2012 – GD/PI CAT Session 1 (Interview Tips)

Today we’re going to go into very crucial form of preparation for CAT examination, Group discussion and Personal Interview. It’s not more of current affairs or general knowledge that we are going to discuss today. It’s directly as to what is expected when you are facing a panel. For CAT examination, it can be a panel of a, for, for an interview of 1, 2, 3 strong member panel, or it can be a group discussion where you’re being watched from far away. I am assuming here that we have all at least witnessed a personal interview. Some of us in-person, some of us we would have heard of interview instances, what happens, at least for getting admission school you would have sat for an interview. Get my point? So that much of experience we do have. The, the key focus here is, uh, we are going to take the interview preparation slightly differently, even if you have a week in hand. There are little bit of things that you need to take care of and if you’re looking at the group discussion that is something that you can actually prepare with, with a couple of mock Group Discussions you should be good to go. Okay, you don’t need too much preparation except the current affairs portion. So these are two aspects we look at. For those of you who have case studies, I’ll try and showcase a particular case study today. Probably we will not be able to read the case study, analyze it and sit down and have a discussion but I’ll try and give you an example as to how we can go forward and analyze a case study and, and, and present our case. Okay. Most of the case studies will happen in a group. So there will be other, you know, voicing their opinions. So how do you fight against your competition who is in front of you? That’s a main, main area, or the key area of case studies as well as group discussions. So I’ll, I’ve prepared something like a small little ppt. I know ppts are very boring so I’ll try to run through the ppt. And I will try and give you some pointers okay.
So I am going to start off with the, with the interview tips. Assumption here always was that we have, we have gone ahead and attended some interviews okay. It doesn’t matter if it was an interview for getting admission into a school, getting adm… admitted into a company for a job or in this case, getting into institution. It, it absolutely doesn’t make much of a difference because the whole point is the goal that you have that will keep changing. That’s the only thing. There is absolutely no, no other difference to it. Maybe you will not have experience, uh, with respect to what you are applying for. So if you’re looking at a Java profile in IT Company they’ll probably ask you a lot of technical questions on Java and you can expect that right? Here the, the only thing that you’re applying for is a position for yourself. The questions that you’ll get is based on yourself. There is nothing else. Right. So in terms of preparation actually we know what, what are the limits to which they can go. Uh. So today the basic objective of today’s discussion is we’ll go forward and understand what we can do before the, before the interview, what we can do during the interview. So what are the things that’ll give you a pointer as to where the interviews going? What are the changes we need to do and then go forward. Some action plan we’ll make by the end of the day. As to how it is that we can realistically go forward and prepare. Okay. That’s a quick overview. We, we anyway have a vague ideas of interview, different interviews of different, uh, different connotation so I am not going to typecast on your fit. Uh, this example shows an example of how exactly an interview for a finance expert is taken up and, and a, and a serious scenario is put up. Gilbert is known for that. Obviously I am not expecting you to do, do like a, you know, heartless conversations or have heartless conversations like, like this person in this particular cartoon. Okay. Where livestock is getting killed and he is talking about, you know foxes killing chickens and he is talking about livestock insurance. So that’s basically not the idea here because, because we don’t have a particular path. The path will be made after the first 5 to 10 minutes of the interview. So that’s, that’s what we are trying to do here.
Now how do you start the preparation? Uh, there are some core areas which we anyway have to take up. There is absolutely no doubt about it. If you, if you ask me what ate the core areas, they, they depend on your self-assessment, so that is very, very important and a list of other things that, that are, that are common to your job interview and an MBA interview. One is self-assessment. Other would be your interests. Then very, very boring questions such as your strengths, weakness and career goals. Okay. Career goals obviously, they have to be aligned to your MBA. There is absolutely no doubt about it. You have to have some alignment. I will give an example of how exactly this career goal works. If you, if you go forward and say that you want to start off something, so there are two ways to go about this right? You’re going for an MBA, which is, which is going to help business. So there are two ways to go about it. Business that is yours, business that is somebody else’s. Right? There are two ways. Obviously you cannot push it to such an extent where you’re saying that you cannot work with any organization. So even though you are looking at entrepreneurship, that is business by yourself, you’re not going to be in a position to go forward and say I cannot work with anyone else. If it goes to that extent, it’s a huge negative. So though you have two options here, one is to sta-, is to start your own business, the other is to go up, join someone else’s, you cannot push it to such an extent that you, you are unable, or you’re unfit to join. That should not be the case.
For example if you, if you look at a particular interview that I attended 2004. I went, I went to the institute called Tap Me. Have you heard of it? Right. So I attended Tap Me. There were around 14 applications that I had filled in. I got around 13 calls. I was very happy. So I went for all these interviews. Tap Me happened to be a 2-day process. So they, they called for Group Discussion and Personal Interview and then the interviews got slotted the other day, the next day. I, I had a small little panel of 2 people. One was a prof, I was very sure about that. The other was an, an alumni, was too young to, to teach. He was just watching me and the prof was keeping on, you know, killing me on, in that particular panel. So I thought Tap Me is like a low-end institute because I got IIM calls, so I am like Tap Me should be a cakewalk. So I was, I was actually feeling that this call is inferior to my requirement. But the problem is that after the first 5 minutes you don’t want to underperform. You want to go forward and showcase the best you. Right? So I started giving my big plans. I want to start agricultural setup, my father is actually an agriculturalist. He is, he is had acres and acres of paddy, wheat, etc. etc. and he comes to this nice small little state called Kerala and all. Unfortunately this guy has been in Kerala. The, the, the guy who was conducting the interview and he knows there is no paddy cultivation that’s going on. Okay. Absolutely nothing. I am bashing him. Paddy, there is lot of rice, this rice, chaffed rice, unchaffed, you know Keralites they have one particular requirement, Tamils they have another requirement. India is full of requirements and Pakistanis are you know giving us basmati rice. How dare they do that? We need to, we need to be self-sufficient. So there is a huge scope and I want to do it in my state. A lot of employment opportunities because the Keralite buggers are they going outside. So obviously I can give them better opportunities, they’ll stay back. So I finally you know felt success. Okay. Then he says which, which part of Kerala do you want to go forward and do this? Which district? So I said how will this guy know all of this. It’s like district names and all that. So I said there is a district called Kullam. So in that district I want to do it. So he said Kullam. Okay. Kullam is known for banana cultivation and coconut. It’s not known for, you know, paddy nowadays. Lot of, lot of areas like Paramoor and all is left barren. The interviewer is telling me, okay. I said yeah that is, that is true but I am here to change that. But I am here to – that’s my comeback dialogue. Now I had, I had to make a comeback right? So I said the point here is I have been working for a couple of years. It does not make sense for me to join somewhere else. I feel agriculture is, is an institution in itself and an industry in itself where I feel I can employ a lot of people. Guide them. Obviously I have some backing from my family. I can, I can go forward. Then the whole interview from agriculture, because he already got his point was on what my ideology was right. So the whole interview went from why exactly is it that you don’t want to work with someone else and go forward and startup your own agricultural setup. So, I had already lost out on the agricultural point and I went forward and started killing myself on not liking what I am doing right now, or on not being an employee. I could not come back from that corner. I was in that corner where the whole problem behind my work had to be laid out in the open. Like I was, I was lying there naked and explaining the issues that I had in my company and all of that to a person that I had not even met for 10 minutes. He had already had a very good analysis. When the results came I did not get through. Okay. I did not get through. I had got some other prestigious institutes, but Tap Me did not convert. It was a, it was a not a very happy, happy moment. Not just that day, the day when I got the interview. I was really wondering what went wrong. It is a good experience I would say because I made a mistake with, with an institution where I was not very keen to join at that point of time, right. That was my call. I was, I was very, very aggressive. I thought, thought Tap Me in Manipal, who is going to go? To reach Manipal itself you know it takes one and a half hour by Mangalore. This is all my, all my weird immature calculation that I made. I did not go forward and compare Tap Me, to let’s say IIM I, at that point of time Tap Me was building a new campus. Okay. So I did not have any preparation done with respect to the new campus and I was really underprepared. It showed that I was not interested. The moment that happened, the interview was not going to be, you know, a very good experience. What happened here was the next interview that I had with MDI, I was, I was very, very meek. I was not very confident. Because I, I already got a bashing right? So within a week I had another interview and I was kind of sure that they will bash me up. So I changed my story. No agriculture. Okay. I will work with someone else and I went forward. But I am not going to talk about that right now.
