McKinsey & Company Consultant Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: In PI, we discussed the scale and infrastructure that Google has and how it’s gaining competitive advantage from it.
I told him searching porn well is very important for a search engine entering a new market, and from there we went into market entry strategies for the search engines.

The PI went on for 20-25 minutes, at which point he realized he had to ask me a case. He asked me a really simple case which got over in 5 minutes

The case was very trivial. It was just multiplying a bunch of numbers together. Less than 5 minutes.




Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Interviewer also works in IT, so he wanted to discuss what Infosys should do next. We talked about their business model, about billing rates and how they can leverage their assets. I brought up the point of “Centers of Excellence” and how they don’t really work in IT services. He asked why, then asked me to come up with alternatives to the model. I talked a while about a skunk-works type project team that they should set up. We discussed the future of the market etc…

The interview was very conversational. No case really, more of a discussion around what I thought of the IT industry and where I see the future of the industry.


Round: personal interview
Experience: This interview was about 20 minutes long, and it was all PI. He asked about why I did an MBA, what I liked/disliked about working at a place like Google. This interview was very different from the traditional case interviews. He asked me “What would people on the campus say about Aditya Kulkarni?”, “Why consulting when you’re doing so well in Google?” etc… I was very honest with my answers, and didn’t use any of the canned responses. I even said that I’m quite lazy and don’t like doing hard work.
We even discussed strategies to do well at exams without studying for them.

I was very honest and upfront about what I wanted from McKinsey. I didn’t use any of the “prepped” answers, and just told him what I thought. I even told him that I was undecided about joining McKinsey (if they made an offer), and he seemed OK with that.


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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: PI Questions came after the case. It started with interviewer asking about my prior work experience. All subsequent questions emanated from the first question which was: “Of all your achievements, which one do you think is the most important to you”. This was a classic case of being able to draw the interviewer to where you want to go. I talked about a very tough implementation project that I did at ITC Factory in Munger, Bihar. I said for me an achievement is about 2 things: (1) The Context in which I
achieved it (2) What it meant to me at that stage. In the context part, I talked about managing an un-skilled workforce.
Then he asked me how do you manage such a work force? I said by established an internal connect with them. He asked how do you do that? Went into a couple of instances which made me establish such connections. Although he had asked me to talk about just 1 instance, but seeing that he was impressed, I requested him if I could talk of another different type of incident which is also very close to my heart. He allowed. I talked about selling a extravagant project to the company chairman. It was
about high-end world class patented Audio-Visual systems. interviewer too seemed to have some knowledge about those equipments and thus we had an interesting conversation. The idea was, I could not only show my Project Implementation Abilities
but also talk about Planning and Inter-personal skills.

The case was about a canned juice manufacturing company. Recently they have diversified into different types/more variety of juices. Their profitability has gone down in comparison to their competitors. Need to analyze, identify root causes and advice solutions to the client. I asked a few ‘Start-Up’ question These are standard questions which you would ask for most of the cases. Some of them were: How big is the client? Has been in the business for how long and how and when has their business strategy changed. Who are the major competitors? What are the various revenue streams (different type of juices et al)? He gave
me some info but asked to assume one standard fruit juice for the analysis. Now I approached in the classical Profitability Case. Profit = Revenue – Cost. Problem can be in either of the two factors i.e. Revenue or Cost. I asked him if he wanted to delve into Revenue or Cost first. He advised to go into the cost aspect (we never visited the revenue aspect). Then he asked me about what are the various cost heads in such a business. This was the key!!! Process Value Chain rules I drew the entire value
chain from Agri-sourcing of fruits to In-Bound Logistics to Warehousing to Processing/Manufacturing to Out-Bound Logistics to Retailer to Customer. Started from the Left Side i.e. Sourcing. He asked me what could be reasons for lower profits. This was more of a brainstorming session. Coming from ITC (of e-choupal fame) background, I could talk the possibility of competitors being able to backward integrate and establish a symbiotic relationship with the farmers which allows them to remove the middle-men and thus get cheaper and good quality fruits, whereas our client has not done that. Then came to In-Bound logistics. I
said that juicy fruits being mostly hygroscopic are prone to damage in transit. Talked about the quality of infrastructure en-route to their plants and quality of logistics partner. Then came the crux: Processing/Manufacturing. At first it was qualitative.
I said the client might have a very high Cost/Unit because of excess/high quality infrastructure. Somehow this turned out to be the case. I realized there has been loads of ‘strategy’ based talking and there bound to be some nos. I asked him and he gave me whole lot of nos. about their manufacturing costs as well as the manufacturing costs of competitors. There was Maths involved here as he gave costs and throughputs of different plants of client as well as competition. Had to find out the average cost per unit of juice manufactured by client vs competition. Of course client’s cost of manufacturing was way higher. Talked about some ways as to how can this be brought down. Talked about economies of scale as some of the assets were under-utilized. This would involve launching other related products as well or expanding markets. There were a few more points discussed but this was merely a closure.
Asked him a couple of questions on his area of expertise and how markets were shaping this year.

I believe that your work-experience (which is a huge factor in your being short-listed) must be reflected in the way you approach cases. Sometime we lose sight of that in following standard structures/frameworks etc. At each stage, I could use my FMCG and Manufacturing experience to come up possible reasons. So, your experiences must show in case solving as well and I believe I did that well. One very interesting thing, right at the start which I think worked well for me. When I entered the room, I generally talked about the view being great from the window. Nal generally asked whose room was it. I had not noticed the name-plate while entering which anyways was covered with a McKinsey signage. Looking at the books and brochures in the room, I
made a guess giving the reason of the guess. It was Bang On!!!

Tips: Do not lose sight of Who you are and What have you achieved till date.This should reflect in your interview. Also, be ready to delve into nos. Interviewer also wants to test your analytic ability with nos. as they back/justify your claims, ideas and suggestions. So ask him if he has nos. when he says “Cost is High” or “Profits are Low” etc.


