Sand Martin Consultants Senior Risk Analyst Interview Questions and Answers

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - It was pleasent experience

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Prepare well as its a good company to work for

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Commonsense and presence of mind will help you a lot provided you have basic know of TCM.

Interview preparation tips for other job seekers - Be positive and you will crack the interview

Round: Case Study Interview
Experience: This was an unstructured multiple case/scenario based interview and needed on spot thinking and some knowledge about the retail scenario in Indian Urban/Rural spaces. Interviewer was looking always doubtful about my ideas and was challenging the thoughts in between with some facts from his experience. What helped that I maintained my calm and followed a firm and informed stand on issues and gave relevant examples (like HUL’s Re 1 Shampoo sachet success in low income group people).
I presented my thoughts clearly and convincingly with examples of rural people buying luxury items as well and gave a few statistics about the size of urban vs rural markets in India. I further went on with examples of ITC retail, which was going successfully in integrating its rural retail business with agri-procurement channel (e-chaupal). Gave a few creative ideas about 2-3 possible new formats.

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

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: Everyone who applied for the company were allowed to give the test. The test was in similar lines as that of CAT (Quant, DI, LR and stuff).
Tips: Try the TIME material (or any other aptitude test material for preparation), Indiabix is an another website for aptitude tests. The more tests you give the more weak points you'll find and the more you can improve on them.
There are a lot of tips available online (far more better than what I could give)

Round: Other Interview
Experience: They directly shortlisted 7 of us for the interview directly from the test. The interview started with some HR questions and they started asking me stuff to test my problem solving skills like the questions that I mentioned in this section. Later, moved on to ask about my experience at the internship and started walking through my resume for some more questions.
Tips: Just be honest and try not to panic if you don't have the solution immediately. Take a 10 second break if need to think (Trust me, this small break goes a long way if you happen to get stuck somewhere)

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Out the 7, they shortlisted 5 for the 2nd round of Interview. This one was very typical to the HR round. Asked me about my hobbies and went in detail for each one of them and then about my future career plans.
Tips: Be honest. That's it!

General Tips: Be patient. Irrespective of the number of interviews you give, you will eventually get the job that suits you the best.
Skills: Ability To Be Involved In Hands On Work, Ability To Justify, Ability To Express Your Ideas, Ability To Analyse, Entrepreneurial Skills, Problem Solving Abilties, Problem Solving Skills, Aptitude
College Name: IIT Bombay
Motivation: Wanted to get into consulting. Didn't get shortlisted in top tier consults. Deloitte is not bad either and is at par with top consults recently

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: The students were selected as per their jobs roles, last degree, streams/subjects.
For example(People for business analyst job profile should have an accounts, finance background) Normally engineers were not shortlisted as they believed that now they are only looking for students with normal finance or accounts knowledge, in future if they have jobs for engineers they will be back.
Tips: If you have done your graduation in accounts, finance , or BBA its a great opportunity for you.

Round: Test
Experience: In this round there will be passages, idioms and phrases, you need to read the passage few audio clips you have to carefully listen to the audio the accent will be quite different making it hard to understand.
Tips: Some place quiter will help you a lot.
Duration: 30 minutes
Total Questions: 10

Round: Telephonic Round
Experience: A normal discussion between the HR and the students, no technical question just some basic knowledge and your introduction.
Tips: Some place quiter and your mobile network should be fine

Round: Test
Experience: Sections:60 min
Reasoning
Excel
Finance

Number of question will be 60
Reasoning question will include some normal English question and some aptitude.
Excel : all the shortcuts, functions and some general formulas ()
Finance: Fundamental finance question, you need to know the terms and formulas(Subjects you can refer to are corporate finance, Financial services in MBA course)

They will select a cutoff, people clearing this round will proceed to further rounds
Tips: -----
You can refer this for normal excel commands or shortcuts

You have to read the Finance part thoroughly.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: Tell me about yourself?
Why should we hire you?
Your strength and weakness?
Tell me about Deloitte?

after aptitude we had 3 interaction, 12 students have qualified for HR rounds.

In this round the HR asked about the company and about the interviewer, about his hobbies. They were normally checking the soft skills and vocabulary of the students.
All of the 12 students have easily cleared this round and moved to the next round.
Tips: You just have to be true to yourself and give the answers.
These were not tough questions they were all about you.

Round: Technical Interview
Experience: In depth question about finance, how Forex market works, situational based question, financial terms, Services provided by Deloitte, balance sheet problems, money market, dept market , current Sen-sex.
Some question asked.
Walk me through a cash flow statement.
What is working capital?
How is the income statement linked to the balance sheet?
What is a deferred tax asset and why might one be created?
Tips: You have to go through corporate Finance and Financial services.

Round: Technical + HR Interview
Experience: The normal HR Rounds turns a bit harder,
You will be asked to implement different financial tool in the current market scenario, How will we contribute in the growth of the organization, here they will also discuss about the package and different allowances provided by the company.

Round: HR Interview
Experience: This round is for welcoming all the candidates who have cleared all the above rounds, This round was taken by onsite employees in our case and Australian Client, who will give the brief Idea of how everything works.

Skills: Soft Skills, reading and listening, Excel Skills, Finance Basics, Reasoning Ability, Ability To Cope Up With Stress
College Name: KIIT University

Round: Resume Shortlist
Experience: The minimum cut off was 60 percent and above

Round: Test
Duration: 30 minutes

College Name: MIT College Of Engineering