I applied through a recruiter. The process took 5 months. I interviewed at PwC (London, England) in Oct 2018
Interview
Four one-to-one interviews over a period of 2 months. However the first interview was requested 3 months after the initial contact by the agent. There was no clarity in terms of how many interviews were required for them to make a decision. Given that I was interviewed by a senior manager and a director, the 3rd and 4th interview came as a surprise, and displayed a lack of decisiveness. W.r.t. the 2nd interview (with the director), it ran over for 2.5 hours, and he asked a lot of sub questions whilst I answered his original question, and also said that he found it interesting since they "come across the same issues with the clients", so it seemed like the interviewer were fishing for potential business development opportunities with the large banking clients I had previously worked for, and it felt a little bit like I've been taken advantage of when there was no offer on the table when this interviewer was the critical interviewer in the process.
The 4th interview (with the Partner) was the most focused and productive interview, as I had only 30mins with him but he covered everything in terms of what they want out of me, and correctly assessed what I wanted to get out of my experience at PwC within the short time. This interview should have been held much earlier on in the process to avoid the huge amount of time wasted by both parties.
W.r.t. the overall process, given that there was a significant amount of time and money invested by the candidate to fly to London on short notice, PwC could have held am initial screening interview followed by a group/panel interview with the two directors and partner to save time and expedite the decision making time.
Additionally, the 2nd interview was nearly cancelled the evening before my interview (just as I was about to board the plane to London). It's only after I insisted that they schedule the interview for an alternative time whilst I was on that trip to London that they made it a point to meet with me. Same thing happened with the 4th interview with the partner, where a reschedule of interview time was requested 3 times (where the 3rd request was made on the afternoon before my Friday morning interview, just as soon as I landed in London). It was only after I indicated that this is making PwC look rather unprofessional that they came back to me stating that my interview will be 30mins long rather than the original 1 hour planned. At this time, I was seriously considering whether I wanted to withdraw from this process completely given they have taken a full 5 months t decide and appeared to be rather disorganised with this interview process.
I was beginning to doubt the credibility of the organisation in advising clients on process transformation, when their interview process itself was pretty disorganised and the senior leaders were indecisive. However I went ahead with the interview just so that my decision could be made on a rational basis not because of frustrating circumstances. In the end, it is ironic that they decided that I was not good enough to join the organisation, when PwC didn't have their house in order in the first place. So I know in some sense their decision was also the right one for me as I would like to work in an organisation that walked the talk before advising clients on how to get their systems and processes right, and also treated their candidates with respect and as external stakeholders recognising that the interview process was the window to the organisation in terms of how they work.
On the positive, the interviewers were very nice and professional at the time of the interview. Also the fact that they took 4 interviews (albeit it could have been done more efficiently and effectively), showed that they wanted to be absolutely sure they are making the right decision for the organisation.
Interview questions [1]
Question 1
A mix of competency based questions and an exhaustive set of questions based on CV.
I applied through other source. I interviewed at PwC
Interview
Interview with partner - international experienced hire. Interview was done over facetime and included questions around my understanding and experience of the deal cycle. Interview length was about 45 min.
I applied through an employee referral. The process took 5 months. I interviewed at PwC in May 2018
Interview
Went through 3 rounds of interviews with the HR and Senior Manager/partners. General questions plus technical questions as per expected. Only thing is they seem to be looking for a know it all rather than industry specific. However it was a bad experience because they gave a fake promise and told me to wait for 3 months and in the end rejected me with a reason that was so fake I didn’t bother replying back to.