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Just imagine. It does not get bigger than him. The senior most guy in the panel who is rumored to take the final call on each and every candidate. I was to interview with him in my Round-1. Thought this was the do or die situation. Questions started coming right from my CV. We talked about taking up very good projects additional to normal course curriculum, participation in sports, organizing ILS and some other personal focus areas for the year. Then he asked which one of the 3 academic experiences: School,
Undergrad, ISB was most enriching. I split it into 2: Academic and Over- all. Academic was School and Over-all was Undergrad for me. He asked me the reason. Came from the CV plus how it was important for personality development and so on… Then he asked about my work-experience. Talked about CAPEX for a while. What did I do as Capex Manager etc.

Started off with the standard warm-up questions but somehow warm-up questions and interviewer don’t go too well. I asked him about the background of the company/competition/industry. For each question I was quizzed on why did I think that question was
relevant and how will it help me achieve the final objective i.e. valuation. Some useful information which I could generate was that the ‘patent’ was for cotton farming and would increase the yield of cotton growth. Realizing that it was a valuation case, I proposed following the a combination of 3 approaches -(1) Value Based Costing (2) Competition Based Costing (3) Cost-Up; to come up with a band of prices and then zero-in on the final price based on other factors. He agreed. Started with Value i.e. Willingness to Pay on the part of the customer. The customers would of course be cotton formers. Then he asked what is the value of the patent to them? I told him about it increasing the yield and asked if he could provide some nos. on the same. He said it increases the yield per sq. ft by a factor of 50%. Believing that it would again be a complicated nos. case, I took some time and came up with a complicated structure to calculate the monetary value of this increase in yield. It involved numerous factors such as average land-holing, no. of cotton farmers, current yield, cotton prices in the market etc. etc. But rest-assured interviewer cases would rarely involve complicated calculations. He said he was looking for something very simple and asked me to think about it.

Now was the moment of surprise. While I was thinking, he asked me to pause. He said “Oh you have worked in Capex right? How would you reduce Capex Cost in a Power Plant?” I was really surprised. I started off by giving him a ‘structure’ (yeah right!!!) which we need to put in place to identify the scope of reduction in Capex. I came up with various stages involved in setting up and commissioning a power plant which would be:
Engineering Design > Construction of Infrastructure > Procurement of equipments > Electricity Generation > Electricity Distribution & Transmission
Told him we need to look into Capex requirement at each of stage and started off with Engineering Design. Just I as started, he asked me to go back to the Patent Case (strange!!!!)

He wanted a simplified model to calculate the value. After some discussion, we have me the annual turnover of cotton in India and the average price per ton. From this I calculate the value of the higher yield that all Indian farmers could get.

He asked apart from increasing revenue, how else the patent could benefit the farmers. Now with revenue there has to be cost!!! I said the new technology could lead to reduction in costs. Was asked to brainstorm on the costs involved. I told land, water for irrigation etc. Yes the patent reduced irrigation requirements. So I talked about reducing water consumption, associated energy costs as well as the psychological costs and risks associated with reliance on monsoons which could now be mitigated. He asked what else? Very happily I told him that now lesser seeds may be required. He said “The patent is a variety of seeds only”. I realized I had forgotten to ask him what does the ‘patent’ entail….in one of the professor’s language, “is it a bird or a plane”. Should have asked it upfront.

Anyways recovered. Had already found out of the increase in revenue (was asked to neglect decrease in costs) . Told him this would be the maximum willingness to pay and thus the upper end of the price band. He agreed. Asked him the cost of Research and Development. He asked why? Told him this would be the lower end of the price band unless the focus was not profitability but social upliftment. He said the focus was completely profitability and gave me a Net Present Value (assume N). Could not understand it immediately but realized that it is Revenue net the costs. Thus, the price band for the patent (in NPV terms) would be between Rs. 0 to N. He agreed and asked me to zero down on a value. Told him we need to look at similar launches in the past to capture some trend (and therefore arrive at a value in the middle) but he cut me short and said that no need to look at past records and
you would price it at less than N as we need to incentive the farmers to overcome their switching costs by passing on some benefit to them. Now this is what I eventually wanted to say but could not.

Firstly it seemed that Nothing went right. I wasn’t confident interviewing with him. Missed basic pointers and took time to identify the ‘simple’ model he was looking for. And of course couldn’t conclude well. But, later I was told, what went right was the CAPEX piece He wanted to test how good I was with my basics while I was caught up doing something else. Can’t expect this from anyone but him. The framework was bang on!!!

Got a bit psyched. Could not structure the Patent Case well and it was more of bouncing off ideas. But was later told this is what happens with everyone when they interview with him



Tips: Can’t emphasize more the need to be thorough with your work-ex and reflect your experience in the case. And if can, be confident no matter whosoever is interviewing you. Please remember, you know stuff much better than the interviewer. You have slogged your back while working. Who else would know about it better?


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I was told that he was very keen to meet me because of my Operations background and was especially interested in my CAPEX experience. I was told that he wanted to know more about what I had done during that stint. So I went in with the frame of mind that I have to maximize on that aspect of my profile. As expected, he asked me thread bare on what all I did in that stint. He did try to intimidate me by passing a few sarcastic remarks but I seemed to enjoy it and gave him appropriate responses. Then he asked a very interesting “What do I expect to hear if I were to go out and ask people randomly what they thought about you?” Now
McKinsey allows you to be innovative, frank and candid in such questions. But these need to be backed by some logic. Told him that different people are entitle to have different opinions about a person and how my different types of interactions i.e. in class, in events, in sports would result in varied responses. Also, talked about the situational aspect of it being 1st Day of placements and how that could influence the responses. Then came up with a few candid ones. You can call me to
find those out

