Placement experiences & More

I intend to pen down my thoughts on ISB in the next few weeks (the last term here!) and what I think are right and what I think are wrong. Some of it is not going to make some people happy, but I am going to do it anyways. I thought the first of these should be my interview experiences during the ISB placement week. So here we go. I am not posting the experience with the company with which I finally took up the offer (which is Barclays), but the other three which I had on day 1.

I think I should also express my thoughts about the placement week. Placement week at ISB creates an artificial job market which puts a lot of unnecessary pressure on people leading to a lot of well deserving candidates missing on jobs for which they have worked their **** off for the last one year. What happened in the Reliance power IPO where 100X people applied to X number of shares? Most people ended up not getting any shares at all (which, in hindsight was not a bad thing at all). The same applies here. The companies coming to the campus have the advantage of being selective because there are 420 students out here from which they can choose and so they get the upper hand. This makes the pressure levels go up and hence we need a system where the students have the upper hand. For this, the concept of the week long placement process should be removed and it should be spaced out. If the companies that are coming later complain about them being not able to get the crème de la crème, they have to be made understood that all the students in ISB are here because they were best in their previous jobs and hence focusing on the top of the batch of the “batch of extremely talented 400 odd people” is not the best approach to take. Instead they need to focus on whether the candidate who has applied to the job is interested and has done enough research on them (by reading the EOI and resume – please read them cause we take a long time to write them) and will fit their culture and see a long tem career in the company etc.
Most companies are not very hung up on grades (Except for the consultancy companies who anyway are not going to be a topic on my blog), and do look whether you have some transferable skills to bring from your previous work experience, which is where being in ISB makes a difference.

The ways in which the interviews are conducted by some of the firms are also abhorable. Having conducted a lot of interviews in my previous job, I believe that a good interviewer should take out time to read the resume before deciding whether they want to meet a candidate or not, otherwise it is simply a waste of time for both. Mechanically short-listing based on grades only or relevant experience only does not work here at ISB because ISB has a diverse talent pool, most of them who are here to shift domains. If they wanted to hire people with relevant experience only, then why not recruit directly from the industry and why come to b-school at all? Firms should have an open mind to take in people who might not have relevant experience, but have the passion to make a career in a new field and also bring to the table skills, which are not technical in nature (organizational) and which can be applied in any company.
Think about it. When a firm recruits a fresher from an engineering college, then she has to be put in an induction program, a big part of which will be on the organizational aspects like social skills, etiquettes etc. also, during the first few years, a new joiner learns a lot of things on the job in the organizational like how to conduct meetings, mentor and manage other people, network in the organization, leadership skills, how to make a different to the organization through non-core activities etc.
A company which recruits from ISB do not need to spend these efforts on the candidate and the only induction program needed would be with respect to the area of work. Does it really make sense to look at the previous relevant experience then? I think not.

Another aspect which I find despicable is the fact that some of these companies that come to ISB has the audacity to offer salaries which are less than offered to the students from the best engineering colleges in the country. What exactly do they think? Are we fools? I mean, don’t their HR departments have any self-respect?
In this respect, we need to put in place a policy which mandates that no company offering a salary less than X will be given a slot. It was heartwarming to see something similar happen last year at my undergraduate college (Regional engineering college Calicut) where the top IT Majors could not find a slot because they were giving salaries less than the institute cut-off!!!!




Interview experiences

Company: A Leading private sector bank in India
Role: Equity Sales & Trading
Duration: 35 minutes
Category: Genuine


There were two senior folks in the panel and an HR lady who walked in half-way. The table in front of them was a mess with lot of food stuff and water bottles. In between the interview, food was again bought over and he actually asked me whether I minded him having his food (Did he expect me to say Yes?!!!!!)
One person (more senior) was not interested at all and he was just sitting there looking down most of the time and lost in though. The whole interview was done by the second person except for some rare comments by the senior guy).

The interview was very technical. I had indicated in my resume my interest in tracking markets and so they started on that. First they asked what a carry trade is and I explained the Yen dollar carry trade and told them about the interest rate parity. Then they asked whether the GDP growth in India is sustainable and I told them yes. Then they asked why and I explained that the GDP growth in the recent years was mainly contributed by the investments that the private sector is making and not really driven by consumption as is the broadly believed perception.
The senior guy suddenly looks up and asks “How are you making all these inferences?” So I tell him that I had been reading research reports and this was based on one of the report in ICRA. Then he says “Yes, that is correct". He then goes back to his old pose of lost-in-thought (and checking blackberry in between).

Then I was asked what was the most important thing haunting the global markets at that point of time and I knew it was a bait for sub-prime and I gladly bit it because I could speak about it with authority. I gave the whole story right from pass-throughs to CDO's to CDS to monolines and they were very happy. The guy said "You have not covered some aspects of it, but you have covered most of them in detail".

I was, for a moment, happy!

Then they asked me which are my favorite sectors (I had written about tracking sectors in stock market) and I said PSU banks and power. He asked me why power? I gave the whole funda of the capacity addition (78000 MW) that is going to be done over the next 5 years and how this sector had to grow for the economy to sustain the high growth rate. I also talked about the proposed government spending on infrastructure in the 11th 5 year plan and how much of that is going to be in Power. He then asked me to name a specific stock in the power sector and I said I liked NTPC. He was not very convinced with my pick and asked me since NTPC has an annuity based stream of revenues, why are people so hung up on that. I told him that from the valuation front, NTPC is really attractive and gave him the info on the P/BV and the interest coverage ratio and the debt equity ratio.

