Clyde & Co Interview Questions

The Clyde & Co interview process consists of:

• Online application
• Assessment day with the graduate recruitment team
• Partner interview (with two partners)

First Assessment Day

The first Clyde & Co assessment day consists of:

• Case study
• Interview with the firm's HR team
• Verbal reasoning test

The case study and verbal reasoning parts of the assessment day may be interchanged.

Case Study

The case study consists of a commercial/contract related question. This will almost certainly be about a bus that has crashed and injured its passengers. You will be asked to give advice to a passenger on his/her chances of success in pursuing a civil action against the bus driver or the employer involved in the incident. A series of different side stories will also be given to candidates, including something about a fast car that happened to cross paths with the bus, the activities on the bus just before the accident occurred and a mechanic report the day before the accident that falsely suggested the bus was in good shape.

Clyde & Co state clearly that candidates do not need any legal knowledge for the assessment centre or case study, but in practice, a general knowledge of tort and contract may be useful.

Interview

The interview takes about 20 minutes. It is purely focused on your job application. Make sure you know your job application by heart and make sure you are able to expand on it in discussion. Be prepared for competency based questions about your work/academic experiences. HR may also ask you to talk about a recent commercial activity that has attracted your attention, and to elaborate further on the subject.

Critical Reasoning Test

This is a standard verbal reasoning test with about six to seven passages, each containing four to five questions. Overall there are 30 questions and candidates are given 30 minutes to complete the test.

There are two types of question for this test:

• Multiple-choice answers (candidates must decide is statements are 'true', 'false' or if they 'can not say')
  
  
• Answers that require candidates to decide on the best substitute for the word 'X' in a passage (a list of words to choose from is provided)

Partner Interview

The Partner interview that I attended at Clyde & Co recently was slightly different to some of the others I have attended.

You will be interviewed by two Partners and I found that one Partner kept relatively quiet whilst the other Partner was asking me most of the questions.

I am not sure if this will apply to every interview, but the Partners who interviewed me really tried to put me on the spot with quite a few of the questions, I suppose they do this to see how you'd react in that sort of situation with a client.

The interview was more relaxed than some of the others that I have been to and they didn't bother asking any competency questions – they were more interested in why I had applied to them and my sporting activites, previous work experience, etc.

The advice that I'd give to anybody going to an interview is to be prepared to back up your answers, and don't give answers that you are unable to back up. I actually enjoyed the interview, it was more exciting than many and the Partners both seemed like people I would enjoy working with.