Was told this is a short case and we need to wrap up the case fast. Without asking too many ‘Start-Up’ questions, came to the 3 dimensional approach of (1) Value to Customer (Willingness to Pay) (2) Competition (3) Cost-up. Started with Value. Was asked to brainstorm on how could this service be valuable to the customers? Talked about the qualitative aspects of Mumbai traffic having various tangible and in-tangible costs. Tangible benefits could be saving of time, fuel and fare. Intangible benefits could be alleviation of psychological costs like being stuck in traffic and getting to spend less valuable time at work and office. But he said that fare is something we need to find outThen moved to the 2nd aspect of competition. Asked him what were the other modes of transport available to the public? He said two alternatives existed- Road (Taxi) and Rail (Train). Asked him information on Time and Cost. Don’t remember the exact nos. so will use indicative figures. By Taxi you took 45 minutes and incurred costs (all inclusive- tangible + intangible) of Rs. 250. By train you took 30 minutes and incurred costs of Rs. 50. Now asked him the time supposed to be taken by Hovercraft and how many of them were there. He said that a hovercraft would take 20 minutes to cover the distance. The company was planning to start off with just 1 hovercraft. Asked him it’s capacity and he gave a figure of 100 people. In a flash of rushing ideas, I just said that then there would be a capacity constraint or atleast the hovercraft would always be full as the no. of travelers would far exceed 100 in a busy place like Mumbai. Although at that stage I didn’t know how this was important in the context of the case but he liked it Ok, coming back. Hovercraft saves 25 minutes over Taxi and 10 minutes
over Train. So though would try and valuate in monetary terms this saving of 25 minutes and 10 minutes. But point to note is that cost of Train is much lower than cost of Taxi. So, value based approach if applied on both the modes would result in two different nos. poles apart. He quizzed me how to proceed and after some discussion, I concluded that it made no business sense for the Hovercraft company to compete with the Train and thus focus on competing with the Taxi only. Plus, with only 100 seats, there would be no issue of in-sufficient traffic. Now this is where the earlier remark on capacity made sense At this stage he asked me to synthesize by giving an elevator pitch to the client CEO, asked me to fit it in 1 minute and started looking at his watch saying I was being evaluated for brevity. To wrap up, knowing that he Head the Ops practice, I asked him a question on benchmarking in operations and whether Indian firms are at a stage where they can be set as international benchmarks. Surprisingly,
he asked me why I wanted to know about it. Now this was strange as I had never ever heard of an interviewer asking the interviewee a counter question on the closing question. I told him how we had to benchmark many of our expansion/ up gradation projects with Japanese firms and wanted a view from someone who has been exposed to such facilities across the world. He was satisfied and then answered the question.

Discussion on Work-ex. Taking the sarcastic remarks in the right way and not getting intimidated. Again reflecting the learning from the work- experience in the case.

The synthesis could have been better. His staring at the watch for an accurate 1 min pitch intimidated me a bit. My bad. Otherwise nothing much was wrong here.


Tips: Again, work-ex thoroughness is imperative. Think through carefully the closing questions that the interviewer offers to answer at the end of the interview. The questions need to make sense in the backdrop of your profile, experiences and those of the interviewer.


Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: PI came after a couple of cases. This PI for this interview too was Work- Ex centric. Noshir asked me about the two most important leadership instances in me work life. Again my idea here was to use these 2 instances to reflect upon 2 different sides of my profile. First example was of course on leading one very tough project in a logistically challenging location. The other was captaining my ex-company’s cricket team which comprised of my bosses and super-bosses, and the leadership tools that you need to put into use in such situations.

This 11th interview of the day and for sure the final/most critical interview for McKinsey. When I was given the first case on Tata Nano, he could figure out looking at the time of the day as well as the previous few interviews that all he wanted was a structured brain-storming output on strategic cost management. So, I did not spend any time on asking clarifications/start-up questions and got down to business. As there wasn’t any readymade framework/structure for this, I imagined myself a part of the Nano team and thought through the sequence in which the material design and procurement process would unfold (of course, again, my experiences at work came in very handy). After a minute of thought, I started off by saying that this was a huge cut- down on costs (by almost 75%) thus process improvements won’t suffice and that it called for radical changes in the design and sourcing
processes. I then recommended that we should first identify the various steps that are involved in the material procurement process and see how we can cut costs in each one of them. The sequence I gave was as
follows: Technical Specifications of the car and individual parts and sub- assemblies > Preparing the Bill of Materials (BOM) > Identification and Selection of Vendors > Negotiations > Logistics- Freight, Duties, Insurance, Taxes etc.
I asked interviewer for his approval which he promptly gave. Then I brain- stormed various ways of cutting costs as each step. Car & Parts Specifications: Car to adhere to the bare minimum specifications that are needed to be adhered to by Indian Rules n Regulations (E.g. no need to Euro N+1 of Euro N compliance required in India) but without compromise on the safety of the passenger which is very important. Technical Specifications of the parts and sub-assemblies to the at Minimum Technical Standard (MTS) i.e. the specs need to be just right to meet the requirements. Bill of Materials (BOM): Talked about how big companies being risk averse always order and add extra quantity of material in everything. E.g. if 90 kgs steel is required, they would order 100 kgs and end up putting 95 kgs. So optimal safety margins need to defined and be adhered to.

Identification and Selection of Vendors: Said for experience that big companies chose their trusted and loyal vendors, and are inclined to have single vendors/point of contact for a plethora of related/unrelated materials. This way, the vendors make unnecessary money. Thus, to manufacture the lowest car in the world, we need to rationally evaluate vendors outside our ‘Zone of Comfort’ and their scope of supplies. Talked for Chinese manufacturers that give both cost and quality advantage. Gave examples of some proposals of Chinese manufacturers that I had evaluated at work.

Negotiations: Then, negotiate hard. Tata can use their buyer power (multiple businesses and product lines) to fleece suppliers but showing them possible opportunities in near future.

Logistics- Freight, Clearance etc.: This was a pure brainstorming session with ideas like bulk shipments through sea (no part shipments, air freights etc.). Centralized insurance and clearance agents. Managing road taxes etc.

Finally, something which is typically talked of in manufacturing: INNOVATION. Although setting Indica as an anchor and working backwards is a possible way, big companies like Tata Motors which have presence in the foreign markets (talked of JLR) and access to the modern technology, must mobilize their R&D department to come up with revolutionary car design. Some cutting-edge innovation like a new cost effective fuel injection system etc.

Whoa…I spoke for 20 minutes continuously non-stop. Did not find the need to. Interviewer was constantly smiling and acknowledging.

