Can the IIM Grads who are joining these e-comm sites answer my 7 interview questions?

By Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal on February 20, 2012 20 Comments / 2626 views

So, I saw this front page report in the Economic Times today:

Bravo!!

I salute the new professional direction the IIM grads are taking!

Now, while this grand new business of e-commerce opens upto the best management brains in India – ‘THE’ IIM grads, I wanna ask them 7 interview questions.

These are 7 questions I would ask them if I was running an e-commerce site and was interviewing them:

Question 1:

Can you please tell me which are the dot com, Internet and Mobile Industry case studies that you studied in detail when you were in IIM?

Question 2:

Do you understand the CONCEPT of Viral Marketing? Was that taught or explained in the IIM marketing curriculum? If yes, tell me how to measure Viral Marketing.

Question 3:

Do you believe in Businesses that lose money forever? That a business can actually CREATE value while it continues to bleed? If yes, which Company do you idolize that does this?

If no, why are you joining an e-comm site?

Question 4:

How will you market an e-commerce site? Have you studied the business of SEO and SEM that exists in the Internet world? Have you come across a notion that sometimes Marketing does not cost money?

Question 5:

What are your career plans for the future? If 90% of e-comm sites were to die, how would you make a transition to your next job?

In the past, most of the IIM grads joined Citibank and Colgate and P&G – Companies that never died. So how are you thinking about your career?

Question 6:

How do you plan to work with and respect your boss, who is probably just as old as you are, and has only a couple of years of work experience?

Is he or she the kind of mentor – especially ‘The’ First Boss, you are looking for?

Do you think, when you look back 30 years from now, this person will pop up as the person who taught you everything?

Question 7:

If suppose tomorrow, the VCs who have invested in this e-comm Company, land up in office and ask everyone to take a 50% salary cut, to make the Company Survive – would you accept it?

Did they ever teach you at IIM, that sometimes, salaries COULD FALL, and not rise?

Depending on the ‘satisfactory’ index of these answers, I shall reserve my judgement to hire or not.

Oh, I forgot … oooops…. No one asked me in the first place :-(((

******

Comments

Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal

20 Comments

chirag February 20, 2012, 7:53 am

Q6 is a little unfair. Probably true in most cases. But still.

BTW, People go to IIM so they can join companies that never die.
Deep Velani February 20, 2012, 9:05 am

Truly one of the questions which I would like to ask, but won’t.
Anirudh B Balotiaa February 20, 2012, 9:06 am

In my experience, everyone(who go into IIM and considering to) joins IIM to get a job with a plum salary. Later their reason may change, but thats definitely the motivating factor to slog their bums for CAT, GD, PI.

But very interesting questions nevertheeless. With Social Media Marketing invading marketing functions globally, I have a feeling this trend will continue. How many cos. surive to hire is another discussion alltogether!

Q6, first part makes sense, next two sub questions…hmm…I dont quiet get in this context. Are you saying that majority of IIM grads look for a famous boss as their first boss?
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal February 20, 2012, 9:20 am

Anirudh – they don’t LOOk for a famous boss – they just get one.

May not be direct reporting, but somehow, if you join HDFC, from a good IIM, you will meet Deepak Parekh in some meeting or presentation and he will impact you for the rest of your life.

I know so so many people who are 39-42 and remember their ‘first’ boss who taught them everything!
Anirudh B Balotiaa February 20, 2012, 9:26 am

Hmm interesting!

I guess once some one passes out from IIM..they immd. climb few ladders, get into the team which for example interacts with Deepak Parekh and get impacted early on ?

Damn..wished I had planned my life better and earlier…for an MBA from IIM! 😉
Tejas Shah February 20, 2012, 9:31 am

hmm.. then why are they joining companies in the ecommerce market which is bound to be consolidated.. the consolidation could be through M&A’s or the company running out of cash..
chirag February 20, 2012, 10:01 am

I buy this point. I am not 39-42 yet. But yes I remember my first boss and yes he pretty much taught me everything.

The flip side being. Can someone who is your age (i.e. the IIM Grad) not teach you everything?
Abhik Prasad February 20, 2012, 10:36 am

Not really. there are few outliers on occasion 🙂
Abhishek Bharadwaj February 20, 2012, 11:08 am

They would fail in Question 4.

SEO and SEM are nowhere taught, be it IITs or IIMs or any other professional institute. Another interesting thing is that every one has heard of SEO and SEM but no one knows what is it!!. Even 90 percent of Indian IT Brigade is unaware of what these stuffs are.
arpit shekhar February 20, 2012, 11:23 am

Everyone in this world learns at every stage….IIM guys have to shed their image and work ….with their boss who may be more enterprising and innovative..out of the box like…Our Dear Rodinhood Sir…may or may not be from IIM.Nowadays small kids teach us which we were never able to learn…..As far as companies dying is concerned they should be capable enough doctors to revive the same or set up new ones after analysing why they failed….everything goes to basics,,,
Anirudh B Balotiaa February 20, 2012, 12:52 pm

I agree with Abhishek.

