Associate Consultant Interview Questions
Associate consultant interview questions shared by candidates
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Associate Consultant at Bain & Company was asked...
Estimate how many windows are in New York 33 AnswersDivide and conquer. I may not know the answer to the question, but I can determine the answer because I can approximate two supportnig questions: * How many people are in New York (City or State, btw) * How many windows, on average, does each person have (home, car, work, shopping center, ....) I'll say 10M in NYC and 10 windows per person so my answer is 100M windows in NYC. 10 windows per person?!?! I want to see what apartment you're living in!! he said 10 windows per person total (including car, home etc). 10 makes good sense. However, i do believe you'll have to go deeper than that. i.e- calculate that, add businesses, shopping centres, cabs and passing cars etc. Show More Responses I would have said , "if you hire me, I'll get my team on that right away." Not everyone in the city has a vehicle, so 10 per person can't be the basis of calculation. estimated Define "New York". Should the answer include opportunities and operating systems? There is an N, e, w, a Y....nope, no windows Since Bain is a consulting firm, this question seems to be used as a way to probe applicant's approach to engagement problems. First ask questions to clarify the goal. Is New York the city, the state, or another municipality that happens to also be called New York, such as New York, Texas. Are we talking about windows on a building, or will it also include car windows, store shelf windows, or maybe even MS Windows licenses. After the information is clarified, it's time to analyze. Estimating the population and estimate an average number of windows per person is one approach, but it may seem too general. Another approach can be divide and conquer. Estimate the number of residential houses, estimate the number of offices, and number of vehicles, etc, and multiply by an average number for each type of structure. Round the number to the nearest million or tenth of million to make it easy to remember for the client. I don't do windows, sorry I gather that this very important question has some significant meaning to you, and I feel you should hire me to get to work on the answer right away. I'm going to need some support staff for this, and a travel expenses budget, and a small but dedicatd team of window counters. Gosh, see how when you ask me a question of genuine importance, I get all fired up? "call Microsoft" Show More Responses Four, the answer is four. Seriously?! No. Simple, all of them. If you are going to estimate correctly, you need to come up with a range. A single point estimate is pretty much guaranteed to be wrong. No matter which approach you take (average building floors by average number of windows, people * number of windows, etc), at best you get a midpoint of a range. The question is how wide does the range need to be? At this point, with little information, you need a pretty wide estimate (in the million window + range). Exactly why I was thinking of Corning as a great Private Equity deal! Let me explain...and let's take this one step further...let's start with the Eastern Seabord, and the number of windows that are really hurricane proof..now let's look at the advantages of Gorilla Glass, it's uses, and strategic opportunities...let's go bigger than New York! 42. as many as the glasses.. new y " O " rk. only one window. I personally don't have the answer but I will find out and get back to you. When do you need to have a response? windows 8 Show More Responses do i include window's on every1's computers monitor or laptop for this?? if so then 10 windows per person at instant will be less caz the question is not clear at all, only one microsoft windows more than door............ 1 window compulsory = no. of houses in NY There are 271,925,321 windows. If there are more windows then it would have been made after the survey and if it is less, then it would have broken down. Are you talking about glass pained windows? Do double pained windows count as two or only one. Should I include MS Windows? What about the number of windows the average person has open at any one time? Which version of MS Windows? Are we talking both server and desktop versions of Windows? I know the answers to all of these questions, but I need to know which ones you want included in the answer. Then (if you have some paper) write some numbers down, do some calculations and give them an answer of some big number that is based on the calculations you made. (This is a question where they are trying to see if you can think outside the box and come up with some sort of reasonable estimate. There is no right answer that can be acheived or verified.) There are no windows for new york because it is a city not a house to provide windows @Bill: you forget '2' the after the '4' People 50m=dwelling x 5 windows =250million What size is your window dimensions ? Large commercial could equal 4 residential size windows. Do you consider single pane or double glass as still one window ? What about glass block windows, do they count ? Like Carl Segan used to say, billions and billions... |
