Indian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad
Hyderabad, Telangana
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Filter interviews byIndian School of Business (ISB), Hyderabad Placement Interview Questions
Updated
22 Sep 2024
228 interviews found
I applied via Walk-in
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. Tell me about yourself
- Q2. Why Consulting
- Q3. Why Parthenon
- Q4. Are you interested in strategy consulting
- Q5. Do you have any questions for me
- Q6. A store in a chain of retail department stores was experiencing a drop in profitability. Diagnose the problem
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: 1. Prepared answers to the basic questions in particular why firm ABC
2. Demonstrated enthusiasm. Spent over 20 minutes after he had asked his basic questions discussing Parthenon’s plans in India. It was more of a conversation and helped build connect.
Tips: 1. Do your reading about the areas of work that the Firm does so that you can engage the interviewer in a conversation [Source: Website, alums etc]
2. Prepare your basic questions and do mock PI sessions
3. Believe that you will crack the interview when you enter. The mental confidence does wonders.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Started off by understanding the context to the case. A handy tool I would use to ensure I asked all the relevant questions was:
1. Did I understand every word in the problem definition e.g.: Drop in profitability by how much, since when, is it drop in absolute terms or percentage terms, what is the profitability trends for competitors in the industry
2. 5 Ws: Who, Why, When, Where, What V: What products does the retail store offer KK: Ordinary department store. Offers everything from electronic goods to vegetables to packaged foods etc
Me: Is it experiencing a fall in profitability in all products or certain segments
Interviewer: All
Me: What is the profitability trend of other competitors
Interviewer: Profitability has been stable although our chain is well below the industry average
Me: I am not very familiar with this business. Could you explain to me what the value chain would be like?
Interviewer: Standard procurement model. There are well-established suppliers for each product category. The goods are procured, markup price is applied by each store manager and goods are sold to retail customers
Me: What has the trend of costs been for the company
Interviewer: Costs have been stable
Me: Okay, so the problem as I see it is that this particular store has been seeing a drop in profits (absolute terms) over the last two years. We need to establish what it is that is causing the fall in profitability and what we can do.
Interview:er Sure go ahead
Me: I’m going to take a minute to structure how I want to think about this problem
Interviewer: Sure, go ahead V: Profitability = (P-VC)*Q – FC
Me: Broke down each leg of the equation into variables that would affect them.
Interviewer: Great I like the structure. Proceed V: Here’s where I got stumped. For the next 5 mins I made the mistake of not following my structure and asking some general questions about cost. I learnt that cost was RM was 60% of COGS, 20% labor and 10% Fixed Cost allocation. After probing I found out that costs were stable and that was no further potential to reduce the costs further. Then I touched on price and found that they had not touched ‘list price’ for a long time. Based on my questions I also learnt that volumes were actually increasing. That’s when I hit a wall. I was thinking to myself. Costs are stable. Price is stable. Quantity is increasing. How the hell is profitability falling? All the while
Interviewer is stone faced.
Me: I think I am pushing myself into a corner. Do you think there is something I am missing. KK: I think your structure was fine. Implicitly I sensed he was telling me to get back to my structure and ask him questions.
Me: I started with Price and was about to ask the first question when he said
Interviewer: Do you know what the revenue trends are like. Just thought you may want to know what revenue is like before you proceed.
Me: Sure, Can you tell me what their revenue trends have been.
Interviewer: Revenue has been falling
Interviewer: Okay. Just before we proceed I want to know whether you understand the relationship between COGS and revenue.
Me: Sure. As you sell more your COGS should increase proportionately assuming no significant changes in goods supplied, labour etc Now we are saying revenue is decreasing despite increasing COGS (absolute terms). This could mean one of two things since revenue is: Revenue = P*Q Quantity sold is falling. But we already established that volumes have been increasing evenly across the board or That effective price at which I am selling to the customer (effective being net of discounts, mark downs etc) is actually lower than the list price
Interviewer: He smiles (The first in over 20 minutes and I know I am on the right track). Great. I just wanted to establish that you understood the relationship. I think it is the latter. Proceed.
Me: Okay. So we know that a substantial part of the problem is that store managers are actually selling the products much below the list price.
Interviewer: Exactly. Why do you think this is the case?
Me: At this point I clarified whether he wanted me to finish the unasked questions in my structure and he said, “No. I think we have isolated the problem”.
Me: Since this was effectively a new problem, I asked for a minute to articulate what the potential causes could be. This is critical whenever a new question emerges in your problem. Do not answer off the cuff or it will seem like you are shooting arrows in the dark.
Me: I see three potential reasons: 1. Incentives: Retail store managers incentives are aligned to sales and not profitability and therefore he is cutting prices to increase volume 2. Buyer behavior: Customers have become more price sensitive. [On hindsight that did not make sense as this would have affected all department stores in the area] 3. Competition: Has there been any change in the competitive landscape.
Interviewer: Good points. So the store manager’s incentives are aligned to individual store performance. However let us ignore the case of manipulation. As far as your third point is concerned. Yes. Wal-Mart has opened a store recently next to this particular retail store and the store manager is being forced to compete with Wal-Mart’s ....
Me: I smile and say “Everyday low prices” [Thank you Prof. Rajiv Banker. We did a case on Wal-Mart twice with Prof. Banker]
Interviewer: Smiles right back and says yes. Whenever you are looking at a decision see the influence of your 4 Cs. Customer, Channel, Cost and Competition.
Me: Would you like me to explore potential solutions.
Interviewer: No. That’s fine. Let’s proceed to the next part of the question.
Interviewer: A software product company approaches the store manager with customer relationship management software that will enable the store to run a promotions and loyalty program. The store manager wants to know whether he should make the investment.
Me: Clarificatory questions. 1. Over what time frame are we evaluating this decision – 1 year 2. Are we considering only the acquisition cost in the decision or do we have to include operating expenses and training costs etc – Only acquisition cost. Assume it to be a onetime flat fee.
Me: We need to do break-even analysis and see whether we are likely to generate additional sales over the next year that will cover the acquisition cost.
Me: BEV Sales (units) = Acquisition cost/P-VC
Me: We need to compare this number with our expected increase in sales over the next year on account of this investment and see whether there is consistency.
Tips: Interviewer likes standard frameworks/equations. Don’t water down your structure with variations like the Internal vs. External factors.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: 1. Prepared answers to the basic questions in particular why firm ABC
2. Demonstrated enthusiasm. Spent over 20 minutes after he had asked his basic questions discussing Parthenon’s plans in India. It was more of a conversation and helped build connect.
Tips: 1. Do your reading about the areas of work that the Firm does so that you can engage the interviewer in a conversation [Source: Website, alums etc]
2. Prepare your basic questions and do mock PI sessions
3. Believe that you will crack the interview when you enter. The mental confidence does wonders.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Started off by understanding the context to the case. A handy tool I would use to ensure I asked all the relevant questions was:
1. Did I understand every word in the problem definition e.g.: Drop in profitability by how much, since when, is it drop in absolute terms or percentage terms, what is the profitability trends for competitors in the industry
2. 5 Ws: Who, Why, When, Where, What V: What products does the retail store offer KK: Ordinary department store. Offers everything from electronic goods to vegetables to packaged foods etc
Me: Is it experiencing a fall in profitability in all products or certain segments
Interviewer: All
Me: What is the profitability trend of other competitors
Interviewer: Profitability has been stable although our chain is well below the industry average
Me: I am not very familiar with this business. Could you explain to me what the value chain would be like?
Interviewer: Standard procurement model. There are well-established suppliers for each product category. The goods are procured, markup price is applied by each store manager and goods are sold to retail customers
Me: What has the trend of costs been for the company
Interviewer: Costs have been stable
Me: Okay, so the problem as I see it is that this particular store has been seeing a drop in profits (absolute terms) over the last two years. We need to establish what it is that is causing the fall in profitability and what we can do.
Interview:er Sure go ahead
Me: I’m going to take a minute to structure how I want to think about this problem
Interviewer: Sure, go ahead V: Profitability = (P-VC)*Q – FC
Me: Broke down each leg of the equation into variables that would affect them.
Interviewer: Great I like the structure. Proceed V: Here’s where I got stumped. For the next 5 mins I made the mistake of not following my structure and asking some general questions about cost. I learnt that cost was RM was 60% of COGS, 20% labor and 10% Fixed Cost allocation. After probing I found out that costs were stable and that was no further potential to reduce the costs further. Then I touched on price and found that they had not touched ‘list price’ for a long time. Based on my questions I also learnt that volumes were actually increasing. That’s when I hit a wall. I was thinking to myself. Costs are stable. Price is stable. Quantity is increasing. How the hell is profitability falling? All the while
Interviewer is stone faced.
Me: I think I am pushing myself into a corner. Do you think there is something I am missing. KK: I think your structure was fine. Implicitly I sensed he was telling me to get back to my structure and ask him questions.
Me: I started with Price and was about to ask the first question when he said
Interviewer: Do you know what the revenue trends are like. Just thought you may want to know what revenue is like before you proceed.
Me: Sure, Can you tell me what their revenue trends have been.
Interviewer: Revenue has been falling
Interviewer: Okay. Just before we proceed I want to know whether you understand the relationship between COGS and revenue.
Me: Sure. As you sell more your COGS should increase proportionately assuming no significant changes in goods supplied, labour etc Now we are saying revenue is decreasing despite increasing COGS (absolute terms). This could mean one of two things since revenue is: Revenue = P*Q Quantity sold is falling. But we already established that volumes have been increasing evenly across the board or That effective price at which I am selling to the customer (effective being net of discounts, mark downs etc) is actually lower than the list price
Interviewer: He smiles (The first in over 20 minutes and I know I am on the right track). Great. I just wanted to establish that you understood the relationship. I think it is the latter. Proceed.
Me: Okay. So we know that a substantial part of the problem is that store managers are actually selling the products much below the list price.
Interviewer: Exactly. Why do you think this is the case?
Me: At this point I clarified whether he wanted me to finish the unasked questions in my structure and he said, “No. I think we have isolated the problem”.
Me: Since this was effectively a new problem, I asked for a minute to articulate what the potential causes could be. This is critical whenever a new question emerges in your problem. Do not answer off the cuff or it will seem like you are shooting arrows in the dark.
Me: I see three potential reasons: 1. Incentives: Retail store managers incentives are aligned to sales and not profitability and therefore he is cutting prices to increase volume 2. Buyer behavior: Customers have become more price sensitive. [On hindsight that did not make sense as this would have affected all department stores in the area] 3. Competition: Has there been any change in the competitive landscape.
Interviewer: Good points. So the store manager’s incentives are aligned to individual store performance. However let us ignore the case of manipulation. As far as your third point is concerned. Yes. Wal-Mart has opened a store recently next to this particular retail store and the store manager is being forced to compete with Wal-Mart’s ....
Me: I smile and say “Everyday low prices” [Thank you Prof. Rajiv Banker. We did a case on Wal-Mart twice with Prof. Banker]
Interviewer: Smiles right back and says yes. Whenever you are looking at a decision see the influence of your 4 Cs. Customer, Channel, Cost and Competition.
Me: Would you like me to explore potential solutions.
Interviewer: No. That’s fine. Let’s proceed to the next part of the question.
Interviewer: A software product company approaches the store manager with customer relationship management software that will enable the store to run a promotions and loyalty program. The store manager wants to know whether he should make the investment.
Me: Clarificatory questions. 1. Over what time frame are we evaluating this decision – 1 year 2. Are we considering only the acquisition cost in the decision or do we have to include operating expenses and training costs etc – Only acquisition cost. Assume it to be a onetime flat fee.
Me: We need to do break-even analysis and see whether we are likely to generate additional sales over the next year that will cover the acquisition cost.
Me: BEV Sales (units) = Acquisition cost/P-VC
Me: We need to compare this number with our expected increase in sales over the next year on account of this investment and see whether there is consistency.
Tips: Interviewer likes standard frameworks/equations. Don’t water down your structure with variations like the Internal vs. External factors.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. Client is a dollar store owner and has experienced a drop in revenues over the past year.
