How to Build a Strong Motivation for Consulting

There is no perfect answer to "Why consulting?" The strongest motivation is not the one that sounds most polished. It is the one that makes sense when someone looks at who you are, what you have done and what you have chosen to spend your time on.

If you say you are fascinated by consulting but have never spoken to a consultant, attended an event or tried to understand what the work is actually like, your answer will be difficult to believe. If you say you are excited by a particular firm but cannot explain what its local office does or why its work interests you, your answer will probably sound generic. And if your entire motivation is about everything consulting can give you, you are only telling half the story.

A good consulting motivation should answer three questions: why consulting, why this firm and this office, and why you. The goal is not to memorize the perfect answer. It is to understand your own reasons well enough that you can talk about them naturally.

Most candidates know roughly what a consulting interviewer expects to hear: solving difficult problems, working with smart people, learning quickly, getting exposure to different industries and working with senior clients. Those are all perfectly reasonable reasons to be interested in consulting. The problem is that almost every candidate can say them.

Compare these two answers.

Candidate A

"I want to work in consulting because I enjoy solving complex problems and working with smart people in a fast-paced environment."

Nothing about that answer is necessarily wrong. It is just difficult to learn anything about the person saying it.

Candidate B

"The projects I have enjoyed most have been the ones where the answer was not obvious at the beginning. During my internship, I worked on a pricing problem where we had to combine customer data with interviews across several teams. I found that process of taking something ambiguous, structuring it and eventually turning it into a recommendation much more interesting than the more routine parts of the role. That was one of the things that made me start looking seriously at consulting."

The underlying motivation is similar, but the second answer is stronger because it is personal. It explains where the interest comes from, gives evidence and gives the interviewer something they can ask about next.

Your motivation does not need to be unique in the sense that nobody else could possibly share it. It needs to be specific enough that it clearly belongs to you.

You can tell an interviewer that you are deeply interested in consulting, but what you have actually done is usually more convincing. If a candidate says, "I have wanted to work at this firm for a long time," a natural next question is: "What have you done to learn more about us?"

That does not mean you need to spend six months networking purely so that you can mention it in an interview. The point is simpler: if you are genuinely considering spending several years of your career somewhere, you would expect some curiosity to follow. You might attend a recruiting event, speak to consultants from the firm, join a case workshop, contact an alumnus, read about the office's work or try consulting through an internship or case competition.

Those actions make your motivation more credible because they show that your interest survived contact with reality.

Imagine two candidates are asked why they want to join a particular firm. Candidate A says, "I really like the culture and the people." Candidate B says:

"I first met the firm at a university event last year. I then spoke to two people from the Amsterdam office, and what stood out was how much responsibility they described getting early on. One of them talked about presenting part of an analysis directly to a client within their first year. That appealed to me because I have noticed in my previous roles that I learn fastest when I am given responsibility early rather than observing from the sidelines."

Candidate B is not better because they collected more networking points. The answer is stronger because they took something they learned about the firm and connected it to something real about themselves. That is much harder to fake.

Most candidates research the firm. Fewer research the office. That distinction matters because you are not joining an abstract global organization. You are joining a particular group of people in a particular location, working with a particular mix of clients and industries.

If you are applying to Amsterdam, understand the Amsterdam office. Look at the industries that appear important, the partners based there, the work they publicly discuss, the initiatives the office runs and the people you have met. Then ask the more important question: why does any of that matter to you?

A generic answer might be:

"I want to join the firm because it has a strong reputation in strategy."

A more specific answer might be:

"I have become increasingly interested in energy transition through my master's and my internship. When I looked more closely at the local office, I noticed that several partners work extensively with energy and industrial clients. The conversations I had with people from the office also gave me the impression that junior team members can get exposure to those problems quite early. That combination is particularly attractive to me because it connects directly to the type of work I already know I enjoy."

Notice that the second answer does not simply repeat facts from a website. It builds a bridge between what the firm does, what you have learned about it and what you care about. That is the difference between company research and an actual motivation.

