Prof Vijay Kumars Interview tips

Sat, 10 Feb 2001 12:00:00 +0000

Prof. Vijay Kumar was kind enough to give us hints on how to prepare for placements.

How to prepare for interviews

Have a list of intelligent but unoffensive questions for each company.
Contact alumni who are working there, and find out what work is like.

What should I find out

How does the work improve my employability or value? Specifically in terms of the
- Nature of work
- The experience that I get
- Skills acquired
What will the salary growth be over time?
What are the perks at different levels?
What are the promotion and growth opportunities?
What industries does the company focus on?
How many people are there, and what is the employee growth rate?
What do clients feel about you? (Talk to clients themselves – maybe friends in client organisations.)
Which is the largest office? Where are most of the projects executed? (It makes a lot of sense to get into this office. Project staffing is usually done with people in the same office.)

What should I question

Revenue per employee. Is the denominator total employee hours or billable hours? That makes a big difference. Usually its the former, to make it look inflated.
Why are you giving me international figures? What are the Indian figures for revenue per consultant? Revenue per partner? Salary per consultant? Billable hour percentage? Consultant to partner ratio? As a rule of thumb, the consultant’s salary is one-fifth of the revenue per consultant. For partners, its usually half.
What components of the cost-to-company will come to my pocket? Could you break down the components of the cost-to-company?
What component of the pay is sign-on? The larger the sign-on, the less the basic pay, and hence the less the next year’s pay.

What does an interviewer want

Brains: logical thinking, primarily
Creativity
Hard-work, but one can take that for granted for a person from the IIMs
Willing to take direction, and yet is a self-starter
A person who can explore new ideas on their own
Good interpersonal relationships
A person who can make casual conversation
Can suavely deflect objectionable questions
Well dressed, good posture, etc.

Should I go for consulting?

If you like solving problems, want to move quickly from one assignment to another, and like helping people, you’re good for consulting.

How are consultants evaluated?

Quality of assignments
Followup on assignment
Client feedback
Budget overruns (applicable more to PLs and managers)
Input into thought leadership and knowledge-base
Strengths and weaknesses
Future directions for improvement.

Comments

pegasus 2 Feb 2007 11:03 am: nice points… I also once had the fortune of visiting him in person.

Scanned Target magazine

Mon, 09 Oct 2000 12:00:00 +0000

I’ve scanned a couple of more pages of Target that have the job profile of the LBS graduating class of 2000 and the summer of MBA 2001. Incidentally, this magazine also publishes a complete list of who’s joined which company. Really neat idea, great for contacts.

Vault reports

Tue, 03 Oct 2000 12:00:00 +0000

Vault.com has some extremely good free reports. They include the Guide to Consulting and the Guide to Investment Banking. They also have some extremely good company reports. Ideal for placement research.

job-placements on S Anand

Prof Vijay Kumars Interview tips

Comments

Scanned Target magazine

Vault reports