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This seemed as a standard revenue based case. however, the interviewer was not very interested in identifying one root problem but a breadth of problems that could influence revenues and more importantly the parameters or “symptoms” one should look for. I started with the understanding of the problem – how much drop in revenues, understand dollar stores, location of client, trend in revenue drop (geography, or store type). After having a good understanding of the situation, I decided to take a 3 Cs approach to diagnose the situation. Some problems uncovered were as follows – 1. slowdown of the economy. Consumer purchase decreasing 2. increase in competition. (possibly because of higher import opportunities) 3. geographical impact of competition 4. changing purchase behaviour at stores 5. decrease in repeat customers I followed up the diagnoses with solutions for each problem. The interviewer wanted to assess my ability to think about a wide variety of issues rather than go into a detailed discussion about one particular topic. On retrospect, I think that for a strategy consulting firm like Parthenon, they are more interested in macro level analysis than micro level.
Tips: Parthenon is strategy consulting. They will ask cases which have similar flavor as you would see in my next case interview.
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: This seemed as a standard revenue based case. however, the interviewer was not very interested in identifying one root problem but a breadth of problems that could influence revenues and more importantly the parameters or “symptoms” one should look for. I started with the understanding of the problem – how much drop in revenues, understand dollar stores, location of client, trend in revenue drop (geography, or store type). After having a good understanding of the situation, I decided to take a 3 Cs approach to diagnose the situation. Some problems uncovered were as follows – 1. slowdown of the economy. Consumer purchase decreasing 2. increase in competition. (possibly because of higher import opportunities) 3. geographical impact of competition 4. changing purchase behaviour at stores 5. decrease in repeat customers I followed up the diagnoses with solutions for each problem. The interviewer wanted to assess my ability to think about a wide variety of issues rather than go into a detailed discussion about one particular topic. On retrospect, I think that for a strategy consulting firm like Parthenon, they are more interested in macro level analysis than micro level.
Tips: Parthenon is strategy consulting. They will ask cases which have similar flavor as you would see in my next case interview.
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. A friend exploring a business opportunity to lease high end luxury cars for high speed driving in a designated arena owned by somebody else.
- Q2. A telecommunication firm having residential and business customers have devised a new technology wherein video chat is possible. To derive market size, plausaib...read more
- Q3. A security alarm device company, leader in US, wish to enter a new market say UK. How will you estimate the market size, how will you recommend to go/no go, if ...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started with understanding the problem completely, and asked many questions because this business model was new to me. So this was not like artificial Car rally kind of setup, which we have in some places in India. It was more like a thrill ride one car at a time in a track. After understanding the problem, took 30-40 seconds to frame my response and told him three four levers I would like to explore, to advise the friend whether to go for business or not. Explored/mined for Cost side, then Revenue side and then viability. Towards the end, on being asked that though the business is profitable as per our analysis, would I recommend to go and If yes what else will I tell the friend, I came up with non existent competitive advantage and suggested strategic tie up/contingent contract with track owner to gain one.
Tips: Understand problem well before deep diving into the case, “NO particular framework can be all encompassing, try to apply some key concepts learned in courses like pricing, marketing strategy to make your solution interesting.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Tried to understand the context and market, as I did not had any background of communication industry. Was able to relate the industry with Indian Telecom industry to draw parallels. After understanding the problem, took 30-40 seconds to frame my response and started asking him relevant questions about data/percentages which he readily provided me one by one. Fitted the data into a table and deduced various numbers from some quick calculations (which he liked!). Explored/mined for Cost side, then Revenue side and then other factors, like political, legal, competitive readiness and customer readiness. Made some graphs to explain proliferation of new technology, and hence how the revenue should be pro rated across year. Towards the end, on being asked that though the business is profitable as per our analysis, what more things we should consider, I mentioned “Cannibalization”, since many new customer subscriptions would come from already existing customers, which I believe is what he was looking at.
Was able to strike a good rapport with the Interviewer early in the interview. Maintained my cool even though he tried to put stress by mentioning “we are running out of time” and was able to think on my feet during various micro details which he checked me on.
Initially goofed up the data a bit, but the interviewer was very nice to help initially, though corrected the mistake by drawing/mapping lot of data thrown at me rationally.
Tips: Typically interviewers wants you to help, Establish a positive environment by some short talk which should not look like planned. Understand problem well, keep a cool head.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: After understanding the problem, took 30-40 seconds to frame my response and started asking him relevant questions about company, competition and customer in target market. Why that particular country, what is competitive scenario like, what entry route company wish to take Greenfield/alliance? I believe that this was a real life problem, interviewer was facing, and he was improvising the problem based on our discussion. It was a very friendly discussion, wherein he was providing some cues in between about the direction I should take, and I was able to lead the discussion in the direction which he wanted. In between time and again, he was checking my analytical and mathematical abilities by leaving some data to be calculated, which fortunately I was able to calculate with ease. He checked me on various pricing strategy issues, marketing mix issues and segmentation/target market/positioning issues. Towards the end, following the trend of earlier interviews after being satisfied with case analysis, he threw some open ended quick questions, (which I am not able to recollect now) related/peripheral to discussion.
Was able to strike a good rapport with the Interviewer early in the interview. Repeatedly came ‘Out’ and went ‘In’ to the case as per interviewer’s discretion without loosing the sight on real problem.
Tips: Establish a positive environment by some short talk which should not look like planned. Understand problem well, keep a cool head. Do not put anything in your CV on which you cannot elaborate or are not comfortable. All the best!
Skills: Guesstimation Cases, Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: I started with understanding the problem completely, and asked many questions because this business model was new to me. So this was not like artificial Car rally kind of setup, which we have in some places in India. It was more like a thrill ride one car at a time in a track. After understanding the problem, took 30-40 seconds to frame my response and told him three four levers I would like to explore, to advise the friend whether to go for business or not. Explored/mined for Cost side, then Revenue side and then viability. Towards the end, on being asked that though the business is profitable as per our analysis, would I recommend to go and If yes what else will I tell the friend, I came up with non existent competitive advantage and suggested strategic tie up/contingent contract with track owner to gain one.
Tips: Understand problem well before deep diving into the case, “NO particular framework can be all encompassing, try to apply some key concepts learned in courses like pricing, marketing strategy to make your solution interesting.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Tried to understand the context and market, as I did not had any background of communication industry. Was able to relate the industry with Indian Telecom industry to draw parallels. After understanding the problem, took 30-40 seconds to frame my response and started asking him relevant questions about data/percentages which he readily provided me one by one. Fitted the data into a table and deduced various numbers from some quick calculations (which he liked!). Explored/mined for Cost side, then Revenue side and then other factors, like political, legal, competitive readiness and customer readiness. Made some graphs to explain proliferation of new technology, and hence how the revenue should be pro rated across year. Towards the end, on being asked that though the business is profitable as per our analysis, what more things we should consider, I mentioned “Cannibalization”, since many new customer subscriptions would come from already existing customers, which I believe is what he was looking at.
Was able to strike a good rapport with the Interviewer early in the interview. Maintained my cool even though he tried to put stress by mentioning “we are running out of time” and was able to think on my feet during various micro details which he checked me on.
Initially goofed up the data a bit, but the interviewer was very nice to help initially, though corrected the mistake by drawing/mapping lot of data thrown at me rationally.
Tips: Typically interviewers wants you to help, Establish a positive environment by some short talk which should not look like planned. Understand problem well, keep a cool head.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: After understanding the problem, took 30-40 seconds to frame my response and started asking him relevant questions about company, competition and customer in target market. Why that particular country, what is competitive scenario like, what entry route company wish to take Greenfield/alliance? I believe that this was a real life problem, interviewer was facing, and he was improvising the problem based on our discussion. It was a very friendly discussion, wherein he was providing some cues in between about the direction I should take, and I was able to lead the discussion in the direction which he wanted. In between time and again, he was checking my analytical and mathematical abilities by leaving some data to be calculated, which fortunately I was able to calculate with ease. He checked me on various pricing strategy issues, marketing mix issues and segmentation/target market/positioning issues. Towards the end, following the trend of earlier interviews after being satisfied with case analysis, he threw some open ended quick questions, (which I am not able to recollect now) related/peripheral to discussion.
Was able to strike a good rapport with the Interviewer early in the interview. Repeatedly came ‘Out’ and went ‘In’ to the case as per interviewer’s discretion without loosing the sight on real problem.
Tips: Establish a positive environment by some short talk which should not look like planned. Understand problem well, keep a cool head. Do not put anything in your CV on which you cannot elaborate or are not comfortable. All the best!
Skills: Guesstimation Cases, Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. Prepare an operation roadmap for the COO of a large telecom firm in the Middle East
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Your client is the COO of a regional telecom player in the Middle East. The COO has asked you to prepare an operations roadmap for the next 2-3 years. These are the steps that I took:
• Clarify what is meant by operations roadmap: Was told it includes marketing, sales, retail stores operations, IT, Network and Customer Care
• Asked a few more questions and found out that the main problem was prioritization of projects that COO had in front of him with limited resources.
• Focused on how to setup a portfolio structure to allow the COO to staff and execute projects.
Couldn’t get the particular insights that the interviewer was looking for. She wanted me to use certain words! So even though I was saying the same thing, she wanted it to be said in a particular way. Got lost half-way through the case where I just kept fishing for words to meet her expectations.
Tips: Think simply and take a step back when stuck or ask for help from interviewer. You have to get used to the interviewer style very quickly in an interview.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: Your client is the COO of a regional telecom player in the Middle East. The COO has asked you to prepare an operations roadmap for the next 2-3 years. These are the steps that I took:
• Clarify what is meant by operations roadmap: Was told it includes marketing, sales, retail stores operations, IT, Network and Customer Care
• Asked a few more questions and found out that the main problem was prioritization of projects that COO had in front of him with limited resources.
• Focused on how to setup a portfolio structure to allow the COO to staff and execute projects.
Couldn’t get the particular insights that the interviewer was looking for. She wanted me to use certain words! So even though I was saying the same thing, she wanted it to be said in a particular way. Got lost half-way through the case where I just kept fishing for words to meet her expectations.
Tips: Think simply and take a step back when stuck or ask for help from interviewer. You have to get used to the interviewer style very quickly in an interview.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
3 Interview Rounds
Interview Questions
- Q1. Why consulting? Why OW? Why Dubai?
- Q2. ISB MBA Vs Wharton MBA- impromptu presentation
- Q3. You are hired by the COO of a company to prepare a 3-yr Operations Roadmap.
- Q4. Mobile service provider – A: 3yrs ago, A’s monopoly was broken. Currently 70% market share Mobile service provider – B: 30% market share over the past 3 yrs. Se...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: HR Interview
Experience: I had prepared a structured answer for each of the above questions. We had a very long discussion on internet services and mobile services. The interview lasted close to an hour and a half.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Asked for more information on the company like- Is it a manufacturing co., or an IT co.? What do you mean when you say Operations and Roadmap? Any financial restrictions? What is the final objective of the co.? She said the company was a mobile operator like Bharti and that I should concentrate on the co.’s IT department (I knew nothing of IT and thought everything was over. I told her upfront that I do not have an IT background but I would try my best.). She asked me to ask her relevant questions. When I asked her about what she meant by roadmap, she probably missed it. Twice she asked me the first question that I should be asking. I didn’t ask the meaning of roadmap again thinking it might work against me. Then she finally said that I should ask what she meant by ‘roadmap’. She said the company wants to move from point A to point B and asked me how the company should go ahead. She also said that the company wants to complete 100 projects to reach point B in 3 yrs. I then tried to structure the problem. “On one side, we have the current capabilities/resources of the company and on the other, capabilities/resources required to successfully execute the 100 projects. We basically have to fill in this gap to achieve our objective.” She was pretty happy with this simple structure. Then I listed the areas that we should look into like- Financial resources and Human Resources. Under fin. resources, I talked about the funding part and under HR, I talked about hiring, firing and training of employees. Then I talked about increasing the effectiveness of the execution- through performance-based pay and several reviews of the projects to modify the strategy if required. Then she told me that there are several departments in a co. like Bharti, such as IT, Marketing, Operations etc. She asked me to list 5 different profiles of employees in IT and marketing separately. These types had to be unique (specialist positions). For example, when I said CMO under the marketing department, she disagreed. Under IT, I came up with Software developer, Hardware ppl, IT maintenance, Architect, Analyst. I took some time to come up with ‘Architect’. Used 4 Ps for coming up with the types under Marketing (Product Manager, Pricing Manager, Segment manager, Advertising people, Market researcher). She seemed satisfied with the solution.
