Careers, interviews and - random thoughts for placements

A random walk at #IITBHU on the invitation of Hritwik Singhai Pratyush Choudhury

This is my rambling thoughts on career, consulting, interviews. Best wishes to those sitting for placements! Here's the summary:

The end outcome we really want upon graduation is a great career. A great career is no accident but a mix of serendipity, focused hard work driven by intention and reflection.

On careers

• Competition is forever. The struggle doesnt end at Campus placements but starts! Your pedigree is only a headstart / jump into a better orbit. In 2019, competition is omni-present courtesy the internet, so make sure your institute placements launch you into the best possible orbit.
• There is never a perfect choice. So your strategy for Campus placements should be to get the best job in the best brand in the area you wish to work in
• Careers are marathons - not sprints
• Unless you are institute or Dep Rank 1 - You need to reconcile with planning your orbits, Mangalyaan style (unlike the NASA mission).
• Think of a job purely in terms of the value it can add in the next two years - nothing more /  less. Imagine yourself as someone 10 years older - “Would you hire yourself, two years out”. If the answer is anything except a resounding YES, then move on.
• Your career is a novel with broadly connected short stories rarely a very taut storyline - our lives are more driven by chance than even the most successful would like to admit.
• Real world is uncertain. Careers will stagnate in 10 - 12 - 15 years so make sure you have invested in your skills and not just hoarded brands. It is a crushing feeling to be compensated well, have assets and yet be unemployable and hate going to work every morning.

Roles vs companies

• Don’t settle - make use of your youth to seek roles that challenge 
• Ask questions to understand a day in the life of Mr/Ms X: Don’t confuse Fantabulous Friday night parties with Forgettable Wednesdays
• Even feted strategy consultancies’ routine is more of endlessly dotting the Is and crossing the Ts till 3am with the occasional CXO review
• In the start, focus on a job you like / good at and that inspires you to stay up till 3 or wake up at 5am
• Trade off big brands with the value the job adds on your CV with the brand: Would you rather be one of the engineers that built self-balancing scooter Liger or a [insert soul killingly mundane job description with little learning] in a behemoth corporation earning 2-3x more?

Plan your 7th sem (or MBA summer) shortlisting from the first semeester of your undergrad

• Your 7th semester outcome is most likely seeded in the 1st sem end internship - There are no overnight sudden successes. Unfortunately, shortlisting for non-research jobs often requires more than just grades.
• The real world reality is that your CV needs keyword optimization:
• Shortlisting is outsourced to the juniormost who cannot say no. That person may not care about doing the very best job but just completing it to get to their evening date or to their child by 6pm. Their goal is making a LONG ENOUGH list asap: NOT perfectly understanding each candidate.
• They could do a 99% good enough job for their company but if YOUR CV is missed, that's a 100% terrible result for YOU. Therefore, your CV needs to scream the right transferable skills on your CV.
• Look at every single line on your CV and ask “So What?”
• Outside of hard grade point cutoffs - most companies would have filters around leadership roles / projects etc which are not public. In an ideal world - you would have seniors who freely reveal their criteria. But alas! So tabulate folks who get shortlisted and review their CVs - then duplicate it!
• Use internships not to earn money but build a personal portfolio of transferable skills. Ask yourself - What big projects - outcomes - real world execution abilities does my CV show? Or review the CVs of other seniors.
• [My suggestion] Embrace a sales-ish or execution internship today. E.g SaaS internship in your summer or winters. SaaS sales = cold calling + team management + sales conversations
• Outside of pure tech - sales / distribution is where eventual winners are decided (think of how PayTM won not through its ads but its ubiquitous QR code at every panwari). Its a useful skill even within corporations.
• Fest - role coord roles is a good way to demonstrate leadership but unless it is G-Sec it is not a replacement for a great internship! Impact is key. No impact, no dice.
• Companies would use any leadership roles as a signal of your ability to work with people, execute at scale and operate under uncertainty while balancing study demands
• But if you can work with a startup that offers you such a chance - why not!? Show that you can actually “Move fast and break things”

Placement interviews

• Always get a sense of where you relatively stand in the shortlist. Date up - not down - but not too much!
• When you have been shortlisted - the job is nearly yours for the taking, esp in the first round.
• Having selected a bunch of ~20-25 people to interview, now the recruiter is as invested in selecting you so as to meet their own recruitment targets :) (AND to get home to their family on time).
• Now they would want to nearly reconfirm that you are as good as your CV indicated - so you need to relax and stick to the basics!
• No one is trying to hire a perfect candidate - everyone wants someone who is smart enough, teachable, hard working and demonstrates second order thinking.

On case interviews

• Structuring or common frameworks of easy to solve profitability/market entry type cases
• Asking preliminary questions in order to understand the context - develop and lay out a hypothesis before you dive into information gathering questions. Listening is key in all jobs. Thoughtful smart listener >>> super smart person who can't listen
• Breaking down problem into a structure. This is SUPER critical - case interviews are about structured problem solving. No structure = bad outcome that's hard to recover from. You might as well go to the next recruiter early than waste your time.
• Thinking of recommendations
• Being "answer first" when summarizing a case
• Using first principle thinking
• Use good assumptions (80:20) so that you can actually complete the case. 
• There is value in giving innovative recommendations that comes from daily reading. But don't read too much to waste hours.
• Practice is good - but self reflection is better.

Best wishes to all. Hope it is useful. If I made any errors, please do not hesitate to let me know.