FTI Consulting internships

For an applicant, the economic distinction is the client’s decision. A restructuring engagement concerns cash and viable options; a transaction engagement concerns an acquisition or investment; an investigation concerns what the evidence establishes; a communications engagement concerns what to say, to whom, and when. This is an analytical way to distinguish the work, not a promise about a particular internship assignment.

Read a practice description with three questions in mind: who hires the team, what decision is being supported, and what artifact the junior professional produces. “Financial analysis” could mean a cash forecast, a valuation, a damages calculation, or a diligence bridge. Those are different apprenticeships, even when Excel is involved in all of them.

These observations came from indexed text of employer-hosted Workday pages retrieved on September 4. The application transactions themselves were not tested. A candidate should recheck the exact posting before submitting; this report does not claim an exhaustive live vacancy count.

Restructuring preparation. A useful analyst-designed exercise is a thirteen-week cash forecast for a business with seasonal sales, overdue customers, supplier payments, payroll, and a debt payment. Explain which assumptions create the liquidity low point and which management actions could move it. The point is to demonstrate cash reasoning, not memorize insolvency terminology. Do not present this exercise as FTI’s interview test.

Financial diligence preparation. Build a bridge from reported earnings to a defensible recurring-earnings estimate. Distinguish an adjustment supported by evidence from a seller’s assertion. Then consider working capital: a business that reports attractive earnings may require substantial cash to support receivables or inventory. An applicant who can reconcile the bridge and explain its commercial meaning has a more useful story than one who merely lists transaction exposure.

Office of the CFO and transformation preparation. Show how a forecast, reporting process, or operational metric changed a decision. For example, explain a budget variance by separating volume, price, mix, and cost, then propose an owner and action. A forecasting model that nobody uses is not equivalent to an implemented finance improvement.

The practical choice is between technical depth and breadth. Ask whether the practice offers repeated work in a defined specialty or a mixture of projects. Neither is inherently superior. Repetition can accelerate skill development; a broader mix can help a student discover which work they actually enjoy.

Our assessment is that FTI is particularly worth investigating for students who want a defined financial, empirical, investigative, legal-technology, or communications apprenticeship. Its segment structure makes it possible to build a specific application thesis rather than rely on generic interest in consulting.

The main downside to test is specialization. A student interested in investing may like transaction or restructuring analysis but dislike discovering that the internship offers little direct investment selection. A programmer may like complex data work but dislike a role centered on document review. A communications student may value consequential assignments but need to understand the pace and review process.

The strongest next step is one targeted conversation about one practice. Ask for an anonymized example of an intern deliverable, the training needed to produce it, and the criteria used to evaluate it. Then compare that work with your best existing evidence. Choose the segment because its daily output fits, not because five different careers share the same company name.

Select one fictional question in corporate finance, disputes, communications or another practice described in the guide. Define the decision-maker and the evidence needed. Show an uncertainty that changes the proposed response. A practice-specific memo is more useful than a generic strategy case that fails to explain why this team should evaluate your application.

Hypothetical preparation exercise, not an employer assessment or a verified internship assignment.

Prepare two detailed examples of your own work: one successful project and one in which your first conclusion was wrong. Know the chronology, alternatives, personal contribution, and result. A reviewer should be able to ask how a number was produced without exposing that you only know the headline.

The central preparation question is: can you defend what a record does and does not establish? Consider an analyst-designed exercise involving transactions that appear duplicated. Start by checking identifiers, dates, adjustments, and reversals before concluding that the duplication represents a loss. Document the alternative explanations. This demonstrates the evidence discipline that makes a forensic or disputes application credible without pretending to reproduce client work.

Candidates with engineering or construction experience should explain the business consequence of their technical work. A schedule delay, equipment failure, or cost overrun becomes more useful evidence when the applicant can explain the baseline, changed condition, causal chain, and uncertainty. Accounting candidates should similarly distinguish an unexplained variance from proof of wrongdoing.

Ask the recruiter which specialty will evaluate you. A broad FLC label does not resolve whether the team’s work is primarily financial, technical, investigative, or industry-specific. It also does not establish that a legal qualification is required.

For preparation, take one empirical project and explain the question, data construction, comparison group, assumptions, and sensitivity of the conclusion. Be ready to say why an apparent relationship may not be causal. A polished regression output is less persuasive than a modest analysis with a clear identification problem and honest limits.

A second useful exercise is a short research memo that separates evidence from argument. Explain what finding would weaken your conclusion. The skill being demonstrated is the ability to support a claim that another analyst can reproduce and challenge. This is our preparation recommendation, not a statement that FTI uses a particular econometric test in interviews.

Before accepting a seat, ask how interns divide time between data work, literature or market research, and written deliverables. That answer determines whether the role suits someone who wants sustained quantitative work or someone who prefers broader client problem solving.

An analyst-designed preparation exercise is to organize a small, public document collection into a chronology with citations, entities, contradictory statements, and unanswered questions. Explain your search strategy and how you checked that a summary did not omit disconfirming evidence. A coding candidate could add a reproducible processing workflow, but code is not a substitute for understanding the documents.

Ask whether the role is primarily platform use, investigative research, technical implementation, or project coordination. Also ask what training is provided and which tools you would actually use. Avoid choosing the segment solely because a title contains “analytics”: the output may be defensible fact-finding rather than a predictive model.

For this route, prepare a writing sample that demonstrates judgment rather than publicity volume. One exercise is a two-page response to a hypothetical business disruption: identify affected audiences, separate verified facts from unknowns, draft a holding statement, and explain what information would change the message. A finance student could use an earnings or transaction scenario; a policy student could use a regulatory issue.

The key fit question is whether you enjoy writing under constraints and revising after scrutiny. Ask about the team’s client mix, the balance of research and drafting, and the circumstances in which an intern communicates with clients. Do not assume that strong case-interview math is sufficient evidence of communications craft.

The recruiting observations below retain the dates in the underlying research. They are not a live vacancy list.