I was quick to figure out what she did not like in people (she hates it when people use words they do not know the meaning of). From then on, I started asking her everything I didn’t understand fully and she appreciated it. Though I did not have an IT/telecom background, I answered all her questions and could engage her in a conversation on her fields of interest (telecom/internet). I asked her a lot of questions that she said were good :).
Tips: Ask a lot of RELEVANT questions. The interviewers like it. Be confident.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by saying that we could measure success of the service by estimating the profits or the revenues. He asked me to go ahead with the revenues. I asked the population of Kuwait, mkt penetration, % handsets that are 3G enabled. I assumed the population and mkt penetration to be const. throughout the year. He was ok with the assumptions. From the above data, I calculated the number (say x) of potential users (of the new service) among the co. B customers. I asked him the current ARPU. I then asked what % of it was voice usage and what % was data related. I asked him the average minutes of usage/month/user. From the data, I could calculate the $ value of voice usage charge/minute. For the video calls, I said we can charge 50% premium over the voice usage charges. I divided the users into 2 segments- business and residential. I asked what % of ‘x’ were business users and what % were residential users. I also asked their minutes of usage per day or week. It was simple Math after that. He asked me about the assumptions that were made in the case. I listed 3 of them (like no switching of customers from A to B etc). He also discussed about how the pricing should be done. I gave him 2 answers- one as a CFO of the co. and the other as a CMO of the co. A CMO would use unmetered pricing to facilitate higher penetration of the new service whereas a CFO would use metered pricing to get back his investments.
Tips: Do not ignore PI. Have good reasons to work for the co.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: I had prepared a structured answer for each of the above questions. We had a very long discussion on internet services and mobile services. The interview lasted close to an hour and a half.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Asked for more information on the company like- Is it a manufacturing co., or an IT co.? What do you mean when you say Operations and Roadmap? Any financial restrictions? What is the final objective of the co.? She said the company was a mobile operator like Bharti and that I should concentrate on the co.’s IT department (I knew nothing of IT and thought everything was over. I told her upfront that I do not have an IT background but I would try my best.). She asked me to ask her relevant questions. When I asked her about what she meant by roadmap, she probably missed it. Twice she asked me the first question that I should be asking. I didn’t ask the meaning of roadmap again thinking it might work against me. Then she finally said that I should ask what she meant by ‘roadmap’. She said the company wants to move from point A to point B and asked me how the company should go ahead. She also said that the company wants to complete 100 projects to reach point B in 3 yrs. I then tried to structure the problem. “On one side, we have the current capabilities/resources of the company and on the other, capabilities/resources required to successfully execute the 100 projects. We basically have to fill in this gap to achieve our objective.” She was pretty happy with this simple structure. Then I listed the areas that we should look into like- Financial resources and Human Resources. Under fin. resources, I talked about the funding part and under HR, I talked about hiring, firing and training of employees. Then I talked about increasing the effectiveness of the execution- through performance-based pay and several reviews of the projects to modify the strategy if required. Then she told me that there are several departments in a co. like Bharti, such as IT, Marketing, Operations etc. She asked me to list 5 different profiles of employees in IT and marketing separately. These types had to be unique (specialist positions). For example, when I said CMO under the marketing department, she disagreed. Under IT, I came up with Software developer, Hardware ppl, IT maintenance, Architect, Analyst. I took some time to come up with ‘Architect’. Used 4 Ps for coming up with the types under Marketing (Product Manager, Pricing Manager, Segment manager, Advertising people, Market researcher). She seemed satisfied with the solution.
I was quick to figure out what she did not like in people (she hates it when people use words they do not know the meaning of). From then on, I started asking her everything I didn’t understand fully and she appreciated it. Though I did not have an IT/telecom background, I answered all her questions and could engage her in a conversation on her fields of interest (telecom/internet). I asked her a lot of questions that she said were good :).
Tips: Ask a lot of RELEVANT questions. The interviewers like it. Be confident.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by saying that we could measure success of the service by estimating the profits or the revenues. He asked me to go ahead with the revenues. I asked the population of Kuwait, mkt penetration, % handsets that are 3G enabled. I assumed the population and mkt penetration to be const. throughout the year. He was ok with the assumptions. From the above data, I calculated the number (say x) of potential users (of the new service) among the co. B customers. I asked him the current ARPU. I then asked what % of it was voice usage and what % was data related. I asked him the average minutes of usage/month/user. From the data, I could calculate the $ value of voice usage charge/minute. For the video calls, I said we can charge 50% premium over the voice usage charges. I divided the users into 2 segments- business and residential. I asked what % of ‘x’ were business users and what % were residential users. I also asked their minutes of usage per day or week. It was simple Math after that. He asked me about the assumptions that were made in the case. I listed 3 of them (like no switching of customers from A to B etc). He also discussed about how the pricing should be done. I gave him 2 answers- one as a CFO of the co. and the other as a CMO of the co. A CMO would use unmetered pricing to facilitate higher penetration of the new service whereas a CFO would use metered pricing to get back his investments.
Tips: Do not ignore PI. Have good reasons to work for the co.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. There is a steel company with 2 plants in India. Now it has done recent acquisitions abroad. What should be the organizational structure that it should put in p...read more
- Q2. The IPL is a 20-20 league of cricket. It consists of city teams, with players from within the city, <21 years old, or players ‘bought’ via an auction process. C...read more
- Q3. There is a consumer finance company that is thinking of starting a unsecured loan at the point of sale in large retailers like Tesco, for consumers who want to ...read more
- Q4. There is a chairman of a conglomerate. He has been on the post for 10 years, and is extremely dominating. He treats the various business heads like children, no...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked him some clarificatory questions on where all in the world have the plants to get an idea of the kind of local areas. He replied in US, Indonesia, Trinidad etc. I then proceeded to succinctly put the problem statement to he and he was ok with it. Then I asked for “some time to structure my thoughts” ☺. The structure I laid out was: 1. What is meant by ‘organizational structure’? Is our end goal to figure out the number of levels in an organization, the number of people at each level and the skill they require? 2. Understand the goal of the organization: a cost focus or a responsiveness focus, whats important in this industry? 3. Map the existing processes that the company is involved in (value chain) and look at how best the goal of the organization can be served with: a. Existing company people redeployed to the new countries b. People from the acquired companies to continue working c. New people to be hired It seemed that he was looking for something else in the structure that I missed as indicated by his body language. However, he answered my queries – For point 1 he said I should look at a broader picture of what an organizational structure means. What I had defined was a very micro view. For point 2 he said I can assume an undifferentiated product market and that cost is the main focus. Here I pointed out that since we are acquiring he plants, the main concern in the short term maybe quick ramp up of the plant. He liked that and said that there are actually 3 measures that we will rate our structure on: - Ramp up time - Cost - Accountability of the plant employees of its performance For point 3 he said it might not be so relevant to our discussion!! Clearly I was in a situation where I didn’t know what hit me since I thought I completely missed what he wanted on 2 of my three points. However I kept calm and asked him what is the way to understand the org structure? He said think about how it was organized in ITC. So I said: 1. Since ITC is a conglomerate, it has a structure of various businesses or divisions which function independently. A ‘Corporate’ division is common to all. 2. Within each division there are functional verticals like the Marketing function, Technical function, HR, Finance functions. Shirish liked the way I described the structures in ITC so he said good. He said that that is a macro ‘Product’ structure of businesses around products like cigarettes, paperboards, clothes. Then he probed me on what could be other structures? I replied that the sub-structure of ‘Functions’ like marketing, HR etc could be the macro structure itself. He said that’s the 2nd, what else? Then we had a discussion on other kind of structures and he led me to two other kinds – ‘Geographical’ and ‘Type of Customer’. Then I started to list of pros and cons of each structure. However he said are you missing the criteria, so I quickly referred my notes and realized that he had given the 3 measures to rate each structure earlier – ramp up time, cost and accountability. I then ranked each on the above and after a discussion with him concluded that we should start with a functional set up to ensure quick ramp up and then move towards a geographical set up to ensure the local accountability, and minimization of costs. He was happy with the way I recovered and synthesized. He then went on to explain that actually they went in with the geographical setup directly, and the functional setup was a pseudo layer on top, as there were ‘functional specialists’ that traveled to a location to ensure quick ramp up. Then He said is there anything else I wanted to know from him. Then I told him that in our previous meeting we had not talked about the challenges of working with the govt sector. So he talked on that for around 5 mins.
Tips: 1. Proceed in the interview the way the interviewer wants you to. If he wants a free-flowing discussion, which was the case here once I laid out my structure, be flexible to do so. However, keep a track of open ends on your structure.
2. Don’t hesitate to ask the interviewer for help in case you are stuck. In my case it helped me a lot.
3. Don’t get flustered if stuck. Persevere and be calm.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Clarificatory questions from my side helped me understand what happens when a company sponsors the tournament. He replied that the tournaments might be branded like “Gold Flake Open”, and the company gets rights like logos on uniforms and on the cricket grounds, title rights etc. I asked about the duration of the tournament etc. Then I took time and laid out the valuation framework. Discounted cash flow analysis and NPV calculation, for which we will discuss the revenues, costs, and the discount rate. I gave details of revenue sources, cost heads. He said lets focus on the revenue sources. Here my proposition was that there could be an increase in the number of people (Users) or the number of times existing users smoke (Usage) due to the advertising in the IPL. He seemed satisfied with this hypothesis and asked me to go on. So I sought to define first the target segments. There was a simple quant test here. I used the urban Indian population (since rural people smoke bidis predominantly) of 30% of 1B, and assuming a life expectancy of 60 years and that smokers start from the age of 20 years got a figure of 200M smokers in India. Out of this assuming 1:1 male-female ratio, we arrived at 100M male smokers (assumed females don’t smoke). He now told me that actually there are only 10M smokers in India. So then I discussed that now we have to delineate the factors why people take up smoking (purchase drivers), and clearly figure out those people who took up smoking by seeing the IPL advertisements or related promotions. Also I mentioned that this would be a challenge to do practically on the ground. So how does the 10M number change (market expansion or increase in users) was part 1, and how much more do the 10M smoke (usage) was the other effect we need to consider. Then heasked me how we can make sure that we convert the advertising into sales. I knew he wanted to get some creative answers, so I said maybe stock up in the shops outside the stadiums, or mobile vendors (and more suggestions I don’t remember now). I did mention that advertising is banned in India for cigarettes and we would have to be careful in the suggestions. He was happy with the discussion on the revenues part. He asked me where would the new smokers come from? Would they be new or would they come from competition brands? Then we discussed a lot on the kind of up-trading that happens in cigarettes, namely, people who smoke bidis move onto cigarettes, and people who smoke small length cigarettes move up and start smoking ‘kings’ type cigarettes. Finally we came onto the valuations part to understand what should be the money ITC should be willing to pay. I explained the free cash flow formula, and how we would use it over the years to calculate the NPV. We had a small summary discussion here. Then he asked me if he had any question for me. I asked him does he feel the urge to do more ‘implementation’ work in McK since he is a doctor, and that I feel that I might get bored of doing only ‘strategy’ kind of work. He resonated the feeling and explained in depth what projects he had done and that a large % is implementation.
Tips: Here he clearly told me that he was not interested in too much structuring, so I reduced my writing but continued to speak all my answers in a structured manner. The interviewer felt nice that I responded to his style. So point is, adapt yourself to the situation, yet maintain the poise in your answers, don’t completely relax. Also please use the opportunity in the end to ask questions that you really want to get answers of. Link them up with the background of the interviewer. This shows commitment and preparation, and builds a last minute connection with the interviewer. Also be clear of the intricacies of the business you came from, it helps a lot if the case dwells on a similar topic.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Clarificatory questions included understanding the types of products sold in the point of sale, the various stakeholders involved in the transaction. The 2nd question hit a chord with , he smiled and said that there are three stakeholders, the Retailer (Tesco or someone else), the Consumer Finance Company, and the Consumer. I knew at this point that I had to concentrate on each one separately. I laid out a simple structure of looking at the costs and benefits (or positives and negatives) for each stakeholder by getting into the scheme. He was ok with this, in fact he said this is exactly how it should be looked at. I started with the Retailer and said that there are only benefits since they get the sales revenues that earlier were not got since the consumers did not have funds. So the Retailer clearly wanted the scheme. For the Consumer Finance company I said that the cost would be the cost of raising the money to fund the loans which would depend on the default rate of these consumers. The benefit would be the interest that the consumer would pay on the loan. Then we had a discussion on how to estimate this default rate. Here I said we could use data from similar loan schemes in other countries since the type of product and the cost of the white goods (20-40K in this case) plays a role, or default rates on loans on other products in the particular region, since location and local demography also plays a role. Another benefit could be that a consumer finance company could occupy mind space with the consumers who might buy other products like home loans, car loans etc from the company in future. Overall, a consumer finance company might be keen to enter into this loan. For the consumers, He asked why would a consumer buy a loan from this company and not go the branch elsewhere and take a loan. I said that the convenience of getting the loan at the point of purchase was the single largest factor for the consumers. Also I added that now they would be able to purchase high value items higher in prestige value that they could not afford earlier, so impulse purchase might increase.On the whole, based on a discussion with he, I concluded that the consumer finance company would need to be cautious in proceeding with the loan since the default rates are not predictable. He inquired a way to solve this problem and I suggested that the loans be launched for selected products and consumer segments to start with as a pilot, and then expanded to other products and consumers.
