Kearney Senior Graphic Designer Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: a) I put a lot of thought into it. A LOT. I started top-down. In a sense, I always knew I was gonna target only 2 types of companies: Consulting and Banking. So made my 2 resumes accordingly. Basically I conveyed what needed to be conveyed. For this, I talked to a lot of people in Oct/Nov and researched a bit from previous editions of BePrepared. Being a DD helped. And then I spent a lot of time thinking how best to convey it. For example, I knew that my success in strategy competitions was crucial for Consulting Firms, hence I put those above my projects/extracurrics. b) Sent it to many people for feedback. Some of the points were accepted, some not. Its always our call in the end. But more often than not, external views make up the MOST important part of Resume Making. Advice: Make a rough copy first and then start thinking. If you think without it, it will take up a lot of time. DON’T LIE – IT WONT HELP YOU IN THE INTERVIEW. Be very serious in your resume. Avoid any kind of humor. Also don’t try to squeeze in too much.. you wont be coherent. Know what you want to convey and convey exactly that. At the end of it.. Look at your resume page by page. And see what it conveys at a VERY MACRO level. For ex: In my resume, Page 1 conveyed Decent Acads with Success in Strategy Competitions and Page 2 conveyed A lot of positions of responsibility with decent results and excellence in dramatics. I attended some of PPTs. Basically, from the beginning my focus was only on Consulting and Banking companies. In all I attended about 6 PPTs. But they do help. I know some of them are more than 90 minutes long. But its worth it in the end. There are some 5-6 important lines in every PPT and a wasted 90 minutes is worth those lines. Do catch the opportunity to talk to the presenters after the PPT informally. I found it to be quite valuable. Ofcourse, this meant less pizza consumed by me. But that’s okay.

Round: Interview
Experience: 2+ 2 rounds of interview after resume short-listing. Total 22, After 2 rounds: 6 Final Offer: 3 (out of which 2 accepted). My McK interviews were scheduled immediately after my 2 BCG interviews. So I was not tense going into them. Round 1: It started off with general HR. Which is how all interviews typically are. This is to make the interviewee comfortable. I was asked about my dramatics and my economics project. He was looking for short, precise answers. Then came the case: I was asked my sport of preference. I said Football. He asked me to Guesstimate (Guess + Estimate) the number of footballs in Europe. (For those of you who are not familiar with guesstimates: It basically involves coming to a number logically. You can either approach it from the supply side (involves estimating the total capacity and multiplying with a capacity utilization kind of a thing.) or the demand side (estimating the number of users and then multiplying by the frequency of use). I told him about how I can approach from the demand and the supply side. I said I would like to use the demand side as I thought it was easier. He asked me to instead use the supply side. This came as a shock as I had hardly practiced anything from the supply side (Lesson: Be prepared to think about novel problems – which you have never practiced). I made a hash of this one. I made a lot of mistakes. But the good thing was I was speaking aloud whatever was going inside my mind. So if I said: “costs at all London shops will be the same”, my interviewer would interject and ask “Would they”.. after thinking for a bit I would realize that they wont be since the transportation costs are different for different shops (unless they are competing) . I think he got impressed by my ability to recognize that I have made a mistake and the ability to rectify it. After this he asked me if I had any questions about McK. I had a few and asked him the same. .
Tips: Lesson Learnt: Don’t have any conceived notion of an interview. You can be asked anything. Go with an open mind. For Cases, Speak aloud. Don’t be stubborn on your findings. You could be wrong.

Round: Interview
Experience: Immediately after round 1, I was whisked away for the round 2. This was a senior partner. He grilled me about how my CPI was low (8.48) . He asked me whether I was against McKinsey taking up govt. studies. I said No and explained him the reason. He was happy. Quite literally. After that came the case: “A and B are the two top Cement manufacturers in India. A foreign cement behemoth C has bought both of them. C is now wondering how to integrate the HR of the two purchasing departments of A and B. What are the possible options? What should it do?” The case was 2-pronged. I had to identify the possible options first and then suggest one. An important learning was that I established the various “parameters” on the basis of which C must decide which one is the best first. I thought I did pretty well with this. The interviewer seemed very happy. After the 2 rounds, I was called by McK people for feedback. I was told that sometime I come across as too Assertive and that should be avoided. I found this feedback very helpful. And later on I realized that a consultant is typically a quiet, analytical, serious character and not a bubbly, flamboyant one.
Tips: Lesson Learnt: Don’t be overtly aggressive against some of the firm policies (govt. work in this case)

Round: Interview
Experience: It Was with a partner, again. I was told in this interview that my temperament and way of speaking was to b observed. He asked if I wanted some tea since I looked tired. I said yes. He jumped straight to the case. “A boiler co. wants to go global. Advice.” I didn't have much information about the boiler industry and hence clarified a few doubts. Every second I nagged myself to be less assertive and be more open and unbiased to information. He didn't let me solve it completely. Stopped in between and said I did okay. Ambiguous statements, very typical of consultants. :)
Tips: Lesson Learnt: Respect the client (in this case the interviewer). He knows much much more than you do.

