KPMG Analyst interview: process, rounds and questions

Written by Mentari as typical of this process — not a record of questions KPMG has asked. Each comes with the follow-up a good interviewer asks next and what they listen for in the answer. Scenario details are our framing, chosen to fit KPMG’s sector.

1. 01 Tell me about the project you listed first — then I will ask about it again in the next round.

   Follow-up · What did your teammate build that you could not rebuild alone?

   Listens for · Depth that survives a second pass; honest ownership.

2. 02 Walk me through the seven OSI layers using an attack at each.

   Follow-up · Which layer would you monitor first for a bank, and why?

   Listens for · The model applied, not recited; a prioritisation with a reason.

3. 03 Write a query that lists departments with no employees.

   Follow-up · Now list departments where the newest hire joined over a year ago.

   Listens for · LEFT JOIN with a NULL test; then a grouped MAX with a date comparison.

Compiled from 6 candidate reports (2024–2026) and the official hiring page. Where reports differ, the range is shown rather than one number.

Online assessment — official description plus one reported pattern — KPMG says the test typically runs 60–90 minutes and covers comprehension, interpretation, logical and verbal reasoning and psychometric abilities, with quantitative maths and data analytics for some practices. A May 2026 preparation-site pattern gives 64 questions in 40 minutes — 32 numerical, 32 verbal — with no negative marking; another gives 42 questions in 75 minutes. Treat the counts as vendor- and drive-specific.^6,1,7

1. Find out which practice is hiring — Digital Trust, Risk, Advisory, Tax, or KGS — and prepare its basics. Every reported interview drew its technical questions from the practice, not a general syllabus.
2. Do timed numerical, verbal and logical sets, and take one psychometric-style questionnaire. KPMG lists psychometric abilities in the assessment; preparation sites report a fast 40-minute numerical-and-verbal paper.
3. Rehearse GDs for structure and presence, not airtime. KPMG names articulation, structured thinking, presence of mind and teaming as what the GD scores.
4. Prepare every project to withstand two rounds of cross-questioning. The 2024 drive cross-questioned projects in the technical round and again in a second discussion.
5. Prepare a short written case or a structured discussion answer on a business problem. The case round "may be a written test or an interactive discussion"; some drives run it.
6. Decide your answers on working from the office five days a week and on relocation. KGS candidates report being asked directly.

What KPMG says it assesses

• Group discussion: oral communication, articulation, structured thinking, proactiveness, presence of mind, teaming and leadership¹
• Case study: subject-matter expertise, and sometimes communication, general knowledge and business acumen¹
• Recruiter evaluation: overall fitment for the role and firm, personality, business awareness, skills and resilience; technical panel: technical competency¹

What candidates report being probed on

• Projects cross-questioned repeatedly, across two rounds²
• Practice basics — information security, audit, OSI layers and cyber-attacks for Digital Trust²
• SQL joins, OOP, a Python pattern program, ServiceNow, the steps of a risk assessment³
• Basic accounting and business awareness — the golden rules, fixed assets, acquisitions⁴
• Conflict handling, collaboration and willingness to work from the office five days a week (KGS)⁵

KPMG is the rare recruiter in these guides whose own page describes a five-stage process with the criteria for each, down to the words "presence of mind" for the GD and "resilience" for the recruiter round — and then says the whole thing is indicative. In practice, campus drives are reported as a subset: the 2024 Digital Trust drive ran an aptitude test, a GD, a technical interview, a second project-focused discussion and HR, with no separate case round. The useful consequence is that the firm has told you what each stage scores; the risk is preparing for a case round that a given drive does not hold.

The second difference is that the technical content follows the practice, not a generic syllabus. Digital Trust candidates were asked about information security, OSI layers and attacks; other Analyst candidates report SQL, OOP, ServiceNow and risk-assessment steps; KGS candidates report AML and KYC terms, Power BI DAX and Java interfaces; audit-adjacent candidates report accounting basics. A candidate who prepares "for KPMG" without knowing which practice is hiring is preparing for the wrong interview.

Where the sources disagree

The official framework and the reports agree on the parts and disagree on the count. KPMG lists five stages and calls them indicative; the one detailed campus account (September 2024) describes five as well, but with the case study replaced by a second project interview; the AmbitionBox report sets describe interview content rather than sequence. On the test, KPMG gives a duration (60–90 minutes) and a topic list; preparation sites give conflicting counts — 64 questions in 40 minutes, or 42 in 75 — which fits a firm that lets the practice and the vendor set the paper. KPMG publishes no eligibility figure; the 60% / 6.0 CGPA figure is a preparation-site report. The one point every source makes is that the content follows the practice, so the campus notice naming the practice is the most important document a candidate has.