Tips: Asking relevant questions in the beginning of the cases really helps as the interviewer starts helping you more, or will reveal information that would be critical in the case. Prepare the basic questions on leadership and teamwork well. This means they should be personalized, not the typical definitions. The examples should be crisp and explain the point well. Showing energy and impact during such answers is crucial otherwise they might appear faffy. At times when he was having a stone expression, I tried to smile and break him out of that mould.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Since this was not a typical case, I broke out of the case mould and immediately asked for some time to think of the questions. I told him that I would follow a predecessor-based questioning model, simply put, subsequent questions would depend on the answers of the previous questions. He liked this approach. My 5 questions were as follows:
1. Select the business which has a large contribution to the conglomerate’s overall revenues, and ask the business head (who reports to the chairman): How many decisions has he independently taken in the last 12 months vs how many has he just implemented decisions of the chairman?
2. Based on the response of the first question, ask the business head what has been the impact both: a. On the individual business (to the company) performance: Company is not doing well, and the situation needs to be corrected/company is doing average/company is doing good. b. On the business head himself (to the individual) morale: He is thinking of quitting immediately/in some time/not at all. Based on these questions we would come to know the real impact of the chairman’s behavior on the company and the immediate reportees.
3. If the problem is serious, ask the business head which section of the employees are affected the most by the chairman’s decisions, say, mid level and shop floor level
4. and 5. Ask the mid level and shop floor level employees the same two sub-points as in question 2.
The questions should seek to address: - Verify whether there is a problem at all - Verify the extent of the problem - Verify the seriousness of the problem.
He seemed satisfied by the questions and the summary. That’s all he wanted to hear in the case, and I was also relieved☺.
Tips: here will always be cases you have not prepared for. Use common sense, and try to use your work experience to think of substance, and then put it in an easy to understand structure to communicate to the interviewer. Also try to enjoy the process. After multiple rounds of interviews, I had gotten over the fear of cases, and was smiling a lot and enjoying the process. Spend time with the alums from the various firms who would be coordinating the process, they will help calm nerves and give a good perspective on the proceedings.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: I asked him some clarificatory questions on where all in the world have the plants to get an idea of the kind of local areas. He replied in US, Indonesia, Trinidad etc. I then proceeded to succinctly put the problem statement to he and he was ok with it. Then I asked for “some time to structure my thoughts” ☺. The structure I laid out was: 1. What is meant by ‘organizational structure’? Is our end goal to figure out the number of levels in an organization, the number of people at each level and the skill they require? 2. Understand the goal of the organization: a cost focus or a responsiveness focus, whats important in this industry? 3. Map the existing processes that the company is involved in (value chain) and look at how best the goal of the organization can be served with: a. Existing company people redeployed to the new countries b. People from the acquired companies to continue working c. New people to be hired It seemed that he was looking for something else in the structure that I missed as indicated by his body language. However, he answered my queries – For point 1 he said I should look at a broader picture of what an organizational structure means. What I had defined was a very micro view. For point 2 he said I can assume an undifferentiated product market and that cost is the main focus. Here I pointed out that since we are acquiring he plants, the main concern in the short term maybe quick ramp up of the plant. He liked that and said that there are actually 3 measures that we will rate our structure on: - Ramp up time - Cost - Accountability of the plant employees of its performance For point 3 he said it might not be so relevant to our discussion!! Clearly I was in a situation where I didn’t know what hit me since I thought I completely missed what he wanted on 2 of my three points. However I kept calm and asked him what is the way to understand the org structure? He said think about how it was organized in ITC. So I said: 1. Since ITC is a conglomerate, it has a structure of various businesses or divisions which function independently. A ‘Corporate’ division is common to all. 2. Within each division there are functional verticals like the Marketing function, Technical function, HR, Finance functions. Shirish liked the way I described the structures in ITC so he said good. He said that that is a macro ‘Product’ structure of businesses around products like cigarettes, paperboards, clothes. Then he probed me on what could be other structures? I replied that the sub-structure of ‘Functions’ like marketing, HR etc could be the macro structure itself. He said that’s the 2nd, what else? Then we had a discussion on other kind of structures and he led me to two other kinds – ‘Geographical’ and ‘Type of Customer’. Then I started to list of pros and cons of each structure. However he said are you missing the criteria, so I quickly referred my notes and realized that he had given the 3 measures to rate each structure earlier – ramp up time, cost and accountability. I then ranked each on the above and after a discussion with him concluded that we should start with a functional set up to ensure quick ramp up and then move towards a geographical set up to ensure the local accountability, and minimization of costs. He was happy with the way I recovered and synthesized. He then went on to explain that actually they went in with the geographical setup directly, and the functional setup was a pseudo layer on top, as there were ‘functional specialists’ that traveled to a location to ensure quick ramp up. Then He said is there anything else I wanted to know from him. Then I told him that in our previous meeting we had not talked about the challenges of working with the govt sector. So he talked on that for around 5 mins.
Tips: 1. Proceed in the interview the way the interviewer wants you to. If he wants a free-flowing discussion, which was the case here once I laid out my structure, be flexible to do so. However, keep a track of open ends on your structure.
2. Don’t hesitate to ask the interviewer for help in case you are stuck. In my case it helped me a lot.
3. Don’t get flustered if stuck. Persevere and be calm.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Clarificatory questions from my side helped me understand what happens when a company sponsors the tournament. He replied that the tournaments might be branded like “Gold Flake Open”, and the company gets rights like logos on uniforms and on the cricket grounds, title rights etc. I asked about the duration of the tournament etc. Then I took time and laid out the valuation framework. Discounted cash flow analysis and NPV calculation, for which we will discuss the revenues, costs, and the discount rate. I gave details of revenue sources, cost heads. He said lets focus on the revenue sources. Here my proposition was that there could be an increase in the number of people (Users) or the number of times existing users smoke (Usage) due to the advertising in the IPL. He seemed satisfied with this hypothesis and asked me to go on. So I sought to define first the target segments. There was a simple quant test here. I used the urban Indian population (since rural people smoke bidis predominantly) of 30% of 1B, and assuming a life expectancy of 60 years and that smokers start from the age of 20 years got a figure of 200M smokers in India. Out of this assuming 1:1 male-female ratio, we arrived at 100M male smokers (assumed females don’t smoke). He now told me that actually there are only 10M smokers in India. So then I discussed that now we have to delineate the factors why people take up smoking (purchase drivers), and clearly figure out those people who took up smoking by seeing the IPL advertisements or related promotions. Also I mentioned that this would be a challenge to do practically on the ground. So how does the 10M number change (market expansion or increase in users) was part 1, and how much more do the 10M smoke (usage) was the other effect we need to consider. Then heasked me how we can make sure that we convert the advertising into sales. I knew he wanted to get some creative answers, so I said maybe stock up in the shops outside the stadiums, or mobile vendors (and more suggestions I don’t remember now). I did mention that advertising is banned in India for cigarettes and we would have to be careful in the suggestions. He was happy with the discussion on the revenues part. He asked me where would the new smokers come from? Would they be new or would they come from competition brands? Then we discussed a lot on the kind of up-trading that happens in cigarettes, namely, people who smoke bidis move onto cigarettes, and people who smoke small length cigarettes move up and start smoking ‘kings’ type cigarettes. Finally we came onto the valuations part to understand what should be the money ITC should be willing to pay. I explained the free cash flow formula, and how we would use it over the years to calculate the NPV. We had a small summary discussion here. Then he asked me if he had any question for me. I asked him does he feel the urge to do more ‘implementation’ work in McK since he is a doctor, and that I feel that I might get bored of doing only ‘strategy’ kind of work. He resonated the feeling and explained in depth what projects he had done and that a large % is implementation.
Tips: Here he clearly told me that he was not interested in too much structuring, so I reduced my writing but continued to speak all my answers in a structured manner. The interviewer felt nice that I responded to his style. So point is, adapt yourself to the situation, yet maintain the poise in your answers, don’t completely relax. Also please use the opportunity in the end to ask questions that you really want to get answers of. Link them up with the background of the interviewer. This shows commitment and preparation, and builds a last minute connection with the interviewer. Also be clear of the intricacies of the business you came from, it helps a lot if the case dwells on a similar topic.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Clarificatory questions included understanding the types of products sold in the point of sale, the various stakeholders involved in the transaction. The 2nd question hit a chord with , he smiled and said that there are three stakeholders, the Retailer (Tesco or someone else), the Consumer Finance Company, and the Consumer. I knew at this point that I had to concentrate on each one separately. I laid out a simple structure of looking at the costs and benefits (or positives and negatives) for each stakeholder by getting into the scheme. He was ok with this, in fact he said this is exactly how it should be looked at. I started with the Retailer and said that there are only benefits since they get the sales revenues that earlier were not got since the consumers did not have funds. So the Retailer clearly wanted the scheme. For the Consumer Finance company I said that the cost would be the cost of raising the money to fund the loans which would depend on the default rate of these consumers. The benefit would be the interest that the consumer would pay on the loan. Then we had a discussion on how to estimate this default rate. Here I said we could use data from similar loan schemes in other countries since the type of product and the cost of the white goods (20-40K in this case) plays a role, or default rates on loans on other products in the particular region, since location and local demography also plays a role. Another benefit could be that a consumer finance company could occupy mind space with the consumers who might buy other products like home loans, car loans etc from the company in future. Overall, a consumer finance company might be keen to enter into this loan. For the consumers, He asked why would a consumer buy a loan from this company and not go the branch elsewhere and take a loan. I said that the convenience of getting the loan at the point of purchase was the single largest factor for the consumers. Also I added that now they would be able to purchase high value items higher in prestige value that they could not afford earlier, so impulse purchase might increase.On the whole, based on a discussion with he, I concluded that the consumer finance company would need to be cautious in proceeding with the loan since the default rates are not predictable. He inquired a way to solve this problem and I suggested that the loans be launched for selected products and consumer segments to start with as a pilot, and then expanded to other products and consumers.
Tips: Asking relevant questions in the beginning of the cases really helps as the interviewer starts helping you more, or will reveal information that would be critical in the case. Prepare the basic questions on leadership and teamwork well. This means they should be personalized, not the typical definitions. The examples should be crisp and explain the point well. Showing energy and impact during such answers is crucial otherwise they might appear faffy. At times when he was having a stone expression, I tried to smile and break him out of that mould.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Since this was not a typical case, I broke out of the case mould and immediately asked for some time to think of the questions. I told him that I would follow a predecessor-based questioning model, simply put, subsequent questions would depend on the answers of the previous questions. He liked this approach. My 5 questions were as follows:
1. Select the business which has a large contribution to the conglomerate’s overall revenues, and ask the business head (who reports to the chairman): How many decisions has he independently taken in the last 12 months vs how many has he just implemented decisions of the chairman?
2. Based on the response of the first question, ask the business head what has been the impact both: a. On the individual business (to the company) performance: Company is not doing well, and the situation needs to be corrected/company is doing average/company is doing good. b. On the business head himself (to the individual) morale: He is thinking of quitting immediately/in some time/not at all. Based on these questions we would come to know the real impact of the chairman’s behavior on the company and the immediate reportees.
3. If the problem is serious, ask the business head which section of the employees are affected the most by the chairman’s decisions, say, mid level and shop floor level
4. and 5. Ask the mid level and shop floor level employees the same two sub-points as in question 2.
The questions should seek to address: - Verify whether there is a problem at all - Verify the extent of the problem - Verify the seriousness of the problem.
