Aseem Patwardhan
Electrical - Power and Automation
Placements
Mckinsey
Business Analyst
Interviewed by:
Raghav Ajitsaria
Internships
Placements
20th September 2020
Q
How was your placement experience?
Well, it was pretty short. I had the 8 am Mckinsey slot. 2 rounds of interviews & got selected. TnP says companies can’t give on-spot offers but it wasn’t a problem in my case as mck told me they would be giving me the offer. After that I had to let other places where I was going to interview know that hey they shouldn’t put effort into taking my interview as I have already been selected. And this is the polite thing to do as well.
Q
Major differences between the intern and placement season?
Intern season is pretty short, in terms of prep also. I came to know about Quadeye a night before my interview when I googled them! Another key difference for me was making my cv. In placement season, I got my cv reviewed by many seniors. Also, in placements, the test difficulty rises quite a lot.
Q
How to fill preferences?
Well, there isn’t any particular right answer. There is one particular tradeoff you need to make. You will get compelling arguments for both sides. But the tradeoff is this - in a lot of firms you get a feeling whether you will do well or not. There are things like hotlist (hotlist kind of indicates where you stand and how badly a firm wants to take you). You need to decide whether you go for a company where you are higher up on their hotlist (this is the safer option) or do you go for your number 1 company regardless of your chances. After agonizing a lot on this, I decided to put Mckinsey first as I really wanted to work there.
Q
If someone does not get an intern via OCS in their 3rd year, what should they do?
I can tell for consulting only. From the point of view of shortlists, I would say land any intern and try to do good work. Develop a mindset to learn as much as you can. I know a lot of people who didn’t have a third year tnp intern but still managed to do very well. There is a buddy at BCG, then another friend who got a tnp intern which got cancelled. Irrespective, they did pretty amazing. As far as core jobs are concerned, I don’t think not having a 3rd year TnP intern would affect a lot as all that matters here is how good you are technically and how well can you answer questions in the tests & interviews.
Q
Main sources of stress during placement preparations?
They sure are stressful. You have seniors who tell you your first job doesn’t matter much, which is great advice, but still in the heat of the moment you end up taking a lot of stress. Best thing to do is try to take your mind off things. I played football, tennis, watched movies, basically indulged myself in my hobbies. So this helped. Also, one shouldn’t try to compare themselves to others, that’s a source of stress as well.
Deciding preference was another source of stress. Preference determines interview time and you have to set your priorities straight and make certain tradeoffs.
Deciding preference was another source of stress. Preference determines interview time and you have to set your priorities straight and make certain tradeoffs.
Q
Online vs Offline placements?
There are certain aspects of online sem that make you worry. I was perpetually worried that my internet was going to be bad, there might be issues during interviews & other minor inconveniences. Irrespective, I would prefer online sem. In the offline sem, I would have had many more things to do & significantly less time, so I don't think I would have had a better experience in an offline sem.
Q
How did you balance consulting and quant roles?
For quant - I revisited brainstellar, hackerrank, etc. and got better at coding. I also read the common books on probability like Heard On The Street and tried to finish these as early as possible so I largely get time to prepare for consulting. For CV, I showed it to a lot of ppl and kept constantly refining it. Also engaged in case practice.
As far as time management is concerned, I aligned my time according to the things which I can’t schedule - placement tests & presentations & case prep with seniors. Case prep sessions with friends were flexible. So, once I crossed out all unavailable times then rest of times I figured - how many cases do I need to do? Do I need to do any reading up for that? For coding, I looked into data structures I wasn’t not familiar with. For quant - I went to problems I hadn’t done, read solutions and tried to learn something from them.
Towards the end of placements, I started using a calendar application on my laptop which was really helpful. And I would recommend everyone to develop this practice. Earlier, I used to write my to-do list for the day in the morning.
As far as time management is concerned, I aligned my time according to the things which I can’t schedule - placement tests & presentations & case prep with seniors. Case prep sessions with friends were flexible. So, once I crossed out all unavailable times then rest of times I figured - how many cases do I need to do? Do I need to do any reading up for that? For coding, I looked into data structures I wasn’t not familiar with. For quant - I went to problems I hadn’t done, read solutions and tried to learn something from them.
Towards the end of placements, I started using a calendar application on my laptop which was really helpful. And I would recommend everyone to develop this practice. Earlier, I used to write my to-do list for the day in the morning.
Good Luck! I will just say it is important to remember that a lot of factors in this entire process are really out of your hands. It is best to not worry and it is best to not compare the kind of preparation and the amount of work you have done to other people because that is something that will stress you out. Good Luck, again. I am sure you are going to have a wonderful placement season! :)
Takeaways