Round: Interview
Experience: Was with a German partner. As I entered the room he said how everyone is very keen on me.. but then said he was not sure and had to see for himself. There was no case in this interview. It was mostly fit. We talked about cars and football. I have never had so much fun in an interview. It was awesome. In the end we agreed that Germany played some kick ass football in the world cup and deserved to at-least reach the final. I was told in the interview that I would be made an offer.
Tips: There are no ready-made formula. However, to get shortlisted he/she must have spikes in his/her resume/CV. The person should be hyper-analytic, open to ambiguity, a person who never gives up and above all should be able to communicate well. You need to also present yourself very professionally in front of this company. It tolerates no informality. Know why you want McKinsey/Consulting etc. Prepare case-studies well. Don’t over-prepare. And you definitely need some luck. Looking back, you realize its only one or two statements that you make which makes you unique.

General Tips: I think the biggest learning was the fact that each company has a different work culture. You should do some research on this also before. I hadn't done much research on UBS and it showed. You will also need to prepare the “Why XYZ?” type of questions from the bottom of your heart. You cant fool the interviewer. Also, always always respect the interviewer. I was down in energy later on. One should have a proper meal before coming for placements. Always be in touch with your seniors (wherever they may be). They can really throw gems of advice at the important instances. Do not worry about your interviews. Its futile. I think overall, I could have researched a bit more on the company cultures. Carry Red-Bull if you have more than 4 interviews. Also keep a sophie/thirdie always at your disposal. Switch off your cell phones when inside. I would prefer that you wear a suit. It gives a good impression. Don’t wear it for the first time on that day itself though. Do check if its good morning/good afternoon/good evening.
College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The trick was here to recognize that even though the firm had several hundred client in each city, it was a few big clients who contributed to most of it's revenue and a distributed network targeting these few clients was the expected recommendation.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The task was to explore possibilities of synergy in this acquisition. The case was based entirely on common sense and elementary mathematics. The interviewer wanted me to write equation showing how costs would reduce if the two companies merge.
HR questions were about strengths, weaknesses, MI etc

General Tips: 1.Pre placement preparation:
Work on your communication skills! It's absolutely necessary to be able to speak fluently with good  diction

2.Resume:
Consultancies look for spikes in your career. Spikes are the areas in the resume where you have shown outshining performance.

3.Case Studies:
Practice them in groups. Avoid technical jargon and frameworks.
College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I went through a few templates & took help from some seniors. I prepared a few drafts and then later made improvements. IT might be a good idea to prepare well in advance and get your resumes reviewed from seniors in the companies you are applying. As probably you'll get to hear a lot, focus more on what you have achieved rather than just stating what all you have done. Keep it simple and short. And don't add anything you are not comfortable talking about in an interview. I know many capable people who didn't get short listed for Mck/BCG just because they didn't think resume was a big deal.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The case was simple. The interviewer said that imagine that he and I were flying together, he being an entrepreneur and I being the consultant. He tells me that he has motorcycle manufacturing business. His revenue has been steadily increasing but he is making losses. As he was not an accountant, he did not have any figures with him at the moment. After some discussion he told me that the sales were up and the costs had stayed the same. I figured that he was probably selling a couple of products and the sales of products which he was selling at a loss were increasing faster than those on which he was making a profit. That came out to be true. He was also selling auto parts apart from motorcycles but was making losses at the sale of motorcycles and sales of motorcycles has almost doubled last year while those of auto parts had stayed the same. That was all and we went back to HR questions. Another case was again pretty straight forward. The interviewer told me that his friend owned a multiplex in some suburb of Mumbai. His friend was making huge losses and had left him a frantic voice mail and wanted to meet him over the weekend. So I had to first give few ideas as to how to generate revenue, to make his friend feel better and then how to find the root of the problem. I think I tossed around a lot of ideas but I don't remember most of them. We planned to decrease cost of tickets but increase charges for advertisements and increase canteen rates. We planned to show soccer, cricket and tennis matches whenever it looked profitable and feasible. We also discussed coming under an Adlabs or PVR umbrella which will offer better bargaining power with producers. Then we also decided that it will be a good idea to conduct a survey in the locality and find the right mix of regional, bollywood and hollywood movies.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: A lot of HR questions interspersed with small cases like consider a factory on one side of a river and a town on the opposite side. There is only one bridge to cross that river and there is always a traffic jam on the bridge in the mornings and evenings. Give a few ideas to improve the situation. He also gave me a guess estimate to guess the number of white boards in use in India. And then he asked me to give arguments for an average educational institute to shift from black boards to white boards.

