PwC Associate Director Interview Questions and Answers for Experienced

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Just be Prepared Technically. And Wait. The Process is Slow bit it will be worth it.

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Just keep your basics strong and be prepared for 3-4 rounds of interviews.

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Started working on it pretty early. Completed a first draft and sent it across to 5-6 seniors. Tried to get an opinion from
seniors of various profiles like consulting, finance and FMCG. Met them personally and took feedback. Reworked the same around 3 times. Made sure I only have things on my resume which I could talk on comfortably. Made sure the formatting was proper and concentrated on what value addition I did at various places rather than just describing the work. Did prepare my BTP and seminar well and studied up 1 course as the favourite course (did not need it though :D)
Tips: Yes attended all the PPTs (had to :P). It helps you a lot to look at the PPT as it gives a lot of idea on what a company is looking forward to and how exactly to prepare for it. Further it does give clarity to a great extent on the type of job being offered. Talking to seniors from companies you serious about helps a lot and PPTs are the best place to get to meet them. First of all the previous Be Prepared documents. Did not do any Puzzles/Technical/GDs. HR questions the usual ones available on the net. However had a couple of sessions with people who were good at this to get feedback. Cases practised in groups, did not read up any theory/cases. Just practised in the group. Used the Kellogg and Wharton case guides.

Round: Interview
Experience: BCG had 4 rounds of interviews and the initial short lists were 28, short list after second interview was 8, and final offers were 5. Cases and HR: In a group of 4 people. Ideal size should be 3-4 people. One person used to get a case and administer to all the other 3. This way we could check on what one is doing correctly and incorrectly. Constructive feedback is really important. While administering cases we made sure that we did couple it with a bit of HR so as to get an exact feel of interviews. Did somewhere around 6-7 cases exhaustively. Read a couple as example initially. Did not do any test preparations as had done some CAT preparation (which does help a lot) HR: Did some amount with group. But primarily analysis like future plans, why the company, strengths weaknesses etc with people who knew me well enough and could actually help me realize these.

Round: Interview
Experience: BCG1: Started off with question on Bridge. Then we did a case of an Air Conditioner Manufacturing company which was losing money. The case revolved around the way dealers were placing the product. Solved the case pretty quick and thus had another 10 odd minutes of HR on things like your biggest achievement till date and why a consulting career. BCG2: This was probably the most difficult interview I had all day (at least that is what I felt). We directly started off with a case. It involved a Tractor manufacturer who had below par sales in a certain region. I started off well but lost track somewhere in between. However I finally got to the conclusion of difference in kind of soil and thus the requirement of higher horsepower. Important point: I asked the interviewer to give me 2 minutes to analyse when I had lost track, took the 2 minutes and then instantly hit the point. Make sure that if you get stuck, you take your own time to understand rather than get hasty. This followed a small round of HR on one of my intern ships. I then had a 10 minute session in which I put forward my own set of questions on why I should go in for a consulting career.

Round: Interview
Experience: BCG3: Because of the session, the round started with whether I actually was keen on consulting. We then moved on to a case involving a cement company which had high transportation costs. The reasons that I found out were under loading on certain trips, high charges being levied by transporters. I even gave a suggestion on moving to trucks with larger capacity. Another small round of HR revolving about my work as Institute Placement Nominee and research paper.
BCG4: We started off with a case involving parameters to be accounted to give an award for best salesperson of a cement company. Numerical data like sales figures, growth rate etc. were given when asked for. Was asked to compare 4 different sales persons. Left the case in 10 minutes. Next 20 minutes we just had a talk where primarily I was asking on how my interviewer (a CA) had ended up in a consulting firm and the kind of work that we could expect.

General Tips: Ideally one should prepare Case Studies and a bit of HR. It doesn't make any sense to study any standard frameworks. Rather it is advisable to keep away from them. You need to try and get structure into the way you approach cases. The number of cases should be the amount till you get comfortable with them. Doing excess of it might even hamper your chances as your thinking starts getting directional and you kind of stop thinking as much as is required. As a matter of fact some of the people who did real well were the ones with the least amount of practice (not that this is suggested)
College Name: IIT BOMBAY