Gerson Lehrman Group Senior Associate Interview Questions and Answers

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Prepare well before going for the interview.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Client is a PSU Bank. Currently the account opening process takes between 60 minutes- starting from the time he comes to clerk counter to the time customer leaves with Passbook, Cheque-book and account number. How will you cut it down to < 10 minutes and still deliver all the 3. Drew a complicated process map.

Basic facts given at start of case:
Current process (60 minutes) : The clerk interacts with customer to provide him the account opening form, does the first round scrutiny, does the KYC, sends form to officer for approval, officer approves, clerk opens account & creates account number & passbook, sends to officer to approval , officer approves, clerk creates the cheque book, sends to officer to approval , officer approves. Clerk hands over the Account Number, Pass book and cheque book to customer.

Facts shared ( shared by Nigel only if you ask)
• Customer is issued form and he submits a filled up form to clerk = 15 minutes
• Scrutiny of form = 10 minutes
• KYC takes 5 minutes
• Each approval loop with officer takes – 10 minutes ( 3 loops=30mins)
• Approval cannot be done by Clerk as per union rules

Key Issues :
Methodologies recommended
a. Break down the process into various smaller steps. Do a time work-motion study to understand the component steps. Then do a Pareto (80/20) and attach the areas which consume the most time.
b. Break down the process into various smaller steps. Classify each step as
1. Adds Value to Customer from a/c opening perspective
2. Non Value Add – can be minimized, not eliminated
3. Non Value Add – can be eliminated.

By experience, 80% of the time is Non Value add ( 2&3). Do a Pareto within that and work out the various ways of reducing time.
Solutions
1. I had recommended an Internet based system where major customer information and checks would happen online and only a mandatory KYC (Know Your Customer) process would take place onsite.
2. McKinsey had (a) Combined the jobs of the clericals and officers (b) Used Pre-printed blank welcome kits with cheque books, pass books & account numbers. (c) Only KYC was done onsite (RBI regulations)..account names were incorporated subject to KYC confirmation.

Ramifications
1. Banking Unions (PSU): How will they react to job rationalisation/ eliminating clerical roles?
2. If you combine the roles (clerk & officer) and make the officer do it…wont your salary bill increase…since the initial clerk to officer ratio (5:1) is now (0:5). What emerged is that in most PSUs, experienced clerks earn similar or more to officers. Hence not much of wage impact.
Tips: 1. Stay Confident & Cool.
2. Take control of the Case discussion. If the interviewer presents information in a user-unfriendly or non standard manner, ask him to do it in the way you want to or ask him to help you out in mapping the information in your framework.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Client is a no 1 boiler manufacturer in India. His profit margins are at 11% while industry expectations are at 15%. Help him out in reaching this target.

Tried to evaluate product mix, profitability etc. – Client makes a wide span of products. But interviewer was not interested in specifics. Wanted me to identify the key cost & revenue drivers.

Costs
1. Are we sourcing Raw material effectively & cheaply? Can we go to china etc?
2. Can we re-evaluate Make vs Buy option for all products in the Bill of Material.
3. Are our products over- designed? Do they consume more raw material than competition.
4. Do we have higher fixed costs- new investments, labour<>variable costs?
5. Do we have economies of scale for all products, parts etc?

Was told to identify sources of revenue to increase margins
1. Change product mix
2. Evaluate newer- more profitable markets
3. Brand your own products (the client is a manufacturer for others, not seller) -> refer to brand and market creation
costs.
4. Service Business – Repair, Spares & Consumables ( Missed this out completely- was finally hinted by interviewer)

Conclusion: Services were neglected by client. Potential revenue source. Client has a large installed base of customers. So he can do this business better, build service model and capabilities.

Options
1. Sell Maintenance contracts with boilers
2. target installed base of boilers

I had added that he can widen his base by targeting all brands of boilers (assuming differences were not significant). Service is a high margin business since operations at units are hampered leading to production losses in the event of boiler failure.
Tips: 1. Stay Confident & Cool even if you miss the above fact. Move on and build on it. Relate the case or elements of it with work and
discuss it.
2. Show Energy during the interview!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case 1
Client is a music company ( RPG-Saregama). It was not making money.

