Planedge Consultants Architect Interview Questions and Answers

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Remain confident, calm and be transparent and honest always.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I asked him some clarificatory questions on where all in the world have the plants to get an idea of the kind of local areas. He replied in US, Indonesia, Trinidad etc. I then proceeded to succinctly put the problem statement to he and he was ok with it. Then I asked for “some time to structure my thoughts” ☺. The structure I laid out was: 1. What is meant by ‘organizational structure’? Is our end goal to figure out the number of levels in an organization, the number of people at each level and the skill they require? 2. Understand the goal of the organization: a cost focus or a responsiveness focus, whats important in this industry? 3. Map the existing processes that the company is involved in (value chain) and look at how best the goal of the organization can be served with: a. Existing company people redeployed to the new countries b. People from the acquired companies to continue working c. New people to be hired It seemed that he was looking for something else in the structure that I missed as indicated by his body language. However, he answered my queries – For point 1 he said I should look at a broader picture of what an organizational structure means. What I had defined was a very micro view. For point 2 he said I can assume an undifferentiated product market and that cost is the main focus. Here I pointed out that since we are acquiring he plants, the main concern in the short term maybe quick ramp up of the plant. He liked that and said that there are actually 3 measures that we will rate our structure on: - Ramp up time - Cost - Accountability of the plant employees of its performance For point 3 he said it might not be so relevant to our discussion!! Clearly I was in a situation where I didn’t know what hit me since I thought I completely missed what he wanted on 2 of my three points. However I kept calm and asked him what is the way to understand the org structure? He said think about how it was organized in ITC. So I said: 1. Since ITC is a conglomerate, it has a structure of various businesses or divisions which function independently. A ‘Corporate’ division is common to all. 2. Within each division there are functional verticals like the Marketing function, Technical function, HR, Finance functions. Shirish liked the way I described the structures in ITC so he said good. He said that that is a macro ‘Product’ structure of businesses around products like cigarettes, paperboards, clothes. Then he probed me on what could be other structures? I replied that the sub-structure of ‘Functions’ like marketing, HR etc could be the macro structure itself. He said that’s the 2nd, what else? Then we had a discussion on other kind of structures and he led me to two other kinds – ‘Geographical’ and ‘Type of Customer’. Then I started to list of pros and cons of each structure. However he said are you missing the criteria, so I quickly referred my notes and realized that he had given the 3 measures to rate each structure earlier – ramp up time, cost and accountability. I then ranked each on the above and after a discussion with him concluded that we should start with a functional set up to ensure quick ramp up and then move towards a geographical set up to ensure the local accountability, and minimization of costs. He was happy with the way I recovered and synthesized. He then went on to explain that actually they went in with the geographical setup directly, and the functional setup was a pseudo layer on top, as there were ‘functional specialists’ that traveled to a location to ensure quick ramp up. Then He said is there anything else I wanted to know from him. Then I told him that in our previous meeting we had not talked about the challenges of working with the govt sector. So he talked on that for around 5 mins.
Tips: 1. Proceed in the interview the way the interviewer wants you to. If he wants a free-flowing discussion, which was the case here once I laid out my structure, be flexible to do so. However, keep a track of open ends on your structure.
2. Don’t hesitate to ask the interviewer for help in case you are stuck. In my case it helped me a lot.
3. Don’t get flustered if stuck. Persevere and be calm.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Clarificatory questions from my side helped me understand what happens when a company sponsors the tournament. He replied that the tournaments might be branded like “Gold Flake Open”, and the company gets rights like logos on uniforms and on the cricket grounds, title rights etc. I asked about the duration of the tournament etc. Then I took time and laid out the valuation framework. Discounted cash flow analysis and NPV calculation, for which we will discuss the revenues, costs, and the discount rate. I gave details of revenue sources, cost heads. He said lets focus on the revenue sources. Here my proposition was that there could be an increase in the number of people (Users) or the number of times existing users smoke (Usage) due to the advertising in the IPL. He seemed satisfied with this hypothesis and asked me to go on. So I sought to define first the target segments. There was a simple quant test here. I used the urban Indian population (since rural people smoke bidis predominantly) of 30% of 1B, and assuming a life expectancy of 60 years and that smokers start from the age of 20 years got a figure of 200M smokers in India. Out of this assuming 1:1 male-female ratio, we arrived at 100M male smokers (assumed females don’t smoke). He now told me that actually there are only 10M smokers in India. So then I discussed that now we have to delineate the factors why people take up smoking (purchase drivers), and clearly figure out those people who took up smoking by seeing the IPL advertisements or related promotions. Also I mentioned that this would be a challenge to do practically on the ground. So how does the 10M number change (market expansion or increase in users) was part 1, and how much more do the 10M smoke (usage) was the other effect we need to consider. Then heasked me how we can make sure that we convert the advertising into sales. I knew he wanted to get some creative answers, so I said maybe stock up in the shops outside the stadiums, or mobile vendors (and more suggestions I don’t remember now). I did mention that advertising is banned in India for cigarettes and we would have to be careful in the suggestions. He was happy with the discussion on the revenues part. He asked me where would the new smokers come from? Would they be new or would they come from competition brands? Then we discussed a lot on the kind of up-trading that happens in cigarettes, namely, people who smoke bidis move onto cigarettes, and people who smoke small length cigarettes move up and start smoking ‘kings’ type cigarettes. Finally we came onto the valuations part to understand what should be the money ITC should be willing to pay. I explained the free cash flow formula, and how we would use it over the years to calculate the NPV. We had a small summary discussion here. Then he asked me if he had any question for me. I asked him does he feel the urge to do more ‘implementation’ work in McK since he is a doctor, and that I feel that I might get bored of doing only ‘strategy’ kind of work. He resonated the feeling and explained in depth what projects he had done and that a large % is implementation.
