Nirbheek Biswas

Pre-Placement Preparation, Group Discussions, Placement Experience, Interview

Profile at a Glance:

● 3 internships
○ 3rd year summer: R&D at Aditya Birla Group (Grasim)
○ 2nd year summer: R&D and Business Development at Nanologica AB (Sweden)
○ 2nd year winter: R&D at Ultra Pure Analytics
● Activist and Member -Saathi
● Course on Wheels and Second in Regional Stage of Global Student Challenge

Pre-Placement Preparation

I personally had a lot of experience in R&D but was unsure if that’s what I wanted to do mostly because of dismal CPI. I also had a slight knack for finance and wanted to give it a shot but was scared that it might be too late to start. I would advise that you figure out what to do from the start or maybe eliminate the things you are sure you are not interested in. This would make the preparation that ensues less tedious and more organised.
I also started pursuing my passion for fitness more seriously this semester, this helped with the stress and also helped me organize my day slightly better as everything could pivot about my gym sessions. I feel having a hobby could really be beneficial and you would have something else to discuss apart from what is on your resume.
You could easily end up giving close to 50 aptitude tests in a short duration so I kid you not prepping for it as early as possible is the best thing you could possibly do. I was preparing for CAT so that was kind of taken care of, working on speed math and some amount of English would come in handy as well.

Group Discussions

Having a GD group and discussing various GD topics (at least 10) would be the smart thing to do. I made the mistake of not having such a group and would deem myself as lucky to have cleared two rounds of GD, but I wouldn’t lie, I have always had above average speaking skills and I usually don’t get flustered in large crowds.
I started working on my Resume and HR doc around the 27th ( I would suggest you start earlier if possible), ask for help from seniors, your friends and people around you, everyone would have something valuable to offer. Write and rewrite your answers, lie if you must, give as many mock interviews as possible. During the interview I felt confident because I had spent so much time preparing and the stories I was going to tell felt compelling and had meat to them.
Dr. Reddy’s had a pretty long test, they had a core test which was surprisingly quite easy, along with other tests which focused mostly on pattern recognition and completion of sequence, followed by a lengthy and to be honest quite taxing psychometric test. Each candidate had to also submit a 2 minute video talking about what they could offer as a chemical engineer, to my surprise all three people in the panel had seen and could remember instances from the video.

Placement Experience

For me Day 2 Slot 2 was Day 1 as I had zero shortlists on day 1. Slot 2 begins around 6, I had decided to wake up early that day and spent most of my day in solitude, I had mostly stopped looking through my resume and the HR questions and focussed more on get into the right frame of mind. I had promised one of friends a few days back that I would get selected in the first interview I gave and that somehow gave me a lot of positive energy and confidence.

GD Round 1

We got divided into groups of three, each group had 10 individuals, I personally felt that my group was slightly tougher compared to the other 2.
We had been given a brief description of a method to produce nano-particles that could carry an API, followed by a few questions (all related to the engineering aspects of the method) that were given and we were supposed to discuss on those lines. Another thing I noticed was that the adjudicator of the GD was really attentive and made sure each of us got a chance to speak and express our views. We were also given a sheet to sign out names on where the judgement criteria was clearly written and the points for each of those criteria stated individually.
I might have had an edge in the first GD as the topic was quite similar to my work in Nanologica AB, but I decided to keep that to myself and let others decide where the discussion would go. I don’t feel that starting a GD is quintessential but if you do, you should have a clear direction in mind and something valid to speak.
I personally like to take my time to understand the topic and figure out who else is doing well, being courteous and raising your hand whenever you want to express your opinions is usually considered to be a good habit, I also always try to ensure that people get to finish what they have to say and try to correct people as humbly as I could possibly could.
I personally felt that the first GD went pretty nicely and I was quite sure that I would clear the round. I had to wait for a long while to get the result, it helps if you have someone reliable to accompany you and also carry along some food.

GD Round 2

As expected I got selected for the second round, which I felt would be a technical round (had prepared a lot for it) but this was also a GD round. 10 of us got selected, 4 from my group and 3 each from the other groups. This GD started a bit late as we had to wait for a few other candidates who were busy with other interviews, this gave me an opportunity to have a conversation with
the panelists, this was a great opportunity to find out about them and also what they were looking for, I also got to know that after this was the last round which was supposed to be a HR round, this gave me a much needed confidence as I well prepared in my HR preparation.
The second GD was similar to the first one, it was actually the topic given to the third group, I think I struggled a bit in this GD mostly because everyone in this group was quite good and had already cleared one obstacle.

Interview

We later got to know that this GD was conducted to create somewhat of a pecking order, with the ones on the top more likely to be selected.
I was placed third. The guy before me was offered a spot offer so I was a little tensed as I had to live up to the expectations.
The panel had 3 individuals, with mostly one person (technical background) asking the most questions.
The interview started with them asking me about the coat buttons (like should they be open or should they be closed when you sitting etc), I think this was more of an icebreaker and also to see the candidates presence of mind. This was followed by general questions about my internship at Aditya Birla, I was quite confident in my work there so I dwelled into the details of my project.
This was followed with just general questions about my background, people I admire the most, qualities I would like to inculcate, things I’ve learned from my parents. I answered these questions quite comfortably giving them ample examples and instances that have shaped me into the person I am today,the interview ended with me asking them about whether Dr. Reddy’s plans to focus on creating their own API’s in the future and questions about the program that they were offering,the interview was quite short, probably did not last more than 10 minutes.
After this they asked me to leave the room, I knew they had given a spot offer to the candidate before me so I was quite disappointed as I was about to walk out of the room, just as I was about to step they asked me to wait outside the room for a minute, after a quick discussions they called me back in and offered me the job, they asked me specifically that I don’t tell anyone about it.
When I walked out of the room about 10 of my friends had gathered outside and from the huge smile on my face they could tell that I had been given the offer and they ended up creating a lot of noise.
To be honest the fact that the 2 candidates above me in the pecking order had rejected the offer might have helped me in the end. They panel called me again after all the interviews were over, approximately two hours later by then my suit was in shambles and we had a small discussion about the incident that ensued after they gave me the offer. We discussed how I had talked about the importance was honesty in my interview and how I had let them down, I apologised for my behavior and promised that this would never happen again, to my respite this was enough and I was offered the job.
I would like to reinstate that I was quite lucky that I got selected in Dr. Reddy’s, in no other turn of events would I have made it and knowing that probably was a very freeing thought, I was willing to persevere and I feel that is what it boils down to in the end, placements are weird and things happen that you would never expect, all you can do is think of it as one interview at a time and give your best shot.