Then straight away came the second case on IT. Now that’s his area of expertise and he wanted to check if I could talk about an industry I had no prior exposure to. I came to know later that this case was in some past year’s case-book and he had written a paper on that. Anyways, I had missed both

Again I gave the initial questions a pass and asked for a minute to think. Exhausted after so many cases, I was not able to recollect any jazzy structure and thus stuck to the basics. I proposed looking at 2 types of factors/aspects which need to looked at by the IT giants of the country:

(1) Internal Factors (2) External Factors
Told him that I am a firm believer that any individual/organization should first have an internal introspection and then start looking at the world outside. Thus would recommend starting off with the Internal Factors. He smiled and said go-ahead. Internal factors meant how the company needs to improve and uplift it-self internally. Said the biggest assets for IT firms were its people and it boiled down to (a) Productivity (b) Innovation. (a) Productivity: Here, I used Productivity = f(Efficiency, Effectiveness) .
Explained the difference between the two and gave some ideas on how IT industries could do that. We could see Microsoft from one of the windows so pointed out and shared some experiences I had while I was visiting an old friend there. (b) Innovation: This is always a safe point to say. No one will challenge Innovation as an improvement measure . Talked a bit about Google
and how it fostered a culture of innovation. This again translated to sound people practices. (2) External Factors: Here I used the 3 Us framework in disguise- Users, Uses, Usage. Users: Talked about IT firms expanding their user base in India and un-explored markets abroad. Once, once you get an organization on-board, need to penetrate to all departments. Uses: Used some SAIT funds to discuss codability and measurability. How certain key process where still handled by companies internally (gave example
from work) as they were highly strategic in nature. Here, IT firms could built enhance their credibility and build stronger partnerships with the clients. Usage: Discussed growth through service provisions like AMCs etc. And then of course, Mergers and Acquisition abroad. Talk of more and more Indian firm’s expanding outside India through this medium and how biggies like Infosys, TCS etc. could continue this trend. This was followed by PI (explained above). Asked him a couple of questions on increasing role of consultants in assisting implementation and talked about the trend at McKinsey.

By this time, I was a robot. This was the best interview of the day for me.

Tips: If you can’t immediately think of established structures, just think-through the logical sequence of events. If you were there in that situation then how would things unfold stepwise? Then within each step, mini- structures/frameworks would readily fit. Again, give examples from work- ex and life beyond work. If you have seen something happen, it has to be true. Also, industry awareness is important to some extent. Reading a Financial Daily for 2 months before the interviews if enough.


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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The government of India wants to electrify all the villages. Can this task be achieved?

Initial clarification
Asked if there are any resource constraints and in what time we have to achieve this task. He simplified by saying time is not a
consideration and resources are limited and hence part of problem was to raise resources.

Case Structure/ Discussion
I made the following structure:
1. Resources
a. Public
b. Private partnership
c. Special purpose vehicles
2. Current level of rural electrification
a. Segregate states based on low density and high density
3. Regulatory constraints
a. Role of government. To be a regulator or also an implementor
4. Political costs in changing laws
a. Eg Will Left parties support privatization

Based on the above I suggested we will evaluate whether a centralized or a decentralized model should be followed.

He was happy but then said he was more interested in evaluating ground realities i.e. So I said, there are three parts to
electrification.
1. Increasing generation through
o Thermal
o Hydel
o Alternate sources
I said will concentrate on thermal as India as huge coal reserves they can be used more efficiently.
2. Transmission
o Who will lay down poles and cables? How will players be compensated?
3. Collection:
o Who takes responsibility? Private player or government.
o Tariff structures. Who will decide private player or government
I completely missed that collections in India are low due to corruption.

After the interview, I asked him whether this target is achievable. His take was that it is very difficult and Mckinsey is still evaluating various approaches. Hence this case is not supposed to have one answer.
Tips: In middle of my case, he told me to set aside my structure and just have a discussion. This was unexpected but not necessarily a bad thing. So do not get fazed. Also show by discussing policy implications (such as reaction of left parties to privatization), you can bring a wow moment in your case. Apply a layer of commonsense in your discussion.

Round: Other Interview
Experience: I had a 20 minute PI as interviewer knew CEO of Evalueserve (my last company). So there were a lot of questions around Evalueserve.
8. Had discussion around development of ISB (Interviewer was involved in writing the business plan of ISB). How it has
emerged and whether it has measured to his expectations.

Many of these questions can be asked to people who have worked in startups/ growing organizations (EVS was 70 people strong
when I joined them and within 2.5 years the employee strength was 600). So the challenges of a small vs. big, fledgling vs. growing organization are very diff. Some points I gave were (I do not know if it helps but you will get a flavor of some answers in this regard):
1. Challenges facing EVS today:
a. Increasing face to face communication between top management and new employees (I was fortunate enough to work with Marc but new employees do not get this chance and this has contributed to increase in employee turnover)
b. Increasing interaction between sales executives and teams (majority of sales executives had not even visited EVS offices and hence did not understand pressures of people working on projects).
c. Recruitment (EVS recruitment quality had dipped as now team leads/ AVPs who were not competent enough did this task. I admitted that I was conducting interviews and I thought that I needed 2-3 years of mentoring to be really effective).

Note that none of the above mentioned are really big points but they are original ones. Hence be honest, think hard about your experience and do not be shy to mention even seemingly small things as independent thought is what really matters.

I also took these questions as small caselets Interviewers sometimes will not mention that they are starting the case. In such situations do the following:
1. Keep it at the back of your mind a situation like this can arise (could be a discussion around placement process at ISB or any other topic under the sun)
2. Be structured in your communication. Again one mistake people do is that they apply structure only during cases. It is important to apply structure during PI as it makes the communication lucid, increases impact and makes it easier for the interviewer to understand you.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: A very small case (10 minutes).

Initial clarifications:
1. Current cost structure:
a. Engine: 20%
b. Chassis, Gear box etc: 25%
c. Body: 25%
d. Tires, glass etc: 30%
2. Time frame to achieve this task: He said time is not a factor as this is a really difficult thing and Ratan Tata would be happy if this can be achieved.

Hypothesis:
I said that there was no one dominant head on which I should concentrate and hence we should do the following:
1. Explore generic ways to reduce cost
2. Then arrive at decision criterion to apply a method to a particular cost component.