He seemed satisfied by the questions and the summary. That’s all he wanted to hear in the case, and I was also relieved☺.
Tips: here will always be cases you have not prepared for. Use common sense, and try to use your work experience to think of substance, and then put it in an easy to understand structure to communicate to the interviewer. Also try to enjoy the process. After multiple rounds of interviews, I had gotten over the fear of cases, and was smiling a lot and enjoying the process. Spend time with the alums from the various firms who would be coordinating the process, they will help calm nerves and give a good perspective on the proceedings.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. Why is a new terminal at an airport required?
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: LHR airport is building Terminal 5. Why? Identified the purpose of terminals, and its physical layout. Defined capacity as throughput of baggage (big mistake: capacity here was supposed to be that of airport with runways being the bottleneck!!). Compared capacity of T-5 with that of other terminals. Basically, T-5 is being built to accommodate the A380. I knew this from my GK but didn’t exactly shine through in the interview.
Identified it as an operations issue. After that everything went downhill. About halfway through the interview, I realized that I was dinged anyhow (I’d have rejected me had I been the interviewer), so there was less pressure and I had a relaxed time with the case after that.
Tips: Don’t neglect operations based cases. These were the least favorite ones of mine during prep. Even if interviewer is hostile, keep a cool head and think logically, don’t let the pressure get to you
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: LHR airport is building Terminal 5. Why? Identified the purpose of terminals, and its physical layout. Defined capacity as throughput of baggage (big mistake: capacity here was supposed to be that of airport with runways being the bottleneck!!). Compared capacity of T-5 with that of other terminals. Basically, T-5 is being built to accommodate the A380. I knew this from my GK but didn’t exactly shine through in the interview.
Identified it as an operations issue. After that everything went downhill. About halfway through the interview, I realized that I was dinged anyhow (I’d have rejected me had I been the interviewer), so there was less pressure and I had a relaxed time with the case after that.
Tips: Don’t neglect operations based cases. These were the least favorite ones of mine during prep. Even if interviewer is hostile, keep a cool head and think logically, don’t let the pressure get to you
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. A client wants to start retailing business. He intends to attract as many people as possible, to his stores. How would you go about advising the client.
- Q2. ‘How would you commercialize poetry”
- Q3. A steel company wants to increase it’s Market Capitalization. How would you go about it.
- Q4. The client is a Financial service distributor. It currently sells only Fixed deposits (FD) and is considering selling of two new type of products –Life Insuranc...read more
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) The purpose + Does client have anything specific in mind (wrt retail format, target segment, products to be sold, location etc) 2) What exactly is meant by attracting maximum number of people (footfalls? Purchase conversion?) At this stage itself I got information about the target segment : It is primarily income based and Delhi and Mumbai are two cities which have large % of population as set of people who can be attracted. Then I split the issue in two aspects that could attract/ bring people to store: a) Awareness b) the in-store experience/ value from shopping He said awareness is not an issue. Hence, I looked at experience aspects – (1) Proximity (2) product mix available (3) Value for Money in shopping (low price vs product differentiation) He told me to look at it as a case of Food Retailing. During this conversation the scope boiled down to identifying the parameters to maximize profits. I started considering Revenue and Cost as two aspects of profit. Revenue is driven from Quantity (Footfalls* conversion) and Price. Price dint come out as something to be considered as fixed. Hence quantity was to be maximized. Considering that Mumbai and Delhi were target cities, I asked if I needed to estimate the revenue. He told me to proceed and I estimated revenue using population -. Households (HH) -> HH greater than and less than 2 lpa of income (more than 2 lpa expected to visit stores). I asked about average usage of food by such a HH and Kaustub gave me certain numbers. He then asked me to proceed to other parameters in Food Retail. Having covered Revenue as the first part, I moved to Cost. He directly asked me to focus on location/ proximity. I said food retail (especially in Indian context, considering the mobility issue, vehicle ownership, road infra etc) is something that needs to have close proximity. The areas to be focused on would however be determined by per square foot cost. The high-end areas may not be a feasible option. However, emerging areas present a case to be considered. I asked if there was any data available on property rates. He told the rates were 200/sqft/month in high-end areas vs 100/sqft/month in emerging areas. Hence client should focus on Profit/sqft/month as primary metric for deciding where and how many stores to open. He asked me to end the case here. In the end (time for me to ask questions) I asked him about his views of Reliance’s strategy in retailing (they are entering many formats in retailing) and had a discussion around certain viewpoints.
Tips: Be confident and persistent even though the cases may seem kind of undefined or large in scope.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) What is exactly meant by commercialization – business/ profits/ practical usage 2) Is it general poetry or my poetry 3) Is there any time frame I need to consider for this. He said the purpose would be to make money from my own poetry and there is no specific time frame. I took a customary minute to think. I used MECE classification to consider two aspects of poetry usage/applications: (1) Academic usage (in text books etc) (2) Non Academic (NA) usage. I further classified NA usage into three areas – NGOs, Corporate(s) and Other commercial applications (namely lyrics for movie songs, advertisements etc. I told him that I had written a poem taking inspiration from a Cadbury’s advertisement) At this stage I said that for any further consideration one important parameter is the FIT of the product (my poetry) to these application areas. I defined FIT in terms of language (I write in Hindi, at time English) and content vs the actual need in respective areas (I gave a coupel of examples – my poems published in magazine by an NGO, couple of Hindi ads etc). I also said I can write for all of the identified application areas. In order to commercialize I assessed each usage area in terms of following parameters (a) Profit Margin (I stated here that the cost = my effort would be nearly same for all kinds of poetry) (b) Capability (FIT) c) Market Size (d) Access (my access to identified market) I made a matrix for assessment along these parameters and rated each on scale of Low, Medium and High. He asked me to focus on How to go about commercializing Other commercial applications. I said our of two areas - namely movie songs and advertisement, I should focus first on Advertisements first (as I have better access to this market). I also looked at another metric - % of advertisements/songs needing my poetry while defining the approach. I further looked at Access to Advertisements in terms of existing and New 148i.e. existing is through my past organizations and through my friends’ network. New means developing contacts through mails and agencies. He asked me to stop at this point and said ‘why don’t you start it right away’. In the end I asked him about his experience at McKinsey and his happiest moment while working there.
Tips: Be prepared to solve such cases based/ customized to your personal interest areas. I got two such cases (one in McKinsey and another one, related to Ball Dancing, in some other interview)
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Asked some questions to understand the problem better: 1) Something more about the client- location, which part of value chain does it operate in? 2) Is there any time frame in mind 3) By what magnitude does the client want market capitalization to increase He said time frame would be 4- 5 years. I drew the value chain of steel industry: RM (Iron ore, coal etc) -> Manufacturing of steel -> Distribution. He said client is currently operating in all. He also provided some information on location – the client had made acquisitions for Iron ore (worth 3 million USD) in US. I said that Market Capitalization would be essentially a multiple of Operating income and hence we should see the problem in two aspects – increasing Revenue and decreasing Cost. I asked him if this approach was fine. He told me to proceed. I said revenue was determined as Price* Output. I asked if price could be increased, which he told me to park aside. Then I discussed output: one way to increase would be through M&A. Other ways would be through Greenfield, Brownfield projects of Joint Venture. He asked me what should be done even before M&A and then dropped a hint about current operations. I immediately said ‘that is something to be looked at first’. Any excess capacity may be utilized to raise output. Further more, the aspects to be looked at would be (1) efficiency (2) RM (biggest chunk of cost) He told me to look at RM. I asked the need vs capacity of the acquisitions done by client in US (3 million tones of output). RM need was not satisfied. Hence more RM sourcing should be ensured through either contracts, locating close to RM sources, acquisitions as RM is biggest part of cost and would help increase the margins and hence market cap also. At this point he asked me about other possibilities of increasing the market cap. I said some ways of indicating god future growth (investments, strategic tie ups) would increase the market cap. He asked me what else could be done and indicated spin offs. I said there could be alternative to float a new firm (separate venture for RM) or sell shares as different types – Type A and Type B while keeping the firm as one entity. He was fine with that. He stopped the case here and said I I wanted to ask anything. I asked him if this was a real case and what had they done in this situation. Then I said that I have wondered what has prohibited systems such as Social Security from being implemented in India and how does he see that coming in future? We had a discussion around the same for about 5-7 minutes and the interview ended.
Tips: Does not matter much even if your case is not going exactly how you want it but don’t hesitate to take a step back and to make efforts while solving. Do keep interviewer involved in the case (Think aloud – may be ask the interviewer at times...if the approach is fair/ assumptions are fair) Prepare intelligent questions (which you have to ask to the interviewer). These could be either based on the case, interviewer’s field of work (typically they introduce themselves at the start of the interview) or relevant to PI in respective interviews. ‘and don’t worry, you can practice drafting good questions while the interview is going on’
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) Tell some more about the client – are they only a distributor? Answer was Yes. 2) Is profit the criteria to be looked at for feasibility/ Sales Force allocation The structure that I made considered three aspects of the problem.
• Customers – are we targeting the same customers, how much of cannibalization (Share of wallet aspect) can we expect if same products are sold to same set of customers?
• Feasibility – in terms of skills (different selling skills for different products) Need/ demand in the market, training issues (all sales people selling all products?) Amount of investment required.
• Incentive alignment – He gave me information about prices of different products and clients margin (basis points). Target customers were same. As product type and related needs are different, cannibalization was not taken as an issue. Feasibility parameters were also fine. I calculated absolute margin (which is Revenue for our client) on each product. Then I said, for financial feasibility, Cash Flows need to be calculated and hence Revenue and cost need to be found. Hence Profit is a function of product Mix: Profit = Sum (Pi-Ci) And we know the values of Pi. I identified the possible costs as the commission to sales agents + The cost of channel (for each product). He was fine with this. He told me to focus on revenues only. He further gave me the capacity of Sales person (while selling only FDs, each person sells 10 FDs per month and if all products are sold the mix (4,8 and1 FD, MF and LI respectively). I calculated the as is case revenue (selling FD alone). I also found the profit (revenue for our client) in each category of products (as per the new mix) by existing sales force. (There were indeed a lot of calculations) The incremental profit was around 170 % more and I said on the basis of calculations, the model seems feasible but there are other parameters to be taken care – how to align incentives. Some part of incentives needs to be pegged to the number of products sold else higher margin products likely to be sold more (moreover there could be strategic reasons for selling even low margin products to customers – acquisition, customers may prefer to buy a basket of products from a single contact point/ sales person). He asked what would I say on basis of intuition ie, Should the client proceed with this. I thought and said Yes because the incremental impact is very high and even if some contingencies arise, the proposition is highly likely to be profitable. He agreed and seemed to be happy with this.
Tips: Try to present your opinion beyond the direct (numerical, as case may be) solution. It does help.
Skills: Basic Knowledge Of How The Products In The Case Studies Work, Guesstimation Cases, Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) The purpose + Does client have anything specific in mind (wrt retail format, target segment, products to be sold, location etc) 2) What exactly is meant by attracting maximum number of people (footfalls? Purchase conversion?) At this stage itself I got information about the target segment : It is primarily income based and Delhi and Mumbai are two cities which have large % of population as set of people who can be attracted. Then I split the issue in two aspects that could attract/ bring people to store: a) Awareness b) the in-store experience/ value from shopping He said awareness is not an issue. Hence, I looked at experience aspects – (1) Proximity (2) product mix available (3) Value for Money in shopping (low price vs product differentiation) He told me to look at it as a case of Food Retailing. During this conversation the scope boiled down to identifying the parameters to maximize profits. I started considering Revenue and Cost as two aspects of profit. Revenue is driven from Quantity (Footfalls* conversion) and Price. Price dint come out as something to be considered as fixed. Hence quantity was to be maximized. Considering that Mumbai and Delhi were target cities, I asked if I needed to estimate the revenue. He told me to proceed and I estimated revenue using population -. Households (HH) -> HH greater than and less than 2 lpa of income (more than 2 lpa expected to visit stores). I asked about average usage of food by such a HH and Kaustub gave me certain numbers. He then asked me to proceed to other parameters in Food Retail. Having covered Revenue as the first part, I moved to Cost. He directly asked me to focus on location/ proximity. I said food retail (especially in Indian context, considering the mobility issue, vehicle ownership, road infra etc) is something that needs to have close proximity. The areas to be focused on would however be determined by per square foot cost. The high-end areas may not be a feasible option. However, emerging areas present a case to be considered. I asked if there was any data available on property rates. He told the rates were 200/sqft/month in high-end areas vs 100/sqft/month in emerging areas. Hence client should focus on Profit/sqft/month as primary metric for deciding where and how many stores to open. He asked me to end the case here. In the end (time for me to ask questions) I asked him about his views of Reliance’s strategy in retailing (they are entering many formats in retailing) and had a discussion around certain viewpoints.
