FTI Consulting billed an average of $529 an hour for Corporate Finance work in 2025, at 60% utilization, according to its annual report on Form 10-K. Nobody pays that for a hypothesis. They pay for a number that is still standing after opposing counsel, a creditors' committee, or a judge has spent a day trying to knock it over.
That is the FTI interview in one sentence. The interviewer is not scoring how bold your recommendation is. They are scoring whether they could put your work in front of a hostile reader. The confident single-point answer that MBB prep drills into you is the most common way to fail here, and most guides never say so because they treat FTI as a smaller McKinsey.
Below: where FTI's revenue comes from and therefore where the seats are, what FTI publishes about its process versus what is folklore, how I score a defensible answer against a clever one, and a 13-week cash forecast you can rebuild on one sheet of paper.
Follow the revenue, because the seats follow it
FTI reports five segments whose economics differ more than the careers page suggests. Figures come from the full-year 2025 results release and the 10-K; revenue per head is my arithmetic. Technology's figure is inflated because FTI excludes about 600 "as-needed" staff from its headcount, and Strategic Communications is mostly not billed hourly.
| Segment | 2025 revenue | Change vs 2024 | Billable staff, Dec 2025 | Revenue per billable head | Utilization | Average rate per hour |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Corporate Finance (restructuring, transactions, transformation) | $1,551.0m | +11.5% | 2,297 | $675k | 60% | $529 |
| Forensic and Litigation Consulting | $764.7m | +10.8% | 1,541 | $496k | 57% | $442 |
| Economic Consulting (including Compass Lexecon) | $720.8m | -16.5% | 1,014 | $711k | 59% | $583 |
| Technology | $373.9m | -10.5% | 662 | $565k | not reported | not reported |
| Strategic Communications | $378.5m | +12.6% | 907 | $417k | not reported | not reported |
Corporate Finance is 41% of the firm and grew 11.5%. By June 30, 2026 its billable headcount was 2,358, up 7.8% year on year, per the second-quarter 2026 release. If you have no strong segment preference, this is where the volume is.
Economic Consulting had a bad 2025: revenue down 16.5%, utilization from 66% to 59%, and billable headcount from 1,110 to 1,014, then to 970 by June 2026, a 12.6% decline in eighteen months. FTI blames lower antitrust demand. Fewer seats, higher bar; if that is your target, read the Compass Lexecon guide too.
Your client is usually a lawyer, and that changes the scoring
The 10-K says 99 of the top 100 law firms on the American Lawyer Global 100 list refer or engage FTI, and describes demand for FLC, Economic Consulting, and Technology as law firms relying on "independent outside resources to evaluate claims and data, facilitate discovery, assess damages, provide expert reports and testimony." FTI's job postings call it "the leading global expert firm." Expert firm, not strategy firm, and that changes who reads your work and what happens when it is wrong.
| Dimension | Strategy engagement | FTI engagement |
|---|---|---|
| Who commissions the work | CEO or sponsor | Often counsel, a lender, or a court-appointed party |
| Who reads it | People who want you to be right | People paid to prove you wrong |
| What a good number looks like | One number, stated with conviction | A range, with the assumptions that move it labeled |
| Standard of proof | Persuasive | Would you sign it, and would it survive a deposition |
FTI's early-talent recruiting manager put the interviewer's question plainly in a Handshake panel: "Can I put this candidate in front of our clients, and will they represent this company well?" At FTI, "in front of our clients" can mean a creditors' committee voting on whether the client survives.
What FTI publishes about its process, and what it does not
Firms publish less than prep sites pretend. Here is what FTI itself puts in writing in its US student postings, on its own careers portal and elsewhere, as of the 2026 and 2027 cycles.
| Stage | What FTI states | Where it says so |
|---|---|---|
| Application | Apply to a segment posting, not to "FTI"; 2027 postings recommended no more than two segments | 2027 postings |
| Preference form | Sent within two business days; you pick a market and a practice area | 2026 intern postings |
| Pre-recorded video | Two questions, one minute each, sent within two business days | 2026 intern postings |
| 2027 full-time timeline | Opened July 27; priority deadline August 28; final deadline September 18, 2026; status update within a week of close | 2027 entry-level posting |
| Later rounds | "Several rounds of interviews with members of the team," mostly virtual, ending in a super day of behavioral, technical, and case interviews | FTI recruiter, Handshake panel |
| Eligibility (US) | Minimum 3.0 GPA; US work authorization without future sponsorship | 2026 and 2027 postings |
What FTI does not publish: the case format, its length, whether it is written or spoken, what the scoring sheet contains, or how much it varies by office. I would expect it to vary a great deal, because the interviewer is usually a practitioner, not a trained case-giver.
