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

Profile at a Glance:

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:

1. Deutsche Bank
2. Bain
3. ITC
4. 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.

1. 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.
2. 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!