Pierian Services Consultant Interview Questions and Answers

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - I led campus recruiting for 2 top MBA programs. Every interaction before an interview is important. You really want to be on the high priority or very high priority lists. The coffee chats are not just to answer your questions, we make a 25-minute determination of whether you had an impressive background, we’re inquisitive, and passed the airport test. Make sure you bring your energy to all of it. It determines how much support you get and how many interactions you have with senior leaders during the recruiting process to give you advice.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: The interview began with a quintessential -“Why don't you tell me something about
yourself?”, The case in round one was about potato chip manufacturing company. Didn't . really end up cracking the case/
Tips: You really need to be calm and only then will the analytical skills and creativity really show. But do not worry - the interviewer shall go out of his/her way to make you feel so.
Just be you and try to establish connecting with the interviewer. A smiling face comes in handy too.
Also, there is a lot of buildup on campus to the start of day zero- just remain calm during that time. It‟s easy to feel over pressurized, especially with all the short-lists coming in, but just relax. It‟s going to be fine.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Case:The client is a large cement company with the highest market share. The second close player is cutting prices. To match the prices the client has also reduced its prices and is facing declining profits. The client has given us 3 weeks to solve the problem.
Structure:
I asked him about the dynamics of the industry. He explained that there is not much difference between the products as well as the cost structures of the company. This meant that even the competitor is losing money by the price war.
I suggested 2 alternatives to solve this: first involved analyzing the cost structure and trying to reduce costs. But the interviewer told me that the client has used all the cost efficiencies possible (this indicates that the interviewer does not want me to go deeper).
Second option that I suggested involved was the Game Theory approach. This involves indicating to the competitor that we will not reduce our prices even if he does so. This I suggested could be done by issuing some way of communication to the competitor. But he said that the competitor is not willing to talk. I could not think of what could be done so he suggested that the client should increase the prices. This will show to the competitor that the client is serious.
Then the interviewer said that after one week, the sales of the client had declined drastically and the competitor had not reduced its prices. This created a problem of inventory.
To solve this data was collected geographically and analyzed. It was found that some dealers had reduced the stocks of the clients cement. The clients did this as they expected the price increase to be temporary and thus wanted to postpone the purchase. I suggested increasing the prices again. This will signal to the dealers that the price increase is not temporary.
Finally he asked me to give some suggestions about the same. I suggested that the dealers should be given discounts based on the average volumes they generate every week and month. This will help in inventory planning. Secondly whenever the price is increased they should be increased all at once and any decrease should be spread over a larger period. This will not allow competitors and dealers to pre-empt the client.
Tips: Even though the ideas might sound outlandish, get them across, they will give you the benefit of thinking out of the box. Try to involve the interviewer in the case as much as possible, if he is interested he will point you out more and more in the right direction.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Started directly with the case. At the end of the case asked me about LBO (Leveraged buyout) and asked me to give an example in the Indian markets .
Case:I was travelling in a taxi when the driver asked me about switching his car and joining the radio cab service such as Meru. What is your advice?
Structure:
I said that we will compare the profits of the two methods and make our decisions based on that. I asked about the revenue and costs of the two and calculated the profit.
I proved that joining the radio cab was better. But the interviewer told me that was the wrong answer. He asked me to go back.
I took the current taxi and approached the different line items one by one. I suggested that if the driver installed an AC he will be able to charge more. But the interviewer asked me to suggest something else.
If the engine of the cab (which was currently diesel) could be replaced by CNG (the radio cab used CNG) the fuel cost reduced drastically making the current cab more profitable. I showed him the calculations.
Tips: Try to be receptive to the hints given by the interviewer in the process. They are extremely important to get to the solution quickly.

General Tips: Do not lose your calm even if you answer wrong.
Skills:
College Name: IIM Lucknow

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Very basic scoping questions.1)Re-iterated the question. Confirmed the objective. 2)Asked him if this was attached to a mall. –He said forsimplicity purposes, let us assume it to be a standalone multiplex.
I told him that any multiplex would have mainly four sources of Revenues:1)Ticket Sales 2) Food and Beverages 3) Advertising 4) Parking Fees He askedme to ignore Parking fees and suggest ways to improve revenue for each of the other three categories.I started with Ticket Sales. Ticket Sales = Number of Tickets Sold/Show * Price * Number of shows. 1)Optimize show timings in such a way that more showscan be accommodated. This needs to be considered as a tradeoff to advertising and trailer timings.2)Pricing: Have a dynamic pricing strategy just like in airplanes. You charge each customer different based on the timing of purchase and supply demand equation.

