32 consultant interview questions to evaluate candidates’ expertise (+ sample answers)

Sooner or later, every business faces challenges that they’re not equipped to handle. Consultants act as seasoned guides and experts that provide strategic solutions for such situations and help organizations achieve their potential.

Consultants’ know-how can be instrumental in helping you achieve ambitious business goals, from navigating operational bottlenecks to revamping your marketing strategies or expanding your business to new markets.

Regardless of whether you’re looking to hire a consultant to help you out with a specific project or to join your consulting team, you need to assess their skills accurately and objectively during the recruitment process. 

How do you do that? With pre-employment skills testing and the right consultant interview questions.

In this article, we’ll focus on the 32 most important interview questions you should be asking candidates to evaluate their experience and qualifications. We’ll also discuss which consultant skills you should assess and how.

How to evaluate consultant skills

Consultants wear many hats. Their responsibilities span diverse areas like problem analysis, strategic planning, project management, and more.

A skilled consultant needs to have a blend of strong technical expertise, exceptional communication skills, and analytical prowess. A skills-first approach to hiring enables you to assess these qualities in candidates efficiently and without any bias. 

While skills tests provide insight into their depth of expertise, personality, and cultural alignment, interviews offer insights into past experiences and behavior – and are an excellent opportunity to discuss your specific needs with candidates. 

Here are some skills tests that will provide a holistic view of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses:

• Critical Thinking: Consultants are, above all, problem solvers – and for this, they need excellent critical thinking skills. 

• Business Ethics and Compliance: Assess applicants’ awareness, judgment, and knowledge of ethical issues in a business setting with this test. 

• Project Management: Consultants often manage large projects and teams; make sure they have the right skills for that with this test.

• Communication: Evaluate and compare applicants’ communication skills accurately and objectively.

• Leadership and People Management: Do your candidates have what it takes to manage and guide others and enable them to do their best work?

• Business Judgment: The best consultants will have a good nose for value and know how to make the right trade-offs and decisions in a business context.

• Negotiation: Consultants often need to negotiate projects and resources with stakeholders, external providers, and business partners. Identify skilled negotiators with the help of this test. 

• Culture Add: If you’re hiring a full-time employee, cultural alignment is essential. 

With TestGorilla, you can combine up to five skills tests to evaluate candidates’ suitability for your project and see whether they meet your requirements and needs. Then, you can invite the best talent to an interview to discuss the details and gain deeper insights into their expertise. 

Top 6 general consultant interview questions and answers 

Below, you’ll find six general interview questions for consultants, along with our guidelines on what to expect from candidates. 

1. Can you describe a challenging project you managed? How did you overcome the obstacles?

Skilled applicants will talk about a specific project, clearly outlining the obstacles they faced, such as tight deadlines, budget constraints, or team dynamic issues. 

They should demonstrate their problem-solving skills by explaining their approach to these challenges, perhaps by reallocating resources, negotiating deadlines, or swiftly resolving conflict. 

You can expect candidates to demonstrate their adaptability and explain how they adjusted their plan to respond to unexpected hurdles, maintain momentum, and deliver the project on time. 

2. Can you give an example of how you've contributed to the business growth of a previous client?

Here, candidates should be able to provide an example where their insights directly contributed to a client's business performance. They should detail the strategies they implemented; for example, they might have: 

• Introduced an innovative product or software tool 

• Optimized and automated processes

• Enabled the expansion to new markets

Skilled candidates will also demonstrate their ability to not just create strategies but also execute them effectively. They’ll also be open to discussing the specific outcomes they helped achieve and the ways in which they facilitated the client’s growth.

3. How do you assess the impact of your work for an organization?

You can expect candidates to talk about specific metrics they use to evaluate the impact of their work, such as:

• Increased revenue

• Cost savings

• Improved customer satisfaction scores

They might also discuss how they establish benchmarks and track performance over time. The best applicants will emphasize the importance of continuous improvement, explaining how they use metrics to identify areas of improvement. 

4. Describe a time when you had to change your strategy due to changing market conditions.

Look for examples that demonstrate candidates’ ability to adapt quickly to changing circumstances and anticipate trends. 

They should discuss how they prioritized immediate adjustments and then changed their long-term vision, ensuring a smooth transition and minimizing disruption to the team’s work.

Experienced applicants will also explain that it’s essential to maintain excellent communication with stakeholders during times of change.

5. Tell us about a time when you were involved in a project that failed. What did you learn from the experience?

Candidates should be open to discussing a specific project that did not meet its objectives, focusing on what they learned and how they have used this knowledge in their career. 

Skilled consultants should demonstrate resilience and be able to take accountability for their failures, explaining what went wrong and what steps they have taken to avoid similar risks in the future. Hiring highly adaptable employees and consultants who are ready to learn from their mistakes is essential for the success of your business.

6. What strategies do you use to ensure you're able to deliver projects on time?

Candidates should explain what planning and risk management strategies they use to ensure the timely delivery of their projects. They might talk about defining clear project scopes, setting realistic timelines, and establishing milestones. 

Skilled candidates will demonstrate excellent time management skills and be able to prove their ability to identify risks and implement mitigation strategies, ensuring that the project stays on track. They should also mention their proficiency in using project management tools to monitor progress and make adjustments as necessary.

Top 6 situational questions for consultants (and sample answers)

Below, you’ll find our selection of six challenging situational questions for consultants. Use them to evaluate their preparedness to work on difficult projects and achieve the best possible results. 

