Interview Questions

Beginning of the consulting process

Questions delivered by Sheila

• How do you find new clients? Can you tell us a little bit about your first client? How do you identify true clients from contacts?
• As a performance consultant, how would you reframe a solution request (changing a client’s perspective towards a solution) received from the client? Did the solution proposed by your first client need to be reframed?
• How could you engage the client in a strategic initiative when the client has not asked for your involvement? Could you please elaborate on that?
• When meeting clients, how do you negotiate for contracts? How flexible should one be when negotiating that first contract?
• How did you finance your business initially? And how did you achieve your desired income?

Midway through the consulting process

Questions delivered by Anton

• What are the main factors to consider when planning a consulting project? Do you plan for multiple outcomes?
• What influences the scheduling process of a given consulting project? How flexible is a project schedule once it has been established?
• As a performance consultant, do you employ any particular mental models to guide you in your day-to-day activities (example: a mental model that helps you analyze business and work group performance situations)? If so, could you please elaborate on how these particular models aid you in your work, more precisely in uncovering the performance challenges?
• In general, midway through the consulting process, are there any additional challenges a performance consultant should anticipate? If so, how would one deal with those challenges?

Towards the end of the consulting process

Questions delivered by Harry

• Given a contract, how important would you consider “following-up” with the client to be? In your own practice, what are some of the follow-up tactics you employ? And for how long after the project closes should you keep following-up?
• At the conclusion of a project, do you encourage feedback from your clients (feedback on both the final result and on you personally)? If so, how do you use the received feedback to improve professionally and personally?
• At what point do you think it makes the most sense to transition from your day job to start up your own consulting firm? What experience should I have gathered before attempting my own company?
• When you submit the final deliverables to a client, how do you protect yourself from the client making the claim that what you produced is not in-line with what they wanted?