How many passengers leave JFK airport on a given day. 19 AnswersNot sure: approx. 100,000? 1.5 million no matter if they are flying in or out, they all leave Show More Responses My answer would have been the same: "Pretty much all of them!" :) planes leave, people board. ALL OF EM ! (and to elaborate - The no. of ppl flying in + the no. of ppl flying out --all leave basically some on foot and other on air All leave except for Tom Hanks, he stays stuck in "The Terminal"....... (You have to include some humor when you answer :) 50k how is this a brain teaser? This question tests how you think critically. In this example, you could start with estimating that JFK has about 100 gates, and that a plane leaves from a gate every 3 hours, totaling 800 flights per day. Guessing that the average plane holds 200 passengers, you arrive at 160,000 per day departing. The interviewer is not as interested that you get the right, or even close, answer, but rather the thought process you go through to figure it out. For those that are interested, the real number is about 131,000 per day based on statistics from 2007. the question was "How many passengers leave JFK airport on a given day.?" my answer is the (number of people arrives that day )+( the employees work there (except for the security guards)) after all no-one stays on the airport forever The answer is the thought process, as above. Personally, I'd have started with the number of flights: flight frequency per runway * runways * open hours. Assume half are leaving, then guess the number of passengers per plane. I might also point out that the number of assumptions multiplied together in that calc is such that you're unlikely to be within an order of magnitude of the right answer... Tim Besse stole my answer! And I thought I was the only one who thought of that. Seriously though, if I was asked this question in an interview I would answer "probably about half" figuring that half the flights are departing and half are arrivals, similar to what another poster stated. Depending on the position you are interviewing for they may be impressed by you going through a long critical calculation, I don't know. In my line of work, character is more important that pure intelligence. Show More Responses all of them 100% 1. Those passengers that arrive on an airplane either leave by another plane or leave the airport by other means. 2. Those passengers that arrive by other means take a plane and leave or they are not passengers. 3. That is, if you exclude those that are still there at midnight. You can assume this number is constant from night to night. Well, there are passengers in cars that come and go, those onboard planes that do the same and some perhaps catching a lift on a bicycle or maybe even piggyback. If there are those that try to actually ride on JFK, he's dead, so - good luck. I would have to agree with those that say all of them. However I must point out an addition to the facts. We are all assuming something when answering these types of problems and as such the answers are as much subjective as they maybe factual. To the rest here, READ the question. Passengers are ON the planes if not then they are NOT passengers! ALL passengers leave eventually however what is a 'day' not specified as 24hrs- because a 24hr period COULD span 2 'days'. ALSO it is possible that a plane could be held hostage on the tarmac for more than 24hrs - these passengers would not leave on the same 'day' so our total may be slightly less than 100% on any given day. Ultimately though, I agree that it is the interviewer's 'hidden' question that counts. With these types of questions the answers are not so mathematically obvious. But rather, the questioner is looking deeper into your logic, character, personality etc. Are you a thinker, do you think out-side the box, do you get frustrated, are you a smart-ass, etc. That's been my experience not all them. because som arrive at one day and leave the next day. My answer will be "A LOT!" the answer does not require a number but how will you find out. It depends on the day of the year and also on how many people are actually on the plane and if all of them are going to JFK or are catching connecting flights. |
A snail moves up a 5m long tree as follows: 1) he goes up 3m in the morning and 2) he goes down 2m at night. How long will it take him to reach the top of the 5m tree? 5 Answers3 days. Not 5 days. Draw it out if you don't believe me. What was the technical interview about? Do they ask you questions about programming? I have the MANH interview soon and am not sure how to prepare for the technical interview! Thanks! @ Homer Simpson, The technical interview was simply them asking me to explain a "technical" process on the whiteboard. There was no programming, though I used a programming example in answering this question. The overall interview process requires little preparation, with the exception of the panel interview since I'm assuming you got the question before hand. Again they want to see the following: 1) Logical thought flow 2) Ability to present/explain on a white-board 3) Can assimulate concepts (including programming) quickly Show More Responses Thanks Boss for the quick reply! I just came back and I think it went well. How much time did they take to reply back to you? http://brainteaserbible.com/interview-brainteaser-snail-drainpipe-climbs-falls-at-night-how-long-reach-top |
What is the exact angle formed by the hands on a clock when the time reads 9:30? 11 AnswersRight 270 degrees Common response, but it's incorrect. What about the hour hand? It's not pointing directly at the 9 anymore... Show More Responses 105 degrees 52.5 60 degrees, or 300 degrees whichever way you want to look at it. |0.5(60H-11M)| = 105 degrees 1/4 of 180 which is 45 ta-daaah oops, I mean 1/4 of 360 :) 90 105 degrees: if the hour hand is right at 9, and the minute had was right at 30 then it would be 90 degrees. but since we're 30 minutes into the hr, the hour hand will be (theoretically) half waybetween 9 and 10pm. so you need to calculate that additional variation. If have the arms 3 hrs apart makes a perfect 90 degrees, then each hr would equal 30 degrees -> thus a half hr would result in a 15 degrees. 90+15= 105 degrees 61.25 |
Associate Consultant at Mattersight was asked...