Folklore, labeled as such: London graduate hiring is widely described by candidates as ending in an assessment centre with a group exercise. FTI does not publish this; believe your recruiter over the forum.
The one-minute video answers are underrated. "I like solving problems" is fatal in sixty seconds. Name the kind of matter you want to work on (a contested Chapter 11 plan, a construction delay claim, a merger review) and one thing about it you already understand.
The defensibility test: how I score an FTI-style answer
When I score a case in this style I listen for five things. None of them is "was the recommendation bold."
| What the sheet rewards | What it sounds like | Where candidates leak points |
|---|---|---|
| Sourced inputs | "The $14m of receipts is from the prompt; the 75% cost of goods is my assumption" | Mixing facts and guesses in one confident sentence |
| Labeled assumptions | "This rests on supplier terms holding; if they don't, the number doubles" | Hiding the assumption that does all the work |
| A range with a driver | "Between $7m and $20m, driven by how many suppliers move to payment on delivery" | One number, no driver |
| The next document | "I'd want the payables aging by vendor and this month's supplier calls" | "Next step: implement" |
| Audience fit | A memo to counsel or the lender | A pep talk to the CEO with a growth strategy nobody asked for |
Score each from 0 to 2 and you have a ten-point sheet. A strategy-trained candidate typically scores 4 or 5: fluent structure, decent math, then a single-point answer with hidden assumptions. The candidate who gets the offer scores 8 or 9 with rougher delivery.
Ned's rule. At FTI, your answer is exactly as strong as the weakest assumption in it, because that is the one the other side will find. Name it before they do, put a range around it, and say which document would settle it.
Worked example: Harvest Lane Markets and the 13-week cash forecast
The 13-week cash forecast is the document restructuring work runs on. Rebuild this one in a spreadsheet in ten minutes. The company and every figure are invented.
Prompt. Harvest Lane Markets runs 38 grocery stores. Its revolver is fully drawn, it holds $9.0m of cash, and its lender wants to know whether it needs new money before a refinancing thirteen weeks out. Weekly figures:
- Receipts: $14.0m (grocery is cash and card, so receipts track sales)
- Cost of goods: $10.5m (75% of sales), bought on 14-day terms
- Other operating cash costs: $0.9m
- Payroll: $3.2m every second week (weeks 2, 4, 6, 8, 10, 12)
- Rent: $2.6m in weeks 1, 5, 9, and 13
- Advisor and legal fees: $0.8m in weeks 4, 8, and 12
Base case. Recurring net cash before lumpy items is 14.0 minus 10.5 minus 0.9, or +$2.6m a week. Layer on the lumpy items and roll the balance forward from $9.0m.
| Week | Lumpy items that week ($m) | Base case ending cash ($m) | Stress case ending cash ($m) |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Rent 2.6 | 9.0 | 9.0 |
| 2 | Payroll 3.2 | 8.4 | 8.4 |
| 3 | none | 11.0 | 0.5 |
| 4 | Payroll 3.2, fees 0.8 | 9.6 | -11.4 |
| 5 | Rent 2.6 | 9.6 | -11.4 |
| 6 | Payroll 3.2 | 9.0 | -12.0 |
| 7 | none | 11.6 | -9.4 |
| 8 | Payroll 3.2, fees 0.8 | 10.2 | -10.8 |
| 9 | Rent 2.6 | 10.2 | -10.8 |
| 10 | Payroll 3.2 | 9.6 | -11.4 |
| 11 | none | 12.2 | -8.8 |
| 12 | Payroll 3.2, fees 0.8 | 10.8 | -10.2 |
| 13 | Rent 2.6 | 10.8 | -10.2 |
The base-case low is $8.4m in week 2 and the company ends with $10.8m. A strategy-trained candidate stops here, calls the business cash-stable, and moves on to margin. That is the 4-out-of-10 answer: correct arithmetic, useless conclusion, because it treats a distressed company's payables like a healthy one's.
The assumption doing all the work. On 14-day terms Harvest Lane owes suppliers about two weeks of purchases at any moment: $21.0m. Suppliers read the same trade press as the lender. If they move to payment on delivery, the company pays for new deliveries while also clearing the $21.0m outstanding. Spread over weeks 3 and 4, each of those weeks absorbs an extra $10.5m. That is the stress column: a trough of minus $12.0m in week 6, and a balance that never recovers before the refinancing.
