KPMG Interview Experience

Hello Readers,

This blog is about my interview experience with KPMG India. I have covered the intricacies of the interview process along with the questions asked. I must highlight my profile to you guys so that you get the context of the interview. I had 1 year of experience working as a web developer and had worked as an ETL developer at cognizant for 3 years. During my stint, I got to work on tools and technologies like Informatica Powercenter, Informatica B2B Dx, Informatica MFT, Splunk, Python, Shell Scripting, PHP, MongoDB, Laravel, NodeJS, and SQL. 

So, let me begin. I have divided it into parts so that it gets easy to comprehend the sections separately. 

The Application.

I have been applying for jobs since September 2020. In the beginning, I hardly received any calls for the interview. I applied using Naukri and even got a Linkedin premium account. I must admit that most of the calls that I received later were via my applications over LinkedIn but during the initial period, I hardly got any call. During the first week of November, I saw a post on LinkedIn regarding an opening in KPMG, there a person had shared his email ID so I dropped my Resume to him. Weeks passed and I didn't receive any response. Meanwhile, I appeared for 4 more interviews and got rejected from all of them. The companies are namely:

• Symphony AI
• Servian
• Fractal AI
• Deloitte

You can read about my experience from here

During the 2nd last week of December I finally received a call from a KPMG India representative. 

Round #1

The day I received the call, the interview was scheduled on the following day. Since I had already been applying for the interviews I was well prepared but due to 4 rejections, I did lose some sinew. The interview was scheduled at 4:00 PM over Teams, 3 panelists joined and only technical questions were asked. The good part was they first asked me about my project activities and work and engaged in asking questions that were related to the kind of works I did or tools I handled. Some of the questions are as specified below:

1. You have a server location where you get a weekly file with name and date appended to its name. You need to process the latest file every week leaving the existing file untouched and then load the data to the target using a 1 to 1 mapping.
2. You have multiple files having data from different departments. You need to process the files and then insert them into a single target file with the filename as a column separator when you change the source you are reading from. 
3. What is partitioning both in DB level and Informatica Level?
4. Suggest ways to remove duplicate data using Informatica PC?
5. How can you improve the performance of a joiner?
6. What is the difference between snowflake schema and star schema?
7. What is the benefit of using a start schema?
8. What are the different kinds of dimensions you have worked on and define them?
9. How will you implement an SCD type 2 logic?

Few more questions were there but I am unable to recollect all of them. I did possibly list the important ones for sure. 

Round #2

On the following day, I was told about my selection and informed to take the 2nd round of the interview that was over the phone. Only 1 panelist connected to me during the afternoon. The questions that he asked me were more akin to optimization. 

1. What test cases will you consider for testing a 1 to 1 mapping loading to a database from a database.
2. What is push-down optimization?
3. Suppose you have a mapping that takes 5 mins to load a table. You have found today that it is taking 20 mins. How will you troubleshoot it to fix the issue? 
4. What automation you did and why?
5. What is indexing and what are different types of indexing?

So, those were the questions I was asked. It went well too and I got shortlisted for the next round. 

Round #3

On the following day, I was told about my selection and informed to take the 3rd round of interviews on 26th Dec. I remember the date since I had a booze party planned with my friends that day and the representative just confirmed me about the interview timings on that very morning of the 26th. The timings he proposed were not as per my suitability and though I talked with a tone that showed resentment he hardly gave any attention to it, perhaps due to the urgency of their requirement. So, I agreed and carried my laptop to appear for the interview though I was told that joining over the phone will suffice. The interview was scheduled for 3:00 PM. I reached my friend's place at 2:00 PM and had fun for an hour keeping myself dry. At 3:00 PM I had to move into the dining room of the tiny 1bhk apartment where I took the interview sitting on the dining table :p .

It went well. Someone with the designation of Partner connected. He asked me about my overall experience and was more determined in testing my attitude towards work. It was much of a chatter that lasted for 20 mins. I was asked about some of the challenging parts of my previous jobs and how I handled them. He also asked me about my reason for leaving and my expectations from KPMG. Generally, and HR asks about the monetary aspects but he too enquired about my CTC expectation and also asked me to justify it. 

So, this was how it went and as soon as I finished the call I jumped into the bedroom to kick start my pending pegs. 

P.S - I went maudlin that day!  

HR Round

The HR called me after 7-8 days post my 3rd round. I was asked about the reason to switch and informed about the location. He then asked me about the CTC I get and the CTC expected. I shared the same with him and asked for a 100% hike. He was hesitant a bit but asked to excuse from the call to discuss it with the panelists that interviewed me. After 2 days he called me and settled for a hike of almost 90%. The offer seemed good to me, that too the joining location was Kolkata. I also wanted to explore the working culture of a Big 4 company so I accepted the offer.  

Conclusion

What I felt is their pattern of interviewing is very much similar to the one of Delloite. They first take a brief from you about your previous engagement and then ask you questions revolving around it. So I would recommend you to be very thorough with the works you have done as they gonna dive deep into it and keep their questions around the kind of work you have handled.  

You must also try to stick to the Job description and highlight your work experience as per it. 

These companies(Big 4) have an ideology "Everyone is a leader", so try to highlight points in you that reflects your leadership, client handling, and team-building qualities.  

I mentioned during the interview my client handling experience during one of my projects and how I managed a team of 2 to address few deliverables in a project. My initiatives to take lead in developing automation also impressed them. 

You may also have a look into my vlog where I have shared my KPMG joining experience link here

You may also see my vlog on project experience

https://youtu.be/QSd4azMQaWs

If you want to ask me anything else you are free to comment or ping me on insta, facebook or linkedin. My insta handle is @theperkysun