Fortune Business Insights Senior Research Associate Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Behavioural Interview
Experience: After the 4th round, they told me that they were making me an offer, and that was a big moment of relief for me.

General Tips: Prepare well for the GDs’ and interview because, a good CV only takes you to the interview and becomes irrelevant after that. Only preparation matters in selection. Also, prioritize your sectors based on your interest, and profile. Be realistic and practical while doing this. Also, If possible, keep one or two options ready beforehand (Ph.D., MBA, civil services, startup/family business) in case you are not able to crack a good job as it prevents you from getting panic. Also, if you are shortlisted in multiple companies in a single slot, do take a friend with you to manage everything. Never be overconfident if you have a very good CV. There have been various instances where many so-called high profile people have struggled with placements due to lack of preparation. Also, do not waste your time preparing for all the sectors, as you won’t be able to become a master in any of them.
Skills:
College Name: IIT Kanpur

Round: Test
Experience: Adaptive DI test. Level of difficulty less than CAT.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This is a very simple case interview. The case was as follows: Client is a micro-lender, they loan funds from a big bank @ 6% SI and loan out the money to farmers at 10% and 20% SI. The segmentation is 60% and 40% respectively. Calculate profit/customer. What is the profit if 2% customers default (uniformly from both segments) on the loan? (Ans: loss incurred)
Tips: This is a very simple round, just stick to the essentials of keeping your structure + calculations neat & clean. Communicate well. You'll get through.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case: We are a telecom company, planning to launch a new subscription plan. Decide if we should go ahead or not. The plan is as follows: We charge the customers $0.99 for the first 20 minutes and $0.08/minute thereafter. The cost incurred by the company is $0.07/minute. Should we go ahead with the plan?
You will be asked to draw a graph between Profit and minutes spent on a call. To come to a decision you might ask the interviewer for some more data like the distribution or the average time spent by a customer on a call. But none of this is information can be used to decide if we should go ahead with the plan. Unless you have a distribution of percentage of customers vs time spent on an avg call, you can not decide the fate of the plan.
On our campus, almost everybody answered a yes(go ahead) or a no for the plan and still got rejected. I think the actual answer is "None of the above. With the present information nobody can predict if the plan will be profitable in the long run.
Please do not say we can use historical data to come to a conclusion, I did, the question he then posed to me is can we really use historical data to predict the usage pattern of this plan by our customers?? The answer is no, we can not use historical data, as the customers will have an incentive to speak for close to 20 minutes per call.
I also looked at the problem from a customers point of view to check if a customer has an incentive to pick this plan over the others. I asked for the cheapest plan/s out in the market currently, so the interviewer told me that the cheapest plan cost the customer $0.08/minute.
After getting this data, I looked at intersection of the time band at which it becomes cheaper for the customer to pick our plan over the 8 cents plan and the time band which is profitable for us.
I came to the conclusion that the band is very narrow to be profitable and that I do not think that it will generate net profits. So we should not go ahead with the plan.
I assumed that there wont be a large chunk of customers in the above mentioned time band. This is what I think my mistake was.
I believe there is no way of definitely saying whether we should go ahead or not. Hence the answer must be Cant be Determined.
FYI: I also suggested him to launch it in a small region/zone so as to figure out the distribution of customers. No good.

Skills:
College Name: IIT Kanpur
Motivation: Chill out workplace. No pressure of work. But no future either :P wont land you in a great B-school. This is just an office opened by a recently grown American company. They have an office in India just to show the Investors that they plan on expanding and are investing in India and Philippines. I don't think the real work happens here. This might sound like a rant, but you should go ahead and prepare for this company. Its one of the best options straight out of college. Or to settle down or if you like to chill a lot....

Round: Test
Experience: The test basically involved solving 15 Data interpretation questions. The test was pretty easy, and hence accuracy was very important to qualify for the next round.
Tips: Solving DI questions from any CAT practice book will be more than enough. The actual questions in the test are much easier. Just be read the question carefully and you will be able to solve it.
Total Questions: 15

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Initially the interviewer tests your basically conceptual knowledge regarding the cost and revenue streams for a loan and then expects you to calculate the average profit given the required data. This was a pretty small interview lasting only about 10-12 minutes or so.
Tips: Keep conversing with the interviewer and clarify any doubts. Do not mess up with the calculation.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Again, the interviewer tests your basic understanding regarding making a decision to select between two marketing schemes. Then, after being provided relevant information, you are expected to make an informed decision, do the break-even analysis and plot a graph.
Tips: You need to show the interviewer your grasp of business concepts. A good knowledge about economics and a business acumen helps. The math is easy, just be careful not to mess it up. Also, keep conversing with the interviewer and help him understand your line of thinking, this would enable him to assist you and get you on the right path.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: You are expected to do the math to assess the profitability of an ATM and qualitatively discuss the factors to be considered while setting up a new ATM.
Tips: Again, think aloud and use your common sense if ever you feel that you do not know an answer. But mainly be confident.

Round: Behavioural Interview
Experience: The interviewer is very friendly and it is more of a chat than an interview. Also, they will get into the specifics of the example you provide just to understand the situation better and to know how you handled the situation.
Tips: Be well prepared with all the general HR and behavioral questions and think about specific examples that you would like to bring up.

General Tips: To sum it up, more than anything, just be confident.
Skill Tips: If you are selected for the interview, chances are that you already have the necessary math skills to succeed. Remember, the only things which are going to get you through are confidence, alertness and business acumen.
Skills: Confidence, Communication, Basic Mathematics
College Name: IIT Bombay

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Resume Shortlist was strictly done on the basis of CGPA ! All candidates with CGPA 7.0 and above were shortlisted for the test.

Round: Test
Experience: A total of 30 questions were given to completed in a short span of 35 minutes. A set of 5-6 questions were based on a set of three graphs (generally line chart, pie chart, bar graph). Questions were based on simple calculations and test was aimed at keeping a check on accuracy and speed of the candidate
Tips: Practice a few Data Interpretation exercise to understand the graphs easily.
Duration: 35 minutes
Total Questions: 30

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The case was about Market entry for a Money Lender in a village. The case included identification of potential customer segment, revenue streams. Then there was some data provided regarding the interest and various kind of loan models that would be used by the lender. I was then asked to work on the profitability. This case was more on the qualitative side.
Tips: - Keep communicating with the interviewer. Involve him in the case solving process.
- If at any point of time, you are unsure about the approach you are following, ask the interviewer.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The case was about a credit card company who uses various kind of marketing strategies (mail, calls etc) for customer acquisition. The interviewer started with the discussion on the marketing techniques. The data included costs, acquisition rate, and the average profits. I was asked to calculate the break even point.
The case was numerical and easy to crack once the data was provided.


Tips: - Calculate accurately. Never answer wrong because of the speed.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The case was about a bank who was observing a higher delinquency rate and fraud. The data provided was about loss per customer, average revenue etc. The case typically numerical after some discussion on strategy about reducing fraud.


Skills: Speed, Accuracy, Ability To Analyse
Duration: 2
College Name: IIT Kharagpur
Motivation: Good Perks, Big Brand.

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - System Design.