1) Tell me about yourself?

- Name.
- Education.
- Transition to work and role. (Post completion of my B. Tech, I took the opportunity to
work with EY as an analyst in the Technology Risk vertical, where I moved from the role
of an analyst to a consultant)
- Hobbies. Football and Formula One.

2) Why do you want to pursue an MBA? Why marketing after IT?]

3)
- Working at EY, I worked on specific problems or areas of focus that had a business
impact but were more on the regulatory side. I wasn’t focused on solving particular
business problems that help the firm grow monetarily or create value/presence.
I had insights into how the clients deployed various software or internal IT processes for
their specific business functions like change management, operations, and access
management. Naturally, I was motivated to learn how different business functions
operate interdependently to create value for businesses.
Also, with the knowledge imparted and skill set developed over the two years of an
MBA, it is natural for firms to hire MBAs for management positions, which I aspire to
take up.

- Initially, when I started working with EY, I was only focused on delivering the work
assigned to me. There was no intrinsic motivation for me to go beyond.
I started observing how my seniors used to focus on how or what more can we do to
help the clients (customers).
As I moved up the ladder, the value-add to the client started coming more naturally. I
saw that it was the most critical aspect in developing relationships with the client and
helping bring the firm more revenue. I was, therefore, interested in learning how firms
get more clients and how they attract more business from existing clients. I aspired to be
in their position where they could help bring in more business and manage teams to
deliver that output.
Marketing as a function forms the foundation of every business – the ability to identify
customer needs and fulfilling them. Hence, I decided to take up an MBA in marketing.

4) How would my friends and teachers describe me?

- Organized. From personal organization to group organization and coordination, I feel
that it is something that comes to me naturally.
I work on prioritizing the tasks for my day and sometimes even plan my day according to
15- to 3-hour intervals depending on the size and significance of the job.
I take up initiatives (group activities or learning), RACE work coordination, outside
activities like playing football, and actively coordinating between APO group members. I
took upon the ownership and responsibility to seamlessly organize this for everyone.

Internal deadlines before client deadlines, regular meetings to keep track of progress,
and multiple trackers created internal meetings before client meetings and enough time
to make changes.
 - Direct and effective communication. I seldom shy away from sharing what I think about
something. Now that doesn’t mean I’m brutal.
I always gave constructive feedback to my peers and analysts at EY. What good they did,
what went wrong, and how they can improve upon it.
I was always praised for how effective my emails (pyramid structure) were and could
eventually see how they helped me fast-track things as I did not require time and effort
on calls with everyone.

5) Strengths:
- Effective communication.
 I was always praised for how effective my emails (pyramid structure) were and could
eventually see how they helped me fast-track things as I did not require time and effort
on calls with everyone.
 I always gave constructive feedback to my peers and analysts at EY. What good they did,
what went wrong, and how they can improve upon it.
- Ability to work under pressure.
 Tagged as “firefighter” at EY. There were numerous occasions when I had to work on my
project and alongside help others at work when there were escalations. I took the
opportunity to show my competency and help the team.
 Handling multiple projects at the same time with clashing deadlines. The ability to work
well under pressure with an objective approach helped me there.
Ex. I was working on a project with SOC reports on three different clients. There was a
client delay in providing us with the right data/evidence. However, the client was under
pressure from the user organization to obtain the SOC reports as they dictate if the
client organization was effective in providing services at all.
Within a week’s time, with some extra effort from myself and leveraging SOC experts at
work, we were able to meet the deadlines. I gave a proper KT to the resources we
utilized in terms of documentation. I set up meetings to make them understand the
documentation templates and an overview of the client’s IT systems. At the end of each
day, I would then review the documentation and make any necessary changes to reduce
turnaround time. I focused on drafting the final reports simultaneously along with my
documentation and we met the deadlines.

