Off Campus Placement: Jay Pandit's Experience
Written on May 11th, 2020 by {"login"=>"jcbitshyd", "email"=>"journal@hyderabad.bits-pilani.ac.in", "display_name"=>"Journal Club, BPHC", "first_name"=>"", "last_name"=>""}When did you realize you wanted to get into consultancy? Why specifically did you choose consultancy?
It all started in my second year when my interests were inclining towards finance. As I understood finance and as I took up more courses, my interest started shifting towards business as a whole. While finance is just a part of business, business as a whole also has other components like operations, marketing, and supply chain management. While finance was one of my main priorities - I started venturing into consultancy because consultancy takes a business perspective on the whole. I participated in a couple of case studies with my seniors. I liked how the business problems were broken down in those case studies, and then was the time that I started looking for consulting jobs. Not only on campus but off-campus.
What is the role of a consultant? What would your position at Bain & Company be?
Clients, who would be large MNC's and the like would come to Bain for their business problems. Consultants would help give them an outside third-person perspective on their situation, which will in-turn help the companies guide their corporate strategies.
In Bain, I will be joining as an analyst. As an analyst, my job role would entail a couple of things. We will be given a large business problem, which will be broken down into a couple of smaller chunks. My associates would be handling these chunks, and I would be subordinating under them there. My work would be data crunching, getting useful insights from the data, and then making my hypothesis about the business case to give a perfect solution for my small bit of the business case.
Furthermore, I would also have some leadership role as a consultant - I would be the one training the next set of consultants and analysts joining Bain.
What other off-campus/on-campus companies did you interview for the placement cycle?
In the placement cycle, I had an interview with Indus Insights, Fractal Analytics, and PhonePe. I received an offer from Fractal as well. In the off-campus domain, I did my PS-2 in Deutsche Bank - however, they were on a hiring freeze, and I wasn't offered a job there. Besides that, I only interviewed for Bain & Company.
How will you rank each of these, and why, in increasing order of importance vis a vis your interview process? a) Overall CGPA, b) Internships and Work Experience, c) Extra-curriculars, d) PoRs?
Internships would be number one for me, be it in your PS or your other internships. The work you do there is very significant, in my opinion. Number two would be your academics as CGPA shows your drive and your commitment towards studies and hard work. Number three would be extracurriculars. For me, this was one of the spikes, which attracted my profile towards the recruiters. But of course, I'll rank them on number three, and number four would be PoRs. Nothing related to PoRs was given any relevance in any of my interviews. Of course, having a President-level PoRs would matter, showing leadership skills. Other than that, I don't feel PoRs would be given much importance.
What were your internship experiences? How did your internships shape your profile?
The general trend on campus is to assume that PS-1 is just a waste of time for three months - however, my story is slightly different.
I did my PS-1 with the National Textile Corporation Ltd. (NTCL) in Mumbai. While this is technically a chemical textile company, I had my interest in finance right from my second year. So I took my projects in the finance department there. For whatever amount of finance knowledge I was having there, I was looking at their balance sheet, their profit-loss statements, their supply chain systems. So, I did a good project there regarding finance. In my third year, I wasn't doing an internship, but I was studying for my exam, the CFA, Chartered Financial Analyst Level One Exam.
I was preparing for that exam, along with going hard on my finance courses as the offshoot scores matter a lot. Following that, I worked with Deutsche Bank (in my PS-2 in the first semester). In my PS-2, I was on the Global Valuation group at DB. My work there was regarding the valuation of equities and bonds, currency pairs.
How did the college courses that you did through your finance minor help in building your profile?
While we are not a finance or management college, our courses and the set of books that are prescribed in them are excellent - to the extent where those books are various MBA colleges as well.
I had an inherent interest in finance, not just because of placements. So I read through them, even though they were not taught in our classes, and that gave me a fair amount of knowledge of finance. That translated in me clearing my CFA Level One Exam - which was one of the big spikes Bain & Company took into account.
My knowledge of DRM and FRAM were the foundation for me clearing the FRM Level One Exam, a specific risk management exam, as well.
My Finance minor also gave me Deutsche Bank as my PS-2. DB, coupled with the CFA and the FRM exams were the spikes that consulting companies look for in my profile.
Can you walk us through the selection process at Bain & Company?
It would start with me applying off-campus in January onwards. It was a simple process of just applying on the portal. I got through the selection round, a résumé shortlist. When I went to go down for their interview, there were 130 people present - right from people with a commerce background to MBA students and candidates from IITs, SRPC, LSR, among others. There were three rounds of interviews - the first round was a standard guesstimate round. The second round was my case study round, and the third round was the HR round.