The answer, as a memo to the lender. Base case, no new money. If suppliers tighten, about $12m to cover the trough plus a $5m minimum operating balance for tills and float, so roughly $17m, needed by week 3 rather than week 6 because it must be in the account before deliveries stop. If half the supplier base tightens, the extra outflow is $10.5m and the trough about minus $1.5m, so nearer $7m. Range: $7m to $20m. Driver: supplier behavior, not sales. Documents before Monday: the payables aging by vendor and a log of every supplier call in the last thirty days.
That paragraph is the whole job: a base case, the assumption that breaks it, a range, the driver, the timing, and the next document. No growth plan, no single "the answer is."
The same test, segment by segment
The test does not change across FTI. What counts as the weakest assumption does.
| Segment | The conversation is really about | The assumption that gets attacked |
|---|---|---|
| Corporate Finance | Cash, not EBITDA; who gets paid, in what order | Supplier terms, collection timing, covenant headroom |
| Forensic and Litigation Consulting | What happened, in what order, and what the documents show | Causation: did X actually cause the loss you are counting |
| Economic Consulting | The but-for world and how you would test it | Your counterfactual: what would have happened absent the conduct |
| Technology | Where the data lives and how you would defend the collection | Completeness and chain of custody |
| Strategic Communications | What the company should say, to whom, in what sequence | Whether the message survives the facts coming out later |
Alvarez & Marsal runs the same cash discipline with a more operational bent. Cornerstone Research and NERA run the damages version: but-for minus actual, with a range.
The rep to do tonight
Rebuild the Harvest Lane table. Then change one assumption, say a 5% sales decline from week 5 as shelves thin: recurring net cash falls from $2.6m to about $2.4m a week, the week-13 balance drops by about $1.6m, and the trough deepens by less than $0.5m. Small, which is the point. Sales are not the driver here, and saying so with a number is what separates the 8 from the 4. Then write a five-sentence memo to the lender containing "range," "driver," and the name of a document.
Then do it out loud. CoachNed's math drill puts case arithmetic on a clock so the numbers become automatic and your attention stays on the assumptions. Take the five-minute first rep, no account needed, and rewrite its closing turn as a memo to counsel rather than advice to a CEO. For a full case with a debrief, the live voice case with Ned runs about eighteen minutes and returns seven scores. Everything is open for seven days, no card; then $120 for a recruiting season or $49 a month.
CoachNed is independent and not affiliated with FTI Consulting, Compass Lexecon, or any other firm named in this guide.
Frequently asked questions
Does FTI Consulting use case interviews?
Yes, in at least some segments. FTI's recruiting manager has described the final super day as behavioral, technical, and case interviews, after a two-question video screen. FTI does not publish the case format, so confirm with your recruiter.
Is the FTI interview harder than McKinsey, BCG, or Bain?
Different rather than harder. The structuring bar is lower and the defensibility bar is higher: you must separate prompt facts from your own assumptions and give a range with a driver rather than one number. MBB-prepped candidates find the first part easy and the second unfamiliar.
Which FTI segment is easiest to get into?
No acceptance data is public. Headcount is: Corporate Finance grew billable staff 7.8% in the year to June 2026 while Economic Consulting shrank. More seats is not a lower bar, but it is more interviewers who might want your background.
Do I need an accounting or finance degree for FTI?
Not firm-wide. FTI's 2026 FLC internship posting lists preferred majors from accounting through construction management, health sciences, law, and statistics, at $20 to $34 an hour; Economic Consulting hires economists; Corporate Finance leans to accounting and finance. Match the segment to your degree.
Sources
- FTI Consulting Form 10-K for fiscal 2025 — segment descriptions, billable headcount, utilization and rates, law-firm referrals, Economic Consulting decline. Checked 2026-09-24.
- FTI Consulting fourth quarter and full year 2025 results — 2025 segment revenues, growth, margins. Checked 2026-09-24.
- FTI Consulting second quarter 2026 results — June 30, 2026 billable headcount by segment. Checked 2026-09-24.
- 2026 Intern, Forensic and Litigation Consulting, FTI student careers portal — preference form, two-question video, preferred majors, pay, eligibility. Checked 2026-09-24.
- 2027 Entry Level Consultant, Technology, FTI Consulting posting — 2027 timeline and two-segment recommendation. Checked 2026-09-24.
- So you want to work in consulting, Handshake — FTI's recruiting manager on interview stages and the "in front of our clients" test. Checked 2026-09-24.