Internship Program @ TNBS

 Profiles Offered:

1.       Graphic designer

2.       Content Management

3.       Marketing

Procedure for selection:

·         You are required to submit your CV + previous work which you might have done in domain you are applying.

·         This is work from home voluntary internship.

For Content Management Profile:

·         Mail an article on “The most memorable day of my life/ My most memorable event” along with your CV. Short listing would be done based upon this.

·         The shortlisted candidates would undergo a final round of either Telephonic/Skype interview.

·         If you are an active blogger, do send us link to your blog.

For Graphic Design Profile:

·         Prior knowledge of either Coral Draw/Photoshop/Illustrator.

·         Attach your previous work along with your CV.

For Marketing Profile:

·         Resume

·         Kindly suggest an approach for the following case:

ABC Pvt. Ltd is a company that aims at delivering quality Ethical hacking workshops for college students. It is their first workshop for which they are targeting students in Delhi and NCR region. With an inability to invest capital in promotions, suggest a way to ABC Pvt. Ltd to market its offerings so as to cater atleast 500 students for the workshop.

Work Profile for Content Management Interns

·          Based upon your area of interest you would write articles on General Awareness.

·         The number of articles would be limited to 2 or 3 per week.

Work Profile for Graphic Designers

·         Making TNBS promotional posters & designs for motivational posters.

·         Facebook Cover Image & Facebook Avatar

·         In case you have good knowledge of Adobe After Effects, you can make promotional videos.

Work Profile for Marketing Profile:

·         Developing various marketing strategies and working on cases related to marketing.

Motivating Interns: Go for Gold!

Introduction to our Medal System: Gold, Silver and Bronze medals will be awarded to you on a weekly basis judged solely by your quality work.

In case any of them achieves a minimum of 5 Gold medals out of total 8 that would be awarded in total internship time of 2 months, you will be given a chance to work permanently with the TNBS team.

Each and every student will be provided certificate stating the duration and kind of work done by them.

How to apply:

Send your Resume and other work at admin@thenextbigstep.in by 26 August, 2012.

Subject of the mail should be: TNBS Internship_Profile (you are applying to)

For e.g., TNBS Internship_Content Management

For any other query, you can drop us an email at admin@thenextbigstep.in with Subject as ‘Query’.  

GD preparation at it's easiest

• Democracy has hampered India’s progress

• India’s Water Crisis

• Are Indians less quality conscious?

• Should the public sector be privatized?

• Globalization vs. Nationalism

• Euthanasia: To do or Not to do?

• Why can’t India be a World-Class Player in Manufacturing Industry as it is in IT & BPO Sectors?

• What we need to do to reduce scams is better regulatory bodies?

• Social Network: Boon or Bane?

• Has Cricket spoiled other streams of Indian sports?

• Indian Villages: Strength or weakness of the nation?

• Final admission call from a good institute: Is it the beginning or the end?

• Should India break diplomatic ties with Pakistan?

• Is Valentine’s day harming Indian culture?

• Small is beautiful

• Growing big: Boon or Bane?

How to prepare for ZS Associates?

ZS Stands for Zoltners and Sinha, a company that proudly declares that you will work with us for 16 hours a day but it will be a great experience. Founded by Andrea Zoltners and Prabhakant Sinha of Kellog Business School, ZS specializes in consulting pharma companies.

Last year, ZS Associates conducted an online exam which consisted of following sections:

·         Basic Quant,

·         Verbal,

·         Logical reasoning and

·         Kind of puzzles section (similar to the one asked in NTSC).

Last section included simple questions like finding mirror image of given figure or finding an image similar to the given image and other similar questions. Written test was easy in all.

Then there was short listing after the written test. After that they had Group Discussion. GD was normal and similar to other companies. You just need to focus on basic GD preparation tips. After the GD round there was elimination and final students were called for interview.

One of the topics asked in GD was:

Is fasting best way to achieve any political change?

Interview was conducted at their office.

P.S.: This was the case last year. It may or may not change this year.

To read more about the company, click here 

Click here to see more topics asked in GD by various companies last year.

Consumer price index (CPI)

It is an inflationary indicator that measures the change in the cost of a predetermined basket of products and services, (including housing, electricity, food, and transportation ) by comparing it with a certain fixed base period. The CPI is used as a benchmark for making adjustments in Social Security payments, wages, pensions, and tax brackets to keep them in tune with the buying power of the dollar. It's often incorrectly referred to as the cost-of-living index.
It is the most widely known index for measuring economic performance and inflation in the United States. The CPI is calculated by taking price changes for each item in the predetermined basket of goods and averaging them; the goods are weighted according to their importance. The contents of the “market basket” are determined by the Consumer Expenditure Survey of about 15,000 families and their spending habits over a period of time. The BLS (bureau of labour statistics) collects price information from 23,000 retail and service businesses. The CPI includes sales taxes, but excludes income taxes and the prices of investments such as stocksand bonds.More important, the CPI does not include sales price of homes. Instead, it calculates the monthly equivalent of owning a home, which it derives from rents.