Revenue side- affected by Music piracy and music channels. They affected price and sales negatively

Cost Side – Producers still sold music rights at higher prices. Since music producers are few- their consolidation hurt the music
industry bad.

Additional facts : All big banners like Yashraj films etc end up making losses for the company due to high music right costs.
Typical successes / margins have been in low (B/C segments with films like Murder etc)

Analysis
Structured case as Customers, Suppliers and Competition.
Option1 – Increase revenues
While analyzing customers- not much information available- no segments -> based on discussion, generated multiple sources of revenues for music industry
a. CD/Cassettes
b. Radio / TV rights – do not provide full song clips to channels. Only teasers. If song is a hit, channels would ask for it and thus can pay for it.
c. Internet- Streaming rights
d. I-pod type devices
e. Ring tones

Told to explore the cost options in details.
Option2 – Decrease costs
Me :Proposed Risk sharing / royalty based mechanisms.
NK : All the big banners do not agree to it
Me : But we can get the smaller producers to agree… (NK agreed that it can be explored)
NK: Why do these companies deal with big producers when they make losses? What is important in the buyer industry structure

After some discussions…arrive at the structure – Big producers (A type) and Small Producers (B&C types)

Possible reasons I could come up with include-
Me: Possible reasons can include
a. Long term relationship in the industry
b. A large number of smaller successes subsidizing the losses from larger ones
c. Association of music companies with big producers offers
them clout in the industry to deal with smaller producers…they can thus negotiate better deals with B&C type producers.
NK : Yes.… the big banners are like loss leaders.... they help music companies in getting better deals from smaller producers. And also, the industry is very relationship driven…some of the deals are purely based on established long working relationships.

Case 2 :
Your client is Tata Motors. The Direct material cost of Tata Indica is ₹150,000. The basic design is same for the 1 lakh car. How can you bring the cost down to ₹75000…outline the basic levers.
Structured it into 4 areas
a. Rationalize the vendor base to get economies of scale and scope.
b. Rationalize parts across platforms of vehicles to get further economies.
c. Rationalize design – Certain parts might be over designed or inefficiently designed leading to increased costs on account of excess materials or additional processing (labour, overhead etc)
d. Evaluate every part from a Make or Buy perspective. This would enable focus on core areas and help gain cost advantage in sourcing items like Tyres, O Rings, Nuts-Bolts etc.

After that he wanted to do a numbers/ quant check on me…so the example was extended to calculate certain % values.
Tips: 1. Prioritize issues for discussions with the interviewer.
2. Be prepared for anything!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case
Client is a confectionery manufacturer making chocolate bars. In the 1980’s it had a mfg base in UK. However, in early 90s it set up another facility in France. During mid 90’s the business faced decline in revenues and profitability. What could be the reasons / hypothesis and what would you recommend?

Enquired about the basic details
a. Product mix – single chocolate bar
b. Supply- demand check -> Demand has been declining. No problems in supply side.

Discussed the Revenue- Cost equation.

Revenue can go down by the following
a. Competition introducing newer/ better/cheaper products
b. Changing customer behavior- more health conscious people/ availability of substitutes/ imports etc
c. Any changes done to product flavour/ taste etc..which can turn off customers.
Cost :
Discussed the standard Fixed and Variable costs. Was asked to break it down further.
Variable – Raw Materials, Distribution etc
Fixed – Depreciation, Capacity Utilization etc
a. Fixed Costs – New plant – higher depreciation costs. + Degree of capacity utilization ( this was reason 1)
UK – mfg capacity = 15 mn units / year
Actual production = 700,000 units per month approx 55% capacity utilization
France – mfg capacity = 20 mn units / year
Actual production = 650,000 units per month approx 39% capacity utilization.
These numbers were generally thrown around to evaluate my comfort with numbers.
Interviewer himself jumps to part (b)
b.Variable Costs
Fact 1 Raw material costs are 25% of Sale price vs 20% for competition
1/ Asked Oliver on the supplier base (local, import & no of suppliers) and amounts sourced. Decreased revenues could have decreased our sourcing economies. OK with this…wanted more reasons….
2/ Checked if both were importing same quality of material. We could be using better quality products compared to competition.
3/ Checked if we hedged these items while procuring…(Key Point
2) Competition was obviously doing this better and saving costs.
Fact 2 Our Distribution costs are 15% of sale price vs competition 10%

