Placement 101

The placement season is back. Whether you like it or not, you’ll find your day packed with pre-placement talks, resume making workshops, sessions and calls with industry seniors and what not. In midst of all these, you have to prepare for your placement tests and interviews, apart from your regular academic curriculum. This sure is difficult, more so if your plan includes CAT as well! I was recently talking to my friend Utkarsh Bagri, the co-founder and CEO of Pariksha, about our placement days. We recalled that in spite of being hectic, placements were among the most memorable and active periods of our college life. This was in large parts due to our friends, colleagues and seniors, who were there at each step to guide and support us during this phase. I think it’s time we pen down our experience during placements so that our readers, who are sitting for campus recruitment, might benefit from the same. The following blog is my attempt to do so.

Oh, just a small reminder. The blog is my personal opinion, based on my placement experience and would be most helpful to fresh graduates sitting for campus recruitment.

With that, we’re good to go!

Set Your Target

Just as you need to set a destination for any successful journey, first and foremost, you’ve to decide on your preferred sector. This is the most important step, as it will decide your future course of preparation and help you channelize your resources in the right direction. Most of the companies can broadly be classified in two sectors: core and non-core. Non-core generally includes consulting, analytics and finance. This list is in no way mutually exclusive; there are several companies which fall in more than one category. With such a variety of options to choose from, it’s imperative that you decide on your priority order right from the start. I personally think that one doesn’t have sufficient time to prepare on all fronts, and I had decided to focus on non-core sector, specifically on companies falling in the analytics and financial sector. My decision was based on a variety of factors, my interests being the most important parameter. Apart from that, the nature of job, growth opportunities, reviews from seniors and job locations were also important deciding factors.

Awesome! You’ve set your destination. You’ve selected your target sector and the relevant companies based on your interests, skill-set and other deciding parameters. Now comes the next part; the firms in your target sector should select you based on their deciding criteria, which mostly consist of your skill-set and past achievements. This is where your resume comes into play.

Stage 1: Resume

Your resume is your pitch to advertise yourself. It’s the first impression that a company has of you. Almost all the companies have resume screening as one of the most preferred elimination round in the selection process. This means that they have to go through the resume of all the applicants, leaving them with less than a minute per resume on the basis of which they decide whether to select or reject a particular applicant. This means that you’ve to make your resume stand out enough to grab the attention of the recruiter within that one minute interval. Sounds like a difficult task! But remember recruiters look out for certain elements in a resume, and you’ve to make sure that you incorporate the same:

1. What specific tasks you did which engage your skill-set aligned with the requirements of the recruiter
2. What was the organization for which you did the task (including a brief description like its size, its past achievements etc.)
3. What was the need for you to do the task, and whether the impact created by your work addressed that need

It is important that you format the above content as per the resume standards. There are several such layouts in place, and you can follow anyone of them as long as it is in line with the role that you’re applying for. I would suggest that the best option would be to look into the guidelines laid out by your college’s placement preparation cell, and make changes so that it suits your resume.

There are many sources on the net which you can refer to perfect your resume. Infact, one of my friends, Jai Prakash Menaria, has written a really great article about the nuances of resume making (link here), which could prove helpful to the readers. I won’t go in much details on this topic, but before closing this section, I would like to stress on the following points:

1. Keep your resume succinct. Instead of long winded paragraphs, enumerate your achievements and the quantitative impact they created. Limit to a one page resume; brevity is an important aspect of resume making.
2. Don’t lie or over glorify yourself. Recruiters can read between the lines to segregate your honest achievements from the fabricated ones.
3. Make sure that you’re absolutely thorough with each and every point mentioned in the resume. If you falter while explaining your own resume, that sends a very bad impression across the recruiters.
4. Don’t use the same resume for every company. Each company has separate job requirements and expectation, and your resume should be in line with these. Ideally, you should draft out a separate resume for each company you’re applying for. Even if you’re scarce on time, you should atleast draft two or three separate resume for each sector.
5. Have your resume reviewed by your peers and seniors. If possible, have someone in the recruiting company review your resume. Work on their feedback and make the requisite changes to your resume.