Naman Kaliswal

Pre-Placement Preparation, Citibank

Profile at a Glance:

Mumbai Suburban Railways Project: Optimization of crew schedules, Master’s Thesis. Proposed the project to Western Railways, got covered in Times of India Edelweiss Financial Services Summer Internship: Worked as an algorithmic trader
Indian Army Project: Analysis of signals from radar to detect non-metallic buried landmines
Entrepreneurial Venture: SaaS platform for complete chatbot management, Won competitions (including Top 5 in Eureka’17, 2nd in Crusade’17), received mentorship from IIT alumni and industry experts
Technical Projects: Machine learning app for non-coders, Ethereum app, IoT Irrigation System, 360° sound generation tool, rating horror movies on heart rate readings
Extracurricular: Teaching Assistant, National Social Services Associate, Hostel Secretary, Anchored multiple events, performed plays, fluent Spanish

Pre-Placement Preparation

 Work on your speaking skills
I believe that this is the most important aspect that can get you a job swiftly. Learning to communicate your thoughts efficiently will help you in all spheres of your life.
 Learn to sell yourself
Remember that the interviewers are humans too. Naturally, they are drawn to stories. If possible, tell the interviewers why you took on a particular project and why is the problem interesting. I believe that this is specifically important for non-core profiles. Interviewers would be more drawn towards your narrations. This paints a picture that you make informed choices and shows you can propose and execute on initiatives.
 Resume Preparation
Be thorough with every point you mention in the resume. Keep in mind that whatever you write in your resume can be cross-questioned. Be well prepared for questions that the interviewer might throw at you. Ask your friends to go through your resume and make them ask you questions. It is highly probable
whatever doubts come up in your friend’s minds might come in the minds of the interviewers.

Citibank

Citibank’s Global Consumer Bank program selects individuals who could work in different verticals of their business. They were looking for strategic thinkers, people with creative ideas and good communication skills.

Round 1: Group Discussion
We were clubbed in groups of 8 and were evaluated by a panellist of 2. There were 2 GDs, each of 10 minutes duration. The topics of the group discussion were:

Structure follows strategy
The first topic is abstract and loose enough to be discussed from various angles. I would recommend not open/close such topics for the vast amount of discussion scope possible. Discuss the topic with examples. Mention a bit about your experiences or background to support your arguments.
Section 377 in corporate Sector
Section 377 was in the news, a month before the placements. Being an avid news reader, I had some facts in mind. Highlight the points to be discussed. Relate the topic to other similar events/policies to back up your points.
Make sure you are being heard. Maintain an eye-to-eye contact with other participants and the panelists. Whenever given the chance to speak, put forth your views completely and at least present 3-4 sentences. Interrupting with a single sentence to add a little point may sometimes seem unnecessary to the panelist. Respect your peers and listen patiently when others speak. Sit in a confident body position.

Round 2: Personal Interview
There were again 2 people taking the interview. The interview was a discussion on the following:

Academic life at IIT, little about personal interests
Dual degree project
Start-up experience
Microsoft Hackathon that I had participated in
Be cheerful, attentive and confident during the interview. Always be clear with whatever you’re trying to convey. Avoid using technical jargon which the interviewer might not understand. Asking a question at the end of the interview is a good way to show interest.

Hufeza Chasmai

Some Useful Tags:
Pre-Placement Preparation, PPT’s, Resume, Tests, Interview Preparation, Placement Experience, Goldman Sachs, Tower Research, IBM, Uber, JP Morgan, Microsoft

Profile at a Glance:

1) CPI : 8.83
2) Minor in Stats, Honors in CS
3) 4 internships (2 Tech, 2 Data Science) + 1 RnD project
4) Lots of Projects

Pre-Placement Preparation:

1) PPTs + Seniors Talk :

You will have to attend a fixed number of PPTs due to the placement policy. Do attend PPTs of companies that you are interested. There will be a lot of information and most of the companies will talk about their business etc. but the important information to take away is what the company does and what would be your role in the company. Apart from this, you should get feedback from people who are already present in the company, either through sites like Glassdoor or by contacting seniors who are placed there. You can get this info (seniors) from the previous years placement blogs.

2) Resume :

Your resume is a very important factor both for shortlisting for the interviews and during the interviews. From my experience, CS Tech companies are mostly interested in your internships as well as your projects. Most of my interviewers didn’t even go to the second page of PORs & Extra-currics, so try to make your resume in such a way that most of the things you want to highlight are mentioned in the first page itself. Have a look at some of your senior’s resume once before making yours. Finally complete your resume well before time and send it to as many friends/seniors as possible and get feedback and make improvements.

3) Tests :

This would be a major factor for getting shortlisted for the interviews. Most of the Tech companies tests are purely coding based having 2-3 questions in typically 1-2 hours along with some MCQs on basics of Computer Science. You should practice coding questions from sites like Hackerrank and Codeforces since most of the questions are similar in nature to them and those questions will help you get your basics clear. The more the questions you do, the better since there is a high chance that a similar question in principle might come in the exam. Apart from this, for finance companies you should practice your probability and statistics skills and do a lot of puzzles. Remember though, that the test along with the resume are used for shortlisting the candidates for the interviews by most of the companies. So don’t lose heart if your test went bad.

4) Interview Preparation :

First and foremost, go through your resume well, each and every point. You never know what might catch the interviewer’s eye and you shouldn’t be left thinking about it in the interview. For projects, prepare justifications for design choices and also revise the mathematical details of the methods used in your project. Apart from this prepare for the basic HR questions. Lastly prepare some questions you would like to ask the interviewer. Also think about questions like why this particular role?, Why this company?. A major portion of my interviews was on these questions in finance companies like GS and JP Morgan. Finance companies ask a lot of puzzles and probability and stats questions in the interviews, prepare well for those. And for CS Tech companies, coding on paper is common. Go through resources online for pointers regarding preparing for the above. One important thing is to always think aloud, even if you are stuck at some point. The interviewers are mostly interested in the way you think rather than whether or not you get to the correct answer.

Placement Experience

I was shortlisted for 8 companies on Day 1, 4 in each slot. The placement cell assigned ½ hour slots for each of the companies to conduct their first rounds of interviews. But these slots were hardly followed beyond the first hour. So it is essential that you have friends on that day who will coordinate the timings of your interview slots with the company coordinators and ensure that your time is not wasted and you are able to attend as many interviews as possible. Also be prepared to make quick decisions on where to go, which may also involve choosing between 2 companies due to time constraints. A day or two before, run through different scenarios and make up your mind about what to choose. For e.g. in my case I had to forgo going for the Google interview altogether in order to give the remaining 3 interviews well in the D1S1 and same with Apple in D1S2. There are typically 2-3 rounds of interviews for most of the CS Tech companies and also for some of the finance companies, and it gets really exhausting till the end of the day. In my case, my first interview for Tower Research (eventually this is where I was placed 🙂) took 2hrs and then I had to rush through everything else. As a general rule if a company is interested in a candidate they try to increase the length of the interview.

Tower Research

1) Resume based shortlisting for the interviews.
2) Interview :
First Round : Intro, Questions on my projects, Networks based questions, O.S. based questions, coding questions. Asked to code up on pen-paper. (50 mins)
Second Round : Similar as the first round in the initial discussions. More focus on coding question (graph based), asked to code it up on pen-paper, asked about my PORs. (50 mins)

Uber

1) Coding Test : 3 Coding Questions (1 1/2 hrs). 2/3 for getting shortlisted.
2) Interview :
a) First Round (Tech) : Asked about how to model the tetris problem and code it up on paper. (40mins)
b) Second Round (Tech) : Asked coding questions (3), Puzzles, and then asked to code up the solution for one of the coding questions. (40mins)
c) Third Round (HR – based) : Intro, Motivation, Questions on internships testing your involvement (Basic Questions like how big the data was, some of the challenges that you faced while coding it up, the systems used to handle the huge amount of data, etc.), Biggest Failure and how you have overcome that failure, Strengths. (40mins)

Microsoft (Software Developer and Data Science)