Skill Tips: A very long PI session. Can’t say it was a PI, much like a conversation. The interviewer asked me about my work at Arvind Infrastructure. We discussed about my work for around 5-7 mins. This made me feel very comfortable and I was very much set for my case interview. He was extremely friendly and very good to talk to
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Follow the basic Profit –Loss Framework. He asked me to just consider Revenues.Revenues of Retail Company Factors: 1) Number of Footfalls 2) Conversion Rate 3) Products Bought 4) Quantity 5) Price of each product 6) Repeat customers.He asked me to discuss strategies to improve all of the above factors.I don’t remember what I spoke for all factors, but wherever I was unable to think, he was giving me clues. Being from retail background, I was able to relate my experiences with many of the solutions suggested.We talked about availability of products: Asked him to keep safety stock. Forecasting needs to be much better, appropriate information needs to be passed to distributors.Talked aboutplanogram: this is how you display your products, shelf space etc.I discussed with him about the loyalty programs and COD model.The interview was long, but again much like a conversation. Was very much relaxes during the interview and the interviewer was also smiling which made me feel very comfortable
Tips: Knowing your background really helps. One can suggest innovative solutions to the interviewer. BCG was the only consulting shortlist I had and by this time, I was very much determined to get to a closure.

Skill Tips: Tell me about yourself. –When I reached my retail experience part, he said “I am very interested in consumer behavior. Letus do a case on a retail chain.”We also discussed a lot about my retail experience:1)He asked me what were the challenges I faced –I told him inventory management was the biggest problem. Did you use some tools to solve inventory issues?I said yes. Spoke about it for about 2-3 mins.2)Why retail?
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Started with the basic Revenues –Costs = profit framework. He asked me to concentrate on revenues. I identified the sources of revenues 1) Consulting 2) Surgeries 3) Lab 4) Pharmacy. He nodded and asked me to move on. I asked him if there was a revenue dip in any of these services to which he replied these are all related and hence the dip is across all services. I asked him about the competition. I asked him whether the competition is offering similar services and how does it charge for its services as compared to the hospital in question. He said “Competition doesn’t specializes in heart surgeries like our hospital. However, it performs all services and their pricing structure is different.I asked him if they were pricing services lower than us to which he replied “no”. He wanted me to think on what could be different in terms of prices. I told him that the structure of pricing is different and hence the hospital may have one fixed fee whereas the competition may have a base fee plus additional charges. The price may come out to be the same but people may perceive it to be cheaper. He appreciated my answer and asked me if I would change the structure of the Hospital in question.I replied that I wouldn’t change the structure. The hospital has a very strong brand and has been following this pricing structure since ages. If it seemingly makes it lower, there is a possibility that patients may come to know about this and its brand may get tarnished. I wasn’t too happy with how I defended but I defended nonetheless.He asked me if I had any questions and I really didn’t have any questions for him. Too tired and nervous to think of anything. However, it is very important to prepare questions for interviewers.
Tips: 1)PI is extremely important. It helps you to develop connect with the interviewer. Also it adds to your confidence. Be genuine about your PI.2)Always keep smiling and be very confident. More than the solution, the interviewer should get good vibes during the interview. Even if you falter, admit that you do not know and you would like to understand from the interview how it needs to be done.3)Be humble.4)Do not ask your colleagues about how their interview experience went. It will just add to your worries and you may end up losing confidence.5)The interview should be more like a conversation.6)Sleep well the night before, do not wait for the schedule. Get up early and check the schedule. Do one case which you are most confident about the day of the interview.7)Again keep smiling.