The senior guy again looked up and asked me what is the cost per unit of electricity produced for NTPC and I said I don’t know but told him the unit rate at which they bid for projects.
“No, I want to know the cost per unit that it takes for them to produce a unit of electricity”
I said I don’t know.

He then told that equity sales and trading does not really come under them (wonder why it was then put on the JD!!!!!!) and they are more into derivatives and other stuff and asked me whether I was really ok about this or was I inflexible about the role. I said I am flexible about that but I don’t think he was convinced and he believed me to be very interested on the equities side.

He then asked me whether I had any questions and I asked about a recent article that I read regarding SME's sitting on huge MTM losses because of exposure to exotic forex derivatives which they didn’t understand. He then asked me to give examples and I gave examples of Hexaware. He said it is a very valid question and said that as long as there are controls in place, then this is a good business to be in.
I then asked him about a news-item in the press which mentioned about the top three private banks (including this particular bank) in India having a combined exposure to about 3 billion worth of sub-prime and asked him how much his bank’s exposure to this was. He expressed shock at this number and pushed it aside saying that press always exaggerates (Wonder what he has to say about it now that the news of this particular bank’s loss has come out in the press in public!)

I think the interview went well and I had a fair chance of getting an offer. Would have definitely liked to know whether I had an offer, but I never got to know because I went and signed Barclays offer in the night.



Company: Citibank
Role: Financial Analyst
Duration: 30 minutes
Category: Genuine

The interview was done by a senior person from HR and he came across as very friendly and amiable. It was more like a dialogue and never for a moment had it felt like sitting in an interview. It started with him asking me how I was doing and how was the week etc. then he asked me to tell him something about me and asked me why I wanted to do wealth management. So I explained him that I was on the technology side of wealth management industry at Goldman Sachs and wanted to move to the business side. He asked me to explain the wealth management flow how it worked in Goldman Sachs and I explained this to him He then asked me about my interest in capital markets that I had mentioned in my resume and asked me which sectors that i thought would do well. I told him that I was bullish on the public sector banks and the power industry and he asked me to justify why public sector banks. I rattled off the reasons on why public sector banks and then he asked me any stock picks. I gave Canara bank and PNB and then he asked me why specifically these. I told him about the reach of these banks and told him that I expected the growth to be driven by agriculture and SME's in the next few years and these banks were best positioned to ride on that. I also justified the attractive valuations for these banks and compared them with their private sector peers.

Interview went exceptionally well and I could see that the person was very happy with my knowledge of the markets and wealth management industry in general. He was mainly explaining how Citi smith Barney model was like and how it required entrepreneurship skills and networking skills etc. I could sense that maybe he had thoughts about me not fitting in with this aspect and whether I will stay there for long. He asked "You would be having more leverage in Kerala and contacts with HNI" and I said, yes, I would definitely be interested.
He then asked me whether I had any questions and I asked him about the career progression in the role and he explained it very frankly telling me that it would be entirely like running your own organization and how it would be a commission based model. I then asked him whether it would involve portfolio mining or acquisition and he replied that the focus would be more on acquiring new clients. I got the impression that he was trying to make me understand that it was a pure sales job that required sophistication to deal with rich and wealthy clients and the gab to get new clients.

Although the interview went quite well, I was not quite sure at the end of it. The conversation however was quite pleasant and being my first interview experience during the placement week, helped me to reinforce my belief that it was more of a conversation.




Company: a Leading private sector banking group in India
Role: AVP – Wealth management
Duration: 20 minutes
Category: Random!

I walk in and they don’t have my resume. They look at me questioningly.
“Are you carrying your resume with you?”
There were three members on the panel. 2 Ladies and one gentleman. One lady never spoke during the interview, so I imagine she was observing my behavioral skills.
“Yes, I do have”. I hand over the resume.
“Hmm…so you were working with Goldman Sachs Technology? What division?”
I tell him that I was with private wealth management technology.
“It looks like you were doing really well in your previous role. Why do you suddenly want to do a volte-face and move to business side?”
Volte-face?!! Told him the reason why I came to business school!!
“Can you describe to us the model followed by GS in their wealth management business?”
I explain the model. While I explain, he draws the model on the back of my resume.
“Hmm..ok..so that is the model”
He does not seem sure of it and had a facial expression as if I had conjured up the model from thin air. I sat wondering whether I was expected to explain more.
“So..do you have any questions for us?”
I was shocked. The interview had not even lasted 15 minutes. I was determined to waste some of their time. So I started off.
Asked them a couple of questions and they replied half-heartedly.
“It was good talking to you Vinod”
“Pleasure meeting you sir. Should I wait outside or would you be contacting us if needed?”
“We will contact you if needed”
Translated – we never had any intention of taking you!

I really don’t understand why these companies don’t read the resumes of the people they have short-listed. It saves them so much time and makes their job easier too!
And why short-list people you have no intention of taking at all?!!!!!!