1. Generic ways to reduce cost:
a. Reduce price (Economies of scale and scope)
b. Reduce Volume of material to be consumed (with price being constant)
c. Redesign (say the engine as requirement for a low income person are different. For eg. He might just be
happy with a 600 cc engine vs a 1200 cc engine)
d. Use substitutes (say plastic/ polymers rather than metal)
2. Decision criterion to apply a particular method to a particular cost component
a. Degree of tech involvement (more suitable for engines and hence this really suggests that we should redesign
the engine and may be use some substitutes).
b. Degree of commoditization (more suitable for body and can also use substitutes)
Here I concluded that multiple methods could be applied to a cost component and hence this makes our task that much harder. Here he stopped me and said he was happy with the analysis.
Tips: 1. Case: I had initially said that based on a criterion, I will apply batches based on this interview experience only ONE method to a particular cost head (no reason why I assumed this). But based on our discussion, we could apply a mixture of 2 methods (he said apply the 80:20 rule). So it is okay to change your initial stand based on the discussion (it’s a blunder to stick to your initial assumptions especially if the discussion proves the assumptions wrong).
2. PI: Rohit Kapoor had told us, recruiters come here recruit humans and not gods. So it is OK to say simple things but say them with conviction.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Client is a meat manufacturer operating in Europe. Their profits are falling for the last two years.

Initial clarification
1. Company has two products
a. Hams
b. Sausages
2. Only 3 players in the market. Client has 40% market share and other two players have 30% each. Clients market share has been falling (indicating that it is a revenue problem).
3. She also said that market size is not growing substantially.

Case Structure/ Discussion
1. Revenues
a. Product mix
i. The process to manufacture hams and sausages is very similar. Sausages are made from scarps left over from hams.
b. Price * Quantity (explained in the sections below)
2. Costs
a. Fixed
i. Allocation of overheads such as CEO salary
ii. Asked how fixed costs can be allocated. I said based on
1. Revenues
2. Volume
3. Number of employees in a division
b. Variable
i. Raw materials (she said there was no scope to reduce this)
3. Customers
a. Drivers of purchase
i. Only price.
ii. Quality of product is not a differentiator. Retailers were not ready to pay more for better quality products
iii. No Value added service can give any competitive advantage
iv. I concluded that this was a commodity product in a stable market
b. Customers are retailers who buy the meat, and sell it as their private label product
4. Competition
a. No new product was introduced in the past
b. No new channels were entered by competition
c. Competition had reduced the price of sausages by only $0.01. The customers (retail outlets) were so sensitive to price, that they were switching to competitor products (to both hams and sausages. So a wrong pricing decision in sausages had let to not only decrease in sales of sausages, but also affected sales of hams as consumers, in this case retailers, preferred to buy from one supplier to reduce their transaction costs.

The flaws in this method are
1. Fixed costs should not be a part of pricing decision (Basic managerial accounting funda)
2. With this method, their margin on sausages is 0. Hence they can not reduce prices according to this method.

I said if you exclude the fixed costs, then in % terms, sausages have a much higher margin. So there is a lot of scope in decreasing price.

Recommendations
1. Exclude Fixed costs from pricing decisions
2. Reduce prices in sausages
3. As process to manufacture both products is same, make one person in charge of both products. This will ensure that pricing
decisions are made in a rational manner. The whole problem cropped up as fixed costs had to be allocated between 2 products
and there were 2 line managers for the two products.

After completing the case, she said there were many other aspects to this problem. These were:
1. The client was operating in a small European country and had 4 plants. So closing down some of the plants was an option. (had enquired about this but she said that we should neglect it for the time being)
2. They could also look at entering foreign markets in Europe to boost sales (I had enquired about this)
3. Also, the sausage process was not efficient. So to improve it they could benchmark it to their ham operation.
Apparently the ham process was very efficient (she did not give reasons for why it was more efficient, probably because it accounted for 80% of revenues and hence received more attention). This was new insight to me as one always benchmarks a process to competitors, or to processes of similar products etc. But internal bench-marking was new to me.
4. This was a family owned business and not a listed company. Hence there were a lot of cultural issues which they had to resolve in terms of best management practices, mindset of the employees etc.
Tips: Just listen to what the interviewer says. She clearly wanted me to go to accounting and she dropped enough hints during the initial
stages of the interview.
Also, even though she was from BTO practice, she gave me a commodity product case. So the background of interviewer/ interviewee really does not matter. What they are looking for is the ability to analyze a problem from the case facts.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: An Indian conglomerate opened an IT company in Delhi and they have failed miserably. You are hired by the client to diagnose the situation and turn around the company.

Initial hints: It was clear from his narration that a drastic approach was required and the client had completely got the strategy wrong.

Initial clarifications:
1. Who is the Indian conglomerate and why did they enter the IT space?
a. Family owned business and hence there is lack of best management practices
b. They entered the IT space as it offered significant growth potential (diversification). They launched this business in 2000.
2. What are their products/ services?
a. Products
i. Healthcare (10-20% revenues)
ii. Knowledge management (20% revenues)
b. Services
i. Application Development and Maintenance (ADM) (60%-70% revenues)
At this point, I said I was not well versant with economic drivers of IT industry specifically the 2 product segments and ADM.
He then wanted me to explore how only services business could be expanded. He said services can be sold on
1. Specialization of a service which can be sold across verticals (e.g. desktop migration)
2. Verticalization (e.g. some mercury simulation service for auto industry)

In the feedback he said that my analysis was good but there was one thing I had missed. Instead of completely shutting down healthcare services, it could have been used to set up captive centers for companies and this could be spun off as an advisory service in offshoring practices.
Tips: Do not hedge your answers.

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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: How would you evaluate the first year revenue potential for a new investment in the business of leasing cranes for commercial buildings in Beijing? The interviewer gave a background that commercial building activity was coming up at a frantic pace in Beijing.

Clarification questions:
Are there any investment constraints on capital investment?
What is the investment horizon?

Structure:
- Identification of revenue streams
- Estimation of demand for the identified revenue streams
- Determining competitive landscape for similar services being provided by existing competition and potential competitors
- Based on the above analysis and specific competence area of the Company, determine the market share that the new Company
could achieve in one year’s time.

Revenue streams:
- Income from renting/leasing of cranes
- Regular
- Overtime

Income was basically broken up into - Price X Volume. Since the price could vary significantly across the regular and overtime.

Demand estimation (Volume – Number of buildings)
The interviewer asked me to identify three approaches in which demand estimation could be done. This was further broken down into new infrastructure and replacement infrastructure. Again, here the interviewer asked me to concentrate only on new infrastructure.

