McKinsey & Company Consultant Interview Questions, Process, and Tips

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Since the case was very open ended, I took a couple of minutes to structure my thoughts. Luckily, the recently concluded course on GSB ( Govt, Society & Business ) came to my rescue and I started by saying that I would like to explain the impact on these three1.
Govt
– It would primarily mean a lower oil bill. I mentioned that since oil bill forms a major chunk ~ 90% of the forex outflow, this would lead to increase in $ reserves with the govt and reduce the current account deficit ( everything else being constant ofcourse) - principles of macro economics helped here
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2.
Society
– The petrol bill of households would reduce and hence and increase in disposable income. Since Indians have a higher marginal propensity to save ( another macro / micro economic funda ), we could expect the banks to see a higher CASA ( current and savings account) balance. Also, the unsaved cash could be channeled towards retail/ tourism ( based on a recent article I read in the economist ) 3.
Business
– Business could be basically of two categories – those which have oil as a revenue ( drilling & allied services – BP, Halliburton etc ) would have a hard time as the revenue will drop and the ones which have oil as a cost (airlines) who can look forward to improvements in margins. He was very satisfied and asked me that how did I expect the Indian stock to behave given the drop in stock price. I wasn’t very sure and requested the interviewer to guide me. He very patiently explained that the stock market had
so witnessed a decline. He then asked me to explain the reason for decline. I said I wasn’t sure but would like to hypothesize. Basically the stock market would decline if investors would withdraw their money. Since FIIs ( Foreign Institutional Investors) are responsible for a major chunk of the investments, it might be that they are withdrawing their investment and using the money for some other purpose. At this point, I checked with the interviewer if the hypothesis was correct. He smiled and nodded and asked me to continue. Now, I said I would need to see who exactly are these investors to ascertain why they were withdrawing their money ( since because of the Modi govt. the business outlook was very positive). Here, he said that these investors were mainly sovereign wealth funds of OPEC countries. Now the picture was clear . Due to declining oil price, the governments in these countries were facing revenue pressure and had to recall the investments in order to continue funding the operations. The interviewer again smiled and said that given the situation, would I invest my money in the Indian stock market. I said that I would invest in specific sectors like airlines, but not in the market as a whole. The case ended here.
Tips: A relaxed state of mind goes a long way in helping crack the case as well as forming a connect with the interviewer. So, keep calm and read the economist / FT and then keep calm again on the D-day!I was able to even hold a conversation here because I had been reading up the economist / financial times. Hence, please make it a habit to please read at least one journal during ISB, especially a couple of months before Day 1

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Only one PI question this time also – Tell me about yourself. The interview was mainly case based.


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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Started with usual profitability framework and started with costs by attempting to make a value chain. I was told that it would get complicated and how else to break them, and I broke them by line item in Income Statement Asked me to look at labor costs. Narrowed down it to productivity issue but could not identify the cause
(Workers were travelling more as the mine digging site kept going farther)
Moved on to revenue and said that prices would be regulated and hence looked at qty - Was asked to stop here and asked to reconsider. I asked what kind of contracts controlled prices –and with his hints figured out that we have stronger bargaining power than our customers and suggested an increase. Used value based pricing to arrive at a number for price Then went back to quantity and suggested geographic expansion as the last part.
Tips: What was good: Speed to cover issues, involving the interviewer in case, PI What could be better: Made assumptions and missed out parts of the case and by then I needed explicit hints Felt like I did not do too well, and took a break before the next interview with the partner.


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: 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: 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)