What it does: Management consulting company
Mission: ZS is the world's largest firm focused exclusively on helping companies improve overall performance and grow revenue and market share, through end-to-end sales and marketing solutions
Size and presence: Around 16,000 globally in 8 locations.
Best known for: ZS is a global professional services firm that leverages deep industry expertise, leading-edge analytics, technology and strategy to create solutions for clients that work in the real world.
The good bits: Great Work culture & open environment. Lots of learning opportunities for freshers
The not so good bits: Work life balance would be a con for many
ZS Associates was founded by Andris Zoltners, Frederic Esser Nemmers Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Marketing at the Kellogg School of Management and Prabhakant (Prabha) Sinha, a former associate professor of marketing at the Kellogg School of Management. At Kellogg, Sinha and Zoltners developed a side business advising companies on sales and marketing, which evolved into ZS Associates.
In 1982, Zoltners and Sinha presented their sales force sizing and territory alignment models to their academic colleagues, demonstrating the world’s first personal-computer-aided territory mapping system. In 1983, Sinha joined Zoltners at Northwestern, and the pair founded ZS Associates in their off hours, offering companies increased sales force efficiency using their now-proven territory mapping software. In its first three years, ZS had helped eight of the 10 largest pharmaceutical companies in the world, including Pfizer, align territories and resize their sales forces. By that time, the 25-member team worked on 100 or more projects in a dozen countries—including the United States, Canada and many European countries.
In 1987, a large American company hired ZS to reorganize, redesign and reallocate their US-based sales force. In addition to deploying their sales territory alignment services, ZS also supported the company in change management, and built tools like incentive compensation programs to support the human resources of the company’s marketing and sales division.
Through the 1990s, ZS continued to develop its capabilities, adding data warehousing, market forecasting, market research and analytical services for their clients. The firm also broke into sales force incentive compensation program auditing, design and implementation during these years.
In 2002, ZS added a marketing research practice to the company that would soon expand and evolve into marketing services. 2004 saw Zoltners and Sinha win the Marketing Science Practice Prize from the Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences (INFORMS) for their paper, Sales Territory Design: 30 Years of Modeling and Implementation, which explored the “[m]odels, systems, processes, and wisdom [that] have evolved over 1,500 project implementations for 500 companies with 500,000 sales territories.”
Every year, ZSers consistently rate “the people” and “the collaborative working style” as top drivers of engagement. A supportive community, trust and empowerment, humility, innovation and a quest for continuous improvement are a few of the hallmarks that underpin our culture.
Welcome to a company where new ideas are celebrated, learning opportunities are abundant, people are treated as individuals and colleagues become lifelong connections.
We celebrate the visible and invisible elements of our identities, personal experiences and belief systems. The ones that comprise us as unique individuals and shape who we are. Collectively, these elements foster collaboration, drive innovation and lead to greater client impact.
At ZS, people are empowered to apply their unique knowledge, skills and passions to the causes they care about—whether that means reducing our environmental impact, offering pro bono consulting or volunteering in our communities.
The ZS Associates Online Test is conducted by Hirepro an assessment company. The sections of this test are
Quantitative Aptitude,
Verbal Ability,
Logical Reasoning.
For the written online exam we need to ensure the following few things before starting the test:
ZS Online Test is auto administered.
No Add-ons like Skype, Calculator, etc are allowed in the exam.
The candidate will face Auto-Logout if the tabs of the browser are changed more than 2 times.
Written test cut off:
The cut off varies for IIT and Non-IIT applicants
It is 70% for Non-IITs i.e. the applicants must be in the best 30% to be eligible for the next round.
Whereas for IITs the cut-off goes only 60% as well as they get the higher package.
There is no negative marking in this round of the ZS Recruitment Process.
This round is an online video interview that is conducted by ZS Associates on the Taleview Platform. This online interview is almost 40-50 mins long and consists of 8 video questions and 3 written questions. These questions are mainly guesstimates, brainteasers, and behavioral questions. No market size questions are asked in this round.
Video Questions -The candidate gets a question prompt and 30 seconds to think and form points about it. Later the candidate will get 3 minutes to talk about the answer which will be recorded and sent to the ZS panel for evaluation.
