Interviewed By:
Hello everyone, today we have Pallav Bhutani who has been placed at Boston Consulting group. So my first question is, what was general interview process for the companies you interviewed for?
Hello everyone, its great pleasure to be here. I had only interviewed for Boston Consulting Group during my placements. Most of the consulting firms including BCG generally follow a multi-tier selection process. Firstly, they might take an aptitude test followed by two-three or sometimes more than three case segments round. The interviewer provides you with a case at that time for which you have to consult to the client (Interviewer) the possible solutions . Finally. In HR round, the senior director generally asks your aspiration and judges you to be a good fit for company or not.
That’s a good insight for the beginners. Moving on to specifically to HR round, can you tell us the nature of it?
HR round is the last round before selection. So, its not as tricky as other technical rounds. There is a pdf by the name ’60 HR Questions’ over the internet. If one can go and hover over them, it won’t be that difficult to answer the questions in the final round. A basic suggestion is, be true to yourself, explain your needs and wants to the interviewer and explain how they match with that of the company.
I hope our audience won’t be having any more doubts on HR round after this discussion. Moving on, what were the quizzes and technical question you faced during technical rounds and how do you think an aspirant can prepare for them?
For consulting, there are case rounds in which the interviewer (posing as a client) provides you with a real-life situation: for example, what should the company be doing during corona pandemic? Most of times they focus on some specific businesses, at any scale: Example: Carlos at KGP is facing decline in sales, what are the three things Carlos should do to overcome the situation? The problems asked are generic but the candidate is judged on how many insights he/she has brought up with limited information in a limited time of 20 mins.
What courses or some books that you might suggest to other aspirants looking forward to placement in consulting companies?
Preparation for case interviews generally starts one month before the interview. You have to form case groups of 3–4 people. These are mostly practised and hence no books are there to tell you what to do. Case books of IIT Madras, IIT Bombay and case book by Victor Cheng had been followed by me for practice. 12 Videos of Victor Cheng are available on Youtube. They come in handy for starting the preparation.
I hope students do take a lot of suggestion from this. Moving on, after qualifying technical round, what changes do you see in your preparation?
Since there was not much time gap for me between both rounds, hence there were not many changes as such. However, during technical round, you are not supposed to tell of your aspiration, you are judged aptitude and mental ability. In HR round, you are judged on how you fit for the company. You can even learn the aspiration of the interviewer.
Moving on. Suppose a second year is looking forward for getting placed in consulting firm, what suggestion you might give to him.
To be frank, we did not have more than 14 days of preparation for the consulting firms and these were enough. Even if I got one month more, I would be solving these cases the same way I did during the 14 days. Because it’s more about your thinking ability, not like coding that you need to know some algorithms for solving. If you see the Victor Chang videos, you will understand that the videos there are very generic, you will be able to go through the interview. If he/she knows the logic and knows what the interviewer is asking, he might get selected as well. So, it nowhere necessary to start from 1st or 2nd year. Just 2–3 weeks of preparation might do the work.
Thanks Pallav. My final question, what changes has KGP bought in your life?
KGP has bought a considerable change to my life and I say to everyone, the companies that this person is an IITian and will do the assigned task; however, they look whether the person is responsible or not. This is the portion where Kharagpur provides you with an edge. All the activities of Kharagpur, curricular or extracurricular, all the events build up the persona of the individual. Working in the fests or other organization activities provides you with know-how of how to deal with the person and this is what every company looks into while hiring. It might sound harsh but PORs are needed in the workflow.
It was a great talk with you. Thank you for your time Pallav.
Thank You.