Many people in Sales/Marketing are good at doing it offline, online is a totally new game for them. Many are not even on Facebook/Twitter/LinkedIn(atleast in their personal capacity) which are by far the biggest game changes as far as Social Media Marketing/Social Networking goes.
Zafar Sawant February 20, 2012, 3:22 pm

I think this would only add to the ‘bleeding’ for the e-commerce companies…

‘e-Commerce’ would be the new BPO…

Atleast for few years, mediums like TV, media houses aka Web18/Times Group or tech giants like Google/Apple could be a better option for these grads.
Sanchita Dutta February 20, 2012, 4:38 pm

hey, loved this one. i too feel IIMs who are used to Cushy life, AC office, All expenses paid salaried jobs can never sustain the uncertainties and rigours of a real struggle that most start up companies have to go through. perhaps they would never have joined IIM at the first place if they were capable of that. Remember that story when a young man said he is working and studying very hard to get into a Govt Job so that he doesnt have to work hard again and can lead a paid for hassle free tension free life for ever. What an irony.

Second set of fools would be the Start Up companies themselves. i feel they need street smart people and not IIM grads. they are better off doing calculations and analysis for biggies…

And i really like the humour part. do share a lesson on Viral marketing though. Was planning to google that next!!
Kartik R March 12, 2012, 4:02 pm

Just interviewed 7 IIM grads out of 22 who applied.

These questions have come real handy 🙂 .. Thanks !
Alok Rodinhood Kejriwal March 12, 2012, 5:20 pm

the important point is how did they answer!

share as general feedback naa?
Kartik R March 12, 2012, 6:51 pm

Sure Alok,

One of the students of the same batch is our campus representative and she is very sharp. I had very high expectations and was a little dissapointed that I couldnt get any talent on board.

The IIM curriculum does have case studies but they are outdated ones. They do not really understand digital media or dot com businesses. Basic questions like name few revenue generation channels for websites did not go beyond 1.) advertising 2.) product sales (ecomm).

Measuring social media impact etc questions seemed unheard of. They are unaware of cost per acquisition, cost per sale, cost per lead etc terms which trickles down to them not being fully aware how e-commerce portals bleed.

The first 4 questions were enough to weed all applicants. I did not get the pleasure of asking the rest 3.

Most probably the best candidates who knew answers to all 7 were recruited on day 0 placements. Most from the ones I interviewed were freshers. I believe they are having a tough time living up to the IIM brand expectations.
Abhik Prasad March 13, 2012, 4:57 am

I think we are taking a pretty short term view of things here.

Ages ago at one point of time in life, i wanted to become an i banker and work on wall street (yes, Gordon gecko was partly responsible for it 🙂 ) While doing the research on the kinds of people that the big banks hire, I came across an article that those places hired people from diverse backgrounds including History and Art majors from the ivy league colleges. Their main criteria for hiring was intellect with the reasoning that finance and excel skills could be taught over time…but they focussed on hiring the best and the best places..

I think we need to look at the IIMs in a similar light…even though our education system is far from perfect, the IIT’s and IIMs bubble up a reasonably good group of intelligent and hard working people. Some of the key learnings that most people imbibe sub consciously at these places include, learning to learn new stuff, hard work, appreciation of a deadline and getting work done. They are also pretty hard working and motivation for money is not necessarily a bad thing.

So in that context, asking them very pointed questions on e commerce might not be the best way to judge them…the basics of e commerce can be learned very quickly…what needs to be looked at is their thought process and how they can bring about a different line of thought compared to to the ‘veterans’ who have been in the industry.

cheers
Saurabh Poddar March 14, 2012, 2:26 pm

Alok,

Q6 …..how about adding one more line to the first line …..” and the boss is a school or a college dropout” ????…..
Joe Felix March 16, 2012, 9:16 am

Alok , The f***ers inside the Industry cant answer more than one or two questions , actually 😀
Venudhar Bhatt March 16, 2012, 3:20 pm

I fully echo the view here. As I read all the comments, I had already thought of writing something like that myself but am glad that I have been saved from the effort from doing so and you have written it very well.

We complain that Indian education system promotes rote learning but people focus on rote learning because they are evaluated on that and not on the real intellect or traits such as what I call “learnability”. Do you think that for a smart individual it would be very difficult to pick up these things quickly? I myself have done well in a domain (technology enabled learning), that I have learned nothing about during my formal education (plastics technology). Only good companies hire people not for what they know but what they are capable of knowing, understanding and doing! Essentially these companies have a long term wholesome view of managing business.

However, most others are worried about the results tomorrow. It is for the same reason that training or learning and development in this country is largely nothing to be talked about. One is trained well only if there is no other alternative, like in the software industry where companies like Infosys hire engineers who specialize in any domain (such as mechanical or electrical engg.) to be trained for 6 months on programming and turned into programmers.