Fresh grads in consulting almost always start off as analysts (the exception being if you're an MBA grad). You really should be talking about why you want to go into consulting rather than purely being keen to be an analyst. After all, you're not going to be an analyst forever in consulting. You'll eventually move on to be a consultant, then a senior consultant, then a manager, and so on (I should note here that I'm in a Big 4 rather than in Accenture, so the career paths might differ slightly).

All the best with your interview!

This post has been edited by _nick: Apr 21 2018, 01:39 PM

I can't speak for Australian counterparts, and my experience is limited to consulting with just one of the Big 4 firms in Malaysia. Speaking from anecdotes, going from analyst to senior consultant in about a year is extremely unlikely. At my current firm, you'd have to be a real rockstar to get promoted from analyst to consultant in anything less than 1.5 years (it typically takes 2 years to progress from one level to another; if you're stuck as an analyst for longer than 2.5 years it's a usually considered a red flag and they'll look into letting you go).

Regarding "graduate programs", yes, we have that here and I was hired as a fresh grad and placed into the "graduate program", but it's nothing like those highly structured graduate programs in other industries where you do a rotation across departments. At my firm, it's called a graduate program simply because of the classroom training we receive as well as the firm hiring on an intake basis (twice a year, where they hire a bunch of fresh grads from an assessment day). Having read up about PwC Australia's graduate program just a few minutes ago, it seems to be really similar to what I'm currently in - there's no specific timeframe for you to hit the senior consultant level, despite being in the program. Here, your time taken to promotion is purely dependent on performance and has nothing to do with tenure.

Personally, I'd say manage your expectations - it's a high strung job where your seniors will hardly have the time to hold your hand and teach you the ropes; as an analyst you're sort of a shadow consultant and you're expected to learn on the job. Even my peers who were employed by MBB firms have been thrown into such situations - in the deep end of the pool and told to swim or drown. That said, the MBB firms do not have anything branded as a "graduate program" and are way more demanding than Big 4 firms and Accenture.

Feel free to PM me if you have more questions. I can't speak much regarding Accenture but I can share what I know about the Big 4 firms in Malaysia