10. All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy (Part 2)

Alright, lets pick up where we left off in previous blog post, shall we ?

Many students sign up to be members of any club or society just for the sake of getting discount for the events organised by that club or society. This is a reasonable and logical action since by joining two or three events, you will get back your membership fees from the discounts. But, do you actually realise that at the same time, all these members are actually being "used" by the top management of the club ? That is, for the sake of their CVs to show their Leadership and Initiative skills which I will refer as L and I from now on.

So, if you want to demonstrate that you have L and I then one way to show that is to be a founder and also president of a club. But please do not set up any Tom, Dick and Harry club, set a club or society that will fit your story of why you want to work in a particular industry. For example, if you want to work in finance industry, then set a Investment or Finance club/society. If you want to work in business or consulting industry, then set up a business consulting society. If you want to be maths teacher/lecturer, then set up a Maths and Stats society.

Like what Spiderman says, "With great power, comes greater responsibility", being a founder and/or president of a club or society is not an easy task. You must have a clear agenda of what your club/society is going to do. For example, if you are going to set up a Maths and Stats society, you can recruit second and/or third year students to conduct homework help session every week for maths and stats 1 and 2 and also the new linear algebra and calculus.You can ask maths lecturers in the institution you are studying at to explain the application of mathematics in real life. You can also teach less mathematically inclined people to think analytically and effectively using quizzes or puzzles.

Let me side-track a bit. Those of you who want to join banks' treasury department, you will often get a brain-teaser questions and you have to answer them very quick. Here are few real questions which I had been asked before in interviews.

1) Count how many Xs are there.

        X     X     X
    X X     X     X
X X X     X     X X
X X X X X     X X
X X X X X X X X

There are many smart ways of solving this, one way of doing it is sort them into  4 + 3 x 8 (see the picture below)

        X      X     X           

    X X     X     X

X X X X X X X X

X X X X X X X X

X X X X X X X X

Now, you may think 3 + 4 + 5 + 2 + 5 + 1 + 5 + 3 is also a trivial sum, but this way of thinking is wrong. When the problem gets more complicated, the trivial sum gets longer and longer and hence inefficient.

2) Today is July 23 2011 and it is Friday. What day is 2152 days after today ?

This question also tests your analytical thinking. The information July 23 2011 is irrelevant, some people may think it involves leap year in your calculation. We know that given today is Friday, every 7 day after today is still Friday. So, what we need to find is the remainder of 2152 divided by 7 (in Abstract Mathematics, we call this 2152 modulus 7). We can write 2152 = 2100 + 49 + 3 which is equal to 7 x 307 + 3. So, the remainder is 3. 3 days after Friday is Monday.

3) If you look at a clock now and the time is 3:15, what is the angle between the hour and the minute hands?

An idiot would immediately say 0 degree. The distance between any two hours is 360 degrees/12 hours = 30 degrees. At 3:15,  the minute hand will point at 3 and the hour hand will move towards 4 by 15 minutes / 60 minutes = 0.25 of the distance between 3 and 4. So,  0.25 x 30 degrees = 7.5 degrees.

The 3 questions above are asked during face to face interview. However, before that you may have to sit through lots of quantitative questions (by SHL, Kennexa, etc). The quantitative test usually require you to answer 20 questions within 15 minutes, that is, less than a minute for each question.

"What about Business Consulting Club ? What kind of agenda does the club have ?" There are lots of interesting activities you can organise if you are going to set up a consulting club. Let me share with you a bit about the interview process with management consulting firms. Some firms like McKinsey and Oliver Wyman require candidates to sit through GMAT-like questions before face to face interview while others immediately invite you for face to face interview. They are going to ask about your interest, why management consulting and then followed by market-sizing question and case interview which I will cover more in details next week if not sooner.

I am trying to hold this "All Work and No Play Makes Jack a Dull Boy" series as long as possible while gathering comments from 50 people on my previous blog post. Do not worry, I will still continue blogging even though I do not get those 50 comments. I can use some generic CV to illustrate my points at the end of this series.

Have a nice weekend !