If you’re looking at preparation I want you to have some kind of a self-assessment. So this is very important because if you, if you don’t do it so I am just, I am just going to show this here. If you don’t do your assessment, you’re, you’re in deep trouble. And the core question here is your introduction. You need to have a one minute introduction ready and a slightly longer introduction of around 3 to 4 minutes. 2 to 3 to 4 minutes. Okay. You need to have 2 introductions ready. One is a quick one where you just touch up on your core basics. The other is a slightly longer one. Now when you’re talking about this introduction, because I’ll touch up on other things like strengths, weaknesses, okay, interests and your career goals. Career goals is what I was talking about right now. You need to be sure that you’re giving options. Okay. You can probably have your entreship, entrepreneurship spirit shown after 3 to 5 years because that can then, if, if you get what I am saying. Your entrepreneurship spirit can come after 3 to 5 years because that can then be a 5 year plan. Because 5 year plan is another very loved question. 5 year plan and then after you have kind of convinced them of your 5 year plan they might jump to 10 year plan, just to see how well prepared you are. Obviously these plans are not supposed to be, you know, made of concrete. They are not going to track you, keep a, you know private detective behind you and check if you have gone forward and done all these things in 5 years and 10 years. So you can be a bit confident when you slightly you know push it a bit too far. So I’ll come to this. Career goals anyway we’ll lead to both of this but introduction. When you’re talking about the introduction right obviously you need to state your full name. So I am Praveen Prakash. I’ll say I am Praveen Prakash. I am not going to say I am Praveen. That kind of sets a very casual context. If there are, if there are professors in your panel, it is not going to sound very welcoming. Okay. I know the corporate structure allows you to skip words like Sir and Madam, so maybe that’s not required when you’re addressing them, but when you’re addressing yourself you need to give some respect. So you need to, you need to mention your full names. So I am Praveen Prakash should be your, should be your starting dialogue. Your name should be your starting dialogue. Okay. And you should go forward and say I am from so and so place. Okay. So it can be your place that comes next. Now you’ve options. Okay. It can be a place. It can be a state, a city, whichever is more prominent. So imagine you’re from a small hill town, there is no point mentioning that. It’s better to say that you’re from the state of Bihar. Okay. Or the state of UP. That’s enough. You don’t need to mention the district, the town, the panchayat, not required. Okay. So you mention the place and then you go forward and say, I, I have come from a background of -. So this background depends on what you are. I have 2 scenarios here. Working/students right. So you can say I am, I am an engineer. So this is your background. I am coming from a engineering background and you can continue by saying I have been working with XYZ. When you say working with XYZ it is obviously expected that you add your tenure. Years is enough. If it is more than 1 you can say 1 and a half, 2, 3, okay, years. If it’s a few months then mention the months. You don’t need to say less than a year. You can say 10 months, 9 months okay. So, so that’s, that’s a slight little thing. So plus tenure. You can continue by saying, my family is, is now well-settled or my family is currently located in, let’s assume, Delhi, okay, my family is currently settled in Delhi, or they are working out of Delhi. My father is, and it’s important that you mention your father is working where, or what he was doing. Because most of the times, if your parents are very well educated, it is a plus. And the other way to put it, look at it is if your parents have not really done an MBA themselves, okay. If they are not working in amazing positions, that’s a possibility because my father was just a Bachelor of Arts. He was a teacher and then he went into sales and marketing, right. So I would probably say, I will not say that he is a Bachelor of Arts, but I will, but I will say that he, he is working in a marketing role. Now why that helped me is because they would obviously think that this guy is going to also take the marketing line and, and there is something in his blood. I am hoping that that positive is there, but it’s important that you mention. Okay. If they are doing business, the moment you say business, you need to keep that as a keyword. Now I will, I will, I will create a different scenario where questions can be predicted. So we are not trying to do the question prediction thing here, just the introduction. So after this I’m expect you to talk about your family. Then you can actually wind it up, you can actually wind it up by doing one of the two things – 1) you can either talk about your interests, or, you can talk about your passion or reason behind doing your MBA. Now today what we’ll do is we’ll give you a, we’ll give you a preview of how this really works. You can prepare this and go in for your mock interview I’m hoping or by now you would have already done once so you can go forward and understand what are the things that you’ve done here. This is your 1 minute, this is your 1 minute introduction. Okay. This is your 1 minute introduction. Now it becomes a longer introduction. How does it become a longer introduction? If they go forward and ask you, “What… tell us something about yourself and some of the things that you feel are very interesting? Some of the interesting things about yourself with a combination of your strengths and weaknesses. We’d like to know that about you”, is what they start off with then obviously you need to add those points. It will easily become 2 minutes to 3 minutes. Okay. Now, when you’re stopping please don’t stop by looking up at the ceiling. Okay. This is me. I love, I love playing sports. Thank you. People don’t know what to do, okay. So when people don’t know what to do they try to avoid the person who is there in front of them, so you usually look up. I maybe going to have a very short talk on, on, on the body language and gestures but just when we are talking about the introduction, this is something that I have noticed so many times. Even in, even in, even in interview panels for MBA, when we are calling in candidates, they seem very confident but they don’t know how to stop. They feel bad that, you know, they have stopped their introduction. It’s like a guilty feeling. So when you, when you, when you, when you feel guilty why the look upside or some people look down. So if, if you’re losing hair then that’s what they are going to see. Okay. It’s not a good scenario. You should face them. There is no doubt about it. You should face them. Say, “Yeah this is my interest” and probably smile. One of the, one of the major factors that will change the way people perceive you and the easiest factors is probably going to be. It’s probably going to be this. Okay. I don’t know if I have got a nice smile? I’m smiling while I’m saying it but the point here is I had to use it. There is no other way. This is like, this is like a, your pause. This is the pause that will help you out a lot. So try practicing it. Obviously there are multiple ways to go forward and practice, I’ll, I’ll anyway let you know. How exactly do you do your head start in a research? So prior to the day you research the institution right. This is, this is one thing that you’ll have to do. I’ll give you one simple example. If you look at your B. School, your applications do not force you to, or most of the applications do not force you to select the career path that you want with respect to specialization that the institution has. Career path, yes, but specialization, that, that, that tie up your link is rare. Not everyone, they don’t say please choose your specialization. Maybe S.P. Jain used to do it in terms of being a first preference, second preference. If you look at XLRI you’ve an HR program. Specifically, you’ve a normal management right. There they are not asking for the specialization. So my point here is you, you necessarily don’t need to do that but you know that the specializations here usually on marketing, operations, HR, you’ve IT in management, okay, and you have one more which is finance. These are the core areas. Now there are, there are multiple, you know, links in between this, some more specialized programs some of the institutes might provide. Now I am not getting into details. I’ll give you a couple of, you know, examples. Now. We, when you’re researching institutions, I’ve listed on a, listed out a few points about them. If you, if you start off I’ll give an example. You take the case, a classic case is a case of IIFT. Have you heard of this institute? Right. IIFT. Now the problem with IIFT is even before you research, you’ve, you’ve a warning bell that’s ringing saying that this is not a normal MBA supposedly. It’s a slightly different MBA that you’re going for. Same is the case with SIIB, Symbiosis Institute of International Business, right. So it was not a normal MBA. They are looking at some kind of international business funda, right. If you don’t take the pain to go through their introduction, that’s all that you need to do, literally, okay. If you don’t take the pain to go through the institutions or the campuses, or, or, or, or, or, or the, or the colleges introduction you’re gone. Because of the perception of international business or the meaning or the nuances international business brings depending on different people they’re different. So what is it that IIFT wants or why is it that they are, that they are there with international business or foreign trade is something that you need to be very, very, very clear about. Why not something else? Do they want everyone to go international? Are the placements international and so on? So I had the opportunity to go for the IIFT interview. It was, trust me I’ve gone for a lot of interviews okay. I, I, I, I had this whole mission that I will go for and apply to as many colleges as possible. Tens of thousands of rupees, I wouldn’t say went down the drain, I hope I am using it right now. Okay. But it was a good experience. So the IIFT scenario, if I can just quickly talk about the IIFT scenario, it’s