You have an unlimited number of marbles colored 3 ways (green, red, blue) how many marbles do you need to select in order to be certain you have one of each color 3 Answersfour, logic your way through it. Yeah, I'm pretty sure to be sure, you need an infinite number of pulls Worded like that, you would need an infinite amount of pulls to be "certain." |
How many people can you fit into texas? 5 AnswersAll the people in the world will fit in Texas. Added to the previous comment: if with the population density of NYC. Depends on how much cubic feet of space each person requires; then requires analysis of total people in world/usa, and total space they require. Then compare with total space in Texas. Show More Responses If they are just occupying the space and there is no need to live there, the entire population of the world could theoretically be in Texas at the same time. Presuming you aren't given the size of texas... Population of New York City: 8 million. Population of the world? 7 billion. Could you fit 1000 New York Cities in to Texas? Probably not. You can check it with numbers, 300sq mi for NYC, 250k sq mi for Texas. You could then go a step further and say that if we were only concerned with how many people can we cram in there, then we could probably increase the density of NYC by an order of magnitude at least, in which case yes, we could probably fit the whole world in there. An assumption that you can fit NYC in a 100 times (a reasonable if not low estimate), and that you could probably fit 80 million people in to New York city if they all squeeze together, you would get a total fit of about 8 billion people could fit in Texas. |
Explain the difference between TCP and UDP 4 AnswersUDP is for like Skype and TCP is for like Youtube.....thats all I know but it has to do with the way packets are received and acknowledged TCP is a reliable protocol that utilizes windowing and acknowledgement packets to ensure all traffic is transmitted and received UDP is an unreliable protocol that does not utilize windowing and acknowledgements, and is good to use when you can't re-transmit a packet (EG a voice or video packet) That's really as difficult as it gets? Show More Responses UDP packet processing is faster compared to TCP packet processing. This is because once TCP packets are delivered to the destination, an acknowledgement is expected at the transmission end. If no acknowledgement is received, re-transmission of packets occurs at the transmission end. This is opposite to UDP operation, in which no acknowledgement is necessary. |
Brainteaser: If I were to give you a cube that was 10x10x10 units in volume, how many individual 1x1x1 units would not appear on the outside of the cube? 2 Answers(n^3) - ((n-2)^3) Or you could just say 8x8x8. |
Associate Consultant at Mattersight was asked...
How much would you charge to wash the windows in downtown? 2 Answers$25 per window Say maybe the average building downtown has 100 windows. Suppose further that there are 200 buildings downtown. Then you have about 20,000 windows to wash. Perhaps it takes 2 minutes to wash each window. Then you will need 20,000/2 = 10,000 minutes to wash all the windows downtown. This translates to roughly 170 hours, which working a 40 hour week will take you just over 4 weeks (4.25 weeks). There's 52 weeks in a year, so you have worked 4/52 = 1/13 of the year. Now we need to make our numbers good to work with. Say you want 39,000 per year salary. Then you would charge 39,000/13 = 3,000 to wash all the windows in downtown. I'm pretty sure this is how they would like you to answer these questions. |
Associate Consultant at Microsoft was asked...
Describe the difference between a struct and class. 2 AnswersA struct cannot be inherited. In C++ members of a struct are assumed public and members of a class are assumed private |
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