Tips: Here he clearly told me that he was not interested in too much structuring, so I reduced my writing but continued to speak all my answers in a structured manner. The interviewer felt nice that I responded to his style. So point is, adapt yourself to the situation, yet maintain the poise in your answers, don’t completely relax. Also please use the opportunity in the end to ask questions that you really want to get answers of. Link them up with the background of the interviewer. This shows commitment and preparation, and builds a last minute connection with the interviewer. Also be clear of the intricacies of the business you came from, it helps a lot if the case dwells on a similar topic.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Clarificatory questions included understanding the types of products sold in the point of sale, the various stakeholders involved in the transaction. The 2nd question hit a chord with , he smiled and said that there are three stakeholders, the Retailer (Tesco or someone else), the Consumer Finance Company, and the Consumer. I knew at this point that I had to concentrate on each one separately. I laid out a simple structure of looking at the costs and benefits (or positives and negatives) for each stakeholder by getting into the scheme. He was ok with this, in fact he said this is exactly how it should be looked at. I started with the Retailer and said that there are only benefits since they get the sales revenues that earlier were not got since the consumers did not have funds. So the Retailer clearly wanted the scheme. For the Consumer Finance company I said that the cost would be the cost of raising the money to fund the loans which would depend on the default rate of these consumers. The benefit would be the interest that the consumer would pay on the loan. Then we had a discussion on how to estimate this default rate. Here I said we could use data from similar loan schemes in other countries since the type of product and the cost of the white goods (20-40K in this case) plays a role, or default rates on loans on other products in the particular region, since location and local demography also plays a role. Another benefit could be that a consumer finance company could occupy mind space with the consumers who might buy other products like home loans, car loans etc from the company in future. Overall, a consumer finance company might be keen to enter into this loan. For the consumers, He asked why would a consumer buy a loan from this company and not go the branch elsewhere and take a loan. I said that the convenience of getting the loan at the point of purchase was the single largest factor for the consumers. Also I added that now they would be able to purchase high value items higher in prestige value that they could not afford earlier, so impulse purchase might increase.On the whole, based on a discussion with he, I concluded that the consumer finance company would need to be cautious in proceeding with the loan since the default rates are not predictable. He inquired a way to solve this problem and I suggested that the loans be launched for selected products and consumer segments to start with as a pilot, and then expanded to other products and consumers.
Tips: Asking relevant questions in the beginning of the cases really helps as the interviewer starts helping you more, or will reveal information that would be critical in the case. Prepare the basic questions on leadership and teamwork well. This means they should be personalized, not the typical definitions. The examples should be crisp and explain the point well. Showing energy and impact during such answers is crucial otherwise they might appear faffy. At times when he was having a stone expression, I tried to smile and break him out of that mould.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Since this was not a typical case, I broke out of the case mould and immediately asked for some time to think of the questions. I told him that I would follow a predecessor-based questioning model, simply put, subsequent questions would depend on the answers of the previous questions. He liked this approach. My 5 questions were as follows:
1. Select the business which has a large contribution to the conglomerate’s overall revenues, and ask the business head (who reports to the chairman): How many decisions has he independently taken in the last 12 months vs how many has he just implemented decisions of the chairman?
2. Based on the response of the first question, ask the business head what has been the impact both: a. On the individual business (to the company) performance: Company is not doing well, and the situation needs to be corrected/company is doing average/company is doing good. b. On the business head himself (to the individual) morale: He is thinking of quitting immediately/in some time/not at all. Based on these questions we would come to know the real impact of the chairman’s behavior on the company and the immediate reportees.
3. If the problem is serious, ask the business head which section of the employees are affected the most by the chairman’s decisions, say, mid level and shop floor level
4. and 5. Ask the mid level and shop floor level employees the same two sub-points as in question 2.
The questions should seek to address: - Verify whether there is a problem at all - Verify the extent of the problem - Verify the seriousness of the problem.
He seemed satisfied by the questions and the summary. That’s all he wanted to hear in the case, and I was also relieved☺.
Tips: here will always be cases you have not prepared for. Use common sense, and try to use your work experience to think of substance, and then put it in an easy to understand structure to communicate to the interviewer. Also try to enjoy the process. After multiple rounds of interviews, I had gotten over the fear of cases, and was smiling a lot and enjoying the process. Spend time with the alums from the various firms who would be coordinating the process, they will help calm nerves and give a good perspective on the proceedings.

