S&P Global Associate Director Product Management Interview Questions and Answers

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. The duration of the test was half an hour. The test consisted of questions on data interpretation, logical reasoning and analytics. The questions were pretty easy. The company shortlisted a lot of candidates for the Group Discussion (GD).

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The interview was, as I would call it, an HR and a puzzle based interview. Some questions from probability were also asked. The puzzles asked were tricky but easy at the same time. I cannot recall any of the puzzles that were asked.
Tips: Before appearing for the interview, I would suggest you to solve puzzles from a book named ‘Out of the Box’; the book contains some really good puzzles.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE

Round: Test
Experience: The written test had various sections. After the written test which was held online, few students were shortlisted for the interview process. There were a total of three rounds of interviews.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The questions asked from all the candidates in all the rounds were quite similar in nature. They were asking puzzles, numerical reasoning based questions and things which would require use of your analytical skills. The questions weren’t difficult and one can easily find them on placement preparation sites. They also tested me on my knowledge of core engineering subjects to ascertain whether I am serious about the tasks I have in hand.

They also asked few normal HR questions. Some of them were about my short term and long term goals and where do I see myself after three years. They also asked me the reason for shift to a non-core field company.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: I had appeared for the placement process for Mu Sigma as arranged by the placement committee of my college. There was no resume based selection and neither there was any group activity. The major criterion for being able to appear for the written test was the CGPA.

Round: Test
Experience: Half an hour test which had 5 C questions, 10 math and 10 on simple English.
Duration: 30 minutes

Round: Puzzle Interview
Experience: Preliminary Round: One Puzzle and a question on probability, I Couldn't answer that puzzle so I started talking about my internship in a great detail and this helped me to get to the next round.

General Tips: It will be of great help if you can solve simple mathematics problems with speed - CAT type.
Skill Tips: Make Sure you do all the common puzzles before you go to interview, E.g 100 gold coin/pirate one which keep repeating.
College Name: NIT SURATHKAL

Round: Test
Experience: Accuracy required
Tips: Easy just need more speed in calculations
Duration: 20 minutes
Total Questions: 15

Round: Problem Statement
Experience: Strategies required for buisness , simple coding
Tips: Strategies required for buisness , simple coding

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: A video round followed by GD will be conducted
Tips: Video round may have clips from films like pursuit of happiness and you have to write about video

Skills: Communication , Team work, Stress handling
College Name: SATHYABAMA UNIVERSITY
Motivation: No need to prepare much being cool and self confident is enough

Round: Test
Experience: Good standard questions
Tips: Be good at your mathematics tricks.
Duration: 20 minutes
Total Questions: 15

Round: ProgRAmming Knowledge Test
Experience: Basic c programming algorithms
very easy indeed
Tips: be good at basics of C

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: Very much interactive one and a good one to talk on.
Tips: Be sure on what you talk and be ready to respond to each and every opinion.
Duration: 30 minutes

Round: Video Synthesis
Experience: A video on Mu Sigma Belief System, a good one to analyse.
Tips: Never summarize the video.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Being Confident is the main plus point for me.
The Interviewer was a cool minded and also good at manipulating our answers to form the next question.
Tips: Be Confident throughout the interview and show them you are meant to be at this job.
And make sure you don't cook up any fake story , you may get caught somewhere in the interview.
And never feel tensed, just give it your best shot.

General Tips: Just show the interviewer how confident you are and what you are capable of.
Skills: Confidence with which you can work, Readiness to work hard
College Name: VIT VELLORE
Motivation: A best company that can be found in today's Indian Economy for Business Analysts and their principle of learning over knowing is the best.
Funny Moments: The HR team is really friendly and they shared a lot of funny moments, one among them is the chat we had on monkeys and people as monkeys.

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: I used only one resume for all the companies that I applied in. I mentioned about my extra-curricular activities and my projects with the projects relevant to the profile on offer getting higher priority.

Round: Test
Experience: For the aptitude questions the preparations for the CAT examination that I had done earlier in the year proved to be availing. Whereas for the technical questions I studied topics like fluid machinery and IC engines.

The first round in Mu Sigma was the aptitude test. The test pattern was CAT based, but the difficulty level was pretty mediocre compared to CAT papers.
Tips: There was time constraint in the test. Therefore I would recommend you to practise some questions before appearing for the test to improve your speed.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The interview began by the interviewer asking me some HR questions. The last question I responded saying that Mu Sigma is company catering to the needs of solution seeking companies. To this the interview asked me come up with a problem that I felt the company would have to deal with and also an efficient solution to the same. I designed a problem which was related to the loss in sales of Refrigerator and I solved it using the 4P concept. Then they asked me a puzzle which was that in a room of height 100m to ropes are hanging one of 120m and another of 60m and your height is 10m then what is the maximum length of rope that you can cut.