Round: Other Interview
Experience: This interview had no case. In-fact it wasn't exactly an interview and we just talked about his time at Mckinsey, their work in India, role of BAs etc.

College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The first interviewer asked me some questions about myself, Mood Indigo and my experience at ITC. He then asked me to estimate the beer consumption in India and specified that he wants a number at the end and not just an approach. He also seemed interested in the assumptions I had to make along the way. The second interviewer asked me to analyze the profitability of an IT firm in India. After giving a few details he asked me to immediately tell him what I thought was the crux of the case and helped me arrive at the fact that using fixed inputs more is economically more feasible. This particular interviewer made no attempt to make it a &l feel-good one, he was very stern and curt.

College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: HR Interview
Experience: They short listed about 22 students. They had 2 rounds of interviews. I was not able to make to the second round. In the first round I had 2 interviews. In both interviews a case study was given and some HR questions were asked. In my first interview the interviewer gave me a case of a steel industry. It was like that my industry had 2 places from where I can procure my raw material and I had to decide which place is better. I did pretty well in this interview. HR questions included about my academic achievements, why not research, my experience as Mess secretary etc. You will always enjoy giving interview to a consultancy firm because this people make you very comfortable. Though it was my first interview but I was not nervous at all. In my second interview I screwed up my case. The case was about a company which is earning lots of profit and is now looking for new fronts to invest the money. I started talking about vertical integration and horizontal integration in the same field in which company was operating. But in the end interviewer told me that he expected me too look into different new ventures like real estate etc. Though I was not shortlisted further but I enjoyed a lot my first interview.

College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Probably made some errors in numerical calculations, but the approach was very clear. Also I was asked some HS 101 stuff, like degree of control over pricing in perfect competition, monopoly, and duopoly situations.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Now basically in the case books very few org. cases are discussed and I hadn’t come across a single one. So, I just tried to think really logically and gave him very high level answers like ( labour union issues, faith in senior mgmt, compare org structure with competition etc ) Theinterviewer was very supportive and kept probing for more possibilities. Finally I was exhausted and could offer him nothing more.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: It had been a very tiring day and this was to be my 7th interview. But the good part was that I had started enjoying the interviews by now.After the usual warm-up questions, I was asked to name something that I felt really
passionately about and the remaining 30 minutes were spent just probing this passion of mine so deep, that even I came out surprised that I had indeed thought so much to answer that issue. This interview proved to me that one should never underestimate the interviewer’s intelligence. These are very, very smart people and are very good
at cracking your thought process. I was made an offer after this interview, so the 4th one was more of an informal chat about past BAs their experiences.

General Tips: If you are one of the lucky ones short listed for more than 1 company, you must decide beforehand what your preferences are and tell the placement body so.
There is no reason to succumb to strong arm tactics from companies. Ideally you
should be in a position to make a decision after you have all the offers in hand. But
the placement body’s rules will have a major role to play in this.
Skill Tips: Each individual has his own take on this. Personally, I read most of the theory from the casebooks floating around on campus and came out with my own framework to solve a problem. Practicing case interviews with a friend helps a lot. But finding a good interviewer is usually tough. I requested a couple of friends and tried out 2-3 cases with each. Totally, I solved not more than 10 cases , which I think was optimal. Too little and you don’t have enough experience and too many will take the fun out of the interview
College Name: IIT BOMBAY
Funny Moments: In case study, the interviewer talked about even higher level issues like mission statement and vision
documents and that the organization was not able to THINK global etc. Came out of this interview assuming my rendezvous with McK was done.

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: The rule of thumb I used while writing and formatting my resume is that the most important things should be clear at a cursory glance. Your resume must be extremely well organized and should read like a “story”. (The definition of most important here is “what the company is looking for”, not what you feel is important. I read a couple of resumes (those of people who had been recruited by the companies I was sitting for) and then made my own. It improved a lot due to the feedback I gained from iitian and non-iitian friends & family. It is advisable to make your resume early for this very purpose. I talked to many people and asked them why they had chosen to work for their particular firm and whether it was living up to their expectations. I also found about what future options each firm/job provides.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: 2 levels with 2 interviews each. Out of the 28 people short-listed for level 1, 8 made it to level 2. Final offers were made to 3.I had 4 interviews. Each one was supposed to be 30 minutes long only, but usually went on for longer. When my turn came to ask a question, I asked the same one to everyone – Whatn has been your highest moment and your lowest moment in Consulting? It was very interesting to note the variety and the personal nature of the answers I got.The quintessential something-about-yourself. I had a story planned but I didn't want to start off with it. So I just talked about some of my recent work in the department and my future plans. He commented on the technical strength of my resume, noticed the initiatives I had taken and asked why I hadn't been a part of Mood Indigo. He asked me a lot of questions about its structure to check my general awareness. (And maybe to see if I get flustered when asked questions I am not prepared for) He asked me whether I knew what EBIDTA was (he worked with fin co.s mainly). I talked about EBIDTA for a couple of minutes

