I failed the 1st round of a Google S&O interview (non-tech , analytics slant). This is the question I believe got me-
New
Vesper Lyn
Jan 14
9 Comments
A sales leader noted that Q1 sales are down . He wants to develop a close the gap plan to bring the organisation back to target.
How would you go about thinking through this?
What metrics would you collect?
How would you present this data ?
TC - 120
YOE - 7 yrs in consulting
#data #dataanalytics #datascience
#product
comments
Yes you need a framework and I’d start by talking through the internal and external environment. I’d also ask questions on historic performance for Q4 (and the Q4 that just ended) as well as the historic performance for Q1. For external you’d want to know about changes in competitors products, market share changes, any supply chain constraints, increased supplier power, etc. for internal you’d want to ask about the number of units shipped, any increases in costs for manufacturing, distribution (assuming it’s not a software product if it is focus on the areas specific to that product). You’re trying to gain an understanding for what’s causing the changes.
Then when you think you have an idea of what could be happening you’d start thinking about what metrics can prove or disprove your hypothesis. But you do need to engage your interviewer both in your thought process and also to make it more of a conversation.
If it isn’t expected, start bucketing sales by different categories to see if any specific bucket(s) accounts for the difference. Start by bucketing by client industry, company size, tenure with your product, product tier, whatever seems reasonable. Interviewer may dig in on a specific bucket. Or they may say that all buckets display the same pattern, so then you can move on from the buckets. If it is bucket specific, you can start talking about putting more resources towards the sales team that deal with those buckets, since you’re working with a sales leader.
See if the change is due to product/internal changes or market/consumer changes. Did you push a new feature? Discontinue an old feature? Is there a new competitor? Are there general market trends that are relevant?
At any point in this process, they may ask for a specific metric that would measure some part of this process. Some volume/revenue metric, normalized, is probably good. Presenting the data depends on what path you go down, and what metric you choose.
Depends on where the interviewer wants to dig in. Feel free to narrow in on some other scenarios, and I can try to give other metrics.
I’ll add more details to the question later