As we get started with our campus hiring process for the academic year 2012-2013, I wanted to share some information about our recruiting process with potential candidates through this blog post.
First of all, greetings to all candidates – we are delighted that you are interested in pursuing opportunities at Indus Insights, and we look forward to getting to know you more! We had a fabulous time interacting with campus students last year, and are eagerly awaiting more exciting conversations this year. We understand that you probably have numerous questions about our hiring process, and hence this blog post. My goal is to answer some of the key questions through this post, so that you can be better prepared for the D-day.
In order to communicate our recruiting approach & process, I’d like to touch upon two aspects: (1) the “high level” hiring philosophy, and (2) the details on the actual process.
(1) The High Level: So, what are we looking for? Well, we are looking for people who have a superb combination of:
a. analytical skills,
b. numerical abilities, and
c. an attitude that fits with our culture
Let me talk more about each of these.
When I say “analytical skills”, I am referring to multiple manifestations of this ability – Structured Problem Solving, Logical Thinking, Critical Reasoning, etc. In essence, can you take a vague problem and apply structure to it? When someone (or you yourself) makes a claim, do you understand the key assumptions that go behind it? Can you take an unknown problem and still be able to come up with a reasonable approach to addressing it? Are your recommendations / approach tied with ground realities & a basic understanding of the context?
By “numerical abilities”, I don’t mean that you need to be a human computer. What we are looking to assess is your ability to perform basic calculations, interpret numbers & charts, use numerical methods to answering business questions, and convert business questions to equations & variables.
The final piece of the puzzle – the “cultural fit” – is a bit hazy, but important nonetheless. This is where we look for whether you will be a good fit at Indus Insights. Our goal is to ensure that people who join Indus are delighted coming to work every single day – they enjoy their work, they are excited about their career prospects, and they are having fun working with their colleagues. To assess this fit, we are interested in finding out what drives you, what puts you “in the zone”, how you act with other people, how you think of your career, etc.
I understand that some of this might be very high level, but hopefully this gives you some insight about what we are looking for. There is one more important piece that I haven’t touched upon – the benchmark for the above dimensions, i.e. how “good” do you have to be. In the spirit of full disclosure, let me say that the threshold is very high. Our clients come to us with some of their trickiest and most important issues, and they demand nothing but the very best from us. In order to surpass their expectations continuously, we need a world-class team, and for that we only hire talent that is truly exceptional.
So why am I sharing this with you? Well, the goal is not to scare you away or to be boastful about our company. I want to share this with you so that you are prepared for what’s to come and are able to put forward your best effort. We want to minimize cases wherein people with the right potential fail to ace our process, just because they were not prepared enough.
Summary: it is not going to be easy, but the rewards will be well worth it!
(2) The details: Before I discuss anything else, let me highlight a key detail – candidates need to bring calculators for the test. Nothing fancy – just a plain vanilla calculator (Background: For some reason that stays a mystery to us, we keep seeing candidates show up for our test without a calculator, despite repeated reminders).
Now that we have taken care of that, let me go into what to expect from our testing process. The first step will be a rapid-fire written test, which will test your analytical, critical reasoning, and number-crunching abilities. You will be expected to think through problems, interpret data laid out in various ways, perform calculations, and evaluate options & arguments logically - all in a very short span of time. Those candidates that clear the written test will go through multiple rounds of interviews which will test all of the aspects mentioned above in (1).
While there is no set structure for these interviews, the best way to prepare would be to adopt usual preparation approaches for management consulting positions. For the “cultural fit” part of the interview, there is no preparation required – just be yourself and help us understand who you are.
With that I will wrap-up – I hope candidates find this information useful as they prepare for our recruiting process. If you are looking for more information about analytical consulting & about Indus Insights, please feel free to visit our website, follow us on twitter, or like our facebook page. We will also be sharing some of these aspects with you when we come to your campus.
See you at the campus – Good Luck! (And don’t just trust your luck, bring the calculator anyway)
Saurabh Sharma
CEO, Indus Insights