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The Case. It was based on a IT firm. He commented that being an iitian, I must be well aware of issues in the IT sector. The case itself was on profit maximization. The key issue was that of difference in labor costs (offsite and onsite) and how the IT sector uses this difference to make supernormal profits. Case was done in a hurry (we ran out of time) but completed well. Session II (Extremely friendly interviewer, ate Pizza while asking Case) The two most fulfilling moments in my life as a leader The two most memorable moments in my life of personal success Note: Justification is important. For the first, its advisable to choose something which reflects your qualities as a leader, and the trust that people put in you. The achievement itself need not be big. For the second, bigger the better :) A company manufactures tankers and wants to go global. What are the issues confronting them? This interview went extremely well for me.

Round: Behavioural Interview
Experience: Session III Talked about some of my resume points. He commented on being impressed with some aspects (including fluency in English) . One event which you consider your life's biggest success

Round: Guesstimate Interview
Experience: The number of cricket balls in Mumbai. I made some calculation errors but incorporated very good structure. Ended up doing integration also. (To include continuously changing rate of population) Ended very well.

Round: Other Interview
Experience: This was with an extremely senior guy, reputed (in McKinsey) to be a ball-buster. He looked at my file (including all the interviewer comments from my previous 3 interviews) and said that he would not be asking me any case studies. This was either VERY good news or very bad! We talked about every HR aspect in the world. It was a long interview. He encouraged me to ask a lot of questions and finally talked about the kind of projects he is proud of and why. Why consulting? Your resume reads technocrat. (He was a PhD in Chem. from Stanford) What's your dream? What happens 10 years from now? 20 years from now? What do you think about academics in IITB. What has been your best performance and why? What kind of companies do you want to work with? Why?

General Tips: I. Cases – Focus on your presentation. The most important things are:
a) Ask the right questions (and lots of them). LISTEN to the interviewer
b) Ensure that they know WHY you are asking each question as soon as you do.
c) Build a mental tree of possibilities and take time off to think wherever necessary
d) Practice your style of summary and conclusion – this can make or break the case.
II. HR questions – Not even one single answer should be immature or unnecessarily cliched. This is your chance to be poised and eloquent.
College Name: IIT BOMBAY

Round: HR Interview
Experience: There were 3 groups formed when the A&M team arrived on campus. A&M conducted 3 rounds of interviews for each candidate and after all the 3 groups had interviewed the candidate, they used to meet and decide on the candidate. Thus the procedure was elaborate but slow. All the interviews were personal interviews.

After waiting outside for almost 7 hours, the interviews were conducted in a very professional manner and the interviewers focus in knowing your past was crystal clear.

Each of the interviewer asked me to go through my resume in a detailed fashion. Each and every bullet point in my resume was questioned and cross questioned. But the interview was not stressful at any point in time. The key reason was that there were no lies in the resume and hence I was very sure about the background of every point (situation, what action I took, why I took that action, what I did, who helped me, how things eventually worked out and what was the result). There were some usual questions as well on strengths, etc. Such questions were few and were randomly thrown at you. Since A&M is mainly a client oriented company who as a part of turnaround would want to “get things done”, I kept all my answers focused towards this theme. Be aware that the interviewers may try to derail you in case you have very well rehearsed answers. So in between questions, there will be some side talk. That can put you off. So being relaxed would help you just laugh/smile that their comments and then continue where you left off. This interview was a walk-in interview for me on day 6, but I had planned on applying here before and hence had some overview of the firm and what it does. That helped me in asking several questions throughout the day. My questions were mainly on switching my focus from IT to operation and finance. At the end of the day, I was told to contact Amit Laud who would be conducting my interview from his base location. This interview was also a personal interview. I googled him and found some details on him. He was an MBA from Wharton, done a stint in Mckinsey, GE and now was the acting CIO for some client company so some questions on IT implementation would be due. I knew that if I get through then I might end up working for him.
Tips: Keep your cool. It is not important to know how to fix laptop or how to fix account statements (if you are CA). But it was more about how you handle such deliberate distracting situations (as if they were your clients) and make the atmosphere friendly.

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