- Top down approach – Using Macroeconomic factors
Growth rate expected in the region -> Level of infrastructure investment required to sustain expected growth rate -> Number of new investments in building for given investment -> Supply constraints in terms of area available, number of construction companies, manpower required, capital/credit availability etc. to be accounted for -> Determine number of buildings that are expected to be constructed in the next one year.

- Bottom up approach – Using Supply based factors
Determine the real estate space available for development -> Identify area that could be developed in the next one year based on other supply constraints -> determine the number of buildings that would be developed given average building size (based on historical data and regulatory guideline) in the next one year.

- Using analyst data

We then decided to crack the numbers using the second approach:
The buildings have to be developed in a square real estate space measuring 3 sq. km. (assume end to end coverage)
Regulatory requirement – Only 1/3 can be developed
Average building size - 150 x 150 sq. m
Number of buildings that can be developed:
(1000 X 1000)/(150 X 150) = approximately 49 (7 X 7) streams, I identified these discreetly.
- Ancillary services from the business
Interviewer asked me to concentrate only on regular income from leasing of cranes.
Tips: Since PI + Case appears to be a compensatory model, If you haven’t done well in one, try and do well in the other if you have the
chance to.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: A small hospital chain is looking to expand geographically. What would be the decision criteria / metrics that you would look at to prioritize the locations?

Few clarification questions:
- What kind of hospital is this? General or specialist? General
- What kind of reach does it currently have? One metro
- Is the amount of investment a constraint? No

I structured the problem essentially in two parts:
1. As a financial problem, trying to derive the maximum net present value from investment in each geography/location.
- Revenue: Market potential which would require demand estimation, existing penetration by existing players and opportunities to take share from existing players based on this hospital chain’s competencies.
- Costs: Cost involved in entering each geography since these are likely to be different.
2. Strategic decision to preempt competition in terms of resources such as location, doctors as well as customers since capacity utilization is one of the major drivers in this business.
- Analysis of competition, both existing and potential(based on competitive intelligence)

There was discussion regarding demand estimation in each location.
Population -> Income classification -> Disease incidence in relevant income bracket (no numbers, just a discussion).
We discussed alternatives if disease incidence data is not available.
I suggested we could draw benchmarks from similar countries where this data was available or data from developed countries
during their developing stage.

Remaining was an open ended discussion. The interviewer then asked me to make an assessment, based on my general knowledge and reading, about the locations I would consider this hospital should foray into.
Tips: Gauge the interviewer’s intent!!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Life Insurance Company which has been in India for a few years wants to understand whether there is a real opportunity in this business in India and what are the strategic options available to it.

Structured the problem in the following way:
- Determine the market size.
- Identify the degree of regulation in the industry and its impact.
- Identify the current levels of penetration & therefore the existing potential.
- Determine the level of existing and potential competition.
- Based on own strengths identify the strategic options as below:
- Exit market.
- Stay in market – to determine whether to operate on scale or niche.

We proceeded with market sizing:
No of households -> No of households with required income capacity -> Percentage of income saved -> percentage of saving
used on insurance.

The interviewer then focused on whether the market opportunity was only as much as the current sizing or whether there was
potential to improve the same. We explored this line of thought.

Major reason for life insurance policy in India : Savings
Then we analyzed what uses are the total savings of an Indian household put to:
- Deposits
- Mutual funds
- Real estate
- Insurance (12%)
- Others

Deposits & mutual funds represented a clear opportunity for increasing the market size for insurance. I identified that we could use data from other developing markets to understand the savings behavior and potential for insurance. Interviewer clarified that in similar economies about 30% saving were being spent on insurance.

Calculated the real market opportunity with 30% savings and identified that opportunity exists given the current levels of penetration.
Tips: Persistence!!!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case 1
The case was relating to the baby food segment (product like cerelac) market in India for which the potential was visibly huge since 80-90% of the children in the 1-2 years old segment who this segment serves lacked the nutrient requirement and 40-50% the calorie requirement. The interviewer wanted the following things to be done:
- Identify the market potential for this segment
- Delineate the marketing plan for a fast moving consumer goods player (like HLL) to enter this industry

Market sizing:
Population (1 billion) -> Children in the 1-2 years old segment (1.5%) -> Identify daily requirement per child (80 gms per day) -> Determine pack size to calculate market for number of packs (400 gms) -> Requirement came to 1.08 million packs of ₹100 each i.e. ₹108 billion.

I also identified that we would need to identify the future potential
going forward as well through the population growth rate and
more importantly growth rate in the Children in the 1-2 years old
segment due to the favorable demographics in India. A proxy for
that could be taken to be the birth rate. (we did not build this into
the calculation)

The interviewer informed me that the market was served only to the extent of ₹1 billion.

I identified that the reason was that monthly expenditure required was ₹600 (80 gms x 30 days x ₹100 per pack/400 gms per pack) whereas the average spending capacity of the parents of these children on this food was ₹200 per month. Therefore, pricing was a critical barrier.

Marketing plan:
Build the following non compensatory structure for the marketing plan i.e. the final reach of the product would be a function of the following three variables:
% of Aware population X % of population that can afford the product X % of population that is reached by the distribution
channel = Market share

I then explored ideas for improvement of each of these:

Increasing awareness: Through the following three initiatives:
- Tying up with Non governmental organizations involved in reaching this segment.
- Information dissemination by tying up with the extensive Public health infrastructure (since the Government is likely to have an incentive in such an initiative).
- FMCG’s own publicity initiatives such as media, radio etc.

Increasing affordability:
Internal measures: Identified major cost components where cost reduction measures could be taken:
- Raw materials: 30% of cost
Using recipes of local product variants with same nutrient and calorie value which utilize lower cost raw materials.
- Manufacturing : 20% of cost
This cost could be reduced through product innovation.
- Taxes & duties: 15% (refer external measures)

External measures: Seeking relief from the government on various tax components in the cost structure. This could shave costs to the extent of 12-15% (since the Government is likely to have an incentive in such an initiative).

Availability: Being a major FMCG player, it was assumed that the Company has a sufficient and capable distribution network.