a nice little Group Discussion. Eleven people were there in that particular Group Discussion that day. I think couple of people backed out, otherwise it would have been a Group Discussion of 15 people. And I got a, I, I got a topic which was at all related to foreign trade. It was like what does the government need to do to, to stand, okay. So it was a time and there was a confusion between Congress and BJP, we didn’t even know if it was state government so we had a nice little chat. I, I thought I was a group leader and I went in for the interview. Okay. So I am not going to talk about the Group Discussion right now. I went in for the interview. I wanted IIFT, yes, but there were lot of interviews slotted that time. I, I am not making that as an excuse but the lot of interviews slotted that time because of which I did not have enough time to go forward and decide, you know, what are the differences that I made in my IIFT application. Another mistake that I made is I did not have a copy of my IIFT application form. You know what I got after I got the interview call, I did not have a copy. So one problem with that obviously was, I am not talking about this point here okay, I am not talking about this point. I am talking about a slightly alternate point because I have just recollected it. Because I did not have the application copy, I am hoping all of you the opportunity to at least take the copy after today. What happened was I had made a mistake in my 12th mark submission. Okay. So I had gone forward, I had gone forward and written my 12th marks, okay, as 80.2. In reality I got 84.8, in reality. No, these are not great numbers. Anyway leave it there, okay. So, okay, everything is fine. In reality I had 84.8. So obviously I don’t have any problem in mentioning that right. So I had a question that was popped up regarding my education qualification. Now, this is not a question that I am very, very happy about because 12th is this, the reality. This is what I mentioned in the particular form, 80.2 or 80.8, I am not sure. I think it is 80.8, sorry. 80.8 is what I mentioned. And I, and I did my engineering. Okay. This is not one of my most happiest, you know, showcasing points. Problem with my engineering is it will definitely make the person go through my educational background, okay. Because I had a, okay, so 57.6 percentage. So when you see this right obviously you will take the oppo…. take the, take notice of things above. Otherwise if it’s like a normal 80, 80, 70 or 80, 80, 68, you know, I think it’s decent. But when you see a 57.6, you wonder oh this guy has passed or failed. And then they start looking at the other thing. So, they asked me a question as to do you think you know, you, you’re, you’re a student, as a student you’re motivated. So I understood where that question came from because I could see my application form in front of them and I could see the page which they had opened up and the table which they had seen which, which instigated this particular question. So, obviously it’s not like you know one meter, ten meters away and they’re sitting far away and I have a mic to speak. I am right across them right. So I took the liberty of seeing what they were, what they were seeing. I saw the particular table and I realized that looking at my marks so I wanted to do a little bit of, I don’t know, a little bit of you know, showc… showboating or whatever so that at least this 57 is not really punished. So they’re not mentioning anything about engineering. They’ve not used the number 57, nothing they did. Okay. But I know that they are seeing it. So, it’s, it’s 100% confirmed that they were looking at my marks and I wanted to showcase so I went forward and said I was a very good student, okay. I was a very good student. My marks in 10th which is like 80, 88 percentage and my marks in 12th which is like nearly 85, 84.8 percentage and there were eyebrows raised that time. I am like why are these guys raising eyebrows. You’ve distinction boss. Distinction. So this is all in my mind okay. Where, where really you know the true me and engineering is not really what I would say a choice that I made. It was something that happened by chance. And this is what I really believe in. It happened by chance. So, it’s, it’s not a place where I can really showcase my skills. One of the reasons why though I did my instrumentation in engineering, my work ex showcases experience in IT and software. Right. So I spoke about before engineering – nice boy. After engineering, changed choices right. So I thought engineering 57 will go off. So I was very happy they, they said nothing to do with engineering, great. So I said okay. That’s fine. That’s fine. That’s fine. So there were 3 people in the IIFT panel. 2 of them were old guys. I don’t know if they were profs or they were, you know they were people brought in from the industry because we’re not asking too many you know professor based questions. There was one young chap. I was pretty sure he was an alumni okay. I was pretty sure. So this guy took that form next to him, so the form was in between. He took it towards him and he looked at those tables again and he said, “So you’re very good in 12th, huh, okay, okay, okay. Have you taken a look at your application form? ”. I said yeah, yeah, yeah. “Have you filled all the details?” “Yes, sir. Definitely I have filled everything.” Because I could see it’s filled right so that’s definitely not a problem. He said “In how much time did you take to fill up this application form?” So that is like a very, very, very tricky question. If you say less, it’s, it’s an insulting. If you say more it’s like you’re a fool like you’re spending too much time. So I said “Sir some of the question I took 5 to 10 minutes. Other information and details I filled in a minute. So anyway my marks and everything I know my information. That took a minute”. So there were like 3 to 4 pages. He said do you have a copy of your, of your application form. I said no, no, no, I don’t have a copy. Okay. So he looked at them, he nodded again and then he pushed it ahead so I could see it. He didn’t turn it around. He just pushed it. So I realized there is some problem where he has circled next to my 12th marks there is 80, 80 percentage. So I just looked at all of them and I said “I definitely got distinction in 12th”. So, they said yeah, yeah, yeah. You seem to be a person in a hurry. You seem to be a person in a hurry and the interview went towards how I am not patient. I am impatient bugger okay. And that’s how the interview went. This guy, this guy, this alumni was there in the Group Discussion also. He was there in the Group Discussion. He just pulled himself onto the interview panel. So that’s something that usually happens right. Because of which I was not in a position, anyway this is not the point here. I was not in a position to go forward and justify this. I don’t know how that panned out. I got a final interview call but I, I am not sure how that panned out because a lot of time was wasted on this mistake of mine. Okay. So if you realize that this mistake happened, imagine that you read your copy before, you can definitely say, you know, otherwise with respect to your marks or you can directly say, you know, there is a, there is small typo that has been made, so they’ll know that you have realized this and it has been sent at the last moment or something. So, at least it doesn’t make, make a fool out of you, in that particular panel. So it’s very important that you do that, okay. But I am coming back to the institution here. When you’re researching institution, I’m taking the case of IIFT, there is another problem that, that happened. Not to me, to one of my good friends. Okay. Both of us were preparing for the same time. This is something, this application form issue happened because of the last moment right. But this guy had a completely different issue. He had applied to XLRA HR. He really wanted to do HR. He is a very soft-spoken guy. Okay. So someone convinced him that soft-spoken people can do HR or finance. Engineering grad, finance is not really something that, that is welcoming. Okay. It’s, it’s a, it’s a scary little cat. So we didn’t want to go forward and choose that option. So both of us were discussing. I said I, I’m anyway going to do marketing. I can do chapar chapar so I think marketing is something that they’ll, they’ll like. That’s my logic okay. And you can do finance. So he said no finance is not something that I think will, will be good. Anyway I can change later. In the interview I can talk about HR. So we had been maintaining this particular, you know, ideology if the specializations are asked everywhere. So he was in the same, he was in the same location on the same day taking the same IIFT selection interview. His name was Chako and he went forward and said I would like to do HR. So they said okay. That’s very good. So why do you think you want to do HR, and a whole lot of questions related to HR. Problem is how many of you have gone through IIFT? Anyone? Couple of people okay. Those who have gone through IIFT will realize IIFT has no HR specialization. Okay. It has no HR specialization. There might be some, some, you know, there will be some small deviations of it but nothing called HR okay. One of the very good reasons why his interview was dead at that point, they smiled, they giggled, he gave a lot of gas about how he is very good with people, how his soft-spoken nature can caress the problem of a very, very, you know, pissed off employee, how he knows the policies of a co..emp.. company well, how he can tweak the policies so the employees re.. are retained. So many other HR policy fundas that he had read. It was a complete disaster. It was a complete disaster. Going forward we did not realize what happened. He came back and depicted this whole, you know, transited the whole story and then I told boss it has no HR, on what basis did you talk about HR? There is not even a word mentioned about not HR not being present or it’s not a good option to him. Nothing. So he actually don’t have any idea what exactly went wrong. So obviously if you make a wrong choice like that, you’re gone. But the issue here was, if you, if you take the case of so many that are aspiring, there are a couple of students who had come out and said IIFT interview did not go well. You need to understand one thing. What is the background of the institution? Is IIFT a government institution or semi-government or private?