Key differentiators could be…
We have our own trucks ..competition uses 3rd party suppliers
1. More costs on account of people, fixed costs of trucks + empty trucks coming back (Low utilization)
2. We send part loads…competition does not worry since his transporters can optimize on truck load thru other customers.
c. General calculations

Another round of quant check. Thrown some numbers to calculate cost per unit of the 2 factories (UK & France )
Each unit has 200 employees x 40 hrs/week x 50 wks /yr
UK wages = $ 15/ hour
France Wages = $ 20 / hour
After this told to calculate profitability of each unit at both locations given Raw material = 25% of sale price ($ 2/unit).
Total numbers check

Recommendations
1. Rationalize the production quantities at each unit - would depend on the overall inward and outward transportation costs also..apart from capacity utilization. (Excess transport costs in serving new markets would need to be checked for)
2. Use excess capacity for producing 3rd party chocolates. Also evaluate if factory can be re-tooled / flexible to manufacture other products apart from chocolate.
3. Shut down 1 plant. –
a. See how efficient it would be operationally. No backup/excess capacity would then be available as a strategic/contingency resource.
b. Also potential trouble on the political front – example if French unit was shut down, there could be a political fallout as well as French customers might boycott your products. (cited Mittal-Arcelor )
c. Union issues- long term dispute- can dilute brand value of business.
Tips: Be prepared for all sorts of numbers/calculations…take time out in case there are huge calculations…I did that…small calculations
were done verbally.

Interviewer also wanted to check if I could come up with all types of hypothesis on various facts. Be prepared to think creatively and use your common sense to remove non relevant stuff.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Client manufactures auto forgings @ 200 per day. Increase it to 400 per day… How?

Enquired if market demand was justified to double output…Market would be able to accommodate 200 additional units.

Wanted me to identify key levers. After a lot of round-about and false steps…learnt that current capacity utilization was 33% only!!
Interviewer wanted a list of things to check …this is what I discussed..
a. Maintenance time records– Breakdown & Planned
b. Setup/ Changeover times on a/c of high product variety
c. Non availability of Material
d. Non availability of Labour – absence/ unmanned breaks
e. Shut down due to utility failures (electricity etc)
f. Quality related losses.
Tips: Be prepared to be grilled.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This seemed a test of whether I could do hypothesis and do some basic math.
Client is a Financial planning & management software company. 3 product lines + 1 service line.
1. Large enterprises – highly customized, large business customers, direct sales force used, consultants needed, sold at CEO/CIO level.
2. SMEs – industry specific package- sold thru dealers/ distributors etc to anyone who wants to buy
3. Individual customers thru regular retail channels.
4. IT consulting – pre/ post support

Question 1: Revenues are declining. What hypothesis would you generate to identify sources of decline…
g. Along segments mentioned above
h. Geographical segments
i. Industries
j. Existing vs New Customers

Question 2: Assume Enterprise segment is losing revenue. What hypothesis can you generate …(asked to generate 15…came to 11) Just think out aloud and discuss ..some of the hypothesis discussed were
d. Changes in regulations
e. M&A in the industry..customers hesitate to buy.
f. Customers think a better product is in the wings and don’tbuy the existing one.
g. New product is complicated …has greater cost and training needs.
h. Sales force not qualified etc.
Question 3: Suppose you find out that the sales force has been spending more time selling simpler product to SME than attend larger customers…enterprise product needs greater effort. wWat would you do?
1. Track sales and channels actively
2. Change incentive structure…
What actions would you take and implications of those.
Tips: Think out loud with the interviewer.

Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)