Ok...so background is: I had a skill telephone interview with ACN a few months back for a consultant role but didn't get beyond that much to my disappointment and a bit of surprise. Feedback i got off HR was that i definitely possessed the technical skills (D'oh!) but i didn't demonstrate the business competence enough to be able to work as a consultant (I've got a telecoms background btw). Personally i thought that was inaccurate and unfair but oh well..what could i do? So i applied to another consultant role months later (and having tweaked my CV to show more of my business/consulting skills) and i got a response from ACN saying my CV was more suited to a Telecoms Solution Architect role which they are recruiting for. An interview has been set and i should have this soon. I presently work for a global telecoms market leader as a solutions architect so immediately i feel like its my forte. But that being said, i can't help but think back to my previous ACN interview and i'm now torn on how exactly i should approach the interview. Do i push both my technical and business skills forward seeing as its a solutions architect role within a consulting company? Or do i push more of my technical skills as its a technical role? or learn from the last time and try to push the techie stuff to the background and focus more on business skills? Also it says in the JD that ACN will be recruiting at different levels from analyst to Senior manager. Does that mean i could instead be managing a team of solution architects?All responses will be very much appreciated.

This is a genuinely interesting problem, and one more commonplace than one would hope to see. What you are trying to do is second guess the intentions of the interviewer and as you cant really do that even in a F2F let alone a telephone interview (as devoid of clues as they are) I suggest you take a foot forward approach.Right up front take charge of the agenda and qualify do they want to talk through your technical skills, your business skills, or both? State clearly that you bring both and need to know where to orientate your focus so they get the information they need.

So a couple of points to note here.When I do these interviews I tend to focus on 2-3 scenarios - making sure I cover a scenario around "technical" skills which is my case would have a project management skills focus. I'd also then look to cover a scenario which has a more business focus (such as dealing with a difficult client).I'd expect the interviewer to do the same or very similar - you can try and make sure you cover off a technical example to tick those boxes and a more business focussed example as well but hopefully you'll be led through that.With regard to level, the interviewer will be assessing you (both in the first and subsequent interviews) with regard to your experience to recommend an appropriate level but in the solution architecture space they do not expect much experience of leading teams at the more senior end.