Kearney
Hi, I have done 5 ‘perfect’ partner round interviews with Kearney Australia and got rejected.
I told them after the 2ndround that I had an alternative offer (which was true) and they accelerated briefly between the 2nd and 3rd round. The 3rd round was my strongest interview ever and yet after that one they started stalling with a 3-week gap despite confirming after 1-2 days informally that I have passed it. Note that the process overall was incredibly slow and long, spread over 2-3m.
Heard only bad things about Kearney specifically for AU (culture, WLB, recruiting process). At some point it’s not just anecdotal.
ANZ is one of the best bunch of people I have ever worked with at the firm. Authentic caring people. And I love the people who came over to work with me from there.
And you just can’t beat the office in Sydney. One of my favorites
Did you try to reach out to HR and see if you can be considered for MEA?
DM me if you’re interested in exploring this option
After that I waited 2 weeks to then be told that feedback from everyone across ALL dimensions (quant, commercial, behavioral etc.) was great, yet they decided not to proceed due to to a change in hiring strategy. I seem to have heard in the conversation (but not sure anymore) that it was also down to hiring capacity now. Note I applied for the manager role in a specific team.
At the end the (fairly new HR person that gave me the news via a call) said that they may want to reach out back to me again at the end of the year (so in 4-5 months time) or at the start of next if things change.
Is that just an Australian polite way to reject someone and make you feel good or is it actually likely down to the fact that business is down (just like in Europe atm) and they froze hiring for now and the prompt is genuine ? I just want to understand the real message.
I suspect change in hiring strategy could also mean they were looking for someone locally from Australia (I am from Western Europe) or a diversity hire (which I am not).
I also wonder if me letting the partner in the final interview know that I got a promotion at my current company (basically the best firm in the world for my industry and one of the most valuable ones globally) impacted it negatively to the extent that they though ok well if we give him the offer now he will probably reject us. Also note that I told the 3rd party recruiter that my comp at the next level will be virtually the same as the manager comp at Kearney that at offer stage we would need to push them a bit to make it actually worthwhile but I doubt that the 3rd party recruiter would have passed on that information to the hiring team at that point (after the 3rd interview) and that it would have impacted it negatively ?
I am super confused since despite pushing the HR lady at the end to highlight at least 1 single dimension I could improve on she couldn't / didn't highlight a single item - which is a first for me since in every other case I was told I could improve on x or y.
This was the longest and most frustrating interview experience, spread over 3-4 months that I ever head and getting this odd message at the end was the most confusing result I ever had, so would be really glad if anyone could shed some sensible light on it.
Thank you!
I'm from ANZ office. DM and I can follow up with HR on the experience and share your feedback more directly.
I'm sorry you had a bad experienced and had to go through this process with limited transparency on the rationale at the end after investing so much time.
In terms of rationale, my strong hypothesis is "hiring strategy" means limits on capacity of new hires. Most strat firms in ANZ are quite tight on hiring right now - not as bad as US.
Nothing related to this. But if you are looking to move to ANZ and work in consulting, please DM me with some info on your background. I might be able to help.
Can’t message you directly because of lack of credits but would love to have a chat. Please hmu if this opening is still available
I wouldn’t be put off, a lot of firms are either being guided by market conditions or diversity requirements in hiring. It’s a strange market this year and many company’s are reducing consultant spend.