1) Test :
a) SW : Coding Test; this included 3 easy questions. The challenge here was that the environment was their own cocubes whose interface is really difficult to use and debug. So essentially they were testing how well can you code on white paper i.e. without the debugging.
The questions were testing skills with pointers, trees, etc. (1hr 15mins)
b) DS : This test included questions in details about various Machine Learning models. Some of the questions were factual but most of them were application oriented. for e.g. effects of various hyperparameters, which loss function to use, etc. (1 hr)
2) Group Fly :
a) SW : This stage included 2 questions to solve on pen paper, and then discuss with the guides there to optimize the solution if possible. One of the questions was based on binary trees and the other was on RLE. (1 ½ hrs).
b) DS : 2 Questions – The first was to explain the mathematical formulation, learning algorithm and prediction algorithm of any of the following : (Neural Networks, HMMs, MRFs, LSTMs, etc). The second question was on practical applications of ML. 4 ML tasks were provided, we had to formulate any one of the tasks as an ML problem, ask for the required data and propose a model which was able to solve the problem and discuss the nuances of the task with the guides present. (2 hrs)
3) Interview :
a) SW :
1) First Round (Tech): 2 coding question on binary trees. Then a simple tweak to the question. Then he asked me to code it up on pen-paper in C++ (1/2 hr).
2) Second Round (Tech) : Discussion about my projects, motivation, talk about why not go for MS? Then a coding question again on binary trees. Asked me to code it up on pen-paper in C++. (40 mins)
3) Third Round (Redmond) : Didn’t get shortlisted for this round.

Goldman Sachs

1) Test : The test was mostly testing your JEE Math skills and some concepts of statistics and probabilities and a few simple questions on coding algorithms, along with one coding question which involved solving a puzzle itself (not much weightage given to this).
2) Interview : There were 3 separate teams that had come for the interviews and each of them had a similar but independent process.
1) First Round : Intro, Questions about motivation (Really Grilled me here), why finance, why GS?, etc.
2) Second Round : Intro, Motivation, Stats based questions on variance and derivations for simple time series data.

IBM (Data Science Profile)

1) Test : 3 rounds of test, one on Logical Reasoning, Data Interpretation and one on English. (2 hrs total)
2) Interview : One HR based interview with questions focussed on ML projects.

JP Morgan (Quantitative Researcher)

1) Test :
a) MCQs – 3 sections : Probability and stats based questions, Maths based Questions, and CS Coding based questions (1hr 15mins)
b) Coding – 2 coding questions on binary trees(½ hr)
2) Interview :
a) First Round : ML questions, mathematical details on concepts used in projects.
b) Second Round : CS theory based questions on Compilers and OOPs in C++.
c) Third Round : Questions on OOPs in C++.

Harsh Srivastava

Pre-Placement Prep, Placement Experience, American Express, General Fundae

Pre-Placement Preparation

a. I was pretty clear on what companies I’d be targeting, hence figuring out the placement preparation goals was relatively easier.
b. My prep was majorly focussed on practising my coding skills, doing logic and
probability puzzles and learning enough about finance to be able to hold an intelligent discussion in an interview, alongside the usual practise of aptitude tests. I wasn’t really focussing on consulting firms, hence case prep was really not on my radar, which led to a rude shock during my AmEx interview.
c. Towards the beginning of November, I started working on HR questions. Having ready answers to the standard questions of HR interviews is a must and it helps if you have worked on framing answers to questions which are not the usual suspects, since, once in a while, some interviewer will ask you a slightly twisted question and having some extra ammunition comes in handy.
d. Try and find out if the companies you are targeting take GDs. If they do, form a group (with NOT your friends) and get together at least once every fortnight to practise your speaking skills. Even if your target companies don’t take GDs, form a group anyways as the practise would help you keep your thoughts collected and concise even in an environment pregnant with pressure, anticipation and urgency, something which you’ll be thankful for when one of your interview starts going south (and believe you me, it most definitely will.)

Placement Experience

a. I only had interview with P&G on Day1 and given their interviewing format that focuses solely on character traits and hence is essentially only HR interview and the fact that I wasn’t really interested in P&G, it offered me a good practise opportunity for my HR interviewing skills. Needless to say, I didn’t make the cut.
b. I interviewed with multiple companies in Day2 slot1 and didn’t even make it to the second round of interviews in any. I mention this only to impress upon you, the readers, that going into every interview with the same mindset and confidence as your very first interview is extremely important (more on this later).

American Express

AmEx interviews were scheduled in Day2 slot2. The aptitude test (no coding test) which they had conducted earlier comprised of 20 questions in 30 minutes. The questions were mostly easy, with some questions of moderate difficulty interspersed in them. Hence each incorrect answer could potentially knock you out of the shortlist. I think I got around 18 correct (just my guess, quite possibly could be wrong) and I was wait-listed for the interviews.
I wasn’t expecting to be called for interviews (rookie mistake – read up on the company even if you are waitlisted). So when I was called in for the AmEx interview, I read up on the company hoping that I’d have enough time before they called me in.
The first interview was resume based and a bit technical. After the usual ice breaker questions, the discussion turned towards the projects and internships I had listed on the resume. My third year internship was focussed on Natural Language Processing and I had mentioned the course project done in Machine Learning minor course on my resume too.
Since the profile being offered involved a fair bit of machine learning, the interviewer quickly latched on to it and the interview went from the details of my internship project to basic concepts of machine learning to some easy to moderate questions regarding machine learning techniques.
The interviewer also enquired about my proficiency with different programming languages and my experience as well as comfort while working with teams. Nothing too major league, just be sure to convince the interviewer that you are the best person ever for the job 😛
The first interview was limited to just these aspects of my resume as well as my technical proficiency and the interviewer ended the interview on a warm note, which was good indicator.
Pretty soon, I was called in for the second interview. The interviewer was, as I recall, Senior Vice President or on some similar post and was surprising chilled out person. Although the first interview was pretty relaxed and casual, the second one managed to be even more so. He started off the interview with the usual ‘tell me about yourself’, ‘why AmEx’ and pretty soon, he presented me with a case to solve.
Although it wasn’t really a core consult company level case and he made it ample clear that he just wanted to see my structure formulation and thought process, I had precious little experience approaching and solving cases. But thankfully, the chilled out interviewer had spiked up my confidence enough to start approaching the case with a logical approach. Although I myself wasn’t really happy with my proposed solution, the path I took must have been logical and coherent enough for them to offer me the position.

A common question across both interviews- why did you reject the PPO? If you are mentioning about your PPO, expect this question in almost 100% of the interviews. Prepare a good answer and tie it well with why the position for which you are interviewing offers better opportunities and doesn’t have the drawbacks you saw in the previous organization
(General rule – Don’t make it sound like the company itself was bad. As a matter of fact, as far as interviews are concerned, all my past supervisors, bosses, mentors etc had been very helpful, approachable)
Around 15-20 min after my second interview, I was informally told by the company officials that they’ll be extending me a job offer. Although I didn’t had too, I still interviewed for the companies with which I had interviews scheduled, just for the heck of it, to get the feel of interviewing without the stress or fear of getting rejected.

