What Motivates You 2026: A Named and Timed Interview Slot

Motivation is a named consulting interview slot, timed at one firm

Deloitte publishes the strongest case. Its UK early careers assessment page sets out four stages plus an outcome, and the final stage contains two exercises: a discussion of roughly 30 to 40 minutes on a topic you prepared in advance, and a competency and motivation interview of roughly 50 minutes.

Read the title of that second exercise. Motivation is half of the name. It is the only place in our whole reading where a firm gives the subject its own labeled, timed slot rather than treating it as an opening pleasantry.

Fifty minutes is 3,000 seconds. If an interviewer covers eight areas in it, that is 375 seconds each, which is over six minutes per area including the follow-ups. Nobody can fill six minutes on motivation with enthusiasm. It has to be built out of material.

BCG comes next. Its global interview process page names four stages and describes the second as a Skills Interview: "In this traditional interview, we will explore your experience, skills, and motivation for joining BCG". Three objects in one session, and motivation is the third of them.

So the honest answer to "how much should I prepare this" depends on where you are applying, and two firms have published enough for you to know.

Seven firms, seven published consulting interview demands

We read the behavioral guidance of fifteen consulting firms. Seven of them name motivation explicitly, which is about 47 percent, since 7 divided by 15 is 0.467.

Two of those seven are worth reading closely rather than skimming.

Kearney's instruction, on its interview page, is the most demanding published anywhere: "Take the time to understand why you want to join Kearney. Be prepared to discuss the firm's values, culture, and recent initiatives, and demonstrate your knowledge of the business." Recent initiatives is a research task with a date on it. An answer built from a firm's About page in 2022 fails that sentence.

Simon-Kucher puts its version in a named person's mouth on its interview preparation page, from Courtney Bromfield, Recruiting Manager in London: "Think carefully about the experiences and achievements that best demonstrate what you would bring to the role and what genuinely motivates you to join Simon-Kucher." The word genuinely is the operative one, and the firm pairs it with a statement that the interview is a two-way conversation.

EY's own interview tips put it as an instruction to rehearse: practice articulating why you want to work here and what interests you most about the position. The eight firms that never name it still ask it in practice. What that means is you cannot calibrate the length from the firm's page, so ninety seconds is the safe default unless the invitation says otherwise.

Why a consulting interview answer has to name something checkable

A motivation answer fails in a specific way: it is unfalsifiable. Nobody can check that you love problem solving, and every candidate that day said so. The fix is structural rather than rhetorical. Put one claim in it that the interviewer could verify, and that only applies to this firm or this kind of work.

Three sources of checkable material exist, in descending order of usefulness.

1. Something the firm published about its own work. Bain publishes that it operates across 67 cities in 40 countries. EY-Parthenon's Swiss page publishes more than 9,000 professionals in its strategy arm. Kearney asks for recent initiatives by name. Any of those can be quoted back and none can be invented.
2. Something you did that the work resembles. This is the strongest of the three, because it is evidence rather than research. It also connects the motivation answer to your story bank.
3. Something about the shape of the job rather than its prestige. Project length, client contact, travel, the mix of analysis and persuasion. These are checkable because firms publish them.

The third one has the best arithmetic available. Two Monitor Deloitte consultants told a Dutch trade title that their projects run from three weeks to three months. Take the midpoint of that published range, which is about eight weeks, since three weeks and thirteen weeks average to eight. Against roughly 46 working weeks in a year that is about 5.75 projects a year, and about 17 in three years, because 46 divided by 8 is 5.75 and 5.75 times 3 is 17.25. The three-week and three-month figures are those two consultants' account; the eight-week midpoint and the 17 are our arithmetic on it, and we say so.

A candidate who says "seventeen projects in three years is the reason, because I have had two in two years and I know which one I learned from" has said something no other candidate that day said, and something an interviewer can push on.

Three versions of the same motivation, ranked

The same underlying motivation can be delivered three ways, and only one survives a follow-up.

Aim for the third and support it with the second. The first is filler, and it is where an answer goes when the candidate has not done the work.

One more thing worth naming, because candidates worry about it. Money is a real motivation and no firm publishes a position on mentioning it. Accenture does publish advice on the adjacent question, telling candidates to let the interviewer open the compensation subject and to give a broad range if asked. That is guidance about negotiation rather than about motivation, and it is the nearest published line on the topic.

One answer built from published pages

The example below is ours. It is a demonstration rather than an answer to reuse, and EY publishes the reason: a memorized delivery is audible.

The answer. "Two things, and one of them is specific to you.

The general one has evidence behind it. In my second year I spent three weeks on a single pricing question for a student consultancy client, a bakery chain, and I came out of it wanting the next question rather than a rest. That is the test I applied to myself. Most of the work I have done, I was glad when it ended.

The specific one is project length. Two consultants in your Dutch strategy team told a trade publication that projects there run from three weeks to three months. If the average is around eight weeks, that is roughly six projects a year, and about seventeen in three years. My last two years produced two projects. Seventeen is the number I am actually here for, because the thing I am short of is reps rather than hours.

What I would want to check with you is how much of that seventeen is one client repeated, since that changes the answer, and I could not find it published anywhere."

Recompute: the midpoint of three and thirteen weeks is eight. 46 working weeks divided by 8 is 5.75 projects a year, and 5.75 times 3 is about 17.

Look at what the last paragraph does. It ends on a question the candidate could not answer from the firm's pages, which is both true and the most persuasive thing in the answer, because it proves the research actually happened.

What nobody publishes, and how we score it

Nobody publishes a criterion for a motivation answer. Nobody publishes a length, except by implication inside Deloitte's fifty minutes. Nobody publishes a score, a weight or a threshold, and nobody publishes a position on whether money is an acceptable answer.

The weights below are ours, applied by our own grader and read from the code that scores. No firm publishes a marking scheme for a behavioral answer, motivation included.