Gargi Yaduvanshi
Chemical Engineering
Placements
Deloitte
Analyst
Interviewed by:
Aditya Vimal
Internships
Placements
20th September 2020
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When to start preparing for the Placement season?
If someone does not get an intern via OCS in their 3rd year, what should they do?
How did you decide your field of interest? What about backups?
Major problems that you faced?
Online vs Offline placements?
Necessities for targeting your field?
You need at least 3 months for calm and panic-free preparation. I like to make some handwritten short notes, pointers for Apti, formulas, etc. of important things for the revision in the end. Preparing at home without friends was a little difficult this time due to lack of motivation. So, I started with something easy and important, that was Aptitude through timed tests and then slowly started including consult preparation by reading “Case interviews cracked” and made a point to read 30 pages each day will take max. 2 hours to practice those many pages and that way you can easily cover 200 pages(entire book) within a week. But make sure u just don’t read through the book, solve(write on paper) with it. Doing preparation this way consistently I realised that if you are fully immersed in 2 hours of case solving, 1 hour of some blogs reading for consulting you will yourself start thinking like a consultant. Will start identifying and solving problems in your head like a consultant and that’s definitely beneficial for preparation.
Online for sure, you are at the comfort of your home, family to take care of you in this stressful situation, you are getting proper nutrition, sleep and motivation.
Apart from that placement at campus are hectic, PPTs at dogra, LHC and then 3-4 interviews in a day starting from 8AM in winters can easily make anyone more anxious and exhausted till the last interview of 8PM arrives. You have to run from one floor to another and run around in your formals in the whole campus. I really appreciate my seniors who did that all.
Apart from that placement at campus are hectic, PPTs at dogra, LHC and then 3-4 interviews in a day starting from 8AM in winters can easily make anyone more anxious and exhausted till the last interview of 8PM arrives. You have to run from one floor to another and run around in your formals in the whole campus. I really appreciate my seniors who did that all.
If not by OCS then you may apply from individual company’s career pages, LinkedIn, Internshala and there are many other websites especially for this purpose. One startup named “Myways” is a startup by IIT Delhi alumnus, you can check that out. There are regular mails from iit-delhi-ug-freshers Gmail group about opportunities. And maybe applying in startups of IIT Delhi can increase your chances for internships in those.
I don’t think it affects their chances at placement at all. Recruiters want to see and test your skills. Still internship is a firsthand experience in industry and if its related to the role the company is offering in placements it will be a plus point. As most of the questions asked in interviews are related to your past experiences, and writing down an impactful internship in CV will lead to more questions asked about that work and your chance to impress them with your skills that are already applied during internship.
I don’t think it affects their chances at placement at all. Recruiters want to see and test your skills. Still internship is a firsthand experience in industry and if its related to the role the company is offering in placements it will be a plus point. As most of the questions asked in interviews are related to your past experiences, and writing down an impactful internship in CV will lead to more questions asked about that work and your chance to impress them with your skills that are already applied during internship.
Field is of consulting and role is of Business analyst. While preparing I did case studies practice and guesstimates. First started with “Victor cheng you tube videos” made notes from it. Then started solving “case interviews cracked” and while solving this, victor cheng video’s notes were useful, because the book mostly uses his framework and if something additional was mentioned I added that in notes. And while solving cases by myself I used those notes.
Prioritising between different companies and preparing according to that priority list. Each company has a different selection process and different patterns for paper. Even though students select their profiles and target companies beforehand, but towards the end due to fear I guess we tend to apply for many and that one target company gets blurred out in our vision.
Till my 3rd year I was interested in the chemical engineering core field. But there are not enough companies (hardly 3-4 good ones recruiting from our campus). I even did my internship in that field with the mindset to go into the core field. But while preparing for Placement and looking at the number of core companies, I started preparing for analytics and consulting. And when I started to solve the consult cases, I found them interesting and liked the profile overall so became more serious for its preparation. Yes, keeping a backup is beneficial, and in fact some of the profiles are interrelated like IT and analytics so you can prepare for these 2 together. Do make a priority for your profile preference
I found doing preparation consistently very useful, deciding to devote 2 hours for case studies 1 hour Apti test at any cost, each day helps u remove the burden and stress of preparation and makes it more like a course u r doing along with other courses at campus. And when u start making progress in ur preparation u gain confidence in cracking any question they throw at you. And I think that confidence is required a lot. Even when you have just read one case study book, but you're confident in cracking cases and you imagine yourself solving the case successfully in the interview, then YOU WILL make your way in the case interview.
Regretful thing I did was not sleep enough before the interview day, it really hampers your energy in the interview, ability to think fast and your charisma. So make sure to even compromise ur studying for the good night sleep.
Regretful thing I did was not sleep enough before the interview day, it really hampers your energy in the interview, ability to think fast and your charisma. So make sure to even compromise ur studying for the good night sleep.
Self awareness. In HR round they generally ask about your values, situational questions to make sure whether you are a good fit for the company's culture. And sometimes they also ask big life questions like what do u want in life, what’s the one value you’ll never compromise on. So being self aware about ur life fundas is also important. And the more authentic and true you’ll be in the interview, the more they’ll appreciate that answer.
So make time for these, 1-2 week before the start of interviews, look at all potential HR questions for your profile (yes HR questions may differ according to the profile) and sit, relax, think deep about the answers of those questions and write down the points, rehearse answering those answers. According to your company’s interview you may change the answers slightly, so as to include values they appreciate more.
So make time for these, 1-2 week before the start of interviews, look at all potential HR questions for your profile (yes HR questions may differ according to the profile) and sit, relax, think deep about the answers of those questions and write down the points, rehearse answering those answers. According to your company’s interview you may change the answers slightly, so as to include values they appreciate more.
Takeaways
Learnings from this placement season?