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

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) The purpose + Does client have anything specific in mind (wrt retail format, target segment, products to be sold, location etc) 2) What exactly is meant by attracting maximum number of people (footfalls? Purchase conversion?) At this stage itself I got information about the target segment : It is primarily income based and Delhi and Mumbai are two cities which have large % of population as set of people who can be attracted. Then I split the issue in two aspects that could attract/ bring people to store: a) Awareness b) the in-store experience/ value from shopping He said awareness is not an issue. Hence, I looked at experience aspects – (1) Proximity (2) product mix available (3) Value for Money in shopping (low price vs product differentiation) He told me to look at it as a case of Food Retailing. During this conversation the scope boiled down to identifying the parameters to maximize profits. I started considering Revenue and Cost as two aspects of profit. Revenue is driven from Quantity (Footfalls* conversion) and Price. Price dint come out as something to be considered as fixed. Hence quantity was to be maximized. Considering that Mumbai and Delhi were target cities, I asked if I needed to estimate the revenue. He told me to proceed and I estimated revenue using population -. Households (HH) -> HH greater than and less than 2 lpa of income (more than 2 lpa expected to visit stores). I asked about average usage of food by such a HH and Kaustub gave me certain numbers. He then asked me to proceed to other parameters in Food Retail. Having covered Revenue as the first part, I moved to Cost. He directly asked me to focus on location/ proximity. I said food retail (especially in Indian context, considering the mobility issue, vehicle ownership, road infra etc) is something that needs to have close proximity. The areas to be focused on would however be determined by per square foot cost. The high-end areas may not be a feasible option. However, emerging areas present a case to be considered. I asked if there was any data available on property rates. He told the rates were 200/sqft/month in high-end areas vs 100/sqft/month in emerging areas. Hence client should focus on Profit/sqft/month as primary metric for deciding where and how many stores to open. He asked me to end the case here. In the end (time for me to ask questions) I asked him about his views of Reliance’s strategy in retailing (they are entering many formats in retailing) and had a discussion around certain viewpoints.
Tips: Be confident and persistent even though the cases may seem kind of undefined or large in scope.