4. 04 What are the steps of a risk assessment?

   Follow-up · Apply them to a bank moving its core banking system to the cloud — what do you test first?

   Listens for · A framework turned into specific threats and one testable control.

5. 05 Explain the golden rules of accounting and apply one to a company buying a machine on credit.

   Follow-up · The machine is paid for over three years. What changes in the books each year?

   Listens for · Rules applied to a transaction; depreciation and liability understood in plain words.

6. 06 Tell me about a conflict in a team and how it ended.

   Follow-up · What would the other person say you did wrong?

   Listens for · A real conflict with the other side stated fairly — the "resilience" and "teaming" the page names.

7. 07 What do you expect from your first year as an Analyst here?

   Follow-up · What do you think we expect from you in the first three months?

   Listens for · Realistic expectations; awareness that the firm bills client work.

8. 08 We work from the office five days a week in this practice. Is that a problem?

   Follow-up · You mentioned preparing for a master’s. How does that fit?

   Listens for · A plain, consistent answer.

9. 09 What has happened in Indian banking regulation this year that a risk consultant should know?

   Follow-up · Which of our clients would it hurt most?

   Listens for · Business awareness connected to the practice.

Walk me through a risk assessment for a mid-sized bank moving its core systems to the cloud.

Weak · "I would identify the risks, assess their likelihood and impact, and then suggest controls to mitigate them, following a standard risk framework."

Stronger · "I’d start with what the bank cannot lose: customer data confidentiality, transaction integrity, and availability during migration. For each I’d name the specific threat — a misconfigured storage bucket, a cut-over that double-posts transactions, a vendor outage — rate likelihood and impact with the bank’s own incident history, and propose one control I could test: encryption with the bank holding the keys, a reconciliation job on cut-over day, a tested rollback. The regulator’s data-localisation rule constrains the region choice before anything else."

Why the follow-up lands · The interviewer asks "which of those would you test first on day one?" The strong answer picks the reconciliation job and says why; the weak one has no specific control to pick.

Illustrative — yours must be true.

KPMG publishes the criteria for each of its five indicative stages; a campus drive typically runs an aptitude test, a GD, one or two interviews and HR, with content set by the hiring practice. The cell’s levers are timed aptitude practice, GD rehearsal scored on structure and presence, and making sure students know which practice is hiring before they prepare.

Mentari’s mocks rehearse the interview stages — projects under cross-questioning and practice-specific basics aloud — for the shortlisted batch before the drive. Run KPMG-pattern mocks for a whole batch.

• Business analyst mock interview
• Finance mock interview
• HR round mock interview for campus placements
• McKinsey interview
• BCG interview
• Bain interview
• Why Should We Hire You? Fresher Answer Guide
• STAR Method Answers That Survive Follow-ups
• All company guides →

1. How we recruit — KPMG in India — KPMG (official) · official · accessed 2026-10-23 · five indicative stages with what each assesses; 60–90-minute assessment
2. KPMG interview experience — on-campus, September 2024 (Digital Trust, VIT) — Naukri Code360 · candidate report, 2024-09 · accessed 2026-10-23 · aptitude → GD → technical → project discussion → HR
3. KPMG India Analyst interview questions — fresher candidates — AmbitionBox · candidate report, 2025-01 · accessed 2026-10-23 · aggregated reports; SQL, OOP, Python, ServiceNow, risk-assessment steps
4. KPMG India Analyst interview questions — AmbitionBox · candidate report, 2025-09 · accessed 2026-10-23 · aggregated reports; accounting basics and fit questions
5. KPMG Global Services Analyst interview questions — AmbitionBox · candidate report, 2025-07 · accessed 2026-10-23 · aggregated reports; Java interfaces, AML/CDD, DAX, five-day office
6. KPMG placement papers 2026 — test pattern and syllabus — FACE Prep · candidate report, 2026-05 · accessed 2026-10-23 · preparation-site compilation; 64 questions in 40 minutes
7. KPMG selection and aptitude pattern 2026 — Assessfy · candidate report · accessed 2026-10-23 · preparation-site compilation; 42 questions in 75 minutes

Verified October 2026 by Sumit Mishra, Mentari founder. Spotted an error, or represent KPMG? Write to [email protected] — we acknowledge within two working days and correct or remove a disputed statement within 72 hours.

Mentari is not affiliated with KPMG. This page is pattern-based, compiled from the public sources listed, and is not insider information. Candidate-reported details are reproduced as patterns only, in our own words.