Case 2
Market sizing for a drug used during surgeries in ICU

Determine the number of hospitals that would have ICU -> Determine the number of ICUs -> Utilization % of the ICUs (60%)->Proportion of surgeries which require the use of this drug (30%)->Average usage per day ( ₹5000 per day)
Tips: You need to put structure for problem diagnosis as well as case solution. Clearly very helpful and puts across a structured thinking
process all throughout!!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The Tatas Rs 100,000 car requires substantial cost reduction measures from the Rs 150,000 Indica materials cost. How will you go about analyzing the cost reduction plan?

Structure:
- Identify the various cost components and proportion of costs they represented.
- Determine cost components which are avoidable due to fewer facilities/accessories that are likely to be provided than in the
Indica. Identify cost reduction from this.
- Explored cost reduction possibilities for all materials components based on 80/20 rule.

We discussed the following options for each component (engine, axle & gear, auto components & plastic body parts) :
- Aggregation benefits due to larger scale at which these cars will be manufactured. The interviewer mentioned these had already
been exhausted to the maximum possible.
- Explored whether each of the components were manufactured internally or externally. Wherever possible, identified cost differentials between internal and external manufacture. The interviewer informed me that there were significant cost differential in in-house and third party manufacture in case of axles & gear, in-house production cost being significantly lower.

I tried to veer the discussion towards possible reasons for cost differential, however, the interviewer asked me to consider corrective action for this problem.

We then discussed following two corrective actions:
- All axle & gear production could be transferred in-house. However, I identified that this was already running to capacity.
Therefore, this was considered as a long term option and identified that significant investment would be required to consider this option.
- Work with the suppliers to transfer best practices from in-house production to the supplier to reduce his cost of production.

Interviewer terminated the case discussion at this point saying that we had figured out the general format in which to proceed which was sufficient.
Tips: Gauge the interviewer’s mood and try to change course/track accordingly.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Cheque processing facility of a bank had the following operation:
Receive cheques at branches, collect all cheques, send then to a processing centre and processing centre would enter all cheque details in the system forward the cheques to RBI clearing house. RBI now requires scanned images of the cheques instead of physical copies. There are two options available to meet this requirement:
- Option A: Receive cheques at branches, scan at branches, send scanned images to the processing centre as and when they were scanned. Processing centre would enter all details as earlier and forward the images to RBI clearing house by 4 p.m.
- Option B: Receive cheques at branches, forward physical cheques to the processing centre by 10 a.m. PC would scan as
well as enter all cheque details and forward the images to RBI clearing house by 4 p.m. How will you evaluate which option to choose from? First up, I clarified cheques from how many locations were being aggregated at the processing center. The interviewer clarified that there were 150 branches.

I discussed with the interviewer that I would like to analyze the problem along two dimensions:
- Time taken under both options
- Incremental cost to be incurred under the two options

After doing a costing analysis under both the options, I concluded that taking only costs into account, Option B would be more cost efficient.

The interviewer asked me to make an assessment of which of the above two options I would take. Here I brought in some operations perspective on aggregation of scanning process at the PC.
Tips: Genuine inclination to want to solve the problem has to come across. Most of the time, number of questions you ask and how persistently you are at it reflects that. So keep at it!!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This one really rattled me…especially at that stage of the process.
Very intense case interview.
Client is a Financial planning & management software company with the following revenue streams
Products:
- Large enterprises – highly customized, large business customers, direct sales force used
- SMEs – industry specific package- sold through dealers/ distributors
- Individual customers through regular off the shelf retail channels.
Services: IT consulting – maintenance & support.

Question 1: Declining revenue and profitability. What kind of data analysis would you perform in order to identify the source of
decline?
a. Products vs. Service
b. Along large, SME, Individual customer base under products
c. Geographical segments
d. Sales force effectiveness analysis
e. Industry segment wise analysis
f. Whether we are losing old customers or not getting new customers
Question 2: Assume Enterprise segment is losing revenue. What hypothesis can you generate …Broke these down into two parts:
Internal causes:
Product based + People based (developers,salesmen)
a. Lack of scalability of the product
b. Perceived quality of product/service not optimum
c. Sales force incentives not appropriate
d. Lack of ability to technical staff to understand customer requirements.
External causes: Explored these on the following three lines Competition + Customers + Context
a. Change in requirement of consumers/obsolescence of product
b. Competitor actions on pricing
c. Changes in customer industry regulation
He asked me to come up with atleast 15 reasons, don’t know how many I came up with, but I tried to think along this structured
fashion.

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. what would you do…?

Identified the indifference point for the sales men between the two incentive structures and accordingly change incentive structure… Did the calculation and then he asked me for other ways in which it could be implemented other than through change in incentives.
Tips: Think aloud whenever hypothesis driven interviews are posed at you…and persistence pays!!

General Tips: 1. Keep a strategic perspective.
2. Be persistent while through the whole interview.
Skills:
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: 1. Guesstimate approach was standard (demand side and supply side, estimate number of residents, travel frequency, distance, customer pooling etc to come up with a reasonable number)
2. On the bank question, suggested some points like:
•Infrastructure bonds – which will make only willing customers take up the risk of infrastructure projects instead of banks
which are lending out the general public’s money
•Private equity investment – infra projects have a toll collection revenue model that returns investments adequately. Private
participation should be encouraged in this matter. Was told to focus on the mismatch in maturity of assets and liabilities, which
led me on the right track and helped me hit the nail on the head.
•Pension funds – because these are investments are long term in nature as are infrastructure projects. Spoke about the new
National Pension System for government employees which is a defined contribution scheme as opposed to the erstwhile defined
benefit scheme. The fact that this has been opened up to the private sector also provides opportunities for more sources of
funds. Gave some figures on the existing corpus size (I had worked on a project on the National Pension Scheme)

Was made an offer :)

Tips: As I realized this last interview would be make or break, I literally took my own sweet time before answering. Remove the pressure on yourself to enable you to think rationally! Every round is a new round and gives you the opportunity to secure the job. Treat it like a conversation at the end of the day. Do remind yourself that it is not the end of the line – this thought, more than making you quit the venture actually gives you the ability to approach a situation objectively. Also realize that no firm is doing you a favour – if you’ve come this far – you’ve clearly earned it and all you have to do is think about what you want to say and how you intend to seal the deal :)