General Fundae

a. If you are decided on what field interests you, focus on that and don’t apply for every job profile just because everyone is. Not only will it weaken your preparation, it will either lead to unnecessary rejections or getting a more hectic schedule filled with interviews and tests you never wanted to give in the first place.
b. Don’t attend placement activities JUST for the sake of incentive points. I’m pretty sure most of you will disregard this advice (so did I ), but the initial JAF signing limit set by the PT cell is more than sufficient. You won’t miss out on any JAF because of the limit and sooner than you think, unlimited JAF signing will start.
That said, do attend events connected to your areas of interest. The alumni sometimes impart some insights that can be really helpful.
c. Try to attend the PPTs of your target companies. Usually it won’t have anything you couldn’t have gotten from their website, but they’ll give a clearer idea about the job profile being offered (and save you from some embarrassing questions during the interview) and well, sometimes, a random statistic from the PPT can come in handy during the HR interview.
d. Please try to get as clear idea about the job as possible. NEVER go in the interview without reading the job description and if possible, try to connect with the alumni working in that company. Not only does it reflect positively on you when you talk about this during the interview, some interviewers might themselves ask if you contacted the alumni already working there and coming up with a legitimate excuse then and there is harder than it seems (been in that tricky spot myself).
e. Do whatever it takes (well, not whatever it takes, but anything reasonable) to keep your spirits up during the process. Getting rejected again and again can be tough, but screwing up your future interviews because of them is just sad.
Remember, it is only your first job. So, de-stress whichever way you can, TRY and get enough sleep and don’t enter an interview room with the gloom and doom of your previous rejections obvious on your face. Believe me, it matters.
(This may sound a lot like self-help bullshit, but you’ll realize this too. Sadly though, it will be after you have been placed.)
f. This is mostly followed but just to reiterate- Be Empathetic. It is easy and frankly, expected to get lost in the joy of getting placed finally, but remember that some of your friends or batchmates or hostelmates might not be placed yet. So party as hard as you want on getting placed, because, well, you deserve it but maybe wait till December 15 before flooding everyone’s social media feeds with celebratory pics and congratulatory messages? Because if anyone understands the stress they are under, it is you.

Harsh Prasad

Some Useful Tags:
Choosing Target Profile, Preparing Yourself, Consult Prep, Non Core Prep, Interview Experience, Strategy&, A.T Kearny

Profile at a Glance:

I am graduating from the Chemical Engineering department. I have been a part of Mood Indigo Core Group leading the marketing department for the 2017 edition of the festival. My internship was with Kotak Mahindra Bank and currently I’m working as a DAMP mentor.

My target sectors were consulting and finance.

Choosing your Target Profile

This should be the most important aspect of your placement preparation. However, the efforts that are put in to deciding this have never been at par with what they should be. (This is my own personal opinion shaped by what I observed in people around me. Reality could be diametric to this 😛). This is nothing more than a match making step in a crude sense.

Decide what are the parameters your choice of profile would depend on (in my case it was short term goals and my skill set)
Write down the “values” for those parameters.(in my case, what are my short term goals & what is my skill set)
Now, make a list of those profiles you feel could be a match and then write down in detail what each of them have to offer.
Each of the above steps will require you to put in a lot of efforts. Speak to people, seniors currently working in those industries, your friends and finally with some bit of introspection, you’ll be able to decide on what should be your target profile.
With this match making, you’re done with the crucial initial step. (Well begun is half done,right ?)

Preparing Yourself

The preparation required varies from profile to profile, however the following major things are important for most of the non-core profiles.

Resume – Make sure you have the first draft of your resume ready at least two weeks prior to the deadline and you get it reviewed by multiple people preferably those who could make it to companies you target. It’s of utmost importance to be truthful in your resume and make sure before the interviews you are thorough with each and every point mentioned on your resume. You should be prepared to speak for 5-10 mins on any point on your resume. Do mock interviews with your friends to help you prepare better.
Tests – The non core companies usually ask only aptitude tests which only questions on basic arithmetic and logical reasoning. If you’re preparing for CAT as well, then the study material provided by T.I.M.E. should suffice.
Interviews – All companies have two types of interviews : profile specific and HR. (Some might have only HR). I prepared majorly for the consulting interviews.

Consult Interview Preparation:

Consulting companies majorly ask cases in their interviews to test the ability of the candidate to structure complicated problems and judge their business acumen as well. Preparation for case interviews can’t be done alone and it’s advised that you form a group of 3-4 friends with whom you can practice cases. You can form multiple groups as well which allows you multiple viewpoints and also you won’t have to read too many cases for your friends. September is the ideal time to start case prep. In the initial few weeks, stick to the standard resources and make sure you are comfortable with the basics.
Once the shortlists are out, companies allot you ‘buddies’ who are working with the firm and their job is to help you with the preparation. Make sure you take this buddy program seriously and utilize the feedback given by your buddies. For some firms, the buddy program might be evaluative as well.

Finance and other Non-Core :

Case prep does help for non core profiles other than consulting. It’s good to practice 4-5 guesstimates every week starting mid- August. Apart from cases, puzzles are also asked in most of the interviews. I followed a couple of standard puzzle books to prepare them. You can also search for the puzzles online and practice. Make sure you’re solving 2-3 puzzles everyday.
A lot of interviewers also love to ask questions on current affairs(specially the case with finance interviews) as these are a metric to judge the candidate’s enthusiasm for the relevant industry.
Make it a point to read the newspapers (Economic Times/Mint preferred) everyday. Also, do read up in detail about the major events that have had an impact on the industry you’ll applying for. For example, in finance events like global recession, economic crisis in Greece etc are important to know about in detail.

Interview Experience

I did not practice cases in the week before the interviews. However, this depends entirely on yourself and there’s no correct way to deal with this. The last week is only for yourself to calm down,relax and make sure you are able to deliver your 100% during the final interviews.
I was shortlisted in three firms in the first slot of day 1.

L.E.K.
A.T. Kearney, and
Strategy&

I managed to interview only with ATK (3 rounds) and Strategy& (3 rounds). Usually, with multiple shortlists, you’ll have interviews clashing and it will be your call to decide where you wish to interview. In most cases this depends on which company you want to work with and how your previous interviews have been with that particular firm.

Strategy&

My first round involved a short case on market growth and was majorly focused on HR. The interviewer dug really deep into my resume and grilled me a lot on a couple of points.

In the second round, we had a discussion on the consulting industry and the interviewer very enthusiastically talked about how the industry is expanding in India. I guess the purpose of this discussion was to test my enthusiasm for consulting. The final round was a short conversation after which I was given the offer.

A.T. Kearney

The first round centered around a case where I had to find out the reason for the declining profits of a canteen in IIT-B campus. The case went pretty smooth and the interviewer seemed happy with my approach of tackling the case.

The second round was also a case where in I had to find the reason behind declining sales of sweet shops in Bhopal.

The final round was a short conversation with the partner wherein he asked some questions on my resume, my interests and so on.

Broadly for all consulting firms, the interviews are very similar and they involve 20-25 mins of case solving and 10 mins of HR type questions. In many instances, interviewers also have made cases out of the candidate’s resume. Therefore, I would reiterate , you need to be thorough with each and every point on your resume.

Garima Natani

Resume Preparation, Profile Selection, Placement Experience

There is one letter difference between Learning and earning and you are reading this means you are trying to learn something new. It’s always good to learn from others experience because our life is limited.

Resume Preparation

I started late, so I got very less time for creating my CV and I found a few mistakes were present in my resume like extra space when I took printouts for the interview.

