at a large enough company, at least above a certain critical scale, is that you do get to work with all of the brand names in the industries that we serve. You’re not stuck with the super small clients that no one has ever heard of. You’ll get to work on issues that count and are at the top of the CEO’s agenda, because that’s what we do in strategy consulting.
You won’t get the 12-month PMO engagements that you could be staffed on in other consulting firms. At Advancy, that’s something we don’t ever do. So, you have a guarantee of high pace, quick turnover in terms of the clients you are going to work for and the teams you will be staffed with and the topics that you will work on. That’s personally something that I really, really like about what we do here.
The company itself is great. We have a great atmosphere in the New York office. We tried to implement some of the better aspects of the French working culture, which includes everybody eating lunch together – not everyone in front of their own screen. We actually stop in the middle of the day and sit all together to have a shared meal, which is super fun and a positive aspect of the culture here.
We go out for tons of dinners. After each project, we take the whole team to a fancy fine dining restaurant. We do tons of social events. Just last Friday, the whole team went to Governors Island in front of the Statue of Liberty, sipping cocktails and playing outdoor games, after having a discussion about the state of the business.
We love to do things like that to bring the whole team together and make sure that we keep connections and have people speak with one another. So, in a nutshell, great projects, and above all, great people.
MC: Japheth Mast
I think that’s a very compelling argument for “Why Advancy?”
We’ll include links for folks to check out the website, LinkedIn, etc. so they can get in touch. But before we let you go, I’ve got a few personal questions, as is tradition here at Management Consulted.
Can you share a favorite moment or highlight from your time at Advancy?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Honestly, I’ve had so many great moments with the teams both in Paris and in New York, that it’s difficult to pick. But I’ll say that if you do join us, you will get to go on small adventures. We’ll take you on a trip to Governors Island, or we’ll take you axe throwing with the whole team.
As well as very big adventures – we go on an annual company-wide trip. In 2023, we brought the whole company to Lanzarote, an island off the coast of Spain. We brought the entire staff there for three days of some parties, climbing, volcanoes, doing some camel riding, and, of course, some beach and pool time.
MC: Japheth Mast
The legendary Advancy annual trip that we’ve heard so much about. I’ve heard some good stories! I would love to know your hidden talent. Can you share that with the community?
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
I cannot resist a dance floor and a good piece of music. I have tons of fun dancing. And that’s also something that if you do join Advancy, you’ll get to see, for best or worst. We do like to dance a lot, and that’s also sometimes part of the social events.
MC: Japheth Mast
That’s amazing. I think that’s the most compelling argument for joining Advancy. (laughs)
Florent, we really appreciate your time. It’s been great getting to know more about the firm, about your journey, and about the interview process. It was really insightful for me, and I know it will be for folks reading this as well.
Advancy: Florent Dhôte
Thank you so much for having me.
Conclusion
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