A.D. Little - Pre Placement Talk at ISB

The consulting club at ISB had the honour of hosting Mr. Thomas Kuruvilla from Arthur D. Little for their pre-placment talk on the 26th of September. With great roles and international postings on offer, the buzz amongst the Student Body was very vibrant . Here are a few pointers.

Presence in India
ADL has no presence in India currently and does not intend to in the near future. However if the project is based out of India, ADL will be glad to move associates in the region.

ADL is resource constrained; no limit to the number of hires that they are looking to recruit from campus. ADL has never been faced with surfeit of manpower and they look at hiring at all levels – depending on experience and the interview performances.

Consultants in ADL in different locations have the same net pay. Hence ADL has international billing rates and since they are resource constrained, they have not pushed for presence in India. They see their operations outside India more profitable. However, ADL does numerous projects in India for international firms intending to enter India.

Recruitment & Process
ADL will look at recruiting for any location that the candidate is interested in. The typical locations are: Singapore, Dubai, Hong Kong, Korea, Europe, Japan etc.

Recruitment is based on 2 parts:
- initial rounds: by home office – Dubai
- later rounds: by the preferred office as indicated by the candidate
Recruitment process is uniform across offices and the criteria are similar; hence candidates are not disadvantaged or advantaged by choice of a particular office.

ADL does not view foreign language skills as an advantage to get through the interview. It will however, be an advantage to work in a particular country.

Process involves:
- Screen resumes
- Short list based on the resumes: each resume gets 30sec view
- 4 to 5 rounds of interview
- initial rounds based on cases
- later rounds are more soft skill based

Indication of clearing after indication by candidate that he/she is interested in the offer. If candidate has cleared, then the offer is made and is valid for 2 weeks.

Experience and relevance
Experience of 4-5 yrs is not considered enough for an individual to be knowledgeable about the industry. However, ADL sees this as allowing the individual to understand functioning of organizations and hence allows individuals to make more informed and practical decisions. ADL is not setting a bar on experience. However, the level of experience will determine the assessment methodology during the interview and hence will determine position and pay.

Hiring from other campuses in India
ADL will be visiting IIMA, IIMB, IIMC, IIMK this year, besides ISB. They had picked up 7 from the IIMs last year and are pleased with their performance.

Movement in ADL
ADL is open to having people move from one sector to the other. Further, they are open to employees moving across geographies.

Work style
ADL indicated that they do jot follow rigid and structured processes of problem solving. They believe in giving employees a greater level of innovation, freedom and this, in their opinion, will lead to superior results. Their areas of strength are: Technology, Telecom.

Indicative pay
Dependant on the role that one is recruited for.

Making a Difference - BCG Session on Campus

The Consulting Club at the Indian School of Business (ISB) recently hosted some Associates and Principals of the Boston Consultancy Group (BCG) to address students on a session titled ‘Making a Difference’. This is BCG’s second formal session with the Club this year. The inaugural session was a talk on Strategy. The purpose of this interaction was manifold - to inform students about the manner in which BCG approaches cases, to share real life examples of cases done by BCG India Office and to answer student questions regarding the organisation, in order to make them familiar with the BCG work environment.The session started with Chief Principal, Arvind Subramaniam, introducing his team and outlining the purpose of their visit. He briefly explained the work culture at BCG and elaborated on the organisational structure of the BCG, terming it as a “Mesh Structure” - where each vertical is represented by a function such as Marketing, Finance, Operations, etc. and each horizontal represents an industry such as Retail, Real Estate, Oil and Gas, etc. BCG also addressed the case approach methodology they follow.

This was described as a four step process:

Developing a hypothesis
Conducting an analysis
Working with a team
Ensuring impact

Recalls Consulting Club member, Varun Khullar, “A very interesting phase of the discussion was the concept of the ‘Sweet Spot’. It basically implies the intersection of three circles - namely People, Ideas and Impact. BCG described that attaining the ‘Sweet Spot’ was the main aim of the associates, at the start of a project.”The session was rounded of by discussing three cases that had been solved by BCG associates. They were cases from the fields of Industrial Goods, Fair Price Shops, and Innovation in the IT field. The interaction proved highly informative and insightful, with students left asking for more. In all a lively and worthwhile experience!