Audience members speaking.
Faculty: What is it?
Audience members speaking.
Faculty: It is Indian Institute of Foreign Trade. If you need to put Indian Institute, usually it is something to do with government. That’s a assumption, logical, logical assumption we’ve all passed our RLNDI, okay. It is, it is based for the gov… it is based out of the government initiative. The initiative states, okay, it’s a government body made in 1960s something. That is what I remember from my prep okay. So 1960, 63 or something. The problem is when you talk about government based issues in a, in a panel which is, which is made for an MBA admission into a, into a B. School you’re going to be in deep trouble if you bash the, if you bash the government. Okay. So, one of the, one of the possibilities that, that can come about like the student I am not going to name him because he did not get through his IIFT and he has just called us and he has come down for this year’s interviews. He has got IIM calls this year for a change, but my point here is he wanted to get into IIFT that time bad.. he is good call right? Fortunately he is got, got IIM calls this year so it’s, it’s good that he didn’t get through but what happened was, I am talking about scenarios here. He spoke about a scenario where he said India was one option and the other option was to get it to the government. Fair enough. It’s not, it’s not such a bad thing right? So I want to manage events in the government. I want to be a bureaucrat okay. But I chose otherwise. I chose otherwise. So, so they were like, okay why did you choose otherwise? What is the problem? Or was it a difficult exam. He said no, preparation and all fine I can do because CAT, IIFT, they are all tough exams. Thousands students are taking, lakhs of students taking. It’s fine. But civil servants, they are corrupt. They are corrupt. This Indian bureaucracy is corrupt. So he said you know being very frank forthright about it is going to give him positive points. So this is not something that he had planned with us. It just came out of his, you know, heart. He said they are corrupt. They said why, because usually, you know, they get these six month, eight month training, I think there itself they would’ve been taught how to, how to uplift the, the country. He went on and on, I don’t need to explain the scenario to you. Let’s cut it short. Problem is if you look at the, if you look at the vision, or, or, or the reason behind IIFT being inculcated, 1960s, it was an institution that was made so that bureaucrats, maybe IFS officers, IAS officers understand foreign trade better. Okay. So maybe they are not doing it in their full capacity right now. It’s become slightly privatized with, with respect to MBA students coming in, but this is an activity that they continuously do. And in a panel where I’m, I’m assuming, 1 out of 3 people will be, will be faculties or people who are involved in the administration, telling that something related to them is not really going well and bureaucrats are really scumbags, is not going to give, put you in, in a, in a golden frame next to Mona Lisa, in, in, in, in you know the art museum, you know. It’s not going to work out. Right. Obviously that statement alone, and I don’t need to analyze much more of his interview. That statement alone, alone was enough for him not to get through. He had a very, very good percentage okay. He had, he had got very high score. Just in CAT here a problem with his, with his DI section, I don’t know what happened, because of which this, this did not work out, the IIMs did not work out. But IIFT he had, he had a very, very good score. So score plus this performance would have been enough. But this statement, this mistake from his part where he was bashing created an issue. You need to, you need to go forward and look at, you need to go forward and look at all these background checks. It can happen with just a 5 minute run through of the website. More than enough. If you go through the website, there is one particular link that is of core importance. Go to any B. School website. There is a link that says ‘news about us’. Okay. Please go through it. So when you go through the ‘news about us’ section, you’re definitely going to go forward and understand what are the different locations they have started centers, what is a, what is a plan in terms of improving more specializations, have they got any kind of awards, have there students got placed before, all the placement details they’ll come in something or another. Maybe not Time of India, it might come in The Hindu, maybe not Hindu, Time of India, it might come in the business lines. So you’ll get all of that with respect to that particular institution in the ‘new about us’ section. Obviously you can google it but this is like a, it’s like a proper, you know, ready to read link that, that you find. So all of this preparation is very, very important. Why I asked a question as to how many of you have attended interviews is because when you go for a, when you go for job interview, this is same thing that you do. So it’s not something that you need to do differently when you go, going for a B. School interview. Absolutely no, not required. Okay. Absolutely not required. So the job interview and the B. School interview, there are a lot of similarities. Lot of similarities. I don’t want to talk about this scenario where I went for my first job interview to LNT and it was, I don’t know, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll, I’ll you know, phrase this fast. So I went for the job interview with LNT. I had a very bad percentage. Last minute they told anyone with any percentage can come. Just go forward and clear the aptitude test, so I, I went forward and wrote the aptitude test. This is a blank sheet of paper. It said questions, 30 minutes, this many number of, these many questions should be solved in 30 minutes. Went forward solved everything very fast. Came out and there were very few applicants that were there for the second day right. So I was not there in college. It was a campus based thing and I realized that I got through. They had an aptitude test and they told they have a technical round. Technical round is very important. So I said okay. So LNT, 100% I need, I need to say something nice about LNT. I am an instrumentation engineer so obviously instrumentation has got something to do with LNT mechanical. So many mechanical engineers were there. There were other engineers from electrical, so many other branches. So I was wondering you know why they’ve called everyone including me, because it is not a core branch right. But anyway I, I did not have too much info LNT. Do you know about Mumbai-Pune Expressway? Heard of it? It’s like a wonderful, you know wonderful, I don’t know, work of art. Okay. And I had travelled the Mumbai-Pune Expressway a whole lot of times, going to Pune, going to Lonavala, and all of that. So I thought that is a very good example because they had LNT board all across. Okay. So I thought that is something that I can say inspired me to look at LNT and all that. So I expected that question. They asked me that question. I said why LNT, you know, why ask, why do you think this particular job is good. They did not say why LNT, they said why do you think this job is reinterest. I was like LNT is something that has done amazing work. They, they are really artist, you know, what they have done for the Mumbai-Pune Expressway is amazing and so on. Now, I have had so many bloopers in my life. The IIFT blooper was just one of them, but this one is like I don’t know how it happened to me but it happened. Okay. So I explained everything and I told you know the way you cut through that particular mountain and you had that particular subway. I remember the names and all. Now I am located in Bangalore so I don’t remember. So there are these passes, okay. There is one pass that’s like 5 minutes you keep going under a particular tunnel so it’s, it took a lot of effort for LNT the company to do it right. They said very good, very good, we are very happy, you know, that you have been travelling and you know do you drive. I said no I don’t drive. Okay. So. This is a job interview, it is not an MBA interview okay. So they said see the problem is we are not into this. I said no? What happened? Anadookas, you should do it right? You’re, you’re amazing company, you’ve done good work. They said no, we’re actually into software. Okay. This LNT group but we are LNT Infotech. So we are coming for a Info, you know, IT role, that’s why we called you know. You’re instrumentation engineer otherwise we would have called mechanical. Oh. Sir actually, actually I am very good in Java also, okay. It is you know, in these routes that I used to read my Java books and you know I used to prepare very well. Java and C I know sir, very well. C is like a sea. So this is what I told. Anyway the expected result was bad because I was not enough prepared for the interview. The tech questions, this is a technical interview right. So immediately they jumped to technical questions is gone. Point here is, in a hurry, lot of things get missed out. That’s the reason why I have kept a separate slide today on the institution. Okay. I’ll give you a very, very solid preparation method which actually helped me because all these mistakes made me tell myself that I’m someone who, who is going to take things very rashly so I need to have a particular map made. So I’ll talk about that approach. Before that I want you to look at this. This is a very simple ways to go forward. This ‘know they resume’ is very simple. Take a Xerox copy. Or take a photocopy. Okay. This is, this is the ‘know thy resume’ portion that I am talking about. Okay. Please take a copy. Prepare samples of your skills and experience. Obviously you need to have examples. I’ll talk about this. Anticipate questions, practicing answering out loud. There is no better way than practice. Even for interview. I know that most of us learn math by writing right. You, you write and learn math or you practice and learn math. You, you try and read subjects. But my point here is, when you’re practicing you need to ideally go for one or two mock interviews depending on your result to the first mock interview right. So try to do that even if you don’t have very qualified panel if you are able to gather a couple of friends of yours, couple of them. Tell them that you have to take my interview