A lot of consulting motivations are surprisingly one-sided. Candidates explain that they want a steep learning curve, great training, international opportunities, exposure to senior clients, interesting projects and talented colleagues. All of those things may be true, but you are essentially explaining everything you would like the firm to give you.

Hiring is an exchange, and the firm is also deciding whether it wants you. So a strong motivation should eventually answer another question: what do you bring? This does not mean turning your motivation into a sales pitch about how exceptional you are. It means thinking seriously about the perspective, skills and experiences that make you different.

Maybe you studied engineering and naturally approach strategic problems with a technical lens. Maybe you built a small company and tend to think more practically about whether recommendations can actually be implemented. Maybe you grew up across multiple countries and are comfortable working with different ways of communicating. Maybe your background in data science makes you naturally skeptical of assumptions that have not been tested with data. These experiences shape how you think, and consulting teams benefit when different people see different things in the same problem.

For example:

"I ran a student business alongside university for three years, and I think that has made me much more conscious of implementation. When someone proposes an attractive strategy, my instinct is usually to ask what it would actually take to make it work operationally. I think that perspective could be useful in a consulting team because I naturally bring the discussion back to execution."

That tells an interviewer much more about you than "I am a hard worker and a team player." Your motivation should not only answer "Why do I want consulting?" It should also help answer "Why might consulting want me?"

A good motivation usually has a story behind it. That does not mean you need a dramatic life story. It simply means the different parts of your answer should connect: what experiences shaped what you enjoy, why consulting makes sense as the next step, why this firm and office fit, what you bring with you and what you want to develop next.

Imagine someone studied engineering. During university, they joined a student consultancy and discovered that they enjoyed the commercial side of technical problems more than the engineering itself. They then completed an internship in a corporate strategy team and particularly liked working across functions on an unfamiliar market. They are now applying to a consulting office with significant industrial and energy work. That story fits together.

A possible answer could sound like:

"During my engineering degree, I gradually realized that I was most interested in the decisions around technology rather than the detailed technical design itself. I joined a student consultancy partly to test that, and I really enjoyed having to understand an unfamiliar business problem quickly and then work with a team toward a recommendation. My strategy internship reinforced that. Consulting feels like the logical next step because it would allow me to keep doing that kind of work across different problems and industries. I became particularly interested in this office because of its industrial and energy work, which connects well with my background. And I think my engineering training gives me a useful perspective in those teams because I am comfortable going into the technical detail when it matters, while still stepping back to think about the commercial question."

There is no revolutionary insight in that answer, but it is coherent. The person's background explains their interest, their interest explains consulting, their research explains the firm, and their experience explains what they might contribute. That is much more convincing than five unrelated reasons placed next to each other.

1. Saying what you think the interviewer wants to hear

You do not need to claim that you have dreamed of becoming a consultant since you were twelve. Maybe you discovered consulting six months ago. That is fine. Explain what changed your mind and why the work now interests you. A believable recent motivation is stronger than an unbelievable lifelong passion.

2. Listing generic consulting benefits

"Steep learning curve, smart people, diverse projects" can all be part of your answer, but they cannot be the entire answer. Connect them to your experience. Why do you value a steep learning curve? When have you enjoyed working across different problems? What have you learned about the people at this specific firm?

3. Talking only about prestige

Reputation may genuinely matter to you, but "I want to work here because this is one of the best firms" tells the interviewer very little about whether you will enjoy the actual work. Prestige gets old quickly if you do not like the job.

4. Giving the same answer to every firm

If you can replace one firm's name with another and the answer still works perfectly, your firm-specific motivation probably needs more work.

5. Reciting your CV

Your motivation is not a chronological list of everything you have done. Those experiences matter only when you explain what they taught you and how they shaped your decision.

6. Making the answer entirely about yourself

You should explain what you hope to gain, but the conversation becomes stronger when you also show what you could contribute.

