Candidate preparation · Strategy consulting leadership
Preparing for a partner interview process
A Partner, Principal or Director move in strategy consulting is not an interview. It is a process — typically seven distinct stages run over two to three months, in front of five to eight people who have never met you and who each decide independently. Each stage tests something different, and the thing that got you through the last one is rarely the thing that gets you through the next.
This page is the preparation tool we give our candidates. For every stage: what it is actually testing, what best practice looks like, what the market is doing right now, the questions worth asking, and the ones that cost you.
Matariki, the seven-star cluster, with the Strat-Bridge stingray at its centre — one star for each stage of the process
Seven stages, seven different jobs
Start at stage one even if you are already in a process — it is the one that makes the last stage straightforward. Otherwise, pick where you are.
Stage 01 Take stock Decide your criteria before anyone shows you a package. Seven or more factors you come back to at every stage after this. Open stage → Stage 02 Exploratory call Thirty minutes that settle your level, your motive, and whether the work you sold would come with you. Open stage → Stage 03 Business case The document the decision actually rests on — what goes in it, how to polish it, and how to pre-empt the doubts. Open stage → Stage 04 Interviews 2–5 Every partner is a cold start. How to give context, stay consistent, and survive the cross-practice rooms. Open stage → Stage 05 Final round Presenting the case to the partner group — plus the due diligence you owe yourself before you can accept. Open stage → Stage 06 Offer & negotiation What to ask for, how to phrase it, what not to touch, and when to walk away. Open stage → Stage 07 Resign and land Leaving properly, and the hundred days that decide whether the move actually worked. Open stage →
Talking it through costs you nothing
If you want to test any of this against a live process — a business case you are drafting, an offer on the table, or whether a move is worth running at all — we take confidential conversations with no obligation and no CV required.
Start a confidential conversation How we work with candidates →
How we work
Four pou behind every search
Our four pou , or pillars, come from tikanga Māori. They shape how we run every search, including yours.
Manaakitanga Care and dignity Nobody is left waiting for news that never comes. Whanaungatanga Relationships The relationship matters more than any single mandate. Tika & Pono Just and honest Honest feedback, even when it is not in our financial interest. Kaitiakitanga Guardianship We hold your career, and your confidence, in trust.
Read what each pou means →
Where this comes from
Strat-Bridge runs Partner, Principal and Director searches for strategy and management consulting firms across Europe. What we describe here reflects the searches we run rather than the whole market. No client, candidate or mandate is identified on these pages, and no compensation figure from any live process appears on them.
Where these pages make a claim about evidence rather than about our own experience, the published research behind it is named on the page that makes the claim. Everything else is what we see in the searches we run.
Written by Ben Appleton, Strat-Bridge · Last reviewed 1 September 2026
