Alvarez & Marsal | Interview for Associate position

Question

Hi everyone,

I'm currently a Senior Consultant at a management consulting firm in Spain (Engineering background + Master in Business Consulting). I am preparing to apply for an Associate position at Alvarez & Marsal's PEPI practice in the Madrid office.

While I have a solid foundation in standard case prep and financial analysis, I know A&M's interviews are heavily focused on operations, EBITDA impact, and cash flow rather than traditional strategy frameworks.

Could anyone recommend specific resources (books, courses, or prep platforms) tailored to A&M’s operational case style (e.g., ODD, 100-day plans, carve-outs)? Also, any insights into the Excel/technical test specifically for the Madrid office would be incredibly helpful.

Thanks in advance!

Answer 1

For operational and transaction-focused thinking, I would recommend:

Private Equity Operational Due Diligence by Jason Scharfman, useful for understanding how investors assess operational risks and improvement potential
The McKinsey Turnaround by Carolyn Aiken and Scott Keller, good for thinking through execution and performance improvement under pressure
Bain and BCG publications on value creation and 100-day plans, which are publicly available and closely reflect how PE-backed transformations are approached

In addition, it is worth reading a few public turnaround or restructuring case studies and investor presentations from PE-backed companies. These give a realistic view on how EBITDA and cash flow improvements are actually driven in practice.

On the Excel or technical test, expectations are usually straightforward. You are not expected to build complex models. The focus is on:

clean structure and logic in Excel
linking operational assumptions to EBITDA or cash flow
working accurately under time pressure

For Madrid, the standard is in line with other European offices. Strong fundamentals and practical thinking are more important than technical complexity.

Answer 2

A&M's PEPI (which I have worked with much) is no different in terms of requirements towards you than for example Big-4's Transaction Advisory, Roland Berger's PESI or even, to a certain extent, MBB's PEG (Bain), PIPE (BCG), PEPI (McK). All those websites and their respective social media, YouTube Channels and spin-off podcasts have a lot of information on the topics you mentioned.

Regarding Excel, you should be able to get a handle on unstructured data fairly quickly, understand how a 3-statement model works, and have at least a basic understanding of typical / potential adjustments in Net Debt, NWC, EBITDA you come across as part of "regular" M&A and carve-outs. All likely fairly searchable with LLMs.