7. Over-rehearsing

A perfectly memorized answer can sound less convincing than a slightly imperfect conversation. Interviewers are not assessing your ability to perform a speech. They are trying to understand you.

You should absolutely prepare your motivation. Trying to improvise the whole answer for the first time in an interview is unnecessary risk. But there is a difference between preparation and memorization.

Before your interview, know your core points: why consulting, one or two experiences that support that motivation, why this firm and office, what you learned from your interactions with the firm, and what you bring. You should be able to explain those ideas clearly without needing a memorized 90-second script.

Real interviews rarely follow the script anyway. An interviewer might ask "Why consulting?" and interrupt after 20 seconds with "But why not go into industry instead?" They might challenge a claim about responsibility or ask what specifically interests you about an industry. If you have memorized sentences, interruptions can throw you off. If you understand your reasons, the conversation is much easier.

This is also why practicing aloud matters. An answer can look perfectly logical on paper and still sound stiff when you say it. Try explaining your motivation without notes, then have someone challenge you: why consulting rather than a startup, why this firm rather than its competitors, what makes you think you would enjoy consulting, and what evidence you have for that?

The goal is not to develop perfect answers to every possible question. It is to become comfortable discussing your motivation from different angles. You can also use Aurora to rehearse answers aloud and get used to follow-up questions rather than practicing a fixed script.

There is no perfect consulting motivation, so you should not copy someone else's answer. But it can help to see the difference between a generic answer and a more personal one.

A generic answer might sound like this:

"I want to join consulting because I enjoy solving complex problems, working with smart people and having a steep learning curve. I am particularly interested in your firm because of its strong reputation, international opportunities and collaborative culture."

There is nothing obviously wrong with this answer. The issue is that it tells the interviewer almost nothing about the candidate.

Now compare it with this:

"I started seriously considering consulting during my internship last year. I was working on a project where our team had to understand why one of our product lines was losing market share. I found that I really enjoyed taking a fairly messy problem, combining data with conversations across the company and gradually getting to an answer. After that I started speaking to people in consulting to understand whether that was representative of the work. The conversations made me more interested rather than less, particularly because I like the combination of analytical work and having to bring people along with the recommendation. For this firm specifically, I have been particularly interested in the work the Amsterdam office does in consumer and technology. I spoke to two people from the office and liked the amount of responsibility they described getting relatively early. I also think I would bring something useful from my own experience. I have worked in a small startup alongside university, which has made me quite practical about implementation. I tend to ask quite quickly whether something can actually be executed rather than stopping at whether the strategy looks good on paper."

The answer works because its parts reinforce each other. The candidate gives a reason, supports it with evidence, explains how they explored consulting further, links the motivation to the specific office and says what they might contribute. It sounds like an explanation rather than a sales pitch.

Before the interview, make sure you have thought seriously about why consulting, what experiences made you interested in this kind of work, why now, why this firm and office, what you have done to learn more, which conversations or experiences influenced your view, what kinds of work interest you, what you hope to learn, what you bring and why consulting makes more sense than the obvious alternatives available to you.

You do not need a perfect answer to every question, but you do need to have thought about them. The best preparation is usually a combination of reflection, research and conversation.

Write your key points down, research the firm and local office, speak to people when you can, then practice saying the answer aloud without reading it. If the answer changes slightly each time, that is usually a good sign. It means you know what you want to say without being dependent on a script.

A strong consulting motivation is not about finding the answer you think an interviewer wants to hear. It is about understanding why this career actually makes sense for you.

Be honest about what attracts you to the work, look for evidence in your own experiences, take the time to understand the firm and office you are applying to, and explain what you hope to learn as well as what you could bring. Prepare enough that you can talk about all of it naturally without sounding rehearsed.

The best answers rarely feel like answers at all. They feel like someone explaining a decision they have thought seriously about.

Do not act like a candidate trying to say the right thing. Help the interviewer understand why consulting genuinely makes sense for you.