to, to assess if I can get into a good B. School program. They need not be MBAs. That’s also enough. It can be a 5 to 10 minute interview. What type of interviews they let me talk about but anticipating questions is something that is very, very, very important. So this is the method that I have, that I have used and I’m hoping that all of you can use. Have you heard the mind map method? Okay. It’s a nice little method. It’s called mind mapping. Uh. This is the name I anyways heard from somewhere and I started using myself. Okay. Uh. The map starts with the person involved. So here we are talking about interview which is pertaining to us, right? So I am talking about me here. Right? This interview. Now, if you’re going to be asked questions 99% of the times the questions are going to come from this circle. Right. So obviously your introduction what you are everything comes from this but if you really want to prepare you need to start branching out possible questions or possible areas that pertain to you. It’s a very, very simple approach. I’m hoping that you can do this as an activity probably after the session is over, keep it and then work on it. It will probably take one or two hours to really make this a good map. Okay. You start this off the very simple ways you start this and you, and you sci.. try saying, uh, personal. You don’t need to be so technical about it because you are doing it for yourself. You don’t need to show this to anybody also but you sci.. try doing personal. When you say personal first thing that you might talk about is family. Next you might, you might talk about cities. Next you might talk about, uh, from family weight, I’ll just show you the actual mind map. From family I will say father, I will say mother, any other siblings, so I have a brother, so brother. Okay. Then I will go forward, show you this. Imagine I’m at father, okay, I’m at father. I start saying work, qualification, okay, current profession, right? His place of birth, if possible remember the date of birth, okay, if possible, at least some idea because they might ask, so because of some weird reason, so, you know, you say you are very similar to your father, are you born in the same month. So they might expect you to actually say no, no, no, no. He was born in another month. I’m bored in February, he is born in Jan. Okay. So, that information if you don’t have you might feel uncomfortable, so all of this. I’m talking about father, you can talk about the same thing. If you look at brother you can say the same thing, work, qualification, okay. Same thing, it’s very similar. Same is the case with mother, sister and all that. Okay. So this is personal. Uh. You can go forward, make this mind map, go forward and then look at education. This is one important aspect that they are going to be asked. Next you can talk about work. I am saying in your mind map this is for you okay. Now, you can also in personal, if I am missing out something it will be like interest. Interest you can talk about artistic, arts, you can talk about sports are you can just say indoor/outdoor. Okay. Can talk here about achievements. If you have a lot of achievements remove this from personal it’s very important you mark it immediately branching out of yourself. School, college, work. In school you can talk about indoor achievements. So you know, you were into recitation or poetry or singing, right? So you create all that and you say outdoor, you say football. Now the moment you, so this is how you predict questions right? So moment you let’s, let’s, let’s take one of my favorite topics, okay. Let’s assume it is, it is football. If you come to me okay and you say something like football or cricket, most Indian men okay, maybe not football but if you say things like football or cricket immediately expect some questions, expect. Now it can be questions as simple as who is your favorite cricketer. When you talk about favorite cricketer you need to know some of his stats, some of his stats, it might be required, because you’re looking at an MBA where an MBA option where you might have written finance, are you may have spoken something about finance. Stats only comes into this person’s mind, so finance and cricket and favorite cricketer’s stats and stats and finance finally they will say “Okay, what do you think is this guy’s strike rate? Is it good enough. As compared to someone else how do you think his strike rate works?” Obviously, students if you’re not interested in cricket these words won’t come, so don’t worry. Ideally, it won’t come. But then these are important, important facts, okay. Latest news, latest news with respect to this guy. The moment you make this right you know what to search. Immediately you know what to search after you make this you, you will fill this up with a, with a, with, with a cricketer’s name, so, my favorite cricketer Sachin Tendulkar. Obviously this is half-death, because he’s retired after lot of hue and cry. There are lot of things that are for him, against him. I will have people in the interview panel who would have thought this guy should have gotten out long time back. Why is this guy ruining our Indian team? Others would have felt very sympathetic so you will, you will find, you will find a mixed opinion, right. So this is a very contentious personality. So I can, I can expect a lot of, lot of, lot of statements about, about this guy. Now imagine it’s not Sachin Tendulkar, it’s, it’s somebody like Yusuf Pathan, okay. Imagine there are people who like Yusuf Pathan. So take it from me. So it is Yusuf Pathan. Unfortunately, you have stats news but something that will stand out with Yusuf Pathan is probably the IPL. Probably, that’s where he has performed, right? Forget the fact that he came in with the T20, but I will say IPL is one of the things, T20 is something else and we’ll go forward. Now because of IPL, because of IPL being here you might get a lot of questions based on IPL. You need to get your facts ready as to Kolkata Knight Riders or generally IPL facts because of this guy. You understand how, it started from you, this whole mind map strategy it started from you. It has gone all the way down to IPL. You need to tell yourself, yes there is a part of me which can receive questions based on IPL. For God knows what reason, the reason is in front of you. If, if, if you ask that question there is a reason in front of you. When it comes to IPL you can be asked simple questions okay like you like football, you like cricket and your favorite cricketer happens to be an IPL star, can you tell me some of the things that the English Premier league can do looking at IPL? Okay. So it’s like a weird question. English Premier League is a, is a, is a league that is very well established, making a lot of money, but this person is telling you businesswise you come for an MBA, tell me what it can do in comparison to an IPL. So IPL has done something, so it’s made a lot of money day one itself, first year, second year, third year, fourth year, it’s not a model that EPL had because it, it’s taken a century, okay, and, and now you know, they, they, they have proclaimed that they are, they are continuously making money. Next year might not make money so where is that they are going wrong? So you start creating, you start creating issues based on your points here, so it’s football and cricket but then you, then you have to connect some of this, football to IPL. Now basically if you create this mind map and you show it to some of your friends who are taking your interview, or your peers, they might be able to connect it for you, if you’re not able to do it. But if you ask me what, what will be the IPL football connection, you’ll go prob… probably go and say you need to have more advertisements between the football match. Uh. If you’re Modi you would have stopped the, the football match, okay, 45 minute half you would have made it 5 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes, 5 minutes, 9 times. So they all go have drinks, the football players, and we have advertisements on TV, definitely. Now if, if you look at the governing body who they are already sick and tired of making lot of money, the FA or FIFA. What they can maximum do during television, during the television broadcast what we see in IPL in terms of small ads coming while the match is going on there is no break. There is a match going on the size becomes less right, 70% of the screen is the match and 30% is an ad. You can start introducing ideas like that. Why? Because these are things that you learned from the IPL. Don’t try to generate new ideas. Exactly what you see in the IPL you can start doing that. Uh. You can probably have a non-football loving crowd coming because of cheerleaders because football does not have cheerleaders. American football has, the normal soccer it does not have any cheerleaders, so bring in some cheerleaders. But then you would say you know Indians would love cheerleaders because of obvious reasons, the Westerners, they’re not bothered, because you know, it, it’s nothing for their eyes. Okay. So these are, this may be points that are coming through your mind but the point here is you are trying to find analogies. If you’re prepared with it, these points will come faster in the interview table because we are talking about a scenario where your reaction time is of a few seconds, maximum 5 to 10 seconds. So if you’re not prepared as to why this IPL question came then you definitely are not going to be in trouble but you’re going to take more time. So this mind map method is one of the, one of the tried and tested methods for me at least because a person like me who’s completely haphazard in his preparation, this is something that gives me some structure. It took time, I agree it took time. It took an hour to two hours to actually create a map which was kind of satisfactory. But definitely this will help. You take the case of work, you take the case of work – this is like a monster in itself, okay. You can have a complete interview that is based on your work alone, just your work, nothing else. It can start off with very simple things like, if you take work it can start off with very simple things like your specialization, it can go to your project, it can go to your team size, it can go to your responsibilities, definitely it will talk about the company, then it will talk about the company structure, is it public, is it private. Then from