College Name: IIT ROORKEE
Motivation: Mu Sigma is a company that deals with data so I went through their site and found what it does. Later the other queries related to the company were cleared by attending the pre placement talk.

Round: Test
Experience: Aptitude of easy level.
Total Questions: 15

Round: Problem Statement
Experience: Learn the basics of a programming language. The problem solving round involved a psuedocode .For the video synthesis round question of our batch, Google "Toast for change" , there is a 5 minute video clipping and we were asked to synthesize it ( NOT summarize it!!! )

Round: Group Discussion
Experience: The gd consisted of two sections. In the first section the students had to discuss the points to be considered while selecting a website. Some of the points we had put up included the site should provide tour packages which is favoured by a lot of people, the site should be linked to applications like Google maps which can provide access to information like location etc,
During the second part of the gd, the students were given five minutes to discuss and decide 3 main points out of all the points discussed previously.
After the gd, the students were asked to 1) write down all the points discussed in the sheets provided 2) write down all the points which they have not mentioned during the gd but are relevant the topic
Tips: 1) Use the time given to think properly. A proper set of points goes a long way in improving your performance during the gd
2) Read newspapers and articles on such topics. Will give an idea about such management issues
3) Be loud. Makes one look more confident
4) Listen to what the others have to say. The judging panel looks for a good speaker and a good listener. The advantage is twofold: firstly if you are out of points you can simply get something to speak about by combining what the others are saying and contradicting a few other like "I completely agree to what so and so have said but I would'nt quite agree to this because .....". The judges will note you as a good observer
5) Donot dominate over others. A group discussion is not a debate where you have to take a side.
6) try to add numbers and statistics in the discussion cause that's what analytics company want from their employees

Round: HR Interview
Experience: The HR PI was quite casual, slightly informal. I was asked about family members etc, followed by a question about the reason for my drop year. The first question after the introduction was "tell me about yourself". This question can be predicted as "tell me about your qualities that make you fit for our company". I used this question to describe all the traits that made me suitable for them, and normally I justify each quality I mention immediately. Also I would advise you to emphasize qualities that set you apart from the crowd and make you fit for their company. The HR asked me why I intended to join an analytics company if all my projects were based on biomedical. My answer to the question was that my projects were all soft computing based, and hence most of the work I do involves using a set of data to predict something which is quite similar to what they do in Mu Sigma. The only difference lies in the fact that the work I do is based on bioloigical data and biological parameters and they used market and business data( please note that I could only bring this up since most of my work is based on neural networks and soft computing, please do prepare something to relate what you have done to what they do or simply mention you were always interested in analytics and playing with nos from the start).
I was asked about a few projects of mine mentioned in my CV, I was asked to explain them, I was asked a few questions on neural networks(they only asked them cause I had mentioned it earlier)
In the end the HR asked me if there is anything I would like to ask him, so I asked him to criticize me so I could work on the points where I lack. He gave me 2 points.
Tips: Points to be noted about the hr pi:
1) Observe the nature and personality of the PI. The video presentation at the beginning of the placement process gives a very good idea about the hr's personality, the work culture etc. So use this information to predict his nature and present yourself accordingly
2) Relax. In my opinion the hr PI is the easiest and the most fun round in Mu Sigma.
3) Use the tell me about yourself and the free question well. What you ask and what you say will give a very good glimpse of your true personality
4) There is no need to be very formal and robotic but maintain politeness while answering.

Skill Tips: 1) Improve your aptitude solving ability.2) Learn the basics of a programming language. The problem solving round involved a psuedocode.3) For the video synthesis round question of our batch, Google "Toast for change" , there is a 5 minute video clipping and we were asked to synthesize it ( NOT summarize it!!! )
College Name: NIT RAIPUR

Round: Test
Experience: Quantitative Aptitude -10 Q ....Questions on P&L AND Percentage ....Cutoff 7
Verbal Ability - 18 Q .....Sentence Correction Cutoff -12 Q
Case Studies - 2

Time - 1.5 Hrs
Tips: Questions were quite easy ....Time Management Is Important
Duration: 90 minutes

Round: Behavioural Interview
Experience: Checking the confidence of the candidate. I think the fact that I had carried out a Social Research (Ganpati Procession Analysis in Pune ) helped. I could share that experience.
Tips: During your course try and associate yourself with some kind of research work ( whether it is complete or incomplete does not matter ).
Study the company ( website) as much as you can before the interview.


Round: Technical Interview
Tips: Questions on Summer Internship - Prepare well and do speak about

Skills: Ability To Analyse, Communication, Basics of Market Research
College Name: Department of Management Sciences (PUMBA)