An Effort by

Sandeep Puri

The Interview: Suggested questions

Tell something about yourself
Tell something about you that is not there in CV
What is your most significant accomplishment?

Why should we hire you?

Have you ever accomplished something you did not think

you could?
Describe a time where your performance went above and
beyond expectations.
What are your career goals? Where do you see yourself 5
years from now?
What are your strengths? Give Examples
What are your areas of improvement? Give Examples
Areas of Interest

The Interview: Suggested questions

Why do you want to work here?
Sales vs Marketing
Barter
Rifle shot approach
Carpet Bombing
Difference between Customer & Consumer
Credit term practices ( Local and out stations)
Application aspects of BCG, Porters 5 forces, SWOT etc
Different terms used in Exports/International Marketing
Predictive Analytics, Customer Analytics
Customer Equity
Customer Constipation

The Interview: Suggested questions

What is retailing?
Pile it highsell it cheapWhat do you mean by this?
Different marketing channels
Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (Give Examples)

Ads you likeWhy?

Ads you dislikeWhy?
How can you predict whether your customer is pregnant or

not?

Distribution
Exclusive

Selective
Intensive

Market Segmentation
Geographic

Region
Density
City size

Demographic

Psychographic

Behavioral

Social class
Lifestyle
Personality

Occasions
Benefits
Loyalty status

Age
Gender
Family size
Income
Occupation
Education
Religion
Race
Nationality

Market Positioning
Attribute positioning, e.g. Disneyland, the largest theme park in the world.
Benefit positioning, e.g. A theme park for people seeking a fantasy experience.
Use/Application positioning: e.g. Japanese Deer Park for quick entertainment.
User positioning, e.g. Magic Mountain Thrill seekers.
Product category positioning, e.g. IMT Management Education Institute.
Quality/Price positioning, e.g. Wheel, the best value for money.

Promotion Mix
Advertising: Any paid form of non-personal presentation

and promotion of a product.

Sales promotion: Short term incentives to encourage trial or

purchase of a product.

Public relations: A variety of programs designed to promote

and/or protect a companys image or its individual products.

Personal selling: Face to face interaction with one or more

prospective purchasers for the purpose of making sales.

Direct marketing: Use of mail, telephone, or other

nonpersonal contact tools to communicate with or solicit a

response from speicific customers or prospects.

Tasks Performed by Brand Managers

Develop long-range and competitive strategy for each

product
Prepare annual marketing plan and sales forecast
Work with advertising and merchandising agencies to
develop campaigns
Increase support of the product among channel members
Gather continuous intelligence on product performance,
customer attitudes
Initiate product improvements
You should know: Bulls Eye Positioning, Brand Equity Models

Some Questions for Finance

Debt Syndication
Securitization
Arbitrage
BSE & NSE
Asset stripping
Black Monday
Black Wednesday
Blue Chip
Interest-only mortgage
Mis-selling

EBITDA
Factoring
Flotation
Hedge funds
Libor
P/E Ratio
Subprime
Mezzanine finance
GDP and GNP
Zopa

More Jargons
Due Diligence

Granularity

Impact Analysis

Hired gun

Over-run

Jettison employees

PSO

Tight supply and demand

Scope-creep

PERT Chart

Organic Growth

Band-aid approach

Inorganic growth

Gantt Chart

Linear Growth

Some More Questions

Ballpark Estimate
Saddle Effect
Beta ratio
CRR
Reverse Repo Rate
Sunk cost
Relationship between exchange rate and exports
Relationship between inflation and interest rate

For HR students
It is usually a behaviour based interview
Questions are usually asked on :
Soft Skills
Areas of Interest
Projects/Summer training
Current HR practices
Competency Mapping

For IT Students
What do you do to maintain your technical certifications?
What automated-build tools or processes have you used?

What development tools have you used?

What languages have you programmed in?
What source control tools have you used?
What technical websites do you follow?
Describe a time when you were able to improve upon the design

that was originally suggested.

