“Do you know Excel?” is a standard question which Banks' HR asks when candidates are interviewed for back office/ operations openings at Evolve XL. 95% of the candidates normally give a chilled out “Yeah, I know Excel” or, “Yes, I know Excel.” And all these guys get rejected…. Surprised..?
The candidates who get selected answered something like this “Yes Sir, I know excel, advanced Excel, V Lookup, H Lookup, pivot table, mail merge, micro, macro, if you give me a system right now I can show you how comfortable I am working on them. These are the kind of answers that gets you jobs.
In my last corporate stint as Head, SME for Standard Chartered Bank in Mumbai, I normally used to interview the prospective candidates in their 2nd or 3rd round. These candidates invariably used to be MBA Finance students and were absorbed as Branch Managers or Wealth Managers for a salary of approximately 4 to 5 Lacs per annum. I invariably ended up asking just one question and 99% could never get it right and the question used to be as given below:
“Mr. Hitesh Shah is our elite HNI (High Networth Individual) customer having an annual relationship of 50 Crores with the bank. He never comes to the bank in normal circumstances, this morning, however, he just walked in and asked you for a loan as he plans to buy a new property in Bandra. He needs to execute this deal in the next 5 days and seems to be in a tearing hurry. He is carrying his last two years' balance sheets along with all the profit and loss account statements, his Director's report, auditor’s report, his bank statements and other KYC documents. He needs to know in the next 15minutes, how much loan is he eligible for, and now you need to quickly calculate his EBIDTA income eligibility and also check out if he can get more under industry margin eligibility calculation.”
This is what you need to know if you want that dream job in the bank which you aspire for. This is the domain knowledge recruiters want in the candidates they hire. This is the difference between teaching skill and teaching content. As an MBA finance I will, for sure, expect the candidate to have the skills to be able to analyse balance sheets and work with application oriented calculations and ratio analysis.
As I have earlier brought out that there are two kind of knowledge- the first is content based knowledge that we normally call “academic knowledge”, and the second would be skill based knowledge, which we know as “application knowledge.” People who are working will vouch that academic knowledge is of no use at workplaces where only application knowledge might be required. Since Indian education system still promotes academic knowledge, smart candidates take time out and utilize resources to improve on their application knowledge simultaneously.
I always advise our students and candidates that if they are looking for a specific job, they must go and meet people who are employed in that role and ask them “What are the skill sets that one needs for that job?” And it's only then that you will have some bang on answers. If you have them, Bingo! and if not, you must learn them.
Will soon come out with the last blog for this section. Till then, happy reading!
The candidates who get selected answered something like this “Yes Sir, I know excel, advanced Excel, V Lookup, H Lookup, pivot table, mail merge, micro, macro, if you give me a system right now I can show you how comfortable I am working on them. These are the kind of answers that gets you jobs.
In my last corporate stint as Head, SME for Standard Chartered Bank in Mumbai, I normally used to interview the prospective candidates in their 2nd or 3rd round. These candidates invariably used to be MBA Finance students and were absorbed as Branch Managers or Wealth Managers for a salary of approximately 4 to 5 Lacs per annum. I invariably ended up asking just one question and 99% could never get it right and the question used to be as given below:
“Mr. Hitesh Shah is our elite HNI (High Networth Individual) customer having an annual relationship of 50 Crores with the bank. He never comes to the bank in normal circumstances, this morning, however, he just walked in and asked you for a loan as he plans to buy a new property in Bandra. He needs to execute this deal in the next 5 days and seems to be in a tearing hurry. He is carrying his last two years' balance sheets along with all the profit and loss account statements, his Director's report, auditor’s report, his bank statements and other KYC documents. He needs to know in the next 15minutes, how much loan is he eligible for, and now you need to quickly calculate his EBIDTA income eligibility and also check out if he can get more under industry margin eligibility calculation.”
This is what you need to know if you want that dream job in the bank which you aspire for. This is the domain knowledge recruiters want in the candidates they hire. This is the difference between teaching skill and teaching content. As an MBA finance I will, for sure, expect the candidate to have the skills to be able to analyse balance sheets and work with application oriented calculations and ratio analysis.
As I have earlier brought out that there are two kind of knowledge- the first is content based knowledge that we normally call “academic knowledge”, and the second would be skill based knowledge, which we know as “application knowledge.” People who are working will vouch that academic knowledge is of no use at workplaces where only application knowledge might be required. Since Indian education system still promotes academic knowledge, smart candidates take time out and utilize resources to improve on their application knowledge simultaneously.
I always advise our students and candidates that if they are looking for a specific job, they must go and meet people who are employed in that role and ask them “What are the skill sets that one needs for that job?” And it's only then that you will have some bang on answers. If you have them, Bingo! and if not, you must learn them.
Will soon come out with the last blog for this section. Till then, happy reading!
No comments:
Post a Comment