One different thing I did was to use decent colours in my resume and I took coloured printouts of my resume for the interview. Some tips:

Start resume preparation early. It takes time! And when companies will open walk in they will look at your resume. So it is important
Take printouts of resume and give it for review to your friends. Because it is easy to catch mistakes in printed version then the digital version.
Be real. Don’t put fake projects and fake things in a resume because if you have command on your resume, that confidence will be shown in the interview.
You can use a different font colour and heading colour in the resume as it will make your resume different from other resumes. Make sure to use decent colours and fonts. It should look professional.

Profile Selection

I had 4 years of work experience in the IT industry and I enjoyed my previous job very much so It was clear to me that what kind of job I want to. Finance, consulting was a big nofor me.
Some tips:
You must have heard the saying that DON’T PUT ALL YOUR EGGS IN ONE BASKET. But I don’t believe in this. I will suggest that put all your eggs in one basket because when you know that there is no backup plan your effort will become more than 100% and when you will try your best you will for sure get success. And even if you fail it’s good to start from scratch because now you will have everything new to explore and you can start the journey without repeating mistakes.

So my suggestion is to take time to decide what you want to do after passing out from IIT, in which profile you want to go but when the decision is taken never look back.
You want to go for CAT/GRE/GATE/UPSC then go for it, leave placement as a backup plan because having a backup is somehow restricting you from giving your best.

Placement Tests and Preparation

Competitive programming is always different from real-world programming. I had experience of real world programming. I applied to more than 60 JAFs my strategy was to use company tests as practice tests and improve my syntax writing and improve my logic.
Tips:
1) Check what are the questions asked by companies and prepare them well
2) There is one FB group called Inter IIT placement group check that frequently as most of the time similar questions are asked in other IITs as well.
3) Don’t get depressed if you are not able to perform well in the test. Because of companies open for walk-in interviews
4) Prepare well

Interview Experience

My first interview was at Google,
Interview 1) One question was on graph. How to find min cycle length in the graph and another question was related to Permutation and combination.
Interview 2) Given un-ordered array and binary search which use a random element instead of mid element. For how many elements it will return always return true.
After that, I was not selected for further round.
My second interview was at Oracle, some easy but tricky questions were asked.
Third Interview was at Hitachi Limited was related to IoT researcher and My MTP is also related to IoT so lots of questions were asked on IoT.
Tips:
1) Prepare HR questions well in advance, discuss answers with friends.
2) Believe in yourself.
3) Do research about the company beforehand
4) Prepare whatever you have written in resume
5) Prepare some basic questions that are asked in every software interview.

Arundhoti Nayak

PrePlacement Preparation, Procter n Gamble, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, General Fundae

Profile at a Glance

A bit about my background I have been involved in IIT Bombay Racing for past three years which makes electric race car which we take into the competition in Silverstone, UK.
2nd year (Junior Design Engineer): Battery and battery management System
3rd year (Design Engineer): Data Acquisition & Controller Area Network
4th year (Core team member): Chief Operations
3rd year summer internship at Monash University, worked on energy consumption for the production of H2/Cl2 in electro dialysis cell.

Pre-Placement Preparation

Practiced aptitude daily from Indiabix
Placement Aptitude Test (pariksha.com), from here I got to know what are my weak topics and practiced accordingly.
Core preparation from the material shared by Department Placement Coordinator
MOST IMP FOR PnG: “64 HR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS”
Read a book: “How to make friends and influence people“

The last 2 bullet points were the most important for my PnG prep. From 64 HR interview question I prepared/ discussed the first 45 questions, from here I got to know how to frame my answers (keep some loopholes in your answers from where they can ask the next question.)
Since I was sure where I want to work in I filled only 14 Jafs and PnG as my only Day 1 company (its okay to fill less jafs, don’t get intimidated by your friends filling 30+ jafs). Do your research well on the companies.

Procter n Gamble

Round 1

The interviewer gave a brief intro about himself.

Tell me about yourself.
What does your father do?
In which places have you stayed during your father’s transferable job? What is your hometown?
Proudest moment of your life.
Tell us about a situation where you had to present something in front of a panel (the question was something related to it). They wanted to know where I have defended myself before.
Tell us about a situation where u have saved significant amount of resources (human, money and time). Told them about my 2nd year in IIT Bombay Racing where we designed BMS (in house) saving 1 lac and got it done in a couple of months. completely technical
a. What is a BMS?
b. What exactly does it do?
c. What is passive balancing? Why does the measuring temperature of cells help?
d. What is the definition of power density?
e. Why don’t you use high power density cells?
f. What is iso-spi communication? Why do you use it instead of can?
g. What is spi communication?
h. How the BMS data does exactly helps? Can the driver manipulate anything in the BMS from the dashboard?
i. How do you calculate the total energy required by the battery?
j. How do you cool you battery? What are the total number of cells
Explain a very difficult situation and how did you overcome it. explained an incident from racing
a. What are the types of motors?
b. Is it two wheel drive?
How do you ensure knowledge transfer in your team?
Explain a decision in which everyone wasn’t on board, how did you explain others and bring everyone on board.
Tell us about a situation where you had very limited resources with a time limitation. How did you overcome it?
There were 2 situational questions among which I remember only 1.
How would you prioritize 4 projects whose submission deadline are as follows: next day, a week after, a month after, a year after respectively.
The interview ended with me asking him what exactly does his job description is, just to gain an insight and to end it on a good note.

Round 2

Interview started with a brief introduction of both of them. They gave disclaimer that they will be taking down notes on my answers and I shouldn’t be bothered about it.

Tell me about yourself.

Explain us about the summer internship project
a. How was it impactful?
b. How did you base your data from? Is this the only way to get your results? How did you validate your results?
c. What is the innovation you did?

Explain about your current position of responsibility- core team member, IIT Bombay Racing.
a. How did you inspire your team members after the disaster in dynamic events in UK this year?
b. Why do you think people should be there in team, what is in their minds to stay in the team

What is one of the situations in which you have taken a lead, and how did you overcome the situation?
Tell us about a very difficult decision
Tell us a difficult phase in your life, when no one was standing with you. How did you face it, what did you learn from it?

Now starts the situational questions. They told me now we are starting the situational questions, we want to study your behaviour, your body language, how you react in the situation and your thinking process.

Given you join in PnG in a managerial position, there are 15 employees working in the company for past 5 years, there is a reform in the company’s rule, 5 of them are neutral, 5 of them optimistic, and 5 of them pessimistic about it. The 5 of them who are pessimistic are working at the end of the manufacturing line (i.e. if they don’t work no product gets delivered). How do you convince them?
Suppose you work in a group of 2. Your co-employee is always behind your tail, disagreeing with you always. Now one fine day she started shouting on you in the cafeteria because you forgot to give her some update on something. How do you deal with the situation?
a. Will you be able to keep your calm?

Then the interviewers wanted to know if I had any questions for them so I asked again from both of them what their scope of work is. Each of them explained their work in jest. But interviewer 2 wanted to know why I asked them these question so I mumbled that oh my god that’s a lot of work. They laughed at this comment and we started talking about general life. The interview ended on a good tone.

Round 3

Again started with brief introduction and tell me about yourself

Proudest moment of my life.
Do you want to be in manufacturing or supply chain
Will you do an MBA in future?
It was a general discussion about my likes and dislikes.

