Nailing Interviews (PART 1)

Q1) What’re your strengths and weaknesses? (You’ll likely only be asked to mention 2 of each)

Now be careful in how you state your strengths. Use VERBS (or action words), NOT ADJECTIVES (or
descriptive words). Saying “I’m energetic” (adjective) isn’t as impactful as saying “I bring a lot of energy to
the teams I work with, which I’ve noticed improves the chemistry” (verb). Do you notice the difference?

Next, for the weakness aspect, interviewers have been asking this question for years and they always know
when you’re simply masking your strengths as your weaknesses. “I’m a workaholic” is the most obvious
example of a strength masked as a weakness. So is “I’m a perfectionist”. These look like cheat cards. You’re
much better off saying something that’s genuine like “I get a little anxiety while public speaking” . (THIS IS
PERFECTLY OKAY!). And it’s okay to have weaknesses, don’t be ashamed of them. Steve Jobs at Apple
Inc. would fuck up consistently, the public just wouldn’t find out (read his book, by Walter Isaacson).

Just remember that with any weakness you state, you must tell the interviewer what effort you’re
taking to overcome it. E.g. saying “I’m scared of public speaking, but I would always force myself to take
a pivotal role in group presentations, which I feel has brought me much closer to overcoming my anxiety;
and I hope to keep improving” is a sure shot way to impress the interviewer – it shows you’re self-aware and
proactive.

Q2) Why should we pick you?

You need to understand the defensive nature of this question – the interviewer will be on the look-out for
certain traits of your answer that will tell him whether you’re a good fit or not.

Firstly, NEVER shit on the candidates outside the room. Shitting on each other is the national sport of this
country, and we practically grow up expecting it from in-laws and vice versa. But in an interview, the other
candidates are likely from your university and you’ve spent 4 years with them, so if you’re capable of
shitting on them, you’re capable of shitting on someone at the company you’re applying to as well. Don’t do
it.

Secondly, do not ever say you’re “better” – DO NOT COMPARE – if you can’t back it up. An example of
you making this mistake would be saying “I’m better at thinking outside the box”. Is there a rubric or a rank
your college maintains for outside the box thinking with your name plastered at the very top of the list? No!
So how will you justify this statement? You simply can’t, so don’t make this statement. Instead, point to
something UNIQUE on your CV, highlight that, and suggest how that makes YOU unique, not how that
makes you better than anyone else.

Thirdly, always remember to hint at the interviewer that the final decision is in her hands. You’d be
surprised how often candidates get defensive when asked this question and end up sounding like they’re
telling the interviewer how to do her job. Ending your answer with a polite “but after everything I’ve told
you, I know the final decision rests with you; I just told you what I feel sets me apart but you would know
better who is the best fit for your company” is BEAUTIFUL.

Q3) How do we know you’ll be committed to this company?

This usually comes up if you’ve left your previous job to join the current one (or maybe it’s your first job
but you’re from LUMS). There’s no one perfect answer to this question because you probably switched to
this company due to a better salary package or better growth opportunities, and the minute a 3 rd company
comes along with an even better salary package or work life balance, you’ll jump ship again!
But you must understand the defensive nature of this question and answer it on two levels: empathetic and
empirical.

Empathetic  Say, “this is a touchy topic, I know. Especially because fresh grads these days are famous
for jumping ship. I also know that when a fresh hire leaves quickly, it reflects terribly on the judgment of the
hiring manager”. If you say this, you will have already floored the hiring manager enough to get a place,
because once she believes that you understand why she’s worried about this, she’ll be much more willing to
buy anything else you sell her. But you still need to seal the deal with the empirical aspect.

Empirical  This is where you show off the research you’ve done on the company you’re applying to. Try
to ensure that the reason you give for leaving your old company is the same reason you want to join this new
company. E.g., “I left my old company, ABC, because their culture was very unsupportive of fresh hires, but
at your company, XYZ, however, I’m aware that you give fresh hires a lot of responsibilities, and have
special programs just for making sure that we all fit in”.

Q4) What animal / fictional character are you (or: what person do you most idolize) and why?

Rare question, but this tells you a lot about how the person perceives themselves, and that’s exactly why
some companies will ask this question or some variation of it (i.e. what fictional character are you).

The key here lies not in the animal/character, but how you justify it. Saying “I’m a lion, because I believe
I’m a leader and I take control of situations” usually doesn’t work as well as you may think for two reasons:
(1) about a dozen people have come in before you and said that so all it shows is lack of ingenuity, and (2) it
may not be too relevant to if you’re applying for an entry level position where your job is to listen and work
in teams, not grab every opportunity by the neck. The stranger your animal, the smarter and more innovative
will be your justification. Think this one through.

For your idol, you can pick a famous celebrity/visionary/leader, or you can pick someone from your family
or upbringing that no one knows about. Doesn’t matter. Just be sure that you actually idolize someone for
the qualities they have rather than how much they’ve achieved (don’t pick a role model just because he’s
wealthy).

Q5) Tell us about a time you demonstrated teamwork or leadership / made a tough decision /
negotiated with someone.

A McKinsey and Bain favorite. But it’s also something most FMCGs will ask you. This question is one of
the biggest sifter questions they throw at you guys. Here’s what to do to avoid being sifted out.

Answer with the PARADE method:

P = problem (what was it)
A = anticipated damage (had you not acted)
R = role (yours in the whole dilemma)
A = action (the one you finally took)
D = decision criteria (why did you choose this path and not an alternative)
E = end result (how did everything patch up in the end – or did it?)

When I answered this question, I talked about a class project of mine in LUMS where a team member
wasn’t willing to work at all because of other projects she had to focus on and how I managed to foster trust
and friendship amidst rising hostility in the group to eventually place first in the class. Your experiences
don’t need to be about life and death – you’re only students! If an interviewer asks you this question, she
does not expect you to go beyond the ambit of university.
AND JUST BTW, the question never says tell us about a successful negotiation. You can talk about a time
you miserably failed but then tell the interviewer what you learned from the failure – this is even more
impressive because it shows how self-aware and committed to improving.

Disclaimers:

Disclaimer 1: Always do research on your company before going. In every serious interview, I’ve been
asked what I know about the company. This decides your first impression. If you walk into a Unilever
interview and accidentally name a P&G brand when prompted, you’re fucked! If your company is listed on
the stock exchange, take a look at its stock – that’ll tell you how well it’s been performing in the past
(bringing this up during an interview may just make your interviewer cry out of happiness).

Disclaimer 2: For all of the questions you’ve read, remember that the interviewer is expecting concise and
impactful answers. You can always give brief examples to get your message across, but do not prolong your
answers and tell stories. Understand the concepts I laid out for each question, and use them in as pithy a way
as possible.

Disclaimer 3: The questions about why manhole lids are round, or any of these curveballs are simply
designed to test how you think. They have a definitive answer, but getting the answer is not necessary and
you likely won’t be asked these unless you apply to Google or the like. So, don’t worry about them.

Disclaimer 4: for any question that is unexpected, ask the interviewer for 20-30 seconds to think out
your answer. It does NOT look bad on you to ask for time. Look at this way: they don’t want you to
come with rote learned answers for everything (if you do have rote learned answers for everything,
they know you could be faking it OR they’ll know their questions just weren’t challenging enough).
Either way, you’ll please the interviewer by asking for time. Just do it politely.

The reason I’ve bolded the above point is because even if you only do THIS disclaimer in an interview,
you’re probably twice as likely to get the job. It stops you from rambling and produces a very coherent
answer that will probably be communicated in the best possible way because you’ll have jotted bullets
down in front of you (or mentally) and you would have given yourself time to calm down after the
frazzling question was asked.

ASKING FOR A FEW SECONDS IS NEVER FROWNED UPON IN INTERVIEWS – IT DOES NOT
MAKE YOU LOOK LESS PREPARED – THAT’S A MYTH; ON THE CONTRARY, IT MAKES YOU
LOOK LIKE A BETTER PRESENTER.

Disclaimer 5: You should still prepare the answers to the abovementioned questions weeks in advance
because you can almost 100% expect some if not all these questions to come up. I’ve made a list of answers
to various questions that I conjure up, and I’ve maintained that list for years now. That’s how you get good.
You should start today, and do it by saving this document and simply adding to it whenever you get ideas.
E.g. add your own strengths and weaknesses under Q1 so you can always refer back to them or update them.


Now take a break, and go eat something or watch Netflix before moving onto “PART 2”.
Ideally, I’d say take a week to get comfortable with the questions in “PART 1”.
Practice your responses; the slower you take this, the better you’ll get at it.
 And there’s nothing wrong with taking it easy (you’ll do better at interviews, trust me).

Nailing Interviews (PART 2)

Q1) Tell us a little bit about yourself / tell us about your day.

This question is all about presentation. The interviewer is literally asking you to present the one topic
you’re more well versed in than anyone else in the world – yourself! So, you need to approach this very
gracefully. To be graceful, keep two things in mind: (1) your content, and (2) your structure.

1) Content  talking about your place of birth, your age, your siblings, or your past life is a cardinal
sin – these topics are highly irrelevant; you’re at in interview, not an investigation where you’re
providing an alibi. Now that you know what not to say, let’s focus on what you should say. Your
major and minor, passions and hobbies, aims and future objectives all do matter, so you can touch
upon them.

2) Structure  this is my favorite portion of the answer because it really sets you apart. I think
structure makes much more of an impact than content. And structure is also what goes wrong
when you freak out. When I answer this question, I say these words verbatim: “Alright (smile), so I’d
like to answer in two parts, professional (major & work experience) and personal (hobbies &
extracurriculars)”, and then I go about the answer, naming 2-3 things about me in each category.
Here’s an additional way to segment, for those of you who may not like to use the previous method.

As far as talking about your day goes, it’s really just supposed to be an ice breaker. I feel people think this is
some trick question and start being overly formal about it. Some of the answers I give to this question are
“It’s been great! Had a big 6 egg breakfast, it’s nice and sunny outside, my kinda day”. Or “I’ve actually
been looking forward to this interview all day, so it’s been an exciting day. I ate well, slept well, I feel
good.” It’s really just a normal question, whatever you say, just stay positive – don’t freak out and kill the
vibe.

Q2) Please tell us something important about yourself that’s NOT on your CV.

I’ve been asked this more than thrice by organizations, so you should prepare for it. Here’s the right way to
go about answering this.

Remember, the whole point of this question is that the interviewer knows it’s impossible for anyone to
include their whole life’s achievements on one piece of paper, so this is their way of being NICE (believe it
or not) by giving you a chance to really differentiate yourself from other candidates. Don’t blow it!

Your goal is to impress the person with what you say next and reveal a part of yourself that you think
would make you very likable if someone were to find out about it, so don’t talk about the time you slept
for 22 hours straight. Ideally, talk about a time or place where you added value by helping someone and
why it mattered to you (could be volunteer work or an extra internship that you didn’t mention on your CV
because of lack of space). Or you could even talk about a very big hobby that you have and how it ties up
with your personality, just be sure to sound impressive, not obsessive.

Point to note: your CV should be very clean and uncluttered I advise not mentioning “additional skills” or
“interests”. The CV screener doesn’t have time to read all the way down your CV. They’re never going to see
that you enjoy python, or trekking or music, believe me! And their decision to interview you isn’t based on
your interests or additional skills anyway, so you can omit that and discuss it in this part of the interview.
Talk about more substantial things on your CV, ideally work experience and leadership roles.

Q3) Could you elaborate on any ONE of your internships, student society roles, or projects that you
mentioned in your CV, and tell us what you learned from it? (You may alternatively be asked to
elaborate on some innovation or improvement you brought on in one of your internship roles).

A very popular question that’s only getting more and more popular with time, so really think about this
one.

The answer to the first part of this question (what you learned), try to think back to a time in an internship
or some society work where you argued your point of view on a topic and were proven wrong at a later
stage by someone more experienced than you – showing that you learned something from this exchange
and that you believe it changed you for the better will WOW your interviewer.

As for the alternative version of the question (innovation or improvement), the interviewer isn’t expecting
to hear that you revolutionized a whole system or company, because your interviewer hasn’t even done
that. All she expects of you is to see (a) whether you have an eye for spotting inefficiencies, and (b)
whether you have the courage and the drive to speak up and address it in whatever small way that your
role allows.

To make this really impactful, talk about the snowball effect of what you did. Allow me to illustrate with an
example from my life:

“At S&P Global where I interned, my team needed to pull a lot of data from S&P’s proprietary databases
and then manually re-enter it in an excel file for further processing. I noticed that the format of our online
databases did not match that of excel file our team was working on (column 1 online was column 4 or 5 in
the excel file). This made it a little harder, intuitively, to copy paste things from one source into another, so
I reformatted the excel file to reflect the format of the online database. Over 8 weeks, because there was
just so much data being copied and pasted, this very small change SNOWBALLED and led to our team
making nearly 3 times more entries than they had before I came in. We were able to finish mundane tasks,
and focus our time and energy on things that added real value.”

See how impressive that sounds? All I did was tinker with an excel doc. Think about a time you challenged
something, no matter how small it was, and received a positive net result through a snowball.

Q4) Why do you think this field is right for you (e.g. why do you think marketing is right for you)?

Notice how this is different from the question, “why should we pick you?” In the latter, you’re going to
DIFFERENTIATE, not compare, yourself from the other candidates via something unique on your CV or
about your personality (refer to my first WOW document for the answer to “why should we pick you”). In
the former, i.e. the question at hand, however, you’re telling them why consulting, or sales, or marketing,
or finance is the right kind of job for someone like you.

To ace this question, answer it on two fronts (1) your interest, and (2) your skillset:

1) Interest: convey that you have a passion for the field. E.g. for marketing you could say, “I find that
this field is continuously evolving and that excites me. Further, it’s consumer facing and requires
creativity, which makes it more fun for me than other fields”
 2) Skillset: show that you aren’t just passionate about it, but you have what it takes to succeed in it.
E.g. you could say “from my experience running a business on campus, I gained insight into how
important understanding your customer and tailoring your marketing messages accordingly really is
(then give an example from your business to seal the deal)”. If you’ve taken entrepreneurship as a
course, then you can talk about a venture from there, else use a class project, an SProj, anything
that required selling something or an idea.