Describe the most innovative change that you have initiated and
what you did to implement this change.
Given this problem (problem is based upon job requirements),
what solution would you provide. Explain your thought process.
How do you handle multiple deadlines?
How do you keep current on this industry?

For IT Students
How do you troubleshoot IT issues?
Tell me about the most recent project you worked on. What were

your responsibilities?
Tell me about the project you are most proud of, and what your
contribution was.
What is the biggest IT challenge you have faced and how did you
handle it?
You have been asked to research a new business tool. You have
come across two solutions. One is an on-premises solution, the
other is cloud-based. Assuming they are functionally equivalent,
why would you recommend one over the other?
You have submitted a piece of code that has broken the client's
website in production. You have found this bug while you were
testing, and nobody else knows about it. What is your next move?

For Manufacturing Students

MES
Six Sigma
Kanban
DCR
BOM
QMS
Batch Production
Difference between lean manufacturing and JIT Manufacturing
How to supervise in a manufacturing unit?
Factory overhead
RMA
SCAR
GMP

Some General Questions

Describe the social environment at your College. How satisfying was it for you?

What difficulties did you experience? Did you have any specific problems with
the faculty or administration? With which groups did you interact most
comfortably? Why?
How do you spend your spare time?
Describe a delicate situation in which your personal sensitivity made a

difference.
Have you ever had an idea or a goal to achieve something that required action

by other individuals? How did you get the idea or come to set the goal? How did
you find or mobilize the requisite resources to make the idea or goal become
real? How did you deal with any unforeseen events along the way?

 Describe a situation in which you recognized a problem or opportunity and

organized people or actions in response. Did you choose to pursue this

situation on your own or did someone else ask or suggest that you pursue it?
What obstacles did you face? How did you overcome them?
What leadership roles have you played in College, at work, in your community?
When have you felt most fully challenged and stimulated in your academic or

work experiences? Most frustrated? What did you do about your frustration?
Your resume indicates that you _______. What prompted you to do this? What

obstacles did you face and how did you overcome them? What satisfied you
most about the experience? Least? Did you have to make any sacrifices along
the way? What lessons have you learned? Knowing what you do now, would you
do it again?

 What experiences have you had working in teams? Using a specific example,

what role did you play on the team? How did you select that role? What were
the most/least satisfying aspects of working on that team? What is the most
difficult thing for you in working with a team?
Describe your relationships with colleagues, professors, bosses, and others in a

significant academic/work experience. In what ways were you most effective

with people? What conflicts or difficulties did you experience? What kinds of
people did you find most challenging? What would your colleagues say about
you?
Where might you look for information on traffic patterns near a shopping mall?
What aspirations do you have for yourself over the next 5 or so years

professionally and personally?

Describe a situation you handled creatively.

 Describe a situation in which you had to convince others that your view,

approach, or ideas were right or appropriate.

Describe a tough decision and how you reached it.
Describe a situation in which you were aspiring to reach a goal. What

obstacles confronted you along the way? What did you do to overcome
them?
Describe a situation that demanded sustained, unusually hard work, where

others might have thought you couldn't succeed. Was the experience
stressful? If so, how did you handle the stress?

Psychometric Testing
Answer from what you are perspective and not

what you want to be or what you think is right

Final Suggestions
Know your CV
Know the company and its competitors
Plan your responses
Count 10 in your heart before giving decisive answers
Prepare well to answer questions on your hobbies
Please Read : Economic Times on daily basis
Refer latest Marketing White book

One Example of last year

Tell me about your family background.
Why don't you want to join your father's business?

Tell us about your internship (5 minutes).

Why sales?
Given a choice between sales and marketing, which profile
would you choose now. Why?
What books have you read recently?
What are the benefits of hub and spoke model?
Break down and Build up approach of territory allocation.

The GD topic was "Mobile phones are connecting or

disconnecting people?"

Last Words
5 Ws to DO WELL in placement week
Drink Well: Water
Eat Well

Sleep Well
Read Well
Wear Well

Stay Relaxed : Hard work never goes waste

Tenacity work as Magic

May God Bestow you with

Dream Placements!

And
You leave campus fast