« Week 03 » Google vs Govt. and the Port of Singapore! BTW, can you tell about yourself?
Welcome!
The third iteration of the newsletter is here!. If you have not checked yet - “How you can get maximum out of the newsletter!”
Week 3
|— Concepts
|— — — Decision Model: 80/20 Rule
|— — — Product Metrics: Churn rate vs Growth rate
|— — — Soft Skills: Steve Jobs presentation style
|— Articles
|— — — Industry Analysis: Ports Sector
|— — — Biz-Tech News: Highlights
|— — — Preparation Articles: Learning better!
|— Tests
|— — — Estimation Guess: Cargo Ships
|— — — Puzzles: 5 Brainteasers
|— — — Quantitative Aptitude: Career360 1/1
|— Questions
|— — — Case Interview: Port of Singapore
|— — — Product Interview: Google Search Engine
|— — — HR Interview: About yourself
Concepts Section
This section covers the theory part of the product and business world, which are tested in the interviews.
Decision Model: 80/20 Rule
Principle: "Work smarter". There’s a lot of data and factors out there relating to your problem, and a lot of analyses you could do. Ignore most of them. Focus on the most important ones — the key drivers.
Situation: 80 per cent of sales will come from 20 per cent of your sales force; 20 per cent of a job will take up 80 per cent of the time; 20 per cent of the population controls 80 per cent of the wealth.
Note: It doesn’t always work (sometimes the bread falls butter-side up). Not to forget, numbers "80" and "20" just represent "big" and "small" analogy!
Product Metrics: Churn Rate vs Growth Rate
Principle: Churn rate measures how much an old customer is engaged with the business. This is different from the growth rate, which measures the scale at which the business grows.
Situation: High churn rate signifies that old customers are now not using the product or service. Growth rate focuses on the new customer segment.Note: Generally speaking, the churn rate should be used when a business has reached maturity in terms of its feature delivery. For a young business or feature, growth rate proves to be a worthy metric to track.
Soft Skills: Steve Jobs' presentation style
Here are key take-away from Steve Jobs' presentation style
A Short Headline to capture the focus of the slide
Passionate expression to show your excitement and interest in the content
People see you, so keep the audience's eyeballs on self to keep them engaged
Narrate a story in a manner that makes them more receptive listeners
Preparing the presentation in advance: work hard at it
Articles Section
This section covers articles that open a new horizon of thinking and builds critical analysis skills.
Industry Analysis: Ports
Here is the brief outline of the Ports Industry by IBEF reports:
According to the Ministry of Shipping, around 95% of India's trading by volume and 70% by value is done through maritime transport.
India has 12 major ports, and under the National Perspective Plan for Sagarmala, six new mega ports will be developed in the country. Out of India’s 204 non-major ports, 44 are functional and strategically located on the world’s shipping routes.
Govt has allowed Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) of up to 100% under the automatic route for port and harbour construction and maintenance projects. It has also facilitated a 10-year tax holiday to enterprises that develop, maintain and operate ports, inland waterways and inland ports.
In FY20, major ports in India handled 704.82 million tonnes (MT) of cargo traffic, implying a CAGR of 2. 74% during FY16-FY20. Cargo traffic at non-major ports reached 447.21 MT in FY20 (till December 2019).
Trade will boost demand for containers. In FY20, container traffic in India (for major ports) reached 9. 98TEUs, implying a growth of 1.12% y-o-y.
Biz-Tech News: Highlights
Preparation Articles
Merely acquiring information is not learning. Learning is a two-step process:
Read or listen: feeding ourselves new information.
Process and recall: connecting new materials to what we already knew.
Our focus should be on understanding the bigger picture, on how things relate to each other.
There are many ways to learn effectively, and it boils down to our personal preferences. This can be either by mind mapping, or active recall, or teaching others, or any combination of these and other techniques.
Tests Section
This is the section to test our aptitude skills!
Estimation Guess
A cargo ship or freighter is a merchant ship that carries cargo, goods, and materials from one port to another.
Guess the number of cargo ships, moving in the Indian Ocean during a regular day.
Puzzles
Curated Puzzles from GFG and Puzzlesite:
Quantitative Aptitude
As we know, practice is the key to have great quantitative aptitude skills. Get a free test (CAT mock) from Career 360.
Link: https://learn.careers360.com/test-series-cl-cat/
Questions Section
This is the section to test our critical analysis and reasoning.
Case Question: Port of Singapore
Client: The Port of Singapore is the busiest container transhipment hub and the largest publicly owned port in the world.
Need: Enter the Indian Market
Purpose: Increase in revenue
Timeline: In 10 years
Industry: Refer to the reports aboveShould they enter the market?
Product Question: Google Search Engine
You are the global product lead of Google Search Engine. With the rising concern over privacy, governments want to regulate what is being shown in the search results.
How will you improve your search engine stack?
Propose 3 actionable steps to make features which add privacy and transparency layers in the search engine. Also, provide metrics to measure the implementation.
HR Question: About yourself
Question: Tell me about yourself.
This is the most common, yet most underrated HR questions of all times. Here are some tips to curate your answer:
Dive into past but fly to the future!
Keep it professional
Tailor to the needs of the position applied
Don't recite resume!
Be succinct and positive
Thank You!
I would suggest you follow the method of "make slight changes while practising". Changes can be done on Distribution Model (B2B vs B2C), Industry (Fintech, Agriculture, Ed-tech, Textile, etc.), Time (15 mins, 30 mins, 45 mins). Also, I would like you to have a small group (2-5 members) who would keep the check on progress.
Feel free to drop me a mail for any suggestions or ideas!
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