# General AI interview practice for IT consultants

An IT consultant weighing boutique firms, an enterprise staffing bench, and independent contracting all at once doesn't have one posting to react to yet. Intervieux's general interview type runs without a job description or resume, so the practice can start on background, motivation, and work-style questions before any of those three paths is settled.

That's a real stage in this particular job search, not a shortcut around it. Someone deciding between a salaried bench role and 1099 contract work is going to get asked different follow-up questions depending on which path they eventually pick, but the opening round, why consulting, how you handle ambiguity, what draws you to client-facing work, holds steady across all three.

## The scenario: practicing before the firm type is decided

Picture an IT consultant three weeks into a search, with browser tabs open for a boutique shop's associate consultant role, a large staffing firm's bench posting, and a corporate contract listing on a freelance platform. None of the three postings is final enough to build a job-description-based session around yet, and there's no single resume bullet to interrogate because the work history looks similar across all three targets. What's missing isn't domain knowledge, it's practice saying the answers out loud in a way that sounds decided rather than undecided. The general interview type is built for exactly that gap, a fixed round of standard questions that doesn't assume a client, a stack, or a contract structure.

## What a general session covers here

Expect the standard opening round: why IT consulting over an in-house role, how you handle a project where the requirements keep shifting, a behavioral question about a time you had to learn something fast. None of it references a specific client's tooling or a boutique firm's stated values, because the general type has no document to draw from. What it does test is whether the underlying answer, the reason you're drawn to client-facing troubleshooting work instead of a fixed internal IT job, holds up when it's said out loud instead of only thought through. A candidate who can articulate that clearly tends to sound more decided across all three engagement types, not just the one they eventually choose.

## How the five dimensions apply to this session

Communication carries real weight in a general session, since the questions are open enough that a vague answer has nowhere to hide behind a specific technical detail. Behavioral gets tested through the standard situational questions, and the same STAR-structure expectations apply here as anywhere else on Intervieux. Cultural Fit and Technical show up more lightly in a general round than they would once a specific posting narrows the questions, since there's no employer's stated values or tech stack to measure against yet. The penalty for skipping a candidate question at the end is worth watching in this session specifically, since a candidate still deciding between firm types often has a genuine question to ask about how each one actually staffs and bills its consultants, and not asking it costs points.

## Frequently asked questions

### Do I need to know which type of IT consulting firm I want before starting this interview?

No. That's the point of the general interview type. It runs on standard background and motivation questions that don't assume a boutique firm, an enterprise bench, or independent contracting, so it works before that decision is made.

### Will this session ask about a specific tech stack or client industry?

No. The general type has no job description or resume to draw from, so questions stay at the level of background, motivation, and behavioral situations rather than a specific stack or client vertical.

### Should I move to a job-description-based session once I pick a target firm?

That's the natural next step. Once a specific posting is in hand, the job-description-based interview type builds its questions around that firm's stated requirements instead of the standard opening round.

### Does the candidate-question penalty matter in a general session?

Yes. The penalty system deducts points for ending an interview without asking anything back, and a consultant still comparing engagement types usually has a real question worth asking about staffing or billing structure.

## Related pages

- [IT consultant interview questions](/interviews/it-consultant)
- [General AI job interviews](/features/general-job-interviews)
- [Browse open roles](/jobs)

## Start a general AI interview as an IT consultant

Practice the standard round of background and work-style questions before you've settled on a firm type, then narrow in once a specific posting is in hand.

Start practicing free: https://www.intervieux.ai/register · Hire with Intervieux: https://www.intervieux.ai/employers/signup