Skills: Personality, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Split revenue as price per engagement and number of engagementsSaid that we could increase price because of customized solutions but not enough for 20% and hence need to increase quantity of engagementsProposed customer retention through better service like engagement at lower corporate levels etc and more customer acquistion through industry expansion (verticals) ; Was asked to suggest a recruitment strategy for industry expansion and said that need laterals for PL position with industry knowledge and we could hire consultants and associates from b-schoolswith generic experience
Tips: What was good: Speed to cover issues, involving the interviewer in case, PIWhat could be better: More energy could be better because you need to energize the interviewer as well as it is a long day for them too

Skill Tips: RevenueTarget Get it to grow by about 20% y-o-yIs it limited to Indian customersYesWhat is the competitive scenarioAssume what you know about consulting currently
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Q. What does our client do? Company was a manufacturing firm looking to build the plant and sell electricityQ. Does the client have a solar plant? No, the client has no current experience in Solar PowerQ. How much time will it take to build the plant?3-4 yearsQ. What is the life of my plant?30 years, govt will buy electricity for 30 yearsQ. How does government decide whom to allot?Project has to look technical feasible and financial terms Q. What kind of bidding takes place?First price Auction, lowest price wins
I started by indicating that the bid price would be dependent on the benefits and costs of the project as well as the competitive bid.The interviewer asked me to move ahead and discuss the benefits and costs. I first picked up the costing side of it and divided into fixed and variable. I was told that the capex was 17 crorers per MW. As soon as I had some numbers thrown on me I got a bit tensed, and thought that I would need to do some hard calculations. However, these numbers were thrown just to test if I could move ahead or be caught with numbers. As per the variable costs, I broke and listed all the expense such as direct material, direct labor, overheads, SG&A and depreciation etc. I then said that these costs would depend on the capacity of the plant. He asked me to elaborate on this topic and I said there would be effects of economies of scale and also the learning effect. He immediately asked me how learning curve would affect the costs. I told him thatthe learning curve would reduce the variable cost over time. I could see that he was happy with the answer and told me to proceed to the benefit side. On the benefits side, I said the amount I earn would be my cost X plus some margin y% over the cost. I also mentioned that competitive bids will impact how much I could expect on the bid price and mentioned that In such cases we usually look at old auctions or try to estimate the auction bid of other companies.
Tips: he case wasn’t hard but because the interviewer was working on his laptop during the interview and often not looking at me, I felt he wasn’t impressed. It was only after 15 mins into the interview, that I could get the interviewers complete attention. This usually happens in a stress interview, and one should not get stressed. Just keep calm and follow the most exhaustive approach. Also, in this case I was occasionally bombarded by numbers and got distracted as to how I should deal with them. One should remember that sometimes numbers are just to confuse and distract the interviewee