General Fundae

Have a chewing gum before you enter the interview, it eases your mind.
Sit upright, back’s straight (practice it if necessary)
Don’t cross leg (an extremely defensive position)
Don’t lock your hands (again extremely defensive position)
It’s okay if you stammer a bit, but rectify it and consciously keep in mind not to do it again.
Be patient, don’t show a slightest amount of annoyance on your face though however pissed off you are at inside
Try to say limited and important things, mention the points you want them to know, keep the ball on your side of the table. Maintain eye contact with your interviewers.
Be confident, don’t be afraid, smile a lot, you can even crack jokes if you want. Take your time to answer the questions.
Last don’t follow any of the above and do the way it naturally comes to you. In the last minutes whatever others say doesn’t matter a lot.

Philosophy

Think consciously about what you like and what you don’t like. A bit of soul searching never hurts anyone.
For me I was very sure that I want to work in either supply chain/core companies, and don’t want to do my Masters/PhD right now.
Talk to your friends/ seniors whom you trust, and limit those number of people whom you turn to for suggestions, because too many suggestions can be confusing!

Aditya Bhosale

Goldman Sachs, Risk Round 1, Risk Round 2, Coding Round 1, Coding Round 2

Profile at a Glance:

● Extensive experience in programming
● URA2 recipient
● 1 Internship:
3rd year summer: University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
● 1 POR: Teaching assistant
● No work experience in the industry, no minor

Pre-Placement Preparation:

I was fairly certain that I only wanted to apply to software, coding and analytics profile. So most of my prep revolved around data structures and algorithms. Not having any work experience or a CS minor, I knew I already had a disadvantage. Also, unfortunately, because of my DDP, I wasn’t able to start my prep until the last week of October which is also when the company tests began.
I was suggested to start by reading the book ‘Cracking the coding interview’ but since I was short on time I decided to jump right in and start solving topic wise problems instead. I would spend an hour or so reading up on a topic and then another 4-5 hour solving problems. I mainly used interviewbit and leetcode for practice. I would suggest starting the prep lot earlier than I did as the company tests take up almost all of your time in November with as many as 6-7 tests everyday except for the end-sem week. Infact, in the last 3-4 days, I decided to give tests for at most 1 company each day as I had already made it into enough shortlists and thought it would be better to focus on interview prep instead.
I was shortlisted for 4 companies on day 1.
● Goldman Sachs
● JP Morgan Chase
● McKinsey Knowledge Centre
● NEC Corporation, Japan
The JPMC shortlist came in the last week and was pretty unexpected as it was a quant profile and I was only able to solve about 9 out of 30 quant problems in the test. They also had 2 coding problems in the test which I was able to solve which is probably why I was shortlisted. But this meant that I needed to prepare for quant interview questions in the last week with no prior practice. I spent an entire day in the last week solving problems from ‘Fifty challenging problems in probability’ by Frederick Mosteller and this other book called ‘Day 1’ by some IIT Madras students.
I did my HR prep only on the day before the interview. If you’re someone who gets nervous easily, I would suggest you start your HR prep earlier and do a few mock interviews with friends to gain confidence. In my opinion, HR questions are the most important questions in an interview. The HR questions are the ones that set you apart from everyone else.

Goldman Sachs

The test had 2 separate sections for coding and quant. The coding section had one coding problem and around 10 MCQs. The quant section had around 15 MCQs. The coding problem was fairly simple and logic based which didn’t require any knowledge of DSA. The quant section was also fairly easy with JEE level math problems. As these sections are for two separate profiles, you’re not expected to be good at both. I know students who only solved the quant section and were shortlisted for the interview.

Interview experience

GS was the only interview I had in slot 1. My first round was scheduled at 8:30 am. I slept for only 3 hours the night before. When I reached the venue the next morning, the interviews of some students had already started. There were 3 profiles for which candidates were being interviewed: coding, quant, and risk. I was called for the first round after about 15 mins.

Risk: Round 1

Round 1 only had 1 interviewer. She asked me to tell her about myself. I gave the answer I had prepared. After that, she asked me to wait in the room and she left. After a couple of minutes, another person entered the room and took the interviewer’s seat. I found it a bit odd but I guess the first interviewer realized that I wasn’t looking for the profile her team was offering.
The new interviewer then asked me 2 coding problems:
● Given a list of 99 distinct numbers between 1 to 100 in no particular order, find the missing number in the list.
● Implement a version queue data structure and a method to print all previous versions of the queue.
I answered both questions. He asked for a different solution for the second question than the one I gave. I gave a different solution after taking a hint. He then asked me why I wanted to work at Goldman Sachs and not some other financial firm? He also asked what kind of job profile I would be most interested in.

Risk: Round 2

For this round, there was a panel of 2 interviewers. One of them was the same interviewer from round 1. This round was relatively chill. They basically wanted to know why I wanted to work in finance when all my previous experience has been in research.
My BTP was on radius based nearest neighbor searching. The interviewer asked how I could use my radius based algorithm to implement a kNN algorithm. I gave a somewhat satisfactory answer. He then asked a simple coding question (how will you find the kth largest number from a stream of numbers) followed by a couple of simple follow-up questions on heaps.
The second interviewer then asked me how I would design a system such as an online shopping website to handle hundreds of thousands of requests per second. I didn’t have any experience with distributed systems which I told them honestly but I explained using a load balancer and message queues.
At the end of the interview, I asked a few questions about the role and asked him if he could tell me about one of the most interesting projects he has worked on to get an idea of the kind of work his division handles. We had a nice discussion on this topic.

Coding: Round 1

This round was a lot more coding intensive. The interview started with a “tell me about yourself” and then went right into coding problems.
● Given an array, for each element find the first value to it’s right greater than that element.
● Write a function to print a permutation of an array of distinct elements such that each permutation is equally likely to occur.
● Find the minimum number of swaps required to sort an unsorted array.

I was able to solve the first 2 myself and the last one after a few hints. At the end of the interview, I asked some questions about the role, career path, and the work culture.

Coding: Round 2

This one was an absolute nightmare. After the usual ‘tell me about yourself’, he asked me a question from graph theory. As I was short on time during the prep, I had completely left out graphs. The question was,
● Given a connected graph, find the set of edges such that if one of the edges belonging to this set is removed, the graph becomes disconnected.
I somehow managed to come up with the correct algorithm after a lot of hints but there wasn’t enough time to write the code for it as all the other interviews were already over and everyone had left.
After the last interview, I was not at all expecting to get an offer. So I rushed back to the hostel, had some food while reading up and taking notes on the 3 companies in slot 2 and rushed back to H16 for slot 2.

I was completely burnt out at this point and had a terrible headache. I first went to give the NEC interview as I knew it would go well and I needed a good interview to recover from the last one. While I was waiting outside the interview room, a friend of mine who was also waiting for the interview saw the blog and told me that I made it into GS. I think I was happier because I didn’t have to give any more interviews than the fact that I got the job.

This also means that unfortunately, I don’t have any more interview experiences to share. Here are some of the interview tips:
● Be honest. This is, in my opinion, the most important thing to remember while answering any HR question. Don’t misrepresent yourself as someone you aren’t just to get a job. Instead, only focus on your strengths that align with the job requirements.
● Have a 3-4 line description ready for each project and internship you have on your resume. It’s easy to give a long description of a project but often difficult to summarize it in a few sentences. Use the STAR method to prepare these summaries (google ‘star method’)
● If you have interviews in slot 1, get something to eat for the morning the night before. You don’t want to walk around searching for food right before the interviews. Also, carry some food and a bottle with you.
● With GS, you don’t have to ace every interview. My roommate last year actually asked the interviewer if an interview with one team affects his chances with other teams after he completely messed up his quant interview and the interviewer said no. He later got an offer from one of the other teams.