6) Weaknesses:
- Inability to delegate.
 I tend to take extra responsibility or ownership of the tasks. I fall into the trap of
excessive judgment, believing that the work would not be up to the standards if I don’t
have direct visibility into what’s happening. I worked on it while at EY as I progressed to
a consultant role, and I couldn’t take hold of every minute detail. I gave sufficient KT and
took progress meetings which slowly instilled trust in me.
- Self-criticism.
 After anything wrong, I often over-criticize and blame myself for what has happened. I
look for answers from within as to what could have been done differently such that the
event never occurred.
Ex. Direct analyst fault in my work at the previous organization. I did sufficient KT and
tried explaining the client’s style of working. The analyst skipped meetings just as a case
 of aversion to responsibility. I wanted to make them understand how this would
negatively affect the team. I told about how something that affects the group would also
reciprocate to individual performance and bonus.
But I criticized myself for not being able to train them effectively and how I couldn’t
handle people working under me. I questioned myself If I could ever take the
responsibility taken by my seniors.
However, they left the firm soon after and were never interested in the job.
Now I try to analyze things from a holistic perspective, taking into account different
angles and motivation levels of people, and explore all possible solutions before blaming
myself.
The same goes for APO groups; I often blame myself for an ineffective group
performance.

7) Have you ever had a conflict at work? How did you resolve it?
- I was working on a client engagement as an analyst. I had some audit findings in our
project that would impact the sampling strategy for the analysis we were working on.
This would have required us to re-visit our procedures and substantively test the Access
Management process for the client.
- However, it was not a process fault but rather a systematic fault as discovered after
further assessment by myself and the team.
- I took this up with my senior who agreed with me on my analysis but told me that the
same issue was found in last year’s procedures and that it would not impact the financial
audit team. They asked me to document it as it is with the rationale given for the
previous year. I did not agree to it at the first go as I thought that this was unethical and
we would not be doing justice to the client or the practice. This caused a rift between my
senior and me and a delay in work.
- I dug up the resources available to us (EY audit methodology) and with a detailed
analysis showed how it would impact FSA and that we would require to revisit the
procedures.
- I was able to convince the senior and subsequently my manager. I also told them how
we only needed to test a portion of the samples as the risk was only applicable to them.
Always go with solutions and not problems or ego.

8) Long-term and short-term career plans.

- One of the personal reasons for me to pursue an MBA was to create business value not
from a regulatory side but from a monetary side. Personally, I seek value creation that is
visible to me and drives me. Leveraging my past experience in managing client accounts,
and relationship building, with a focus on sales and marketing here, I want to work as an
account/sales manager in the B2B space where I can manage internal and external
stakeholders whilst feeding my intrinsic motivation of visibility of value creation.
- My long-term goal would be to work as a Key account manager in the coming 5 years.

FMCG - My short-term goal is to become an area sales manager learning the ground reality of the
trade with stints in both general and modern trade.

Leveraging my skills developed as an ASM and honing my stakeholder management skills, I want to
become the Chief Sales Officer.
9) Most rewarding project.
- Refer to Norway.

10) Least rewarding project.

- In my first year, I worked on a project for a retail client from the US. I used to work extra
hard, given it was my first job and I thought this would be my chance to prove my worth.
I was working with the team from Bangalore on the project together to help the on-site
team.
However, at the time of my year-end appraisal, I noted that my performance rating
wasn’t great. Even though I worked hard, I didn’t work smart. It was a lesson taken early
in my career. I didn’t maintain any visibility in front of the senior management and didn’t
converse to let them know of my progress. I just met the project requirements and
didn’t add a lot of value to the relationship with the on-site team. Therefore, this was
monetarily my least rewarding project but I learned a great deal from it.