Changes in CPI are used to assess price changes associated with the cost of living.The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics measures two kinds of CPI statistics: CPI for urban wage earners and clerical workers (CPI-W), and the chained CPI for all urban consumers (C-CPI-U). Of course , the C-CPI-U is a better representation of the general public, because about 87% of the population comprises of the urban wage earners .

Merits of CPI :

1)The CPI is a measure of inflation, . Large rises in CPI during a short period of time typically denote periods of inflation and large drops in CPI during a short period of time usually mark periods of deflation.Therefore, it is used by the Federal government to determine whether economic policies need to be modified to prevent inflation. 
2) Secondly, CPI is used to adjust prices in other government economic indicators, such as Gross Domestic Product, or GDP. 
3) Also. the CPI is used to adjust benefit levels for recipients of Social Security and other government programs.

CPI has some demerits too which are as follows:
1) The predetermined market basket includes primarily items which do not see price spikes due to innovation, such as food, apparel, utilities, and education. 
2) substitution bias (variations in price can cause consumers to respond by substituting on the spot, but the basic measure holds their consumption of various goods constant)
3) product quality bias : The CPI measures the cost of purchasing a product without accounting for the quality of the product. 
4) some of the sale items are sometimes overweighed in sample rotation)

How to prepare for McKinsey Knowledge Centre?

Mc Kinsey has an excellent placement procedure. The competition is very fierce for this company. It has a long and extensive placement procedure which is as follows:

1.       CV shortlisting

2.       Written test

3.       Group discussion

4.       Interview rounds – 3 to 5

CV shortlisting: Company provides its own application form which asks your personal details, internships and few questions related to your career goals and understanding of the profile offered by the company.

Written test consists of case studies. These case studies are a mixture of data interpretation and reading comprehension. You need to practice these in order to develop speed and understand the fundamentals of solving case studies. Few sample case studies are given on company’s website. Just go through them and understand them properly.

Then comes the group discussion. There are three to four mediators for a group of ten students. GD is very well organised. Everybody is given time to introduce and summarise. For this you need to practice GD with your friends and be thorough with current affairs and basic terms of finance. Topic can be related to finance or current affairs.

Interview round consists of case studies, guesstimates and HR questions. Major focus is on guesstimates and case studies. You need to practice as much as you can.

Moreover, when you go for interview to any consultancy company, try wearing formal suits because these companies give a lot of importance to your personality. So behave and act your best during your interview of Mc Kinsey or any other consultancy.

All the very best!!!

P.S.: The entire procedure has been explained as per the recruitment procedure of the company in 2011. It may or may not change in 2012 or following years.

Few tips to improve your CV

1.      Keep the resume 1 page. (at the max 2 pages but still refrain from a 2 page resume)

2.      Give one or two line information about each of your work and internships.

3.      Use a Template while writing your headings.

4.      Organize the information in reverse chronological order.

5.      Standardize your resume with particular font style and font size.

6.      Don’t write about information such as ‘Won XYZ drawing competition in Class 2′ and the likes. Always write about those achievements which are significant and relevant to the profile company is offering.

7.      Don’t Try to fill the resume with unnecessary information (interviewer will ask for details if he requires them).

8.      Don’t Format your resume in fancy and/or large fonts

9.      Don’t fake the information in your resume.

10.  Don’t fill redundant data.

11. Be thorough with whatever you are writing. Don't write anything just for the sake of filling your CV .Your CV should be concise and to the point. Don't give detailed description of each and every thing in your CV.

What are your weaknesses?

·         I become too much of a workaholic sometimes that leads to me neglecting my family and my health.

·         I care about how other people perceive me.

·         I do trust my abilities but I become over confident sometimes.

·         Occasionally I over think and ponder too much.

·         Near the completion of my work I tend to stress out on details.

Questions which can be asked from the above answer are as follows:

1.       How has being over confident hampered your success?

2.       Is over thinking and pondering too much really your weakness?

3.       What are you doing to overcome your weaknesses?

4.       We don’t need workaholics. Instead we need people who work in a smarter way. How will you justify that?

5.       I personally don’t like those people who neglect their family and health because by doing so they ultimately decrease their productivity. This is going to be very harmful for you in coming future. You should really work on it and improve on it.

6.       How giving too much stress on details is your weakness? It is actually a good sign that you give importance to small things.

P.S.: You should justify each and every weakness and you should be able to explain what you are doing to overcome it? Moreover, you should not tell more than 2 weaknesses to the interviewer. Accepting your weaknesses is never considered negative rather, defending them goes against you.