Atharva Modi

PrePlacement Preparation, Deutsche Bank, Bain, ITC, Cairn India, General Fundae

Profile at a Glance:

Top 10% of the class
3 internships:
- 3rd year summer: R&D at Dr. Reddy’s Labs
- 2nd year summer: Supply Chain Lead at Xynteo (Plastic Maker Hubs)
- 2nd year winter: Analyst at NextGen PMS (worked on impact assessment and conceptualising CSR projects)
General Secretary, Hostel-5
Core experience in form of two electives: ‘Course on Wheels’ and ‘Techno-commercial aspects of fine chemicals’
Always involved in sports and adventure activities

Pre Placement Preparation:

Decision of Profile to apply for:

After my diverse experiences, it was difficult for me to choose any of the field. I liked bits of every one of them, but was highly unsure about core or consulting or management or finance or even opting for civil services. But, I was clear that I will not apply for software, coding & trading profiles. This automatically left me with fewer options in finance profile. Also, my internship at DRL taught me that somewhere I lacked the patience and grit for research.

It was somewhat clear to me that I will not sit for CAT or GRE this semester partly because I wanted a break from studies and want to explore the practical world, and partly as I didn’t want to create more options for me.

Going for civil services is still in back of my head. I felt in the end that one can afford to prepare for the exams like CAT and simultaneously get an upper hand at placement tests (Aptitude+Verbal).

Balancing Between Different Types of Preparation:

In the mid-semester I was inclined towards consulting and keeping core profiles as my backup. But, as shortlists of companies uncovered around mid-October I found myself shortlisted in only one Day-1 consulting firm and again the indecision creeped in. I did not have many friends who got shortlisted in consulting firms which halted my preparation with the case interviews.

I consciously attended most of the relevant pre-placement talks and alumni talks. These ppts and sessions gave me an overview of work each type of firm and its employees do. I took notes in each of them which proved to be helpful down the line. They also helped me to show several ways to prepare for placements, but in the end we must devise a way of our own.

Also, for group-discussions preparation, we formed a group and discussed at least 10 topics of different genres in the group. By the end of October, I was facing aptitude tests and buddy meetings (consulting; (un)fortunately I had only 2 of them, but people with more shortlists were really busy with these). I was not prepared with any of these and they went not up-to the par. I was not shortlisted in the most tests in this time range and if buddy reviews are a truth (and yes they are), then they must be not so good for my performance.

Just after the end-sems we were facing a mountain of tests and they kept us engaged from 7 in the morning to 1 in the night. There were breaks in between but the whole process was tiresome and I could barely manage any time to prepare for interviews, core or case interviews in the last week. Suddenly, I had to come out of the hibernation and as always being a last-moment performer, gave my best shot to prepare stories and HR questions in the last two days.

I got shortlisted in 4 firms on Day-1. All of them were in slot-1:

Deutsche Bank
Bain
ITC
Vedanta (Cairn) Oil & Gas

Deutsche Bank

Round-1 involved a panel of 2 equally participating members (A & B):
A: Hi Atharva, I also wanted my son’s name as Atharva, it is a nice name but people suggested that it’s very difficult to pronounce, so we chose another one. Is it really that difficult for people?
I: I don’t know if it is difficult to pronounce as no one calls me by my first name. Even my mom sometimes calls me Modi. Actually, my teacher in 10th class also changed the name of her son to Atharva. It seems she was inspired by me.
A: So, what’s the meaning of your name?
I: (with little stutter) The name is derived from name of Lord Ganesh and even is name of one of the four Vedas. If we go by literal meaning it means “a spell of holy magic”.
A: So, let’s see your magic then
I: Of-course!

After this feel-at-ease start to the interview, the next part of interview went pretty normal including general questions like:

Tell us about your background?
Explain your project at DRL.
How did you benchmark the supply chain in your project at the intern at Xynteo? (“Benchmark” was a word I used as an exaggeration in the resume and later needed good preparation to defend the word; SO BEWARE!)
Why Finance and why not supply chain? (Supply chain profile was protruding from my resume) (I should have been well-prepared with this question, but spontaneously I generated an escape relating to the power & impact of finance guiding the market and supply chain projects.)
Why not become our client instead of joining us? (Based on my impromptu answer to above question)
What is the difference between a point and a line?

Questions for the interviewer: I asked the interviewer about is there a possibility of a recession in recent times and will it affect their work as an investment banker and another question on the effect of new technologies like AI on value of their work. Both questions received interesting responses.

The second round also involved few probability problems and an unconventional pricing case.

We have a bus with seats numbered from 1 to 100. There are 100 passengers waiting outside numbered 1 to 100. The passengers enters the bus according to their number and the seating policy is such that each ith passenger is obliged to seat in ith place if its seat is empty. If the seat is already occupied it can take a seat on any of the empty seat left. Only the 1st guy has a privilege to have a seat of his choice irrespective of seat’s number. Find the probability that 100th guy occupies the 100th seat.
You are selling your institute. Estimate the value of IIT Bombay.

Questions for the interviewer: Again I asked the same questions to the panel this time and I think here even they realised the danger AIs possess to their job!

Bain

I was aware that I did not have enough practice for the Day-1 consulting interview but I was ready for any kind of “humiliation” I may face. The interviewer began with questions like “Why consulting?” and “Why Bain?” to which I stammeringly responded via my prepared answers. Then we started with the case which went as follows:
“We are a regional parcel company and we decided to lease driverless electric trucks as a substitute to diesel trucks and in the pilot project we faced additional costs more than the expected. Should we go ahead with the project?”
The interviewer basically tested how I will compare the costs of both the fleet type and how comprehensive my segmentation is. Then she provided me data about the segmentation of the costs and asked for what factors to consider to improve the costs. We settled on the long-term financing of the project instead of single-year project to get a discount from the vendor. The case ended with pretty bad calculations from my side and I was much assertive for my kind of brute-force calculations for simple oral problem. The interviewer didn’t like me a bit and even I didn’t adored her expressions. My review came out that I should try for other firms and I was out after a single round. It was an experience for which I was pretty much ready.

ITC

I knew after the GD that ITC was my best shot. I was not prepared as I should have been with my resume and core aspects. Thus, I was left with the only good choice of being confident on my 3 years of engineering studies and prepare for every word in the resume. Guide the interviewer your way, and this can be done by writing down answers to all the common questions and discuss them with your friends to see which way they can go ahead.

ITC Group Discussions are generally based on ranking of characters or importance of things in the given case. There are fixed 6 cases from which they ask each year. You can get these topics from google or seniors or internship junta. We practiced two of these GDs in the group and for the rest I personally prepared a framework.

General tip: Of-course giving a direction to the discussion shows your skills and increases your chance of selection, but don’t initiate just for sake of doing it. Create a solid base for the discussions clarifying the case to all the members of the group.

