Porter Business Analyst Interview Questions and Answers

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I had a standard resume for this company as per our institute placement cell norms.

I prepared resume keeping in mind the areas of interest that would suit the company’s requirements. The companies that recruit students from all departments usually tend to recruit students seeking interests in subjects related to management. I knew about this and while applying to non-core companies I specified my areas of interest as these subjects.

Round: Test
Experience: The first round was the written test. The paper was composed of general aptitude and basic programming questions. For programming questions we were told that in case we did not know the desired syntaxes we could write the algorithm for the problems. Since I was not a proficient coder I preferred writing only the algorithm for the coding questions. There were also some logical reasoning questions (mainly puzzle types). For example in one of the questions we were given a multi coloured cube with each side having a different colour. Initially the cube was kept with the blue colour appearing on the top surface; then the cube was rotated along various axes, we had to specify which colour would appear on the top surface. I qualified the first round.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The second round was an aptitude interview round. In this interview I was asked about the preference with respect to the profiles ordered (programming or analytics). I replied that I would like to join the company as an analyst, however if given an option I would be open to learning programming as well. The interviewers were delighted to know about my interests in learning newer things.

The interview further asked me puzzle based logical reasoning questions like ‘How to find the odd coin out of 8 coins of which 7 are similar in all senses in two weighing steps by use of a balance?’ He asked me few more of these types; I successfully managed to answer all these questions.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The final round was again a personal interview. This was actually supposed to be a profile specific interview; however since I had earlier said that I was open to getting recruited in both the profiles they asked me questions from programming as well as analytical questions. I informed them again that I was interested in learning programming but did not have much clue about it at that time. They did not pay any heed whatsoever to my plea and kept asking me questions related to programming. They asked me some questions and told me to suggest some algorithm for those questions since I did not know coding. I framed some algorithms but they did not seem very convinced with my answers. Eventually I was not recruited.
Tips: As per my experience I would say that knowledge about C++ is necessary to get into the software section of Snapdeal. They want people who are well versed with puzzle solving questions and who can solve analytical questions easily.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: I got to know about the company and the profile through the pre-placement talk by the company. The company is one of the leading e-commerce website today and is quite famous among the youth. Hence I had knowledge about its existence and field of work beforehand.

Round: Test
Experience: Simple questions. Accuracy and speed were determining factors.
Tips: Practice Quant/Give online Quant & LR tests.
Duration: 12 minutes
Total Questions: 50

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: CV Should carry proper format, action verbs . Impacts created (preferably numerical ) should be exclusively mentioned for each project under internships.
Tips: An E-Commerce internship background are an add-on. SQL , Google analytics , R Software knowledge are an advantage.

Round: Group Activity
Experience: Topic for GD : Impact of Coal-Gate scam on Indian economy.
Tips: Be updated about current affairs. Subscribe economic times or business standard. Don't create a fish market in the GD. put your points clearly and conclude what the entire group has agreed with

Round: Guesstimate Interview
Experience: Was able to do them. Prior consulting internships helped.
Tips: Practice Case in point. Have a well structured and calculative approach.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Normal HR type questions. They see your attitude towards life and your work style.
Tips: Prepare well for them. These questions are not new or different for any interview,

College Name: IIT KHARAGPUR

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I consulted my seniors for preparation of my resume. I believe that seniors provide the best provide you with the best possible insights in this regards.

Round: Test
Experience: The first round was the written test. There were 8 theoretical questions asked in the paper. The questions were either in the form of puzzles or probability based questions. The first three questions in the paper were compulsory questions and needed to be answered correctly for the rest of your paper to be evaluated; if a particular candidate answered any one of these questions incorrectly then he was rejected then and there. Apart from these 3 questions solving 2 more questions would have assured a candidate’s chance of getting selected for the next round. The duration of the test was of around 40 minutes.
For the written test nearly 300 people appeared out of which 30-40 were shortlisted for the interviews.

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: In the interview I was asked few puzzles and few coding problems.

Some puzzles asked were:

1) There are 3 couples (each couple consists of a man and a woman: husband and wife pair) who want to cross a particular river with only one boat available for the voyage. At a time the boat can carry a maximum of 2 people and a woman cannot stay in presence of other male in absence of her husband. All three couples want to cross the river, what are the ways in which this could be done?
2) There are 2 ropes which burn in 60 minutes. How to measure 45 minutes without cutting any of the ropes?

In the coding questions the interviewers did not ask me to write down the complete codes of the problems, they only asked me to suggest some suitable algorithms. In one of the questions they gave me a binary number and asked me to write down the algorithm to calculate the number of one’s in the binary number.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: In second round of interview I was asked some hardcore programming questions on data structures since I wrote it as my area of interest. Some of the questions asked were:
If you have an array of ‘n+m’ elements and have these ‘n’ elements separately and you have to transfer these n elements in the n+m element slot which already contains the m elements. The transfer has to be done in such a way that all the m+n elements are sorted.
I was asked some puzzles as well. For instance in one of the puzzles, I was given a square consisting of 9 dots on its periphery. I was asked to join those 9 dots using 4 lines without lifting the pencil.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Interview wa easy and can crack it

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Understand any city's demographics for instance. Take most busy road and assume that 70% supply will be on food -tech (MArket Standard). Open Sw / Zo and see the supply available in that area in peak time. There can be more than one way to solve for these question

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Be thorough with examples for each of the 14 principles