Once you’ve your final resume with you, and you’re confident with every point listed in it, you’ve reached the first milestone. But it’s no time to rest; brace yourself, the next challenge is up!

Stage 2: Aptitude Tests

These are one of the most important aspects of placement preparation and, unfortunately, among the most neglected ones. Most companies from the non-core sector (and several from even the core sector) conduct some sort of aptitude test as part of their shortlisting process. Students often develop a complacent attitude towards these tests, based on the assumption that these tests don’t require any special skill-set and can be cleared by anyone with a decent understanding of high school (or at the maximum intermediate) level mathematics. This is fatal error, one which could prove detrimental to their preparation. Even if they could solve all the questions accurately, the challenge is to do so within a limited time-frame while competing against their batchmates, who, I might add, also possess a decent understanding of high school (or intermediate) level mathematics. Thus, it is essential that one meticulously practices such tests beforehand to gain a competitive advantage over others.

During my preparation, I had recognised two excellent sources for aptitude practice: CAT resources (such as Career Launcher, CL) and Pariksha. CL has an online portal called Test Gym Adaptive, and I find it extremely useful if you want to prepare a specific topic. Pariksha, on the other hand, pits you against others in the campus and offers several topic and full length tests, where you can gauge your performance against other students. This allows you to realistically estimate your relative placement preparation, and the areas you need to improve upon. Moreover, several companies conduct speed test, where you’ve about 15-20 minutes to solve 35-40 questions. There are quite a few 20 minute tests on Pariksha that could be useful for such companies.

Several companies conduct single attempt type tests, where you can visit a question only one. What it means is that there is no back button on the test portal; once you visit a question, you either answer it, or skip the question and move forward. This is among the most difficult aptitude tests: try solving all questions and you may lose out on the easy ones, too many skips and you may end up with very few answered questions. One way to ace these tests is to practice regular aptitude tests as single attempt types. So, when you’re solving a practice test, set a time limit and ensure that you never go to a previous question. You may score low at first, but as you practice more, you’ll see a definite improvement.

With aptitude tests cleared, you’ve checked the second milestone. At this stage, you’ll be selected for the interview round. Most non-core companies have case studies, guesstimates and puzzles, along with some general HR questions, as part of their interview process. We’ll now address the same. Gear up!

Stage 3A: Case Studies and Guesstimates

These are the Holy Grail for your preparation process. You must be confident in them if you aim to ace any non-core interview. A case interview basically consists of the interviewer giving you a situation or a challenge, which you’ve be asked to analyze and come up with a suggestion. These challenges are often real life business scenarios which the interviewer (or his/her colleagues) had to face.

Often in these interviews, it is not the final answer but the approach that you take up, counts as the deciding factor.

Case interviews grill you on all three fronts: your numerical and reasoning ability, your communication and presentation skills and your business acumen. The preparation process should therefore span across all the three elements. Your aptitude preparation should suffice for your numerical and verbal skills. For the other two, you need to put in extra effort. The best place to start would be Case in Point, Victor Cheng Case Interview Workshop or M-Consulting Prep (the last two are video series on YouTube). They tell you about the basics of case interview: how to begin a case, what should be the proper set of preliminary questions, how to classify the problem at hand etc, along with several case interview examples. But this is as far as the theory will go. You need to actually work through the cases instead of just reading through them. For this, you can use Case Interview Cracked, Day One or IIM-A Casebook. Practise with your friends, where one of you takes up the role of the interviewer and the rest are candidates. The ideal group size for case practice is two, with one interviewer and one candidate. However, if you’re short on time, you can also practise in groups of three or more, where one person would be the interviewer and the rest candidates.

Guesstimates a smaller version of a case, where the goal is to estimate a certain quantity using a mixture of guesswork and calculation.