Tips: Be confident and persistent even though the cases may seem kind of undefined or large in scope.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) What is exactly meant by commercialization – business/ profits/ practical usage 2) Is it general poetry or my poetry 3) Is there any time frame I need to consider for this. He said the purpose would be to make money from my own poetry and there is no specific time frame. I took a customary minute to think. I used MECE classification to consider two aspects of poetry usage/applications: (1) Academic usage (in text books etc) (2) Non Academic (NA) usage. I further classified NA usage into three areas – NGOs, Corporate(s) and Other commercial applications (namely lyrics for movie songs, advertisements etc. I told him that I had written a poem taking inspiration from a Cadbury’s advertisement) At this stage I said that for any further consideration one important parameter is the FIT of the product (my poetry) to these application areas. I defined FIT in terms of language (I write in Hindi, at time English) and content vs the actual need in respective areas (I gave a coupel of examples – my poems published in magazine by an NGO, couple of Hindi ads etc). I also said I can write for all of the identified application areas. In order to commercialize I assessed each usage area in terms of following parameters (a) Profit Margin (I stated here that the cost = my effort would be nearly same for all kinds of poetry) (b) Capability (FIT) c) Market Size (d) Access (my access to identified market) I made a matrix for assessment along these parameters and rated each on scale of Low, Medium and High. He asked me to focus on How to go about commercializing Other commercial applications. I said our of two areas - namely movie songs and advertisement, I should focus first on Advertisements first (as I have better access to this market). I also looked at another metric - % of advertisements/songs needing my poetry while defining the approach. I further looked at Access to Advertisements in terms of existing and New 148i.e. existing is through my past organizations and through my friends’ network. New means developing contacts through mails and agencies. He asked me to stop at this point and said ‘why don’t you start it right away’. In the end I asked him about his experience at McKinsey and his happiest moment while working there.
Tips: Be prepared to solve such cases based/ customized to your personal interest areas. I got two such cases (one in McKinsey and another one, related to Ball Dancing, in some other interview)
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Asked some questions to understand the problem better: 1) Something more about the client- location, which part of value chain does it operate in? 2) Is there any time frame in mind 3) By what magnitude does the client want market capitalization to increase He said time frame would be 4- 5 years. I drew the value chain of steel industry: RM (Iron ore, coal etc) -> Manufacturing of steel -> Distribution. He said client is currently operating in all. He also provided some information on location – the client had made acquisitions for Iron ore (worth 3 million USD) in US. I said that Market Capitalization would be essentially a multiple of Operating income and hence we should see the problem in two aspects – increasing Revenue and decreasing Cost. I asked him if this approach was fine. He told me to proceed. I said revenue was determined as Price* Output. I asked if price could be increased, which he told me to park aside. Then I discussed output: one way to increase would be through M&A. Other ways would be through Greenfield, Brownfield projects of Joint Venture. He asked me what should be done even before M&A and then dropped a hint about current operations. I immediately said ‘that is something to be looked at first’. Any excess capacity may be utilized to raise output. Further more, the aspects to be looked at would be (1) efficiency (2) RM (biggest chunk of cost) He told me to look at RM. I asked the need vs capacity of the acquisitions done by client in US (3 million tones of output). RM need was not satisfied. Hence more RM sourcing should be ensured through either contracts, locating close to RM sources, acquisitions as RM is biggest part of cost and would help increase the margins and hence market cap also. At this point he asked me about other possibilities of increasing the market cap. I said some ways of indicating god future growth (investments, strategic tie ups) would increase the market cap. He asked me what else could be done and indicated spin offs. I said there could be alternative to float a new firm (separate venture for RM) or sell shares as different types – Type A and Type B while keeping the firm as one entity. He was fine with that. He stopped the case here and said I I wanted to ask anything. I asked him if this was a real case and what had they done in this situation. Then I said that I have wondered what has prohibited systems such as Social Security from being implemented in India and how does he see that coming in future? We had a discussion around the same for about 5-7 minutes and the interview ended.
Tips: Does not matter much even if your case is not going exactly how you want it but don’t hesitate to take a step back and to make efforts while solving. Do keep interviewer involved in the case (Think aloud – may be ask the interviewer at times...if the approach is fair/ assumptions are fair) Prepare intelligent questions (which you have to ask to the interviewer). These could be either based on the case, interviewer’s field of work (typically they introduce themselves at the start of the interview) or relevant to PI in respective interviews. ‘and don’t worry, you can practice drafting good questions while the interview is going on’
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) Tell some more about the client – are they only a distributor? Answer was Yes. 2) Is profit the criteria to be looked at for feasibility/ Sales Force allocation The structure that I made considered three aspects of the problem.
• Customers – are we targeting the same customers, how much of cannibalization (Share of wallet aspect) can we expect if same products are sold to same set of customers?
• Feasibility – in terms of skills (different selling skills for different products) Need/ demand in the market, training issues (all sales people selling all products?) Amount of investment required.
• Incentive alignment – He gave me information about prices of different products and clients margin (basis points). Target customers were same. As product type and related needs are different, cannibalization was not taken as an issue. Feasibility parameters were also fine. I calculated absolute margin (which is Revenue for our client) on each product. Then I said, for financial feasibility, Cash Flows need to be calculated and hence Revenue and cost need to be found. Hence Profit is a function of product Mix: Profit = Sum (Pi-Ci) And we know the values of Pi. I identified the possible costs as the commission to sales agents + The cost of channel (for each product). He was fine with this. He told me to focus on revenues only. He further gave me the capacity of Sales person (while selling only FDs, each person sells 10 FDs per month and if all products are sold the mix (4,8 and1 FD, MF and LI respectively). I calculated the as is case revenue (selling FD alone). I also found the profit (revenue for our client) in each category of products (as per the new mix) by existing sales force. (There were indeed a lot of calculations) The incremental profit was around 170 % more and I said on the basis of calculations, the model seems feasible but there are other parameters to be taken care – how to align incentives. Some part of incentives needs to be pegged to the number of products sold else higher margin products likely to be sold more (moreover there could be strategic reasons for selling even low margin products to customers – acquisition, customers may prefer to buy a basket of products from a single contact point/ sales person). He asked what would I say on basis of intuition ie, Should the client proceed with this. I thought and said Yes because the incremental impact is very high and even if some contingencies arise, the proposition is highly likely to be profitable. He agreed and seemed to be happy with this.
Tips: Try to present your opinion beyond the direct (numerical, as case may be) solution. It does help.
Skills: Basic Knowledge Of How The Products In The Case Studies Work, Guesstimation Cases, Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. Heathrow airport wishes to add a 5th terminal to its existing 4 terminals. Should it go ahead?
- Q2. Not a formal case, but broad industry level strategic discussions about IT & IT Products and Innovation
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started off saying that the problem statement looks like it’s a Go/NoGo decision we have to help make, so first we should establish the exact objective against which we would measure our decision. Once the objective is clear, we would need to establish our current performance against the objective, what is the target level we wish to achieve on that particular objective and then evaluate if the new terminal would help us achieve that or not. But before that I would like to clarify about exactly what is meant by a terminal here.
JC: Heathrow is one of the busiest airports and already has 4 different passenger terminals, now they want to add a 5th. A terminal provides the usual services like Bays for Boarding & disembarking, Check-In, Security, Lounges & shopping areas etc.
Me: Great, do we also have to look at the financial and operational viability of the terminal or that is not a concern.
JC: for the purpose of discussion let’s ignore that, those would not be the constraints.
Me: Ok, so maybe we should the start looking at what the administrations core objective is for the new terminal. Why does it want to come up with a 5th terminal?
JC: Why don’t you tell me what those objectives could be?
Me: Well there could be many (started jotting down options in parallel as I spoke): 1) increase the #Passengers served per year, 2) Reduce Flight Congestion if any, 3) Reduce the Time spent by flights on the airport, 4) Increase the airports revenue sources. Am I missing any other?
JC: No I think you have mentioned the major ones, let’s briefly talk about each of these. What do you mean by the revenue sources?
Me: Then we had a brief discussion about revenues from shopping areas etc. Then we came to Flight congestion – primary metric there was time spent in air waiting for permission to land etc. Then we came to #Passengers served per year which is more of a demand metric and effectively dependent on the number of flights we can serve per day. We also discussed Time spent by flights on the airport and split that into further two types – flight landing and takeoff time and turnaround at the gates. At the end of this brief digression it emerged that if Time spent by Flights on airport can go down, #Flights can go up and so can #passengers, at the same time congestion can go down as well. Me: (summarizing) So is it fair to say that the objective of building the 5thterminal is to achieve a higher capacity at the airport and our problem definition is to evaluate that claim?
JC: Yes, if you wish to frame it so - effectively our problem definition is if the 5th terminal adds to the capacity of the System? Me: Good just give me a minute to put my thoughts in place as to how we can go about evaluating this?
JC: Sure..
Me: Ok as I mentioned, what we need to decide what is the exact metric used for measuring Capacity? Then what is the current value of airport for that metric? Then what impact would the new terminal on the level of the metric? That should lead us to an answer.
JC: Ok, so what do you want to know
Me: How do airports measure their capacity?
JC: Two commonly used metrics are ATM – Air Traffic Movements, and MPPA – Million Passengers Per Annum. For our discussion lets focus on ATM.
Me: So just to clarify ATM refers to a single air traffic movement, therefore the turnaround of one flight i.e. landing and take off would count as one or two ATMs?
JC: Two Me: Ok, so do we know what is the current ATM?
JC: How would you find that out?
Me: well the annual ATM would be average Flights per day * 365 * 2 JC: Right lets keep the analysis to per day Me: Ok so what’s the current #daily flights?
JC: Am not sure why that is relevant here for answering our question but lets say 100.
Me: No, this would help us by how much will the Terminal increase the capacity. Ok so how many Bays would there be in the new terminal?
JC: 50
Me: And do we know on average one flight spends how much time at a Bay?
JC: 60 minutes
Me: Is that number in line with international standards or is there scope to impact that by way of terminal design or operations?
JC: No that’s about the best you can get ☺
Me: Fair is the distribution of traffic the same through out the day, or in other words is the demand pattern similar through out the day or is it varying with time? JC: Let’s assume that a bay is utilized effectively only for 12 hours in a day. Me: Ok so that means a given bay has the capacity of 2 ATMs per hour or 50 bays together would add 50 * 2 *12 or 1200 ATMs
JC: So should we add Terminal 5?
Me: Well yes from our analysis so far it does appear that adding the 5 Terminal could add upto 1200 ATMs per day and therefore one should go ahead.
JC: But what was our problem definition?
Me: (a little flustered) will the new terminal add to the capacity of the airport?
JC: yes of the entire system. So will it?
Me: (suddenly a light bulb strikes ☺, smiling) Ok I possibly get the drift of what you are trying to hint at, while the terminal has the potential to add so many ATMs, it is not necessary that the capacity of the entire system will be incremented by that number.
JC: Correct, and why that may be so? Me: Because the bottleneck in the system may be some where else.
JC: Right and so what defined a bottleneck Me: In any system the resource which has the lowest capacity and for which the implied demand is higher than its capacity constitutes a bottleneck, and also limits the throughput of the entire system.
JC: So what else could be a bottleneck in the system? Me: Runway JC: Ok and how can we find that out?
Me: We need to evaluate the utilization of the runway. How long does it typically take for a successive takeoff or landing on a given runway?
JC: How can we find that out?
Me: A mathematical way to do that would be to find the typical distance an aircraft travels while landing/takeoff and at what speed to find the time for which it uses the runway, another could be that there would be some minimum time set by the ATC/guidelines as the minimum inter flight time that would limit the number of planes that can use a runway.
JC: Right, let’s leave the mathematical way, what do you think the other number is?
Me: I don’t know for sure, but from my observation the time in India is something like 5-6 minutes between flight landings/takeoffs
JC: Ok those might be t he numbers in India, but Heathrow is a very busy airport and there the minimum time is 90 seconds.