public-private you need to understand the difference between okay your company is a publicly listed company, what is a privately listed company, what’s the meaning, what’s a private company, what’s the LLC, what’s in INC. Your company is listed in the US. If you take the case of Cognizant, people who are working in Cognizant or not working, I don’t think it’s a company that is listed in India, correct? It’s listed in the US. Why is it listed in the US? What’s, what’s, what’s the difference? Are they trying to, you know, siphon money out of some country or something or is there some kind of tax advantage. So these are the questions that you will get. So public, where, where is their, where is their head office, why is the head office there? So this obvious questions when you reach one particular breakpoint, its questions like why, where, who, get it, how. These are 4 to 5 questions that you can definitely ask when you reach one breakpoint. If you feel there is no more questions will be asked, stop it there. You don’t need, you don’t need to go forward and look at this. Team size, it’s a very simple point right? So why the team size is small, why the team size is big, is something that you would need to go forward and justify. What has been your roles? You need to connect all of this, you need to connect all of this to each of these points. All of this to each of these points. So your specialization is let’s say Java and your role is currently that of a module lead. You aim to be a project lead. I believe after project lead you can take two parts, tech lead and project manager, okay. So that’s, that’s something that these guys assumed or you, you, you yourself have said. So you need to justify as to why you will not take the tech lead position, why you will go for project management? If you go forward and say something like “Yes, tech lead is something that’s been offered to me”. Please listen to this statement carefully, okay. I’m currently in a position where my next promotion which is happening in April, okay, and your interview is supposedly happening in March, okay. My next promotion is, so you want to showcase the fact that you have been doing well and you go forward and say you’re going to be a tech lead. Now that is actually having a small negative shade. Yes or no? Why? Because you’re going for a B School interview and you are openly proclaiming that the, the opportunity that you have is our opportunity being provided to you is to become a technical lead. If you’re already a technical lead it’s fine. But if you’re saying your current work and profile has pushed your management to believe you can become a technical wizard. You can easily get questions on why did you opt for technical lead or why do you think you are better technical person than a management person in your current company. How do you think an MBA is going to help? Do you think you should go for an MBA because already you are having a good career path? Technical is where you’re going. So many questions will come because of this roles and specializations, so many. You have to go forward and understand now, very simple things which I might, I might have missed, like when you talk about company, one of the main points that can come is competition. Hundred percent, you will definitely be talking about competition. When you talk about competition there can be competition because of products, competition based on location, competition based on revenue, so many aspects. So what are the types of competition, we’ll answ…. we will give you, we will give you the answer to these questions. I know that you’re not getting any answers right now but this is your maximum set of questions that you can expect based on you, nothing else. If you want, if you have good friends sitting next to you today you can probably you know tell them to do their mind map separately. You can compare you know how widespread their mind map is and probably if you are getting stuck you can take a look at it. There is no limit to it because, if, if, if, if I tell you the truth, after a week also you will start getting ideas to restart the mind map. So there is no limit. Don’t say that you know, I, I don’t know if I have finished with my mind map or not. There is no start, there is no finish. The, the bigger it looks, the more you need to prepare. So you can look at the core areas, mark them, so hopefully the first page that you make, or the first sheet that you make will look like this. Nonsense. Okay. Then you redraw it properly and keep it with you or you can keep a you know a big chart sheet and you can go forward and utilize that. Keep it with you. If you, if you don’t want, don’t show it to anybody. Okay. Because you might feel vulner… vulnerable. Keep it with you and go forward. There are so many possibilities as I said. I just circled work and I took it up. There can be education. This is like a monster part two that is waiting to rise. Especially if you got 57 percentage in any of your exams you’re gone. Okay. So they will ask a lot of questions based on this. So you need to get these points very, very clear, done and dusted. When you do this most of your other areas like interests, your strengths, your weaknesses, examples that you’re going to cite, they will all come crystal clear in the interview. You say that you’re very patient. Tell is one instance in work where you really showcased a patient behavior, because I don’t think you’re a patient person. It’s something that the interviewer will actually mark on to your face or point at your face and say. So you would definitely have done your work, right. At work there are these many people, this is the reason why I got this particular growth, is are all points that you got. So you obviously get an example of patience from there. The days before this is something that you should hundred percent take care of. Okay. The mind map strategy takes care of almost everything. Anticipating questions and getting examples also. If, if any of us are able to anticipate questions, it’s end of the interview. There is no way you can be startled. So that’s the reason I feel this is a very, very important thing. Now, obviously the panel is going to look at all these things, okay. I am not going to stress on anything in particular. Your interpersonal skills, your analytical skills, your teamwork, these are all important. Just like a job interview. So I want to give you this analogy because people feel what I did for my job interview is going to be not at all related to what I, what I’m going to do for this B school interview. That’s not the case. Your job interview and B school interview, they have a lot of linkage and connection. So definitely you need to keep all these traits that you felt was important for landing your first job in mind. So some of the important things like ethics, teamwork, so these are all important things okay. Your leadership quality obviously it was important at work but it is much, much more important here. If you can show anything related to leadership, if you are writing it down in your essay or similar purpose or you’re mentioning an example, try to mention example where it is not about leadership, but your, but you’re indirectly indicating about leadership. So you can probably say the instance where you know I had to be really patient was our client was really behind our back, we had done an estimation where only five resources where the estimation sheet said we need, we need to 10, four people resigned because of XYZ issues and I had to motivate the people to go forward and, and work better. I was leading by example by, by working for 10 to 12 hours only till we got the project done and dusted and we ensured that after that the policy was set right. My employees were working for only eight hours. So you are talking about a scenario where you’re being patient of the, with the client. You can explain that in more detail, okay. You are patient with the client, you have explained to them what the situation is, you have not asked for any, you’ve not asked for any deadlines but probably you would have told them you know we are facing issues because of resource crunch. You might not be able to explain it in detail. It’s a reality right. You cannot go and explain to your American clients or any other client that you’re in deep trouble. The project is doomed. Out of 10 people only 5 are remaining. You cannot explain that but you can say we are having some unplanned leaves, some employees are not really keeping well so because of which we, we are very, very tight but I will ensure our teammates are working well and you go back and give an update to your teammates but the story actually can be elaborated by you talking about you motivating the people, you talking about you leading by example. So what does the, what does the interview panel get? They get to understand that you’re not only showing examples of interaction with foreign clients and trying to make the situation calm and cool, at the same time you’re also showing small little you know shades of leadership. They have not asked for it but you have indirectly put it across. This will only come and I will come back and I will go back to what I started off in the last slide, creating an example of yourself. So I called it mind map but you can call it whatever you want. Just create all those examples. You want to make bullet points, make it. No, no difference. You don’t want them drop unnecessary circles and arrows, don’t do it. You want to make bullet points, no issues. But focus on the four core areas, education, work, family and your personal, I am talking about personal and your achievements. These four areas definitely should be there. I, I, I believe we all had a session on current affairs and all of that, if you have not had it please go through it so that you can understand other aspects which are not really related to you but can be shot out of the blue, current affair topics right. So that’s not put in my mind map. My mind map has nothing to do with current affairs as of now, okay. Now all of this is important. Okay. Interpersonal skills, this is what they will be checking during interview. Now in the interview there is, there are few things which I want to help all of you out with. I don’t know how we can address all of it. Your dress code okay. You are taking an interview let’s assume, let’s assume you’re taking interview in Bombay, okay. What’s the specialty of Bombay?
