PADECO INDIA Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: 15 minutes. Everyone was given time to conclude. Strength was 10. No specific skills were tested, Common GD skills like communication skills, listening to others viewpoint etc.

Round: Interview
Experience: 1st interview was with the panelists who visited here and the other was a telephonic interview with the Head of the Division from Delhi.As office is in Gurgaon, Hindi speaking ability helps. HR related question were there mostly. Asked about General Secretary post(POR). Asked about family background. As a lot of travel is involved they see your attachment with family. Interview was mostly based on PORs and resume.
No specific fundas required.
Tips: Before going for the interview please be aware of the recent affairs in the sector. Please read the day’s newspaper as I was asked a question about Malaysian infrastructure which featured on that day’s newspaper. I couldn’t answer and that was the reason I wasn’t selected in Deloitt Infrastructure

General Tips: Please go through the current affairs of the particular sector you are applying for( finance, Infrastructure). Before coming to the interview read the day’s newspaper.
Skill Tips: Focus on your Study.. Revise the subject that you have studied at the time of Interview
Skills: Technical Skills
College Name: IIT MADRAS

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: Tests your speaking skills, ability to form consensus, ability to work as a team and how you handle differences
Tips: Agree to disagree, be firm about your opinions but recognize if you are wrong.
Duration: 10 minutes

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Tests your approach towards solving problems
Tips: Say your thought process aloud, make broad assumptions first, give realistic numbers to your assumed variables and perform sanity check on solution.

General Tips: IMPORTANT - discuss your salary during interview with Feedback Infra. Clearly ask what your take home component would be. It is wrong on their part but the company first quotes a competitive CTC orally and then after your placement is done, it gives 10-15% lesser CTC on its legal letterhead, but by then you would have declined other offers, so you would not have any choice but to accept this job. They dupe students from IIMs, IITs, SPA Delhi, LSE and also lateral hires on salary aspect. Be very careful, tell them you can only accept or decline their offer after they quote salary on letterhead.
Skill Tips: Be calm
Skills: Approach towards solving problems, Basic mathematics
College Name: School of Planning and Architecture
Motivation: Wanted a job

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Dual Degree students with decent CPI, relevant projects and extras
Tips: Highlight subjects and projects involving data mining, machine learning, marketing research

Round: Test
Experience: PST had 26 questions to be done in an hour (3 cases) and 20 QUESTIONS in 30 mins general apti (level: 2-3 of Arun sharma)
Tips: practice!
Duration: 1 hour 30 minutes
Total Questions: 46

Round: Technical + HR Interview
Experience: Since my resume was filled with

College Name: IIT Kanpur

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The interview started with a 'tell me about yourself' for which i had prepared a 1 minute intro highlighting specific aspects about myself that I wanted to bring to his notice . Then he asked me about what i did in CRISIL (my prior workplace) . I explained that I was engaged in assigning Credit Ratings to Corporates under Basel II Regulations.
How would you go about Rating a Company, lets say Bharti Airtel.
Because it was Bharti Airtel I had to give an answer tailored to what the approach would be for a Telecom company would be. While answering I was conscious of 2 things – One, that I have a clear structure to my answers and Two, tried to keep it as simple and jargon free as possible.
(An Offshoot from something I had mentioned in the earlier answer) What are the ratios that you would look at?Here I mentioned the financial ratios that I would look at stating specifically why I would look at each ratio. He probed me on a few ratios here and there. The intention appeared to be more to check my articulation of a financial concept.
Eg: What is a Current Ratio?
I explained the formula. However I did not stop there. I went on to explain that it was used to assess the liquidity position of the company.
Then I went on to explain to the logic behind the usage of the ratio – Simply put, it tells us if there is likely to be sufficient inflows of funds over the next one year to meet the maturing payment obligations. So a current ratio of less than one means the company has more to pay than what is coming in, a liquidity problem. (Based on the approving nods that I was getting, I felt he liked those portions of my answer where I endeavored to de-jargonize or simplify complex concepts)
So Tell me, how would you increase the revenues of Bharti Airtel.
That was my case, it had begun. However, at that point I thought it was just an extension of my previous discussion and I started rambling.
Analysis:
Preliminary questions - We all know Bharti Airtel and the services it offered quite well – So there was no need to ask preliminary questions. Also, since I wasn't aware that I was doing a case I did not have the opportunity to ask preliminary questions.
Structure: The Structure that I used was fairly simple – Increase in Revenues can in Existing markets or through expansion in new markets.
I explored the existing markets first. Here increase in revenues could occur through increased market penetration, increased usage of basic services among current users or increased usage of Value added services among existing customers. He asked me a couple of questions on how these things can be done and I gave him some off the cuff answers.
For the New markets, I suggested that the company could look at inorganic expansion through acquisitions or through establishment of Greenfield operations in new markets with high market potential.
The entire case was more like an informal chat. There were a few follow up questions on some of the options I had generated. The case did not last very long – about 10 minutes at the max.


Tips: Know your Resume well. At no point in the interview should you ramble on. All answers must be natural (ie, must not appear rehearsed), brief, structured and to the point.

Retaining composure through the interview is critical. Mistakes may happen during the interview, but it is important to pick you up and keep at it. People rarely have perfect interviews where everything has gone right and interviewers don‟t expect it either.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case: I am the manufacturer of Tata Nano. While setting up the plant I expected to have sales of around 5 lac Nanos per annum, but now the number is way below that. Can you help me find out why.
Analysis: Preliminary questions – Since it was Tata Nano, lot of the background questions were not required. I clarified whether the problem was a lack of bookings that they received. He agreed.
Structure: The Structure that I used was not the best but it did get me to the problem. I started off by saying the lack of bookings could be on account of 3 reasons – One, a lack of awareness of the product among the target customers (Marketing problem), Two, Being aware of the product but not being able to place a booking (Distribution problem) or a Three, being aware of the product yet not interested in the product(i called this the product problem). He asked me to ignore the first 2 (he did not seem highly impressed) and explore the 3 rd the product problem.
Here I again broke it up in to 2 further branches – Problems that the Car has by itself (Internal factors) and problems in the external environment mainly competition, etc. I deep delved in to the Internal factors.
Of the internal problems I mentioned, he agreed that the negative publicity from the steering wheel catching fire was an issue and comfort factor was another issue. As and when he acknowledged a problem, I made a separate note of it. Eventually when he asked me to explore the external factors, I used these points to do a quick summary of the key takeaways up to that point.
In the external problem, I divided it into competition from other cars and two wheeler. I asked a few questions here trying to pick up a clue or 2 of how to proceed from there but he just refused to shell out any information. At this point he also took out his Blackberry and acted uncooperative. I went on to analyze for myself that given that the price of the next cheapest car was over a lakh higher than this car the issue lay more with the 2 wheeler. I went on to list factors why people would prefer 2 wheeler to a Tata Nano. Of the factors I listed, he acknowledged that the high running costs and availability of easy financing options seemed like the distinguishing factors. He said I seemed to have arrived at the problem.
He now asked me to tell me how he could provide
financing options for the Nano. This I felt was like a
guess estimate problem. I said I would work backward
to solve the problem. This is how I solved it – I said the average Nano target customer would earn Rs 10000 per month (he had given me that number in an earlier discussion, he liked the fact that I had noted it down and was using it again) I said, given the average savings rate of the country is at 35%-40% (this is from the RBI website I think). That meant a saving of about Rs 4,000 per month. No one would be comfortable giving up their


Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow