Compendium admissions 2023-25
Download 4.08 Mb. View original pdf
|
- Navigate this page:
- Communication Skills
- Learning capability
- Guesstimates
| Thinking on your feet: The key to solving the problem is to think rationally and logically. It takes nothing more than real-world knowledge, commonsense, and a bit of quick maths to solve even the toughest of problems ii. Thought flow process: Rather than the final answer, the interviewer is looking for how logical and structured is the interviewee's thought process. Whichever methodology you are following, try to breakdown a problem into smaller pieces, identify the most important ones and work through them logically to find a solution. Follow techniques like the 80/20 rule, hypothesis framing, and top- down bottom-up approaches to solve the problem efficiently iii. Communication Skills: While solving problems, always ask clarifying questions and doubts to ensure you have all the important facts. Don't be afraid to think out loud while translating, and make sure you walk the interviewer through the process and justify your reasoning in a clear and concise way iv. Learning capability: No matter how much you know, there are always things you need to do. Learning in management consulting is an ongoing and never-ending process (even for partners and 16 directors, from learning new industries, new geography, and new functions, to learning how to work well with different people, etc. Guesstimates Consultants must make educated estimates about the size of a problem or the impact of a strategy, etc, using their logical ability, general knowledge, and problem-specific learnings (garnered through extensive research and asking good questions. Illustration Estimate the market size in the US for delivering tomatoes on demand. Top–Down Approach If you are unsure how to start the guesstimate, start big with the basic assumption that the population of the USA is 330 million. According to the Consumer Expenditure Survey, an average household spends $751 on fruits and vegetables yearly. Assuming the average household size to be three members, a total of $ Bin annual spending in the US. According to the USDA, the share of tomatoes in fruits and vegetables is 5%. Assuming that on-demand delivery of tomatoes will be desirable in large cities whereof the population resides, that reduces our estimate to $ B. Assuming that 20% of households would order tomatoes on demand if offered and that the delivery of tomatoes would increase their consumption by 0-5% (taking a 4% increase, the final estimate is Mb Bottom-Up Approach One can also start small by estimating the demand in a large city and extrapolating by considering the total number of large cities. The price of a large tomato in the US is $ 1. Assuming that consumers buy three such tomatoes weekly, the average consumer would buy $ 150 in tomatoes annually (thinking 50 weeks in a year for simplicity. The average population of large US cities is 1 million. Since the average household size is three members and assuming that 20% of households in large cities would order tomatoes on demand, 66,667 homes would be willing to order tomatoes on demand. Assuming the US has 30 large cities, the final estimate is $ M ($ 150 * 66,667 * 30) |