1. You realize your team lacks a key skill required to complete a project successfully. What do you do?

Some candidates might consider a strategic reassessment of the resources they have available to them, including the project’s budget, and look for ways to plug skills gaps quickly and efficiently. 

To deliver the project successfully, they might:

• Redistribute tasks to better align with the team’s abilities and strengths

• Reassess the project’s scope and communicate potential changes to stakeholders

• Organize targeted training sessions to help team members update their skills

• Bring in an external expert or collaborate with other departments

Look for applicants who are proactive and resourceful in ensuring that the project stays on track.

2. You present a solution that you believe is optimal, but a key stakeholder strongly disagrees with your approach. How do you proceed?

Expect candidates to talk about the importance of actively listening to stakeholders’ concerns and understanding their perspective. 

They should discuss how they would engage in a constructive dialogue, presenting data or case studies to support their solution while remaining open to adapting their strategy to feedback, ensuring that their approach aligns with stakeholders’ requirements and expectations.

3. You're leading a critical project and the client suddenly asks to move the deadline up by two weeks. Your team is already working at full capacity. How would you handle this situation?

Candidates should describe their approach to negotiating with the client, seeking to understand the reasons behind the deadline change and explaining the challenges it presents. 

They might discuss reevaluating the project scope, presenting alternative timelines, or propose phased deliveries that could meet the client's urgent needs without compromising the quality of work. 

Skilled applicants will also explain that they’d look to identify areas where efficiency gains are possible, or reallocate tasks to ensure that the team can prioritize the most critical elements of the project and complete them by the new deadline.

4. A strategy you implemented is not delivering the expected results. How do you address this?

The best candidates would explain they’d:

• Conduct a thorough analysis to understand why the strategy is not working

• Look at data, feedback, and any external factors that might have influenced the results

They might talk about the importance of staying agile and ready to adjust the strategy based on their findings. Skilled candidates will emphasize the importance of learning from this situation, documenting their insights, and applying them in their work to avoid similar issues in the future.

5. Two key members of your project team are in conflict, and it's affecting the project's progress. How do you resolve the issue?

Expect candidates to tell you about their approach to resolving workplace conflict and acting swiftly before the issue escalates. They might talk about arranging a mediation session where both parties can express their concerns in a neutral environment and reach a solution.

6. Halfway through a crucial project, a key stakeholder informs you that the budget has been significantly reduced. What steps do you take to ensure the project's objectives are still met?

Skilled consultants would first conduct a comprehensive review of the project plan, analyzing every aspect of the project to identify potential cost savings without compromising on quality. 

Then, they would closely examine the project deliverables, resources, and timeline to determine what changes they could make. They would also analyze existing assets they could leverage to deliver the project successfully – and also revise expectations with stakeholders.

20 extra interview questions for consultants 

In this section, you’ll find additional questions you can ask consultants during interviews based on their specific area of expertise.

5 interview questions for cybersecurity consultants

1. How do you conduct a full cybersecurity risk assessment for a mid-sized company?

2. Describe a method you have used to detect a data leak within a company. How did you identify the source and what steps did you take to prevent it from recurring?

3. What is your experience with implementing security protocols in cloud environments?

4. How do you balance business needs and security requirements?

5. What’s your approach to managing and mitigating threats posed by insiders, be it intentional or unintentional?

5 IT consultant interview questions

1. Can you describe your experience with large-scale cloud projects?

2. What methodologies do you use for IT project management?

3. How do you approach technical debt in a project?

4. What strategies do you use to ensure you're able to deliver IT projects on time?

5. Describe your approach to diagnosing and resolving a problem when a critical system goes down unexpectedly and there's no clear cause.

5 marketing consultant interview questions

1. What are your methods for accurately measuring the ROI of a marketing campaign across various channels?

2. Can you describe a time when you had to adjust a marketing strategy in response to a public relations crisis? How did you approach the situation and what was the outcome?

3. In highly saturated markets, what innovative approaches do you recommend for a brand to differentiate itself and create a unique value proposition?

4. How do you evaluate the effectiveness of new marketing technologies and decide whether to incorporate them?

5. How do you ensure that your content marketing strategy cuts through the noise and genuinely engages the target audience?

5 sales consultant interview questions

1. How do you optimize long and complex sales cycles, especially when they involve multiple decision-makers in large organizations?

2. Price is often a major sticking point in our sales negotiations. How do you think our team should handle price objections and guide the conversation back to the value our solution provides?

3. How do you develop and implement sales strategies for market expansion, considering cultural differences and local market nuances?

4. How do you ensure the accuracy of your sales forecasts and manage expectations with the rest of the team and company leadership?

5. How would you address a drop in sales? What would you do to identify potential areas of improvement in the sales process?

Hire top consultants bias-free with the right interview questions and skills tests

The right consultant is more than just a problem solver, they are a strategic partner, a trusted advisor, and a catalyst for positive change.

But with so many consultants offering their services on LinkedIn and other platforms, it might be difficult to select the right partner for your business. That’s why it’s essential to assess the skills of candidates and not just rely on their resumes or social media presence. 

By using a skills-first approach to hiring, finding the right consultant will be much easier. Use skills tests to identify the best candidates – and then simply invite them to an interview to gain deeper insights into their competencies and expertise. 

TestGorilla will help you hire the best consultant for your business. Sign up for a free demo to talk to one of our experts – or try our free plan to start evaluating candidates’ skills today.