Starting with the guesstimate round - I had to solve three guesstimates in 45 minutes. The interviewer wanted me to delve as deep as possible into each guesstimate so that he could see and evaluate my problem breaking or problem-solving skills. These guesstimates were vast - I was expected to evaluate the area of India, the number of passengers flying from Delhi to Goa across the year, and evaluate the number of ATM booths in India. These took a reasonable amount of time.
The second round was the case study round - which was a private equity round (as I had given my interview for the private equity group).
Private equity requires a fair share of financial knowledge. They expected me to have some knowledge in finance viz. cash flow statements, debt to equity ratios, and cost of debt.
I had this knowledge from the FM course that we're taught in college.
The case study involved a private equity company wanting to take over a mall in Gurgaon. The interviewer did not give me any clues - so I had to account for everything through approximations. I had to guess everything from the cost of the land to the construction costs to the costs of the bulbs - so it was a very exhaustive process. I had to evaluate everything, and for every assumption, I had to provide a substantial amount of backing also.
The interviewer appreciated my approach over the other candidates - because I had a fair amount of financial knowledge poured into my solutions.
I was a bit happy going into round three. I thought it would be an easier round, but it wasn't to be.
The interviewer asked me questions about why I wanted to get into consulting and why I was pursuing Bain & Company if I already had an offer with Fractal. They also wanted me to explain what my role would be at the company and how I would be an asset to the team? I wasn't there for learning new things - I was going to be an employee, and so I had to explain my plans and agendas to give back to the team. This round also lasted around 30 minutes.
How did you go about preparing for your interviews, especially the case study components?
I started my preparation in December - after I completed my PS-2.
I was doing my case studies alone - using the books recommended by the Placement Unit.
Case In Point, Cracking Case Interviews and all those standard books were important. I also skimmed through case books from IIM Ahmedabad and ISB Hyderabad - which helped me crack the private equity case study I received.
While the most common cases provided are those of market entry or profit-loss cases - I wanted to get ready for other types of cases as well.
So I skimmed through both the case books. And it had a variety of case studies right from cases about the film industry, to the nuts and bolts industry.
I had a good amount of awareness about what all cases could be asked - and that's what helped me with my Bain interview. Had I just prepared for market entry one, the private equity case would have been a bit difficult. I would recommend my juniors to go through many case studies as having a wide array of case studies can be very helpful.
What was your GPA at the end of your 4-1 when you got your placement? What would you rate as being a good CGPA?
When I was applying off-campus - my CGPA was around 7.9. A CGPA matters quite a lot. I was asked why my CGPA was on the lower end in my HR interview as well? While a GPA of 8 is not a benchmark, when Bain goes for on-campus placements in the Pilani campus - they generally take in students with a profile of around 8-8.5. So, my GPA was on the lower end of the spectrum. While I did have my fair justifications over the same - a good GPA, around that benchmark, is quite important.
How did you go about building your profile and your résumé for Bain?
I started building my profile in my second year - when I wanted to diversify my CV - and move beyond just chemical or just finance.
I was a part of ACE - the Chemical Engineering Society in their marketing team. I put it up in my CV that I was in the marketing team.
I did my case study competitions (like at IIM Ranchi, at our campus and at IIT Kharagpur) so that I could extend into the consulting avenue. I did my PS-2 in a finance setup - so I gained a finance extension there. My PS-1 was in NTCL - so I understood the supply chain of a textile company.
If you add these together in a mix - I had a fair bit of knowledge of marketing, consulting, supply chain, finance, and of course, my core branch - chemical engineering.
This mix - which I created, or which got created due to the circumstances, diversified my profile into one with a fairly prominent holistic development. When I approached some seniors with my résumé and my cover letter too - they liked the point where I stated how I had diversified my whole profile. I bring a whole lot of experiences with me, which, while not at a corporate level - showcase the holistic basis behind my profile. That's how I built my résumé.
If you had to give some words of advice to your juniors - what would it be?
I would say two things. One is to have patience, and the second is to be confident. I had a fair amount of panic attacks while I was in my PS. But, it's important to keep patience and to have faith in your placement unit. Panicking around won't help much, and that will simply deteriorate your confidence level.
When you are in an interview, your CGPA does matter. But then if you are well versed with your concepts, with your knowledge, and you're presentable, those numbers don't matter much there. You need to have that confidence in yourself. Prepare for placements for a couple of months. Two months of placement preparation would be decent enough. So have patience and give it with confidence.