I'd attended PPTs (Pre-placement Talks) of almost all the companies I'd interest in during my placement time. Many students find attending PPTs a waste of time. I was not one of them.

I liked attending PPTs. I felt they gave me continuous motivation to be consistent in my preparation. I remember the first PPT I'd attended. It was EXL and it felt like almost every final year student was in that room. Not a single chair in Kalidas Auditorium was unoccupied.

Looking at such a big crowd of students in that auditorium, me and my friend looked at each other with confused looks. We exchanged these words.

Me: "Yaar Rahul, yaha toh bahot log hai be. Competition tagda hai be."

Rahul: "Ho jaaega be. Naukri hi toh hai."

Yes the competition is going to be tough. So be prepared. I'm not trying to scare you. I'm just saying give your best shot at preparing for the companies you're interested in. It's just a matter of few months. I remember I'd studied more in that semester than all the previous semesters combined. This semester is an opportunity to learn the maximum out of your college life. Make it count.

I always made it a practice to take notes of the presentations I was attending. And then when needed I would look at them and try to understand what exactly is the company looking for. Be the boring one and take notes.

Following are the snippets of some of the companies I could find in my mobile.

1. FICo

   • Define score card for banking and lending institutions
   • Clients include DB, HSBC, ICICI bank, Coca-Cola, JP Morgan Chase, Healthways
   • Project in diverse fields
   • FiCo score - Number 1 score in North America
   • Hiring 25 to 30 people across India
   • Custom analytic modeling for Maths and Computing
   • Informal structure and informal culture

2. Miebach consulting

   • Supply chain Company
   • What is supply chain - Everything involving from the start of manufacture of product till delivery at right time at right price
   • Started in 1973, started in India in 1996, FOUNDED by Dr. Miebach
   • Consulting in automotive, spare parts, fashion, FMCG, retail and e-commerce
   • Hiring for Associate consultant
   • Close to 60 employees in India
   • You need to be a team player, result oriented, a leader
   • Procedure for hiring: CV submission, test, GD/case interview
   • Test quantitative, analytical

3. Capital one

   • Credit cards, auto finance, home loans, consumer and commercial banking...50 percent bigger than SBI in terms of bank labs
   • Us, UK, Canada
   • Fortune 500 company, ranked 127
   • Only 22 years old but is comparable to top banks
   • Credit card interest rate in India? Look for it.
   • Making decisions based on data

4. Times internet

   • PLP, product leader program
   • Analytical ability, General aptitude
   • Basic aptitude test followed by pseudo algorithm test

5. Goldman Sachs

   • Market maker, provides liquidity
   • Advisory services eg. Merger and acquisition
   • Financier eg. For a growing company like Facebook
   • Asset manager
   • Principal, find the best companies to be invested in
   • Founded in 1869, 32400 people in 65 offices in 34 countries
   • Survived 2008 crisis
   • Financial holding company
   • Bangalore is global hub of GS with representatives from all divisions
   • Our client's interests always come first
   • We anticipate the rapidly changing needs of our clients
   • GS culture: Excellence, integrity team work, meritocracy, entrepreneurial spirit client device
   • Quantitative roles
   • Investment management, automated trading, developing algorithms to run trade on electronic markets like NYSE, NASDAQ
   • Risk modeling building models to quantify market risk, liquidity risk. Post trade activities, surveillance analytics
   • What is risk? Why measure risk? Relevant to whom?
   • One possible measure: How much can we loose in one day?
   • Historical simulation
   • Value at risk

6. AmEx, American Express

   • Started in 1850 as courier firm
   • Moved to charge and credit card business in 1958
   • Transactions worth 900 billion dollars by volume globally
   • Interesting projects like shopping through Twitter, tweet to buy launched in US last year
   • AmEx is all three parties combined in online transaction
   • 500 plus people based in Gurgaon and Bangalore
   • Decision sciences, campaign management, big data.
   • Newly involved in e-commerce
   • Generate different kinds of score
   • Wipro
   • Wipro, applying thought
   • WIPRO: western India vegetable products limited
   • Got Listed on NYSE in 2001
   • Provider of Consulting services, BPO, IT, R&D services
   • Largest independent R&D services provider in the world
   • Six strategic SBU (small business units)
   • Banking & financial services: healthcare, life science and services, retail consumer products, global media & telecom, energy natural resources & utilities, manufacturing and hi-tech
   • One of the most ethical companies by Ethisphere institute

7. Futures First

   • Propriety trading, most challenging work in financial services
   • You don't take calls from clients...you invest on your own
   • GHF group
   • Trading...buy low, sell high...having an expectation and trying to trade on that expectation
   • Discipline, risk taking ability, decision making, street smartness, flexibility and adaptability, mental toughness, analytical ability
   • Trades in: Interest rates, commodities, foreign exchange, equity index futures
   • In terms of volume based market share, we are in top 10
   • Group of 700 trader and analysts
   • Started in 1993 in London, in India in 2004
   • Performance bonus on an average of 1.2 lakhs
   • Bonus can be zero or explode to multiple times of your salary
   • Work week from Monday to Friday, working hours depend on your product market
   • The best part is "even I don't know what is the maximum amount I can make" - one of the employees in the video

8. Citi Bank

   • PPT. presented by Raj Kurucheti
   • Global bank, 200 years of history
   • Leader in the financial sector with presence globally
   • Our primary business in citi corp
   • Citi technology centre: Pune
   • Test analytical, logical reasoning, language agnostics, coding
     
     I hope you found this post helpful. Share it with your friends if you found it useful. And as always, drop a comment if you have any queries and I will respond back to you as soon as possible.
     
     Prepare well for your placements. All the best!