A 24-year-old man shared his interview experience on Reddit, alleging that a real estate company wanted someone as intelligent as Albert Einstein for a digital marketing role. The man, who was offered a Rs 5 LPA package, said that he was asked an IIM-level question during the interview.
The man, who initially claimed to have rejected the offer, agreed to do an online interview after the company promised to offer him a better package.
‘Indian company wants Albert Einstein’
“The interviewer asked me some questions that I answered well. But then he threw in an IIM-level question, which honestly felt out of place for a Rs 5 LPA job,” he claimed in his post titled, “Indian company wants Albert Einstein.”
The Reddit user, who shared his experience on Reddit’s “India Careers” community, said that he was asked a mathematical question by the interviewer, who didn’t allow him to use the calculator.
‘IIM-level question’
The question, as per him, was: “Let’s say the real estate company has Rs 100 crore in inventory, which is 74 flats, and the population of Nagpur is 4,00,000. What would the CPL (Cost Per Lead) be?”
Although he didn’t expect a maths question for a digital marketing role during the interview, he still answered after doing a mental calculation.
“I didn’t expect a question like that. I was already tired, and calculators weren’t allowed – still, I tried to calculate it in my head. I said something like Rs 200-300 as CPL.”
He went on to say, “What I should’ve done was assume a 1% conversion rate from the population — so, 1% of 4,00,000 = 4,000 potential leads. To sell 74 flats, we’d need at least those 4,000 leads. If a marketing budget had been provided, I could have divided that by 4,000 to estimate CPL.”
The Redditor, who goes by “American_Leo” online, said, “The question wasn’t impossible, but I didn’t expect it at all — especially not at this pay level. I’m just frustrated because I know I would’ve nailed it if I had mentally prepared for something like that.”
Indian company wants Albert Einstein! (Salary: 35k PM)
byu/American_Leo inIndiaCareers
Social media reactions
Since his Reddit post, which was shared a few hours ago and has over 200 upvotes, was marked under the “discussion” category, many took to the comments section to share their thoughts.
One Internet user said, “I was in a similar position where I was expected to operate at the level of a Senior Manager and revamp a brand that had been inactive for two years. Several VPs had been hired before me to get it operational, but they weren’t successful. I was expected to handle all of this, with a salary of just Rs 41,000.”
They added that they had left the company after three months: “My manager turned out to be extremely toxic, constantly taunting me about my salary, like he thought he was overpaying me for the work I did. He’d threaten to fire me all the time, and once even gave me an ultimatum: get this task done or you’re out. I resigned the same day.”
“Happened to me once for a business development associate role at Flipkart, that too on a one-year contract basis. The interviewers made me solve calculus equations and then started asking about the projects in my CV to very minute details, even though I clearly mentioned that the project was divided into different teams and I was part of the design and research team, whose job was to conduct a survey and collect data to create a presentation. They started going on about how I will convert leads if I can’t solve the calculus equation. Mind you they didn’t ask me a single marketing or sales question which was the fucking job to make sales. Had enough and stood up mid-interview and asked them, ‘How are your equations relevant to the job description you posted?’ They just kept looking at me, and I left. And icing on the cake was, it was for a two-lakh CTC job,” shared another.
A third said, “An interviewer asked me questions like I have experience of a year or two when I was clearly applying for an internship and guess what? They were offering me a salary of staggering 5k a month for WFO. Then tried to put me down because of not knowing about specific tools when applying for an internship, which should’ve been for a fresher.”
“Tech interviews are even worse lmao. As an intern, the guy wanted me to build something that would take weeks, in 24 hours as a ‘pre-interview task’,” commented yet another social media user.