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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: •We discussed about the advantages of online banking from a customer’s perspective – saving time (queues, transaction time), getting value added services (online shopping) and established that there would be high demand side pressure for online services
•Segmented population and found mid-high income groups being the target audience (with internet access, requisite income and proximity and service time at bank branch being influencing factors). Renny pointed out that the unorganized sector would prefer branch banking if cash transactions are common
•We then talked about the advantages from a bank’s perspective (saving on manpower costs, real estate etc)
•In terms of strategy we talked about identifying geographies, promoting online services, offering competitive products etc
Tips: •In such a situation, you might find that scoping a question is becoming tough if you aren’t receiving active participation from the interviewer
•Proceed to explain your own understanding of the problem and try make a structure if you see one.
•If you stop seeing a structure – don’t hesitate to put your pen down and start making conversation about what you feel are the major issues. List down 4 or 5 such issues. The need to create and conform to a structure can become a liability at times like these, but trust me, your ability to merely survive a round like this may result in your being given an offer.
•
Can’t undermine the importance of dynamically adjusting yourself to an interview. In this case, it’s better to think freely and give a few good points than to draw a blank at the second branch of the case

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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Recommended Approach
- Broke down the value chain of the business – basically everything from design to delivery
- Asked about the business model. Was told to explain what I already know / make assumptions about the same. Gave my understanding about the business – that there would be a set of requirements given by the client possibly through a standardized procurement process involving floating of an RFP. This would be followed by design of structures, procurement of materials, construction and hand-over
- Understood the various elements of costs and dwelt on each
- Notable points/suggestions included i) making provisions on cost escalations during framing of the contract, ii) protecting against obsolescence of material in case of delay initiated by the client, iii) supplier rationalization for securing raw material, iv) some suggestions on achieving scale in transportation either by sub-contracting or some other means.

Suggestions weren’t fabulous so the case only went moderately well

Tips: •Don’t expect every interview to go in the same way. Snap out of your previous one and expect something new in the next one. This interview was open ended and required a lot of driving by the interviewee.
•Don’t get stuck in points where you aren’t able to ideate. Think of the interviewer’s time as limited. If you are in a spot – offer to give some ideas in an area where you think you might be comfortable. No one will ever refuse. He would love to have you bore him a little less !
•There are some cases which are just not up your alley. Again, don’t flog yourself for not aceing it.
•For a bunch of reasons your performance might not be consistent in a set of interviews. All your psychological phenomena come into the picture – overconfidence (the last one went so well, this is a piece of cake !),
denial (I can’t be screwing up this case – there must be something wrong with either the question or the interviewer
), nervousness(Oh my god ! This guy is a partner with McKinsey !)
or just white-noise (revenue minus cost…..bzzzzzz…bzzzzzz….where was I?
• If you rock one interview and pass another, you will typically get a third interview so don’t worry if you don’t own the case

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

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Never underestimate the importance of PI. I wish to lay emphasis on PI questions as it can be used as a metric to judge the ‘drive’ of a candidate and Sasi made it explicit that he wanted to test my ‘drive’ by understanding how I went about developing my musical skills – which happened to be a stand-out section in my extra acads. Also, the more structured you are in your answers the more impressive it would come across. To give you an exerpt:

Sasi: “So you chose to study economics at IIT (interesting choice) then you picked up music at IIT, then I suppose you would have had to balance your academic goals with your music right?”
Me: “Sir, there are three parts to your question as I understand it: 1) Why did I choose economics at IIT, 2) How did I work upon my music ? 3) How did I trade one off against the other?”
Sasi: “Let’s stick with the question on the music” Me: “ Sir, I look at this as a 5 step process:
1- Listen to more music [ For this I contacted seniors and got myself hundreds of GB of music on my harddisk]
2- Sing and listen to myself sing [ Used a software called Audacity where I would record and replay to myself and
understood inconsistency in tone, pitch, volume and beat]
3- Learn singing techniques like pitch control, vibrato, falsetto, runs and riffs [ looked at videos of vocal coaches on
youtube like Eric Arceneaux

Round: Case Study Interview
Tips: •So this being my first interview, there were jitters – but Sasi made me feel very comfortable

• PI set a good tone to get cracking
•Honestly, when I heard the question I didn’t feel like I’ve got this under the belt. It takes time for a case to build up along the way
•I made it a point to keep voicing out my thoughts, interjecting with “one moment please!”, “I need a little bit of time with this” to which the response invariably was “take your time”
•At times, thoughts don’t necessarily flow in the form of a tree – but jag around. Don’t flog yourself in order to come back on track. It is perfectly okay to talk about issues, considerations and concepts in order to engage your interviewer unless he forces you on track.
•You are actually being tested for your ability to come up with a bunch of relevant points on the topic, your ability to make smooth conversation in a professional context, and your ability to keep your cool. Don’t make an imaginary score chart in your head corresponding to the tree diagram that you’ve been used to practicing. To reiterate, McKinsey cases can be unstructured.
•I struggled a bit with math but I was able to laugh it off. I really doubt people judge you really harshly if you are making mistakes within the realm of human nature. Keep it together, offer a laugh if you can and move on.

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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Recommended Approach
As said by many earlier, no real frameworks or Victor Cheng’s formula work here. First Principle – going by logic and common sense will get you what questions to ask and how to approach and end the case with a solution
Tips: One more mistake which should not have been done, is a bad summary. Take a minute to go through the case and then summarize crisply. No structure for synthesis but, to the point and covering the essence!

Skills: Passion, Confidence, Approaching A Problem
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: He said I can list any number of approaches but dig one approach deeper to arrive at the number
Recommended Approach
I must have prompted how to recheck the answer I have got. That s one thing I must should have done well. Interview Day jitters!
Whenever you take a bottom up approach, make sure you all cross check it with a top down approach
Tips: Although one might say the final number doesn’t matter much in market sizing, I think that gives you fair indication about how accurate your approach would be. As soon as the interview is done, I googled and found the number of auto s in New Delhi are about 80,000. So it is a quite reasonable estimate. But many a time, you might be far off. So practice market sizing questions and cross check them with original figures to improvise your approach

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