11) Challenges faced during my stint/ Time-Budget management

- I worked in an off-shore model. We had on-site teams and clients from all across the
globe. There was a certain linguistic/cultural gap that I had to adjust to. The style of
working in the Nordic regions was very relaxed as compared to the States/the UK. They
wouldn’t work after 5 PM. So, initially, there was a gap in expectations, and the delivery
used to face roadblocks due to the time difference.
Also, it was casual in the States to sit for long hours and the time difference usually
asked me to sit until 10 PM at work at times.
Agenda-based meetings only, daily status and progress updates, effective simple English
communication, and setting expectations of work hours for the entire team helped me
with these issues. I had new analysts working the 8-5 shift and myself and the rest of the
team working the 10-8 shift to better distribute tasks and better management of time.
- We were plotted on weekly hours which were blocked well in advance. Now at times,
there were client delays due to which insufficient work was received for a few weeks
and at times there was a lot of workload during certain weeks.
 Proactively asking the client/onsite teams if they see foresee any delays in providing
evidence/requirements. This way a lot of the rescheduling could be done well in
advance.
 Reactive measures, sometimes you can’t foresee and delays happen. Seek out other
team members/resource management team for others with the same skillset. Help was
provided to us. However, the distribution of tasks was done in a manner such that
minimum KT would be required as these could be ad hoc tasks.
 Stakeholder communication with backing evidence. The number of hours per task and a
draft of the expected timelines of evidence vs. delivered evidence. Visibility and
communication backed us into asking for more time.

12) How did you encourage analysts/ what if they didn’t work or meet targets?
a) The first challenge at times was the application of the learnings through training or
sessions into the work.
To ease this, what I did during my time and also helped my subordinates were:
 Not attempt to see if the client’s processes were a result of the learnings from such
training. They were unique processes and had to be catered to differently. However,
developing a risk perspective was what was important. It was a risk-based approach
that had to be applied and accordingly, the learnings would fit in.

b) Timely delivery issues due to illness/exigencies:

The team manager had already instilled an attitude of teamwork within us. There
was never a feeling of loafing amongst any of us. So, it was a case of knowing who
could and when the work could be taken up by another person. The cohesiveness
developed and the end goal of team performance translating into individual reward
was also everyone knew.

c) Quality low.
First, identify the reason:
If extrinsic, such as money, connect with the concerned authorities.
Or sometimes, they felt like they were just thrown into a pool:
Given work that was first not so hard to do, to bring up the confidence and hence
motivation to take up more work.
Additional training and sessions.
Slowly, guide them as they built a foundation.

13) Last project I worked on:

- Vodafone UK. Refer to CV questions

14) What went wrong in a project I was managing:

I was working on a client engagement as a consultant. We had some audit findings in our
project that would impact the sampling strategy for the analysis we were working on. This
would have required us to re-visit our procedures and substantively test the Access
Management process for the client.
However, it was not a process fault but rather a systematic fault as discovered after further
assessment by myself and the team.
I took this up with my manager who agreed with me on my analysis but told me that the
same issue was found in last year’s procedures and that it would not impact the financial
audit team. They asked me to document it as it is with the rationale given for the previous
year. I did not agree to it at the first go as I thought that this was unethical and we would not
be doing justice to the client or the practice. This caused a rift between my senior and me
and a delay in work.
I dug up the resources available to us (EY audit methodology) and with a detailed analysis
showed how it would impact FSA and that we would require to revisit the procedures.
I was able to convince the manager and subsequently my senior manager. I also told them
how we only needed to test a portion of the samples as the risk was only applicable to them.
Always go with solutions and not problems or ego.

15) If extra time was required?

- You might talk about adding another member if the team is feeling overloaded,
implementing time buffers in the planning phase for certain tasks (Review phases
planned two weeks before a client update was to be provided), or negotiating with a
stakeholder for more time or resources (prepare a tracker all along indicating the
number of hours put in for every task and a small description, this would ensure
transparency and honesty to the client as well) [client delays also cause such situations
where the plotted hours are exhausted, so this timeline helps convince them for more
time]

15) Why sales?

- Regulatory, value creation, and its visibility and impact.
- Indirect contribution towards sales, revenue 300K USD, and Vodafone's other local
markets.
- However, in my prior job, I had no experience of being on the ground, meeting people, and
understanding their motives. I feel that there was a gap between my outgoing nature I am
and the desk job I was doing. I feel I am young and want to utilize this energy for something
that I feel I have an affinity towards.

16) WHY FMCG?

- While growing up, I was surrounded by brands such as Lacto calamine for treating my
chronic pimple issues and oily skin. At the time, it was only a remedy given by my mother
and I didn’t view it from the lens of a marketer. The brand positioned itself with the benefits
of it being paraben-free and removing excess oil from the face and has since then sustained
itself.
- Coming here, and being exposed to different products and marketing concepts, I realized
an affinity towards the sector.