Me: (quickly doing the numbers) 90 seconds implies 1 ATM every 1.5 minutes or a max of 40 ATMs per hour or a max of 40*24 = 960 ATMs per day per runway.
JC: Correct, so assuming there are 2 runways already what would now be the impact of adding the terminal 5 on the capacity of the system?
Me: Let’s assume that the current capacity of the terminals is X, then the current capacity of the system is min(960*2, X), and after the new terminal comes online the capacity of the system would become min(960*2, X + 1200). (I actually clearly wrote down the mathematical form) So depending on the value of X we will know how much the capacity of the system can improve by, and our decision should be driven by if that new number is enough to achieve our goal or not? For any positive value of X > 720 it seems we will only be able to go up to a max 1920 ATMs per day, without adding a new runway or decreasing inter ATM time for runway usage.
JC: Good I think we are done with the case. Do you have any quick questions for me?
Me: Sure why don’t you tell me a bit about the nature of work you have been doing and the kind of work BTO London does?
Tips: Listen carefully, especially the case question/problem framing Maintain a pleasant disposition, Do Smile Be ready to admit your mistakes and over sights Speak slowly (Especially when dealing with international interviewers) Write down stuff in your pad - write legibly Steps should be Think, Write, Read out & Discuss. Do revise the core concepts – just helps you with the right terminology in he interviews. On the interview day take each interview on by one – Never think about any that you have already given, and nor about any to come.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: NFK: McKinsey has done some work in innovation in the BPO and outsourced project management space..
...yes the Process 360 & Project 360 initiatives (brought in the fact that I had gone through the article. This also happens to be Noshir’s research)...
NFK: right.. they are operational excellence frameworks we have come up with to assess the best practices in the BPO and outsourced application domains.. so the question is if you were to develop a similar framework for excellence in the product development or product development outsourcing space what metrics do you think can be used to measure those?
Sure, may I just have a minute to think this over..
NFK: Ok..
(wrote down a few bullet points and then started).. We can think of different parameters/indicators at different levels – Individual/Company/Market/Users. The idea is to measure excellence in product development by not just focusing on the inputs, and the processes, but also by outputs both direct market facing and indirect outputs.We had a 1 minute discussion about each and at the end NFK seemed reasonably satisfied with the suggestions. NFK: Great, so we all know India has been known for outsourcing in the services and process space, what do you think ails the Product development? In particular I would say some companies like Adobe, Intel, TI and MS (only to a very limited extent though) have been successful at doing product development out of India, but not many others. What do these companies do differently? What do you think have been the critical success factors for them? (took a little time to ponder over things and really tried to dig into my experiences at Adobe an TI & what I thought was salient about the senior management there – therefore the lesson – do not ignore the Sr. Management talks & Company vision and strategy meetings that you used to have back in offices ☺) Well I think two overarching factors in the success of companies like Adobe and TI have been Vision of the founder & Execution, and I would want to break down Execution further into 1) Hiring & focus on employee growth, 2) Process & Discipline, 3) Sr. Management Commitment & push back, 4) Clear & continuous communication with the International parent. It might be a coincidence but in the case of both Adobe and TI, their India offices have been led by very strong and committed senior leadership teams who have grown from within the parent companies’ home operations. Therefore, one they knew what were the parent’s best practices, and two they had the ambition to set up something in India and make it succeed. Then once they had the go ahead they focused single mindedly on the execution.... NFK: What do you think are the key strategic challenges for a company like Infosys going forward? (again after a minute of pause and jotting down stuff) I think the three key challenges would be 1) How to remain competitive now that they are in the 4B+ league and starting to compete with the big league of IBMs, Accentures, EDS etc, not just in outsourcing but end to end IT management 2) How to manage such a huge work force and manage their skills 3) How to remain relevant in the face of changing business models specially the move to hosted & cloud computing and software as a service models. NFK: Let’s talk more about the 3rd one! (He immediately latched on to the cloud computing thing.. so this is an example of a hot word for a particular interviewer) We then had a lively discussion on what cloud computing and Software as a service and software on demand is etc., and what impact can it have for IT companies and their business models. NFK: Good. Any questions that you may have for us I asked on what the role definition of BTO was and how was it different from the high-tech practice of McKinsey?
Tips: If possible do read a bit about the interviewer’s background. You wouldn’t get to know your exact interviewers till shortly before the interview so you obviously can’t read about all, but try to read up about the senior people as well as people who will be from similar backgrounds as yourself. Excellent way to do that is to get on to company sites and browse for interview panelists profiles. In the case of McKinsey, try to get to McKinsey Quarterly, and then search for the interviewer and articles written by the person Be prepared to get the broad discussion cases even in the first round. Have a perspective on the industry of your choice and or background – again a good way to do that is to browse articles and industry reports. If you are able to go through even one consulting firms site reasonably you should be in good shape. Try to change the plane of your answers depending on the interviewers interests – when to give thr 50,000 Ft view and when to give the 100 ft view. In hind sight I think the corporate strategy course had a lot of articles about outsourcing and different models of comp advantage for multinational organizations and how to leverage offices in different geographies. Though I myself didn’t recall much of that article but then it just shows you never know which reading might come in handy where ☺Have questions that you want to ask ready
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: I started off saying that the problem statement looks like it’s a Go/NoGo decision we have to help make, so first we should establish the exact objective against which we would measure our decision. Once the objective is clear, we would need to establish our current performance against the objective, what is the target level we wish to achieve on that particular objective and then evaluate if the new terminal would help us achieve that or not. But before that I would like to clarify about exactly what is meant by a terminal here.
JC: Heathrow is one of the busiest airports and already has 4 different passenger terminals, now they want to add a 5th. A terminal provides the usual services like Bays for Boarding & disembarking, Check-In, Security, Lounges & shopping areas etc.
Me: Great, do we also have to look at the financial and operational viability of the terminal or that is not a concern.
JC: for the purpose of discussion let’s ignore that, those would not be the constraints.
Me: Ok, so maybe we should the start looking at what the administrations core objective is for the new terminal. Why does it want to come up with a 5th terminal?
JC: Why don’t you tell me what those objectives could be?
Me: Well there could be many (started jotting down options in parallel as I spoke): 1) increase the #Passengers served per year, 2) Reduce Flight Congestion if any, 3) Reduce the Time spent by flights on the airport, 4) Increase the airports revenue sources. Am I missing any other?
JC: No I think you have mentioned the major ones, let’s briefly talk about each of these. What do you mean by the revenue sources?
Me: Then we had a brief discussion about revenues from shopping areas etc. Then we came to Flight congestion – primary metric there was time spent in air waiting for permission to land etc. Then we came to #Passengers served per year which is more of a demand metric and effectively dependent on the number of flights we can serve per day. We also discussed Time spent by flights on the airport and split that into further two types – flight landing and takeoff time and turnaround at the gates. At the end of this brief digression it emerged that if Time spent by Flights on airport can go down, #Flights can go up and so can #passengers, at the same time congestion can go down as well. Me: (summarizing) So is it fair to say that the objective of building the 5thterminal is to achieve a higher capacity at the airport and our problem definition is to evaluate that claim?
JC: Yes, if you wish to frame it so - effectively our problem definition is if the 5th terminal adds to the capacity of the System? Me: Good just give me a minute to put my thoughts in place as to how we can go about evaluating this?
JC: Sure..
Me: Ok as I mentioned, what we need to decide what is the exact metric used for measuring Capacity? Then what is the current value of airport for that metric? Then what impact would the new terminal on the level of the metric? That should lead us to an answer.
JC: Ok, so what do you want to know
Me: How do airports measure their capacity?
JC: Two commonly used metrics are ATM – Air Traffic Movements, and MPPA – Million Passengers Per Annum. For our discussion lets focus on ATM.
Me: So just to clarify ATM refers to a single air traffic movement, therefore the turnaround of one flight i.e. landing and take off would count as one or two ATMs?
JC: Two Me: Ok, so do we know what is the current ATM?
JC: How would you find that out?
Me: well the annual ATM would be average Flights per day * 365 * 2 JC: Right lets keep the analysis to per day Me: Ok so what’s the current #daily flights?
JC: Am not sure why that is relevant here for answering our question but lets say 100.
Me: No, this would help us by how much will the Terminal increase the capacity. Ok so how many Bays would there be in the new terminal?
JC: 50
Me: And do we know on average one flight spends how much time at a Bay?
JC: 60 minutes
Me: Is that number in line with international standards or is there scope to impact that by way of terminal design or operations?
JC: No that’s about the best you can get ☺
Me: Fair is the distribution of traffic the same through out the day, or in other words is the demand pattern similar through out the day or is it varying with time? JC: Let’s assume that a bay is utilized effectively only for 12 hours in a day. Me: Ok so that means a given bay has the capacity of 2 ATMs per hour or 50 bays together would add 50 * 2 *12 or 1200 ATMs
JC: So should we add Terminal 5?
Me: Well yes from our analysis so far it does appear that adding the 5 Terminal could add upto 1200 ATMs per day and therefore one should go ahead.
JC: But what was our problem definition?
Me: (a little flustered) will the new terminal add to the capacity of the airport?
JC: yes of the entire system. So will it?
Me: (suddenly a light bulb strikes ☺, smiling) Ok I possibly get the drift of what you are trying to hint at, while the terminal has the potential to add so many ATMs, it is not necessary that the capacity of the entire system will be incremented by that number.
JC: Correct, and why that may be so? Me: Because the bottleneck in the system may be some where else.
JC: Right and so what defined a bottleneck Me: In any system the resource which has the lowest capacity and for which the implied demand is higher than its capacity constitutes a bottleneck, and also limits the throughput of the entire system.
JC: So what else could be a bottleneck in the system? Me: Runway JC: Ok and how can we find that out?
Me: We need to evaluate the utilization of the runway. How long does it typically take for a successive takeoff or landing on a given runway?
JC: How can we find that out?
Me: A mathematical way to do that would be to find the typical distance an aircraft travels while landing/takeoff and at what speed to find the time for which it uses the runway, another could be that there would be some minimum time set by the ATC/guidelines as the minimum inter flight time that would limit the number of planes that can use a runway.
JC: Right, let’s leave the mathematical way, what do you think the other number is?
Me: I don’t know for sure, but from my observation the time in India is something like 5-6 minutes between flight landings/takeoffs
JC: Ok those might be t he numbers in India, but Heathrow is a very busy airport and there the minimum time is 90 seconds.
Me: (quickly doing the numbers) 90 seconds implies 1 ATM every 1.5 minutes or a max of 40 ATMs per hour or a max of 40*24 = 960 ATMs per day per runway.
JC: Correct, so assuming there are 2 runways already what would now be the impact of adding the terminal 5 on the capacity of the system?
Me: Let’s assume that the current capacity of the terminals is X, then the current capacity of the system is min(960*2, X), and after the new terminal comes online the capacity of the system would become min(960*2, X + 1200). (I actually clearly wrote down the mathematical form) So depending on the value of X we will know how much the capacity of the system can improve by, and our decision should be driven by if that new number is enough to achieve our goal or not? For any positive value of X > 720 it seems we will only be able to go up to a max 1920 ATMs per day, without adding a new runway or decreasing inter ATM time for runway usage.
JC: Good I think we are done with the case. Do you have any quick questions for me?
Me: Sure why don’t you tell me a bit about the nature of work you have been doing and the kind of work BTO London does?
Tips: Listen carefully, especially the case question/problem framing Maintain a pleasant disposition, Do Smile Be ready to admit your mistakes and over sights Speak slowly (Especially when dealing with international interviewers) Write down stuff in your pad - write legibly Steps should be Think, Write, Read out & Discuss. Do revise the core concepts – just helps you with the right terminology in he interviews. On the interview day take each interview on by one – Never think about any that you have already given, and nor about any to come.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: NFK: McKinsey has done some work in innovation in the BPO and outsourced project management space..
NFK: right.. they are operational excellence frameworks we have come up with to assess the best practices in the BPO and outsourced application domains.. so the question is if you were to develop a similar framework for excellence in the product development or product development outsourcing space what metrics do you think can be used to measure those?
NFK: Ok..