The first round of interview had a 2-memebered panel- probably one HR and another relatively recent alumnus of IIT-B. They started with asking about my background right from family to college life. Then they moved on to the core internship and I explained the internship using a flowchart I prepared. At last the interviewer offered me his coffee which I graciously accepted.
Below are the questions (in order) they asked me:

How did you plan your experiments? How many experiments did you perform? Can you give us a number of papers you read on the topic?
How the levels of variables were decided (related to Design of Experiments)? Was some statistical analysis involved in it?
So, why were you late in obtaining results from your experiments?
How were you elected as the General Secretary? Was actual “polt” involved?
What is your favourite subject? (I said that I liked the most practical applications of engineering. Do this daring act only if you are confident enough.)
Tell us practical examples of isobaric, isochoric and isothermal process. (I converged my whole answer to the tea making procedure. They were seeking for something more industry related, but it worked)
Draw refrigeration cycle. If we open the door of a refrigerator in a closed room, what will happen to the room’s temperature? Which law governs it? (I stumbled in drawing the refrigeration cycle, but later part of the answer was answered handsomely.)
What else you do apart from your academics and work as General Secretary? (I mentioned my hobbies of sports and music and was able to convince them that Ultimate Freesbie is actually a game and its tournaments are played in Mumbai.)
Explain the event you wrote in “Mind over Matter” section of the application form. (They read your application before the interview. Be prepared with it.)
Are you comfortable if you get a job in Mumbai? (Quite a weirdo from a manufacturing job, but answered in a positive.)

Questions I asked: We all know that IoT and AI will bring the next big disruption in supply chains globally. How this incoming technologies affect ITC? Are we working on the same?

The second round of interview had 2 senior members from the company and both looked knowledgeable in every aspect. I entered the room along with a Mongini’s guy, which brought a genuine big smile on my face and our conversation started with the charming cake.

Where are you from? Why are not you going for an MBA like your brother? (Hearing in their ppt helped me answering the second part.)
Are you a chemical engineer by a chance or by choice? (I said partly by choice, and related the versatility of Chemical Engineering to my likings.)
How can you apply Bernoulli equation to the Wall Street? (This question was coming from my last answer. I just said it is a differential equation which can be applied to any type of flow in different forms being money, energy or material.)
Give an example you use Bernoulli’ equation in real life? (I moulded the answer from basics of flow in a convergent pipe which finally went to Venturimeter with the help of interviewer.)
How do you manage to get such good grades handling this PoR and other stuff? Din-raat Mugte rhte ho? (I said that I have cracked the grading system in the institute and good grades require a very different kind of study. I moulded my answer towards my habit (not really :P) of scheduling things and studying attentively in the classroom.)
What is your favourite subject? (I said that I like most practical applications of chemical engineering, but if they force me to choose one I will go with Mass Transfer.)
Tell us names of different types of column you studied? What is the use of packing in a column?
Why did not you get a PPO at Dr. Reddy’s? (The question came as a shocking end for me as I had prepared an answer for consulting firms as “I wanted to reject core sector so I made it clear at the end of the intern”. Now spontaneously I had to prepare an escape about my choice to go to a manufacturing unit rather than R&D sector. It was a genuine belief and thus went all good. I will highly recommend being thorough with such questions beforehand.)

Questions I asked: Are we allowed to change the divisions in ITC? (This question was accompanied with a lot of knowledge I gathered from their website and talking to an alumnus between the interview. The interviewer looked surprised by my knowledge about their work culture, but in reality it was just a glance on their ‘careers’ webpage.)
We all know that IoT and AI will bring the next big disruption in supply chains globally. How this incoming technologies affect ITC? Are we working on the same?

Cairn India (Vedanta Oil and Gas)

I was the last person to go for Cairn’s interview. I was already feeling hungry and tired and will suggest all of you to take enough food with you. I knew that interviewers are focusing more on core knowledge related to upstream processing of oil & gas and adaptability of work on the drilling site.

GD for Cairn had 8 people with 10 minutes to speak. The topics were very vague. Some groups had a lot to debate and our group did not even had much to speak for the whole time.
Our GD topic: Have the nuclear tests of Pokhran in 1999 helped India or not?
The selections at the end were much random and people who spoke well enough or even initiated and directed the conversation were left out. Don’t get disheartened if you are the victim in such a case.

Tell us about yourself.
 Why it is important to remove water from natural gas?
 What are the methods used to remove water from Natural Gas?
 Can molecular sieves be used for extremely low concentration of water?
 What is ethylene glycol? What are its industrial uses? Can it be used to remove water from NG?
 Which will need more work: Same flow rate of API 35 crude or API 20 crude at similar conditions? (I clarified them if it was same mass flow rate or volume flow rate. This was something I learnt from case interview preparation.)
 This job will require working on the site, are you fine with it? (Again, I did not say a yes or no directly but went on to ask questions on which my decision will be based on.)

Questions I asked:

The work profile just mentions ‘Operational Excellence”. What does the work actually include? I want an exposure to overall process from raw material procurement/extraction to the consumers; will I be able to get this in the role? (As the jaf did not include much information in it and they did not have a ppt, this questions become relevant and actually shows your interests in the job.)
You can easily afford living in a metro city. How you manage your life switching between site and home?
What is the individual’s progress in their company? How many years does a person have to work on site?
Why Vedanta merged with Cairn?

The second round of interview was very chill and I even didn’t carry my resume in there. There were 3 people in there, most probably from HR department. They asked me to describe my 21-22 years of life and later I went on explaining them my and family’s whole journey from childhood to being a 19-year old job applicant. At last they just confirmed if I was fine with working in a 21 day work 21 day off format.

General Fundae:

Make resume realistic and simultaneously write down explanations for each and every word of it to a depth of 3rd level. This means you must be able to explain every term in the explanation of the description of your projects. Brag about yourself by playing with words and mention well-thought explainable numbers in the resume.
Make notes in every PPT you attend. They will help down the line.
For consult preparation, one has to be interactive and proactively practice with friends and seniors. If you don’t have any friends preparing for it, making new friends is the best thing you can do here or else you can also take help from several online case practice platforms. Form one or two case groups, practice and monitor the performance regularly. Analyse the practiced cases individually and give as much time to this crucial step. Analysing the cases means seeing how others have solved it, what was the best way for you, what factors you missed in the case, trying different types of frameworks on the same problem, etc. Finally, you have to be firm in your aim to join consult which keeps you going all the way.
I will strongly recommend solving guesstimates and basics of profitability and market entry cases to everyone irrespective of their target companies. They can be asked in a different format in any interview and become an important metric of rejection by the company as it happened with my most friends.
Preparing a timeline and most importantly sticking to it will surely take you places. Read this book, get experiences from seniors, attend sessions and make your own tailored plans from mid-October. Timelines may include preparation for tests, group discussions, case interviews, etc.
For the last 2 days I was preparing the HR questions and brushing up my resume points. Fortunately, I got help from my friends at the last moment to make explanations for resume points which will not generate doubts in the mind of the interviewer. I should have done this preparation much before I did. I penned answers to most questions linking them through “stories and events through which I learnt this…..which led me to believe this…..”. Writing down your answers is an excellent way to refine your answers and making them perfect. Instead of keeping generic answers try to relate all your answers with experiences from your life. This makes a good connection with the interviewer and also make you stand-out from the crowd.
People facing problems in communication in English language must improve upon it as at last what matters is how you express your views in the interview in this language. You can start by regularly reading newspaper and at least one article aloud each day. Don’t hesitate in conversing in English with your wing-mates and close friends. Encourage, Not MOCK!

ALL THE BEST!