Audience members speaking.
Faculty: Its Mumbai’s okay. What’s the specialty?
Audience members speaking.
Faculty: It’s a happening place. Probably you will become drunk the, the morning of the interview, right I understand. Okay. This is what people in Bangalore think about okay. If you look at Bombay and, and you look at any scenario where let’s assume you’re going to Jamana Lal Bajaj for an interview, right. They have a, they have a process where interviews happen in different locations. The main thing is and we are talking about nonverbal communication and dress and all that, that’s the reason why I am talking about this point. It’s a slightly more humid location. So imagine you’re coming from a, from a part of the country where it is cool okay, and it’s not really humid. Sweating is not something that you are used to. Going down to a city like Bombay you need to be prepared with some kind of extra, you know, material that will absorb all your perspiration. If you don’t, going to be a, I don’t know, a wet situation. Okay. You’re going to be completely drenched. The people who are conducting interview will most likely think have you got your form, the forms. All of you have returned the, the forms to, please do that yeah. Okay. So the interviewer will think this guy is very tensed. It is definitely one thing, one thing that they are going to think. Second thing is obviously this person is not prepared because you’re supposed to be prepared right. You’re supposed to wear your, wear enough material to, to, to take in all that select. It’s very, very important. Another thing that we, that we very simply forget because I’m not going to tell, give you tips like please wear a full sleeve shirt because that’s obviously understood. Please don’t, please don’t wear something that is very florescent. I know I support the left party CPM, CPI. So does not mean that I wear red color clothing okay and, and have a red bandana and all that. That’s anyway not possible, right. So the kind of, the kind of things that you will wear will be light and subtle. Obviously it can be white, light, light blue shade. Same is the case with ladies, okay. You don’t need to go forward and have your, your sisters’ wedding sari being used for your interview. Get my point? So maybe it might be Kanchipooram silk and all that with Rs.10,000 price tag shown, but it’s not going to help. Right. So they will be wondering this person coming for marriage or going to a marriage or are we somewhere in between. So that’s definitely not, not something that I will, that I will suggest. But over and about this, very simple thing, be gents or ladies, I had like you to carry in your purse or on your, in your pockets a handkerchief. Please don’t forget that okay. Please don’t forget that. If, if it’s not used I’m happy for you okay. Suddenly when you reach there, you’ve got, get an allergic reaction, you are leaking through your nose. It’s going to look very, very bad okay. I don’t want to explain that situation. Uh. Now, one more thing. When you’re, when you’re talking about dress and dress code, I am talking to the ladies who I am addressing right now. Please don’t mind me being very open. Uh. Please don’t wear, uh, garments which you have not tried out before okay. Classic example being a sari. I know that men have it easy. We can wear whatever we want in a couple of minutes. Probably put a blazer on top of it if we feel comfortable, okay. So it’s not a big question for men. A blazer, no blazer, you can remove the blazer if you want to, that’s fine. But the choice between a salwar and a chooridaar and a, and a sari, or formals. Okay. There are three options right, in which the sari is a most, uh, most contentious piece of garment because you should be very comfortable wearing it, very comfortable. If you cannot walk properly, and your walk from the door to the, to the interview seat is like a good 10-20 meters, uh, it might be a big long discussion room or a meeting room, if you feel they are going to trip and fall, okay, that moment is seen by the interview panel. They know that this person is uncomfortable. You are probably looking down catching your sari or whatever it is that should be done I will be walking. It’s a complete you know, completely bad start to the whole interview. Same is the case if you talk about gents, the tie. How many of us, how many of us here are wearing a tie every day or for infosians, definitely 100%. Okay. I know if you don’t wear it you have a 100 or 300 rupee fine. Okay. So it’s better to have three ties, one in your pocket, one in your bag and everything. Fine. But no one. Problem with the tie is there are so many different ways to tie the knot. Okay. Try it a couple of days before, please, please. Don’t try to do that army, I don’t know what you call it, some cloth and it comes out from here, okay. Please don’t try all that, okay. I don’t know I have never tried it myself. That’s one of the reasons why I am very averse to it. It might make you look like you got some problem with your neck or you might start sweating all across. So it’s not something that I want to try out. A tie definitely, our bow tie, you know a bow tie, you have ready-made bow ties. I don’t know, have you seen this bow tie? Right? I am not saying it, I have written it. Okay. No. Please. Okay. This is definitely not, I don’t know, it’s not a ballroom whatever. So definitely not okay. So that is definitely not the case. Hygiene I’m not talking about. The hygiene, definitely we will take a bath and all of that. The one special request that I have, ladies I am very sure, you’re, you’re up to it; men, please shave. Okay I don’t know what is it you get allergy or you want to get that small little s.. s.. you know, stubble look that Shah Rukh had in the second half of, I don’t know what the name of that movie is, Jab Tak Hai Jaan or something right? And you come out of a bullet and you, you know take your right leg out all the way down. I don’t think anybody is going to see all that okay. So all those looks which you want to try out for the first time, please don’t. If you feel it’s something that makes you look much better, obviously you can try it out. No issues. Or you are very sure but no issues but having small little patches okay, on your chin, extensions to your right and left, g-girls I am sorry I have to say this in front of you but please don’t try it out. It might, it might showcase it you know, you-you are very daring and all that but no chance. Now those of us who have a lot of hair, okay, on the head, uh, please groom it properly. I am talking about guys as well as girls. Please don’t let it out. Shake it all across, then take it out and then see the interviewers. Please don’t. I know that it showcases, showcases you know good strong hair growth tactics and techniques but it’s definitely not going to work. I don’t know if any interview panel which is really attracted to good hair. Okay. So obviously well groomed, well oiled, nice. I don’t know if you should, if you have an opportunity to keep a comb or hair brush. Great. If you do not, like if the guys are, especially guys if you’re walking light or traveling light then you can probably just you know have some oil on your hair and just groom it. So these are very simple things that will give you extra confidence. That’s all that I am saying. Everything else that we are talking about. The firm handshake, eye contact, poses and natural gestures, this is something that we can anyway help you during the interview. When we, when we take the mock interview or anyone can help you out even after 2 to 3 minutes of interview.