You need to really believe in what you’re doing to say something like this. So, whatever position you apply
for, take some time to think about 2-3 reasons you would ACTUALLY love to do that.

Q5) If you were given this role in my company (social media marketer), what would you do?

The interviewer wants to know if you’re already THINKING like the right person for the job. This is a very
important question. It tells you a GREAT deal about the candidate because it acts as a pseudo simulation of
your on-the-job performance.
There is no one way to answer this question, you can be as creative as you want AS LONG AS you
remember to do these two things:

1) Ask any relevant questions about the role and the expectations your manager. Orient yourself with the
expectations and nature of the job. You’re not expected to know everything about the role, so asking
the right questions is key here, because you’ll get hints from your interviewer on how to nail this.
Many of your rivals will think it looks bad to ask, but that’s where they’ll fall short and you’ll get ahead.

2) Once you’ve gotten the info from (1), you stand at a less vague position. Now ask for 2 minutes to
think out your answer and jot it down in points. E.g. “Okay, so I understand you want to get 10k more
likes on your FB page in 1 week, and you expect 10% of those likes to become customers. Based on
this, I would do A, B, C and D to help you achieve your goals.” (Explain the reasoning behind doing each
thing).

Q6) Before you leave, do you have any questions for us?

IF you don’t have a smart question for the interviewer, you’re probably NOT getting the job. That’s how
important this question is. You must produce questions, and they should be of a certain caliber. Luckily for
you, I’ve outlined some of the ones I use below:

- Ask them to elaborate on a piece of information discussed during the interview that you would like
some more clarity on. This is a good habit. The interview will not automatically assume that you
were not paying attention the first time the topic was discussed, so feel free to ask.

- Another favorite of mine: “a have a question that’s a little informal, but I’m really curious about it,
may I ask?” (the interviewer always says “yes”, very encouragingly). I proceed, “what all about your
working style and your personality do you think helped you reach this position today?”

- If the above question is too probing for you, you could instead ask: “what values does this company
really value? What traits and habits does the top management exhibit that the company endorses
and likes to see in its employees?”

- Another very powerful question: “what’re the challenges and opportunities your company faces,
and how well-placed is someone in the role I’m applying for to tackle each of those for you?” The
 interviewer may not answer this if she feels the answer reveals confidential information, but she
will be impressed that you’re already thinking at this level.

Disclaimers:

Disclaimer 1: some of you may feel dis-incentivized to use these tricks since everyone can now access
them, but that’s not how you should look at it. I’ve only laid out frameworks. How you play with them to
incorporate your own stories is what’ll set you apart.

Disclaimer 2: although you can expect my questions across all interviews, expectations do vary depending
on the job you’re applying for. E.g. consulting firms interview differently from NGOs who interview
differently from the industry (FMCG, banks, oil and gas, telecom). Thus, to find out what special questions
are asked by a particular firm, search the firm on Glassdoor.com, or just consult your alumni who work
there.

Disclaimer 3: I know that some firms expect you to be a little assertive (Reckitt Benckiser), whereas others
expect you to be very humble (Bain & Co.). Both expect you to be confident. To find out what types of
personality traits firms are looking for, take to Glassdoor or your alumni once again. Personality
expectations differ per firm, and can play a role in your selection, but you should know that personality
types don’t decide selection as much as they decide rejection. That means you can’t ever be so
kind/compassionate/humble that you get the role simply based on that; however, you can come off as too
arrogant, rude, or aggressive and not be given a role based on that. So instead of trying to shape yourself
into something you’re not, try to focus on more important things like researching the company, selling why
you’re actually passionate about the role, and why you have the skills to fit into it.

Disclaimer 4: just be you. Many people think that you need to have a “corporate personality” to get hired,
but there really isn’t any such thing. Just look around you, think of the people you know at P&G, Mckinsey,
Bain, or Unilever. From my personal experience, I’ve seen very smart AS WELL AS very daft people end up
at these companies. Some of my friends at these firms have a great sense of humour and other are dry;
some like to mingle with their co-workers and schmooze their bosses and others like to work all day &
night. The common factor is, they’re good at the roles they applied for, irrespective of their personalities
(or at least the firm believes they are). So be yourself and focus on showing that you’re good for the role
based on your SKILLS, not your personality. It’s also easier to sell yourself if you’re comfortable in your own
skin rather than mimicking someone else who got in. Just be you, and trust me, you’ll be alright!