This will be the last and deciding round of the ZS Recruitment Process but it is further divided into 3 rounds. Following are short details of all the interview rounds a candidate has to go through after the online test and behavioral assessment rounds. Below we have given only short descriptions of each round.
Case Round Students should be prepared to analyze a business case independently. It will involve understanding the client issues in a case study for 30 minutes and discussing the approach to addressing the issues with a ZS interviewer
Behavioral Interview- Resume Probe. They should be prepared to solve structured and unstructured problems (brain teasers, guesstimates, puzzles)
Fit Round They will have an opportunity to meet with one of the senior ZS managers to discuss growth opportunities, career paths, and ZS vision in general.
The solutions we bring to our clients are steeped in deep expertise. Come with your love of learning, entrepreneurial spirit and collaborative nature. ZS will provide the opportunities, coaching and hands-on experiences that enable you to explore your passion and make an impact.
What sets ZS apart, beyond our smart and driven people, is that ZSers are value-focused in every way. Treat people right. Get it right. Do the right thing. These principles are the foundation for every decision we make. Regardless of level, tenure or background, our people feel supported by a diverse community of colleagues with a shared enthusiasm for challenging the status quo.
Today’s business challenges require the right combination of capabilities and expertise. We structure our teams to enable our clients’ success while nurturing our people and their long-term development.
These teams solve our clients’ business challenges. We design and deliver a wide range of solutions that transform organizations—driving customer value and company results.
We look for exceptional critical thinking and problem-solving skills leveraging deep domain expertise and data analytics. Enthusiasm for solution innovation, quality and client service is essential. See below for some of the areas of opportunity for your career at ZS:
These teams typically focus on long-term, ongoing client relationships. We learn the client’s business to run, enhance and transform their processes and customer experience.
We look for quantitative aptitude and a process-improvement mindset as well as solid communication skills, business acumen and a passion for quality and client service. See below for some of the areas of opportunity for your career at ZS:
Conceptualize, design, build, implement and support digital and technology products and solutions that enable end users to make critical decisions and help companies achieve better business results. See below for some of the areas of opportunity for your career at ZS:
Partner side by side with clients in real-time while liaising with the ZS team to take business analytics, operations and reporting to the next level.
Situated across the globe, professionals in administrative support, communications, finance, HR, IT, legal, marketing and strategic alliances enable the success of our organization.
We value diverse perspectives and a variety of experiences. What’s important is that you collaborate, contribute and grow. Speak up when there’s a challenge you want to be a part of. ZSers are empowered to own their career growth, while supported through professional development and coaching at all levels. We know that passionate people are the best problem solvers, and our culture is set up to support your unique journey.
We look for exceptional people with a variety of academic backgrounds. The people who succeed at ZS are creative problem solvers with an entrepreneurial drive.
Average ZS Business Operations Associate salary in India is ₹ 9.8 Lakhs per year for employees with less than 1 year of experience to 2 years. Business Operations Associate salary at ZS ranges between ₹ 7.3 Lakhs to ₹ 12.9 Lakhs per year.
Through ZS Cares and Sustainability@ZS, ZS people globally are empowered to make a positive impact through pro bono consulting, volunteering, green initiatives and more.
Our corporate responsibility program reflects our company values: We treat people right, get it right and do the right thing through world-positive economic, environmental and social practices.
Making a difference where we live and work
At ZS, people are empowered to apply their unique knowledge, skills and passions to the causes they care about—whether that means reducing our environmental impact, offering pro bono consulting or volunteering in our communities.
We strive to make a positive difference in the communities where we live and work by using our expertise and time to partner with nonprofit organizations to grow their impact.
We aim to reduce our footprint on the environment by making more efficient use of our physical space, limiting business travel by leveraging technology, working in close proximity to our clients, reducing waste and using renewable resources.
We partner with nonprofits in many sectors
Healthcare and patient advocacy
Education
Equality and economic development
Environment and sustainability
ZS wsa quite in the talks when a lot of applicants accused ZS of being orthodox and biased firm towards engineers.