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, Porter’s 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 high…sell it cheap…What do you mean by this?

Different marketing channels

Segmentation, Targeting and Positioning (Give Examples)

Ads you like…Why?

Ads you dislike…Why?

How can you predict whether your customer is pregnant or not?

Distribution

Exclusive

Selective

Intensive

Market Segmentation

Geographic

•Region•Density•City size

•Age•Gender•Family size•Income•Occupation•Education•Religion•Race•Nationality

•Social class•Lifestyle•Personality

•Occasions•Benefits•Loyalty status

Behavioral

Psychographic

Demographic

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 company’s 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

Impact Analysis

Over-run

PSO

Scope-creep

Organic Growth

Inorganic growth

Linear Growth

Granularity

Hired gun

Jettison employees

Tight supply and demand

PERT Chart

Band-aid approach

Gantt Chart

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