For example, you may be asked to estimate the number of cabs in a certain city, or the expected revenue of a newly released movie. As with case interviews, it is the approach rather than the final numerical answer that counts. Having said that, the interviewers do expect that the candidate has a rough idea of common metrics (such as the population of India, urban-rural split etc). For practice, Case Interview Cracked and Day One provide a few basic guesstimate cases. There is infact a great book on guesstimates by Adam and Larry Weinstein, titled “ Guesstimation: Solving the World’s Problems on the Back of a Cocktail Napkin”. Apart from these, you’ve the internet with you! Just google guesstimate and you will get several good questions. Quora also has a guesstimate topic that you can visit.

Stage 3B: Puzzles

Most non-core companies, Goldman Sachs for instance, include puzzles as part of their interview process. Less often, several tests also include puzzles in a separate section. Puzzles can broadly be classified in two categories: mathematical and lateral thinking. Mathematical puzzles are numerical puzzles and can be thought of as an extension of aptitude questions. They have to be worked out mathematically and require some degree of calculations. They often employ elements of permutation and combination and probability. Solving such puzzles, therefore, requires you to be familiar with higher level concepts in these topics. Braingle is a very good website for mathematical puzzles.

Lateral thinking puzzles, on the other hand, are non-mathematical and require some “out of the box” thinking. They generally don’t have any conceptual background: you just need to think in a different direction to solve it. There are tons of such puzzles on the net, and it is next to impossible for you to visit and solve each and every one of them. You can focus on puzzles from Braingle, Heard on the Street and Pariksha. These three can collectively provide you with most of the puzzles asked during placement interviews.

Stage 4: HR Questions

HR questions competes with aptitude for being the most neglected aspect of preparation process. I’ve known instances where excellent candidates have been rejected on the basis on their HR interview, and you must have ample preparation for HR round to prevent such a scenario. Basically, the questions in these round are along the lines of the following:

1. Why do you want to join our company?
2. Why should we hire you?
3. What are your strengths and weaknesses?
4. What are your short term and long term goals?

The above list is not exhaustive, but more or less covers most of the questions asked in this round.

For the first two questions, you need to do some degree of research. Visit the company’s website, look into their vision and objectives and their expectations from the job profile they’re offering. Your answer should show how your goals are aligned with the company’s vision, that you’re interested in their work and that your skill-set completely matches the job profile. Basically, you want to show that you’re a perfect fit for the company.

The next question is on strengths and weaknesses. Everyone is in a rush to tell their strong points to the interviewer. You need to differentiate from the other candidates. This can be done if a discussion of your strengths also includes instances where your strong points actually came into play. The next part is a bit tricky. No one wants to show their weak side to a prospective employer, so what do we do? The best response would be to honestly mention your weak points, and at the same time, discuss how you’re trying to improve upon that weakness. For this, it is important that you recognise your weakness beforehand, and actually start working on them as you’ve mentioned in the interview. Remember the old saying “Honesty is the best policy”? It works well for interviews too!

There are a lot of resources on the net which can help you formulate answers. Prepare these beforehand. I’m not telling you to mug up the answers; it’s never a good idea to rote learn. However, you should have a general idea of how you’re going to tackle these questions if they come up during the interview.

Conclusion

You’ve practiced sufficient puzzles and cases, and I’m hopeful that you’ll reach the end of journey. You might even face obstacles on the way, but I’m sure that at the end of it, you’ll have a job at hand which you’ll be proud of. Before I sign off, I would like to jot down the most important elements of the above discussion:

1. Be thorough with your resume. You should be confident about every point mentioned in it. It pays if you have mock interviews, where your friends cross-question the points listed in your resume.
2. Instead of just reading the cases, have mock case interviews with your friends. Ideally, this should be done in pairs, but if you’re short on time, practise in groups of 3-4, where one person is the interviewer and the rest are interviewee.
3. Practice ample amount of aptitude questions. Take your practice tests seriously, and diligently go through the test analysis.
4. Don’t be disheartened if your test results are not as per your expectations. There are a lot of companies, and a lot of tests that will follow. The result of one test should not affect the remaining ones.
5. Don’t panic! Enter the test or the interview with a cool head.
6. Lastly, if you found the blog helpful, make it a point to meet me! I would be glad to hear your placement story.

All the Best :)