Skill Tips: Yash asked me why I did Bachelors of Finance and not Engineering. He also asked me about my choice of taking up commerce. I realized that was only to build stress and see how I perform later in the interview later. He also asked my GMAT score, Having a score of below of 700 I felt a little uncomfortable as I thought the interviewer would already make an impression about my performance. I guess it didn’t matter afterwards as I went to the final round.
Skills: Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The usual PI questions, I’d say be prepared with a list of them. The PI would give you on opportunity to strike the right vibes with the interviewer. So when you get down to doing a case, you’ll feel a lot more comfortable and confident.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information that I got was as follows – 1. The trend was temporary, and the market was expected to start growing again after a few years. 2. Need not worry about what widgets are; just consider them to be a part of machine equipment. 3. The manufacturer is a global company headquartered in US 4. The market had been growing over the last 2-3 years at 30 – 40 % and has now flattened. I then defined the problem statement. From here on I took a pretty unconventional first principles approach in structuring my though process. I decided to look at 2 aspects – a. Means to enhance Capacity Utilization through an understanding of the business based on b. Market Analysis Under capacity utilization I had intended to focus on Altering the product mix, increase sales geographically, rationalize my asset base, and providing value added services. The first one wasn’t possible and on the geographical front we were already selling globally. Then I switched to market analysis where I looked at # of players, respective market shares, competitive landscape, drivers of purchase and price points. On questioning, it turned out that we were the largest player with a 35% market share, two other major players had a 20% share each, and the rest of the market was fragmented amongst small players. Everyone sold at the same price. In past, the purchase decision had not been based on price, but on being highest in quality, and we were perceived to be amongst the highest in quality. We were also the cost leaders in this business, and this was the catch point. It also turned out that in being more cautious about their purchase of widgets, our potential customers had now become more price conscious, and the market was price elastic. From here on I started shaping recommendations – I put them as short term and long term. In the short term I suggested that we play on price points. Since we are the cost leaders and the market was price elastic, we can bring down our prices till a point where our profits increase with decrease in prices. Also, our competitors won’t be able to cut prices to the extent that we can, and in this way we can squeeze their margins beyond tolerable limits, force them to exit, and thus increase our share of the pie. In the long run, we needed to work around rationalizing our asset base, and building a value added service layer to our business. That’s where the case concluded.
Tips: I’d suggest that encase you too reach your solution pretty soon in the interview, spend some time to look at other strategic aspects, at points in your structure that might have been left untouched, but don’t panic if there’s nothing more to add from your end. You can close the case as and when you feel you’ve done what you wanted to, and need not wait to have spent a pre-decided amount of time on it. Yes I made it to the next round.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client was a $10 billion + company with 50000 + employees. 2. It was a Europe based company with operations all over the world, and their business was expected to grow at 10 – 15 % 3. The lines of business were divided into 2: A. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space. B. Providing Services, which was further subdivided into 4 categories.(i) Turnkey i.e. developing new networks (ii) Managed Services i.e. run the network on behalf of the service provider (iii) Maintenance (H/W and S/W) (iv) Consulting Solutions then defined the problem statement. From here on I structured by approach to do a Revenues & Cost analysis after having done a thorough Market Analysis. Under Market Analysis, I looked at 1. No. of Players – there were 6 -7 players, we were no. 2 with a mkt. share of 20%. The mkt. leader had a 30% share. 2. I looked at Growth in each of the businesses, Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space each growing at 15 % and 25% respectively and overall this line of business was growing at 20% In Providing Services, the above 4 were expected to grow at 0%, less than 10%, 15% and less than 10% respectively (in the order mentioned above). 3. The drivers of purchase were driven by Cap Ex and Op Ex incurred by the customers, i.e. Price was the key driver of purchase once you were a part of the consideration set. However, to be considered for a contract by a potential customer, high standards of quality were a must. Before starting to look at the revenues and costs in trying to address profitability, I asked for the revenue break up of for our client. It was as follows – 55% from 2G(30%) & 3G(25%). 24% from turnkey. 9% from maintenance. 6% from managed services and the rest from consulting. I then asked for how this picture would look 3-4 years from now. Selling Equipment and S/W in 2G and 3G space would together constitute 40%, with 70% of this 40 from 3G and rest from 2G. Services would constitute 60% of the revenues, and in comparing to their current contributions, Turnkey would stagnate, Maintenance business would grow at 10 – 15%, and Consulting and Managed Services would grow disproportionately. This unfortunately is all that I remember of the case in terms of data, but from here on it was pretty standard. I prioritized my probing of the cost structures for each of the businesses based on their current and future contributions to the revenue pie. I then explored the cost structures for each line of business, identified the cost levers, and further prioritized my recommendations for each cost lever on the basis of where we could achieve most impact. On the revenue side, my recommendations were around building capabilities around consulting and managed services based on how the business was expected to shape up in the future. There was a lot to talk about under each of the above – off shoring, consolidation of suppliers and subcontractors etc., managing over runs, acquisition to build capabilities, and I did touch upon all of these. I'm sure based on your own judgement, you can add more to it. All the best!

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked a few clarifying questions. The information I got was a follows – 1. The client manufactured broadly two kinds of products A. Textiles (of different counts, pure yarns, viscose mix etc.) B. Garments (semi formal / informal in cotton, for both men and women) I structured my approach as follows: As part of Market Entry evaluation, I wanted to look at the following: 1. Market Attractiveness – size of the mkt., growth expected, penetration levels and margins. 2. Competition – in each of the segments. Further look at unbranded retailing, branded retailing and pvt. label retailing. 3. Strategic Fit and Capabilities as far as this proposed line of business was concerned. 4. How to enter – Organic v/s Inorganic At this point, I was asked to move onto the branding strategy that I would recommend. One key factor that I considered was a single brand v/s a multi brand strategy. And through discussions with the interviewer, I decided to pursue a multi-brand approach for different segments, different qualities etc. (just as Arvind Mills, Madura Garments etc. do). I then proposed that in developing a brand strategy for each of the brands I chose to pursue, I would look at the following: 1. Position the brand 2. Pricing 3. Distribution 4. Promotion. In positioning the brand (each of the brands that we will roll out), I would look at drivers of purchase and then position myself accordingly through parity and distinction. At this point, we got into a more general conversation around how to position, what other factors to consider, and then wrapped up the case.
Tips: As you step in for the interview, make sure that you leave all the excess baggage outside. It’s a big deterrent in one’s performance. I had one more interview that I’m unable to document, after which I was made an offer.

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