ZS Associates

I'm EXTREMELY happy about my recent progress! I received an offer from ZS Associates to join their team as consultant, and I've accepted their offer to start in August 2011.

Many have not heard of ZS Associates, and to be honest, until I saw the job posting, I haven't either. As I did more research on the firm, the more I liked the work that they do. I come from a marketing and sales background in the financial industry, and have experience with customer segmentation. When I heard that ZS is a specialized sales and marketing consulting firm in the pharmaceutical industry, I was immediately interested for I've always had an interest in baby boomer industries.

I called up an alumni who worked at ZS Toronto office, and she offered tremendous help in understanding the type of work, the software, the clients, and the interview process. Though she was a stranger, she was always cheering me on, telling me "You could do it!" which was really motivating!!

I did an insane amount of case prep... everyday consisted of at least 4 cases before class, and another 2 or 3 after class. Some days I get very discouraged and had doubts about whether this effort will pay off, but I guess it did!! =)

First round was one behvioural and one case - I found that my research on the pharmaceutical industry helped a lot in the case. Second round was one deep-dive behavioral, one short verbal case with some behavioural, and one case presentation.

The toughest part was a case presentation where I was given 40 minutes to read through a LOT of material (about 20 pages of text & graphs), and come up with a recommendation. Then I had 30 minutes to present the information and answer questions from the interviewers. The time crunch was definitely the hardest part, and I hadn't expected to receive so many slides! Aside from the tough case presentation, and some tough behavioural questions in first round, I thought the interview process was fairly similar to other interviews.

For the case presentation, I practiced with some Ivey cases from profs with 3-4 pages of text and 3-4 exhibits, but nothing like what I had during the actual interview! I am SO thankful for my classmates who supported me throughout this grueling process of case preps, especially those who don't even want a case in return! I can't thank them enough!!

Throughout this process, I had the opportunity to meet some very nice people in the different firms, of which Deloitte's people really impressed me... the caliber of people, the culture of collaboration. It's unfortunate that I had to choose between the firms, but the positive experience I had at Deloitte definitely ranked "up there"!