Interviewed By: Secretary
Hello everyone, today we have Divyam Sharma who has been placed at BCG. So we are here to interview him regarding his preparations and strategies to crack the interview of this company. So firstly What was the general interview process for the companies you interviewed also Please mention the number of rounds and the nature of the interview process.
I interviewed only for BCG. The interview process consisted of 2 rounds as evaluative buddy rounds followed by 4 rounds of interviews on the final day. The first 2 rounds on the D-Day were strictly case rounds, where one case was Math heavy and another one was around Qualitative judgment. The last 2 rounds had both fit and case, where cases were easier and non-calculative but there was a fair amount of focus on HR Questions and Personality judgment.
Thanks Divyam for explaining the general interview process. Now can you please list down the questions you were asked in the different rounds? Cases, HR Discussions, or puzzles in general that you think will prove to be helpful for students.
Yes, Sure. The questions for the cases were
1. Guesstimate the Number of ATMs in Dubai
2. Indian Public Equities Optimal Portfolio Allocation for a long-haul investment strategy
3. Profitability of a Steel Manufacturer
4. Market Share Expansion Strategy for OLA Electric Scooters.
And for HR discussion the questions were
1. Easiest and Hardest Internships and learnings from the same
2. Most Challenging aspect of being in the Placement Committee during a pandemic
3. Steps you would follow to set up a soft skills club at IIT Bombay.
That would be helpful Coming to the next question What are some of the FAQs in most companies that you faced and think students must prepare for? More specifically, in the context of HR rounds.
For FAQs, I think one must prepare for Why they want to enter Management Consulting, Why that specific firm, about their strengths and weaknesses, and briefs of their PoR and Internship experiences.
That’s rightly said, so the next question is What are things students sitting for placements next year can do from now until December to maximize their chances of getting through a company in consulting?
I would recommend students to start case prep early, also developing soft skills usually takes a long amount of time, aspirants can take conscious efforts towards improvement of interview personality, spoken English, and confidence.
Surely, your advice will be really valuable for all of us. so coming to our last question of the day. How did your preparation for Case rounds evolve once you were shortlisted, please let us know about the resources you used as well?
Yes the resources which one can use are:-
1. Books
1.1 Case Interviews Cracked
1.2 DayOne
1.3 Wharton 2010 Casebook( only some relevant parts)
1.4 Some handful cases/guesstimates from IIMA/L and ISB CaseBooks
2. Videos
2.1 Case Interviews Cracked Webinars
2.2 Aaditya Agarwal mock case videos
And I regarding the strategy I would like to say that:-
1. It is critical to focus on learnings from each case rather than solving more cases. I spent at least 30–40 mins with the case after solving it with the case partner, in the analysis, I would spend time on understanding how the case could have been done faster/better and would check the strength of my structure by testing it for root causes other than the one that was the case.
2. I used to keep a note of my strengths/weaknesses of each case and used to read these notes twice daily for all the cases
3. Doing cases with multiple partners, especially alumni helped me to develop as an interviewee, and would recommend students to do cases with at least 4-To 5 different interviewers.
Thank you Divyam, for giving your precious time for this interview to Communiqué IIT Kharagpur. I hope your interview will help the students in their endeavours and we wish you all the best for your future achievements.
Thank you!