Tips: If possible do read a bit about the interviewer’s background. You wouldn’t get to know your exact interviewers till shortly before the interview so you obviously can’t read about all, but try to read up about the senior people as well as people who will be from similar backgrounds as yourself. Excellent way to do that is to get on to company sites and browse for interview panelists profiles. In the case of McKinsey, try to get to McKinsey Quarterly, and then search for the interviewer and articles written by the person Be prepared to get the broad discussion cases even in the first round. Have a perspective on the industry of your choice and or background – again a good way to do that is to browse articles and industry reports. If you are able to go through even one consulting firms site reasonably you should be in good shape. Try to change the plane of your answers depending on the interviewers interests – when to give thr 50,000 Ft view and when to give the 100 ft view. In hind sight I think the corporate strategy course had a lot of articles about outsourcing and different models of comp advantage for multinational organizations and how to leverage offices in different geographies. Though I myself didn’t recall much of that article but then it just shows you never know which reading might come in handy where ☺Have questions that you want to ask ready
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
I applied via Walk-in
1 Interview Round
Interview Questions
- Q1. An incumbent retail bank’s profits had been hit by competition as the competition had started building ATMs. They wanted to develop an ATM strategy.
- Q2. The client is a insurance company that offers life insurance to its customers through a sales force. It wants to know whether it can also offer product insuranc...read more
- Q3. There was a steel making company on the west coast (say Surat) that wanted to determine of it should start a new plant in West Bengal
Interview Preparation Tips
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: First thing to ask is why are they being hit if others are building ATMS? He answered that the client does not have ATMs while now competition does. This is making people shift their bank accounts form us to the competition. Then I asked him what ATM strategy mean in this context? He quizzed me back as to what I think it meant. To which, I replied that there could be the following sub questions we could be asking: ( I used the 4W and one H way of dealing with vague questions!) 1. Where we want to establish the ATMs? 2. What technology /interface we want to use? 3. What is the time frame of the ATM roll out? 4. How do we plan to fund this roll out? 5. To whom do we cater to through this ? I told him that we needed to prioritize these questions according to their importance in order to begin building the strategy. He told me that where to establish was the main question to answer. I began by asking him whether we were looking at specific locations or just geographies. He told me that we were looking at both. Hence, I said that I would start with narrowing down to specific geographies and then talk about specific locations in those geographies. He also told me that we wanted to roll out as soon as possible. I asked him where all we are located geographically to which he responded that we had a pan India presence. With this, I said that I would first look at the factors that affect the choice of a geography. Since the best strategy would be to attract the maximum customers per new ATM– I listed the following: 1. Income level of customers ( Assumption: Since ATMs would be used by people who had more money) 2. Density of customers (Assumption: Only customers would use our ATM service) I asked him if these factors covered or was there something that I was missing? He said this was fine but what I meant by geographies. I specified that what would be looking at is City/town wise data. He also asked me what would be the cut off level of income that I would be looking at? He said that lets assume that with this info we located the Mumbai region to be the highest on the priority list. Now he wanted to know how I would decide on a location. I said I would again look at data inside Mumbai to again prioritise areas with the above two factors.He asked me if there was anything else I would like to look at? He asked me to come out of frameworks and think about the original question. I told him that as per my understanding the locations should be one with high footfalls specifically offices, markets and hospitals etc. He asked me how I would find out where all to put ? All hospitals? Remember we need to roll out as soon as possible.. Finally he told me we could look at ATM locations of competitors and atleast put an ATM wherever they are located.
Tips: Make sure that the personal interview goes well as it sets the btone for the case as well.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Firstly, I clarified what product insurance meant. It was more to satisfy my curiosity and to better understand the context. He told me that it was the insurance on consumer products like electrical goods etc. I said I would first like to understand the whole value chain to better understand the role of the sales force before laying down my approach. He said there was nothing much to it as basically the company was an intermediary between an bank and the customer. It just sent out the sales force and got customers. I asked him what exactly was the structure of the products. He said although it was not relevant to the discussion, I could assume that the premiums were paid each year and the policy lasted for a fixed time (say 30 years). I now asked him who the customer was and how did the salesperson approach the customer. He said that the customer was anyone on the street (think of LIC). Then I asked him that I would like to analyse the question in two ways, qualitative and quantitative. On the quantitative side, I would like to see whether the sales force had the time to devote for the new product. On the qualitative side I would like to see whether they had the skills and knowledge of these products. To answer the first question, we analysed the total idle time per sales person. Then, we would have to see how selling an additional product would affect the time the sales person spends with the customer. This would then determine if the sales person could cover the same number of customers or would that number drop. In the latter scenario, I told him that we would have to see what the tradeoffs were and then decide whether we would want to target lesser number of customers who would have higher value in terms of buying the two products. On the qualitative side, we looked at what capabilities were required for selling the new products. We classified these as already present and new. We found that most of the capabilities like customer lists, getting time from customers to make a call, general selling expertise was already there. What was needed was product information and knowledge. This we concluded could be built through training. He asked me if I was missing something. After a quick summary, I realized that I had not touched the new “capability” of additional budget for higher salaries. (sinece the sales persons were going to be spending their idle time as well, and earning more for the company, they would have to be compensated additionally. We tried to toy with some pay out (pay versus policies sold per quarter) to see what could work best I concluded (we did some number crunching on idle hours etc) that we could use the same sales force but mentioned the additional capabilities like training and revised pay outs.
Tips: On the final day, try and keep your energy levels up as much as possible. One good idea is to carry some energy food (granola bars, chocolate bars or even fruit juice or glucose).
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: First, I clarified some background information like if there were any more steel plants that the company owned? He said no there were none. Then I asked him at what capacity was the steel plant running. He said it was nowhere close to 100%. I asked him how was our profs in the last few years? He said that they had declined. Then, I began the revenue and cost route. It turned out that revenues had not declined as quantity and price (steel is a commodity so they cant do anything with price anyway) had stayed the same. In costs however, after going through all the components, I found that the raw material costs had increased. The main raw material is iron ore, and that is where the problem was. Then I asked him if we knew why the costs for iron ore had increased. He told me that the iron ore mines were located in West Bengal and there had been some regulation that made it more expensive to transport steel out of the state. Then it started making sense to put up a plant in WB.! But I though not to jump to conclusions and we deliberated more. I told him that there were four options available to us.—run only one of the two lpants, run both or shut both. (helps to be MECE!) I sad that in order to figure out what we should do , we should look at the NPV of all four options. Then we went on to do some calculations into which I will not get into here. Finally, as per our discussions it turned out that we should keep both the plants running. We could purchase iron ore cheaper due to presence of a plant in WB but at the same time it would become cheaper to produce steal at Surat. Since there was a demand shortage in this industry we could increase production in total.
Tips: Do read the profiles of the interviewers before the D day. It helps in making conversation once you are in front of them. And you could also prepare for questions on your previous work experience that is similar to theirs. Also it is important to ask why a certain situation is in the way it is. This sometimes gives important leads into the case. Synthesis should be short ant to the point. Even in the middle of the discussion, if you are asked to give your opinion on something in the case, it should be firm and backed by sound logic.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
Experience: First thing to ask is why are they being hit if others are building ATMS? He answered that the client does not have ATMs while now competition does. This is making people shift their bank accounts form us to the competition. Then I asked him what ATM strategy mean in this context? He quizzed me back as to what I think it meant. To which, I replied that there could be the following sub questions we could be asking: ( I used the 4W and one H way of dealing with vague questions!) 1. Where we want to establish the ATMs? 2. What technology /interface we want to use? 3. What is the time frame of the ATM roll out? 4. How do we plan to fund this roll out? 5. To whom do we cater to through this ? I told him that we needed to prioritize these questions according to their importance in order to begin building the strategy. He told me that where to establish was the main question to answer. I began by asking him whether we were looking at specific locations or just geographies. He told me that we were looking at both. Hence, I said that I would start with narrowing down to specific geographies and then talk about specific locations in those geographies. He also told me that we wanted to roll out as soon as possible. I asked him where all we are located geographically to which he responded that we had a pan India presence. With this, I said that I would first look at the factors that affect the choice of a geography. Since the best strategy would be to attract the maximum customers per new ATM– I listed the following: 1. Income level of customers ( Assumption: Since ATMs would be used by people who had more money) 2. Density of customers (Assumption: Only customers would use our ATM service) I asked him if these factors covered or was there something that I was missing? He said this was fine but what I meant by geographies. I specified that what would be looking at is City/town wise data. He also asked me what would be the cut off level of income that I would be looking at? He said that lets assume that with this info we located the Mumbai region to be the highest on the priority list. Now he wanted to know how I would decide on a location. I said I would again look at data inside Mumbai to again prioritise areas with the above two factors.He asked me if there was anything else I would like to look at? He asked me to come out of frameworks and think about the original question. I told him that as per my understanding the locations should be one with high footfalls specifically offices, markets and hospitals etc. He asked me how I would find out where all to put ? All hospitals? Remember we need to roll out as soon as possible.. Finally he told me we could look at ATM locations of competitors and atleast put an ATM wherever they are located.
Tips: Make sure that the personal interview goes well as it sets the btone for the case as well.
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Firstly, I clarified what product insurance meant. It was more to satisfy my curiosity and to better understand the context. He told me that it was the insurance on consumer products like electrical goods etc. I said I would first like to understand the whole value chain to better understand the role of the sales force before laying down my approach. He said there was nothing much to it as basically the company was an intermediary between an bank and the customer. It just sent out the sales force and got customers. I asked him what exactly was the structure of the products. He said although it was not relevant to the discussion, I could assume that the premiums were paid each year and the policy lasted for a fixed time (say 30 years). I now asked him who the customer was and how did the salesperson approach the customer. He said that the customer was anyone on the street (think of LIC). Then I asked him that I would like to analyse the question in two ways, qualitative and quantitative. On the quantitative side, I would like to see whether the sales force had the time to devote for the new product. On the qualitative side I would like to see whether they had the skills and knowledge of these products. To answer the first question, we analysed the total idle time per sales person. Then, we would have to see how selling an additional product would affect the time the sales person spends with the customer. This would then determine if the sales person could cover the same number of customers or would that number drop. In the latter scenario, I told him that we would have to see what the tradeoffs were and then decide whether we would want to target lesser number of customers who would have higher value in terms of buying the two products. On the qualitative side, we looked at what capabilities were required for selling the new products. We classified these as already present and new. We found that most of the capabilities like customer lists, getting time from customers to make a call, general selling expertise was already there. What was needed was product information and knowledge. This we concluded could be built through training. He asked me if I was missing something. After a quick summary, I realized that I had not touched the new “capability” of additional budget for higher salaries. (sinece the sales persons were going to be spending their idle time as well, and earning more for the company, they would have to be compensated additionally. We tried to toy with some pay out (pay versus policies sold per quarter) to see what could work best I concluded (we did some number crunching on idle hours etc) that we could use the same sales force but mentioned the additional capabilities like training and revised pay outs.
Tips: On the final day, try and keep your energy levels up as much as possible. One good idea is to carry some energy food (granola bars, chocolate bars or even fruit juice or glucose).
Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: First, I clarified some background information like if there were any more steel plants that the company owned? He said no there were none. Then I asked him at what capacity was the steel plant running. He said it was nowhere close to 100%. I asked him how was our profs in the last few years? He said that they had declined. Then, I began the revenue and cost route. It turned out that revenues had not declined as quantity and price (steel is a commodity so they cant do anything with price anyway) had stayed the same. In costs however, after going through all the components, I found that the raw material costs had increased. The main raw material is iron ore, and that is where the problem was. Then I asked him if we knew why the costs for iron ore had increased. He told me that the iron ore mines were located in West Bengal and there had been some regulation that made it more expensive to transport steel out of the state. Then it started making sense to put up a plant in WB.! But I though not to jump to conclusions and we deliberated more. I told him that there were four options available to us.—run only one of the two lpants, run both or shut both. (helps to be MECE!) I sad that in order to figure out what we should do , we should look at the NPV of all four options. Then we went on to do some calculations into which I will not get into here. Finally, as per our discussions it turned out that we should keep both the plants running. We could purchase iron ore cheaper due to presence of a plant in WB but at the same time it would become cheaper to produce steal at Surat. Since there was a demand shortage in this industry we could increase production in total.
Tips: Do read the profiles of the interviewers before the D day. It helps in making conversation once you are in front of them. And you could also prepare for questions on your previous work experience that is similar to theirs. Also it is important to ask why a certain situation is in the way it is. This sometimes gives important leads into the case. Synthesis should be short ant to the point. Even in the middle of the discussion, if you are asked to give your opinion on something in the case, it should be firm and backed by sound logic.
Skills: Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)
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