I got contacted by the recruiter on LinkedIn. After basic screening I was scheduled for first round which consisted of Behavioral and Case study. Couple of days later I got an email saying that I am shortlisted for the onsite round. They flew me to Evanston for the Super day. The onsite round consisted of four back to back interviews. One Behavioral, One Analytical and Two Case interviews. The very next day I got an email saying that I have been shortlisted.

Applied through employee referral for Senior Business Process Analyst with the Business Technology function. HR called to verify some operational details before scheduling the Case Interview and Behavioral Interview. Both last between 30mins to 45mins. Case Interview: An Insurance company wanted to access the poor performance of one of its household plans. Needed a graph and table to be populated. 1. 5 different tables were provided and asked to discuss on how the graph and table can be built from those 5 tables (joins, aggregation etc). 2. What error checks and validations will be performed on that data to ensure data integrity? 3. What other recommendations do you have for the team to gauge their insurance plan performance? My Approach: 1.Used excel to quickly project the 5 tables at one place 2. Used joins and aggregation and count functions to arrive at the specific column values for the desired table 3. provided error checks based on data types and unique field constraints 4. was wrong for one of the columns where I didn't have to join two tables. Interviewer promptly corrected me and asked me to give a scenario where I might have to join those tables. Behavioral Interview: After a quick self introduction from the interviewer, I was asked for examples on the below: 1. give an example of a time when your motivation to learn resulted in better understanding of client and their requirements. 2. Give an example when you had to push deadlines and how did you convince the client for the same. 3. Give an example of how team work helped you and the project to succeed well. 4. How will be go about eliciting requirements from a client who is very vague with what they want. My Approach: 1. My last project in finance team where I had no knowledge of finance operations and my motivation to learn about their business process helped them in identifying gaps in their business process and also in better visibility across cross-functional teams on what they were doing. 2. Focus is on the Budget, Time and responsibility of ownership. Mentioned that we take care that budget is not over the limit during extension of deadlines, try to limit the time needed from business during this extended deadline and have clear ownership of responsibility for the cause of extension 3. Spoke of a time when we had a 7 business day cycle for yearly-roll over projects and how involving IT team early on helped us in aligning the priorities and devising work-around for non-deliverable items due to the tight timeline. 4. Focus on business process and where they are today and where they want to be, rather than looking at what client wants. A want is only a means of satisfying a need and getting to the true business need is more important than what they want. Both Interviewers gave me an opportunity to ask questions about the company and their work: Below is what I asked: 1. ZS Associates works with 18 of the top 20 pharma clients. How is client confidentiality ensured and is there a conflict of interest while dealing with competing clients? How is the knowledge repository built since details on client process cannot be a part of the documentation? What knowledge is shared between projects to help each other, yet protect the client sensitive data/process. 2. 3 things why you continue to work at ZS? 3. Support from ZS to new associates who don't have domain expertise. How are the trainings and employee development activities? 4. The kind of projects that the technology division takes up and the duration of those. Also asked for details on being on multiple projects or single projects since Analytics division has employees on multiple projects at the same time. Awaiting result on the First Round.