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) What is exactly meant by commercialization – business/ profits/ practical usage 2) Is it general poetry or my poetry 3) Is there any time frame I need to consider for this. He said the purpose would be to make money from my own poetry and there is no specific time frame. I took a customary minute to think. I used MECE classification to consider two aspects of poetry usage/applications: (1) Academic usage (in text books etc) (2) Non Academic (NA) usage. I further classified NA usage into three areas – NGOs, Corporate(s) and Other commercial applications (namely lyrics for movie songs, advertisements etc. I told him that I had written a poem taking inspiration from a Cadbury’s advertisement) At this stage I said that for any further consideration one important parameter is the FIT of the product (my poetry) to these application areas. I defined FIT in terms of language (I write in Hindi, at time English) and content vs the actual need in respective areas (I gave a coupel of examples – my poems published in magazine by an NGO, couple of Hindi ads etc). I also said I can write for all of the identified application areas. In order to commercialize I assessed each usage area in terms of following parameters (a) Profit Margin (I stated here that the cost = my effort would be nearly same for all kinds of poetry) (b) Capability (FIT) c) Market Size (d) Access (my access to identified market) I made a matrix for assessment along these parameters and rated each on scale of Low, Medium and High. He asked me to focus on How to go about commercializing Other commercial applications. I said our of two areas - namely movie songs and advertisement, I should focus first on Advertisements first (as I have better access to this market). I also looked at another metric - % of advertisements/songs needing my poetry while defining the approach. I further looked at Access to Advertisements in terms of existing and New 148i.e. existing is through my past organizations and through my friends’ network. New means developing contacts through mails and agencies. He asked me to stop at this point and said ‘why don’t you start it right away’. In the end I asked him about his experience at McKinsey and his happiest moment while working there.
Tips: Be prepared to solve such cases based/ customized to your personal interest areas. I got two such cases (one in McKinsey and another one, related to Ball Dancing, in some other interview)

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: Asked some questions to understand the problem better: 1) Something more about the client- location, which part of value chain does it operate in? 2) Is there any time frame in mind 3) By what magnitude does the client want market capitalization to increase He said time frame would be 4- 5 years. I drew the value chain of steel industry: RM (Iron ore, coal etc) -> Manufacturing of steel -> Distribution. He said client is currently operating in all. He also provided some information on location – the client had made acquisitions for Iron ore (worth 3 million USD) in US. I said that Market Capitalization would be essentially a multiple of Operating income and hence we should see the problem in two aspects – increasing Revenue and decreasing Cost. I asked him if this approach was fine. He told me to proceed. I said revenue was determined as Price* Output. I asked if price could be increased, which he told me to park aside. Then I discussed output: one way to increase would be through M&A. Other ways would be through Greenfield, Brownfield projects of Joint Venture. He asked me what should be done even before M&A and then dropped a hint about current operations. I immediately said ‘that is something to be looked at first’. Any excess capacity may be utilized to raise output. Further more, the aspects to be looked at would be (1) efficiency (2) RM (biggest chunk of cost) He told me to look at RM. I asked the need vs capacity of the acquisitions done by client in US (3 million tones of output). RM need was not satisfied. Hence more RM sourcing should be ensured through either contracts, locating close to RM sources, acquisitions as RM is biggest part of cost and would help increase the margins and hence market cap also. At this point he asked me about other possibilities of increasing the market cap. I said some ways of indicating god future growth (investments, strategic tie ups) would increase the market cap. He asked me what else could be done and indicated spin offs. I said there could be alternative to float a new firm (separate venture for RM) or sell shares as different types – Type A and Type B while keeping the firm as one entity. He was fine with that. He stopped the case here and said I I wanted to ask anything. I asked him if this was a real case and what had they done in this situation. Then I said that I have wondered what has prohibited systems such as Social Security from being implemented in India and how does he see that coming in future? We had a discussion around the same for about 5-7 minutes and the interview ended.
Tips: Does not matter much even if your case is not going exactly how you want it but don’t hesitate to take a step back and to make efforts while solving. Do keep interviewer involved in the case (Think aloud – may be ask the interviewer at times...if the approach is fair/ assumptions are fair) Prepare intelligent questions (which you have to ask to the interviewer). These could be either based on the case, interviewer’s field of work (typically they introduce themselves at the start of the interview) or relevant to PI in respective interviews. ‘and don’t worry, you can practice drafting good questions while the interview is going on’

