Sample Answer
I’m an applied microeconomist working at the intersection of labor and public economics, with a focus on how firms respond to regulation. My job market paper asks: how do modest increases in minimum wages affect firm-side adaptation, not just employment? I assemble a panel of about 120,000 multi‑establishment firms over 12 years, linking administrative employment records with detailed financial filings. Methodologically, I use a stacked event‑study design with firm and market fixed effects, combined with a difference‑in‑differences specification and a matched firm control group. I also exploit variation in exposure within multi‑state firms. I find that a 10% minimum‑wage hike leads to only a 0.6% decline in low‑wage employment, but a 3–4% increase in investments in scheduling software and self‑checkout technologies. A key contribution is documenting this technology margin and showing it explains roughly 40% of the longer‑run labor demand response.
Keywords
Based on your hydrology and irrigation engineering background, explain how you would estimate the irrigation water requirement for a kharif crop in a semi-arid region of Gujarat. Walk me through each step: from reference evapotranspiration estimation, crop coefficient selection, effective rainfall calculation, to arriving at canal discharge for a given command area.
In your civil engineering studies, what specific design coursework or project work did you complete related to irrigation channels or canals (e.g., design of lined/unlined canals, distributaries, minors)? Describe one such design in detail, including how you determined discharge, permissible velocity, section dimensions, and lining choice for Gujarat-type soil and climate conditions.
Walk me through a recent multi-channel digital marketing campaign you managed end-to-end. How did you set objectives, choose channels, allocate budget, and measure success?
In your resume you note improving or optimizing [a process, KPI, or metric]. What specific baseline metrics did you start from, what steps did you personally take, and how did you verify that the improvement was due to your changes rather than external factors?
On your resume you mention working on a cross-functional project (e.g., involving multiple teams or stakeholders). Describe a situation from that project where priorities conflicted—how did you navigate the trade-offs and what was the final outcome?