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: I started by asking clarifying questions : 1) Tell some more about the client – are they only a distributor? Answer was Yes. 2) Is profit the criteria to be looked at for feasibility/ Sales Force allocation The structure that I made considered three aspects of the problem.
• Customers – are we targeting the same customers, how much of cannibalization (Share of wallet aspect) can we expect if same products are sold to same set of customers?
• Feasibility – in terms of skills (different selling skills for different products) Need/ demand in the market, training issues (all sales people selling all products?) Amount of investment required.
• Incentive alignment – He gave me information about prices of different products and clients margin (basis points). Target customers were same. As product type and related needs are different, cannibalization was not taken as an issue. Feasibility parameters were also fine. I calculated absolute margin (which is Revenue for our client) on each product. Then I said, for financial feasibility, Cash Flows need to be calculated and hence Revenue and cost need to be found. Hence Profit is a function of product Mix: Profit = Sum (Pi-Ci) And we know the values of Pi. I identified the possible costs as the commission to sales agents + The cost of channel (for each product). He was fine with this. He told me to focus on revenues only. He further gave me the capacity of Sales person (while selling only FDs, each person sells 10 FDs per month and if all products are sold the mix (4,8 and1 FD, MF and LI respectively). I calculated the as is case revenue (selling FD alone). I also found the profit (revenue for our client) in each category of products (as per the new mix) by existing sales force. (There were indeed a lot of calculations) The incremental profit was around 170 % more and I said on the basis of calculations, the model seems feasible but there are other parameters to be taken care – how to align incentives. Some part of incentives needs to be pegged to the number of products sold else higher margin products likely to be sold more (moreover there could be strategic reasons for selling even low margin products to customers – acquisition, customers may prefer to buy a basket of products from a single contact point/ sales person). He asked what would I say on basis of intuition ie, Should the client proceed with this. I thought and said Yes because the incremental impact is very high and even if some contingencies arise, the proposition is highly likely to be profitable. He agreed and seemed to be happy with this.
Tips: Try to present your opinion beyond the direct (numerical, as case may be) solution. It does help.

Skills: Basic Knowledge Of How The Products In The Case Studies Work, Guesstimation Cases, Case Solving Ability, Case Analysis
College Name: Indian School Of Business (ISB)

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Need to have decent written and oral comm skills. Good knowledge of sourcing procurement concepts is an added advantage

Topics to prepare for Protiviti India Member Manager interview:

• Risk Management
• Auditing
• Internal Audit
• Compliance
• Communication Skills
• Leadership Skills

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Focus on your communication skills a lot more than anything else. Be thorough with the process understanding and very clear about what you claim to know.

Don’t try to bluff and be point to point. Also focus on the importance of documentation in the audit and risk management process.

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Be confident truthful and try to be open about the expectations and clear about the salary part