Couple of things that I want you to understand. Very simple. I have laid them down. Uh. Number one, I am repeating this. Please smile. Okay. There is no, no bigger savior than a smile. Even if you are answering questions very well the smile shows that he is or she is very modest okay. Obviously there are smiles which does not show your modesty like, okay, there are so many smiles like that but I am talking about a normal smile okay. All of us do have a normal smile right. That, uh, and obviously if, if you don’t know a particular answer, uh, this is a classic question. You don’t know what should you do? Should you, should you, you know, gas it up a little bit okay. So if you don’t know there are two ways to do it. Obviously you go forward and answer something and then you, uh, then you say that this is, this is what I am guessing okay. I am not very sure the answer, I am guessing and I am, you go forward, but whatever will be the case you know, you not very sure and you don’t know at all. Okay. You say, I am, I am sorry, I-I-I- I quite do not know what your, what, what the answer to that question will be. All these three scenarios you should end it with a smile. Okay, now, I have said smile for three scenarios. There are only three possible scenarios, does not mean and I am hoping okay you don’t take it to the extreme where you are walking in and throughout the interview. So people are asking questions, there is no pause, there is nothing, you’re like. So you be thinking this guy, this fool told me to smile and these guys are watching me like a, like a zoo animal. So the, the smile needs to come only at ab–, at particular pauses okay. It’s, it’s, it’s like a, it’s like a, it’s like a, you know, pause breaker. That’s the, that’s the thing okay. So you need to smile only at that point of time. I don’t want you to go forward and have a smile throughout. But please practice your smile. Some of us are very good at it. I am talking to the others who do not like smiling too much. It, it, makes them feel vulnerable okay. So, it’s to those people that I am talking. Please try and practice this. The best way to do it is do it in a mirror. The best way to do it is to do it in a mirror. Okay. Uh, there are many people who, uh, I don’t know, uh have you, have you seen the movie ‘Green Mile’ anyone? Green Mile? Okay, if you have not seen the movie, not a problem. Just google the, google the movie ‘Green Mile’ okay. Uh. You will see a poster. There is Tom Hanks in that movie. It’s not one of his best movies but the most important character in ‘Green Mile’ is not Tom Hanks. There is this huge, uh African American dude. He is like 7 feet tall. I, I think close to 200 kgs okay. Full of muscles. And he, and he is, he is in for, he is in for a death sentence, in that movie. Okay. Now, if you look at the movie, initially you, you see that this guy is like a terrorist. You really feel this guy should be hanged as soon as possible. Why I want you to take a look at it is, you know when you search for the images, this will just take a couple of minutes I hope. You will see this guy smiling. Okay. You will see this guy smiling. That single smile was enough for, for us the, the audience, to have a completely different perspective. You didn’t need to even understand the story. His story was not required. You know why he was getting a death, life sentence and death sentence and why he shouldn’t get it was not required. We would ourselves come back, come back and say this guy actually looks big but the smile really uh you know tells us who he truly is. Get my point? So depending on who we are, I, I, I don’t think I am like a huge fellow who will, who will look intim.. intimidating to others, even the panel, but if I were to be, you know, having a very strong built or something, one request is I would like all of you to mellow it down with, with a, with a small little smile. Okay. I am repeating this point because there is nothing like it. You won’t know the, the value of it. Some of the answers that you say will have lesser points than this. So they will, they will actually feel that you are pleasing. I know you are tensed. It is difficult to do it in a tensed situation. Now we are anyway having a casual chitchat. Right, but in a scenario where you are facing one or two or three people or maybe even five people, it’s difficult to do it, but please practice and make it happen. Okay. Uh. Eye contact, I mentioned slightly about eye contact. The golden rule is please look at them. Okay. Now, looking down, obviously it shows that, that you’re tensed or you are not confident. Tensed is fine. They will, they will forgive you but you continuously look down, it’s like this guy is definitely not a confident person. So that’s anyway not going to work. Looking up is much more criminal because it shows that you don’t care. Get it. It’s, it’s, it’s like I don’t care look. So that’s anyway not going to work out. Now, when you are looking at them there is only one place that you should look at. Okay. Looking slightly below or looking above is not going to help. Simple reason. Look at their lips. They will be thinking what is he looking inside my mouth for? Okay. And obviously they will, they will notice. You, you, you can try it out. So I don’t want to really concentrate on the eye, right eye, left eye, right. Not required, but somewhere there. If you go all the way up, unfortunately the person, these people are really you know, experienced, I won’t use the term old. Experienced people who have used their brain so much that their hair starts falling, right. You start looking above the eye, then they will be like okay, unh, okay. So there is going to be an issue. So I want you to concentrate on, on that portion. That will be more than enough. One more thing, when you are answering people usually look to the right and left to get the answer. It will take some effort but as far as possible bring it back. When you’re thinking right there is a school of thought that says you look to your left when you lie, you look to your right when you’re actually telling the truth. Forget all that. I’m not going to talk about psychology and all here. Even if you do that please come back to the, to the, to people. One more thing is in part what the eye contact is do not forget, it’s easy to look to the person in front of you but there will be one or two people to your right or left, please glance at them. Of course they are, if they have asked the question give them more time and then go, go back to the others, but otherwise when you are answering a generic question asked by anybody please glance at everybody. It’s important. These are things that you might not realize even if a mock, during a mock interview there will be many more core issues that are coming up, this might not be mentioned. But I want you to take note of it because you know yourself best. So you would know that you know I’m not looking at people, I look down. So you can just make that change. It would take one or two you know prep talks to yourself and it will be taken care of. Okay. With respect to handshake, in case, they say thank you all the best, there are different ways to go forward and have a handshake, uh, uh, I don’t know, I’m, I’m not going to call anyone. Let’s assume there is another hand okay. This, this, this is my right hand. Obviously we are going to shake with the right hand, we all know that. Please don’t catch these fingers and shake the hand. Okay. This is not a handshake. Or catch it slowly, okay, and are you seeing this? Okay. Are you seeing this? Okay. This is not a handshake. It should be a proper contact. You see, see, you see this portion, right? You are, your this portion should come directly here and it should, it should have a strong grip. It’s one, two, leave. That’s the whole point. It’s one, two, leave, that’s it. If you are, if, if you are being given a handshake, I, there is, there are a, there are different schools of thought which says should you get up and offer your hand you know to the interview panel and all. It’s usually not welcomed. It’s usually not welcomed. Some of them might feel good, some of them might, might be like why is this person coming into my space? He’s not yet in the, in the, in the, you know, institution, or she is not yet admitted that she is got that, you know, too much of overconfidence. So that is something that you need to, you need to really, uh, take note of. One more thing when you are conducting interview there are some natural gestures which you will be doing. So moving your hand is, is very good. Okay. But some na.., some people might have a natural gesture to bang, Sir I am telling you Sir. So it’s not a, it’s not a bang, like a parliamentary bang, but it’s like, sir I am telling you sir please this is the reality. This is the correct answer sir. Sir, sir please sir. So that’s, that’s one way. Another way is if you have a beard, so something that I have been told that I do is I keep doing this. Okay. So when I think, I’ll be like. So if this person does not, you know, like me fiddling around with my beard, they will probably think, you know, what is this guy doing? Is the itchy there or what exactly is his issue? So, if I know this, if I know this for 15 minutes, I’m saying that’s an approximate that you can expect right, 15 to 30 minutes, you can avoid. The hair is another object of, object of great aggravation, okay. I don’t know if, if I have more hair, less hair, whatever it is, wherever you have you try doing something, okay. Please avoid that. Please avoid. At least for that 15-20 minutes. It is stuff but please do it. Okay. People who have specs, try not to wear it below, okay, showing the Einstein look. Try to keep it here and try to maintain it there. Once or twice you touch your spec, its fine. It, it’s okay. It’s not criminal offense, okay. But as far as possible try not to, you know, go forward and do it too much, go forward and do it too much, okay. There are so many other things that can happen, uh, you can, you can, you can go forward and start catching hold of your hand, you would be sweaty in your palms. So one of the request that I have is when you are seated, when you’re seated, please ensure that you are seated with your hands on your feet. So if any time you feel tense or something you can just probably rub it slightly so your tension goes off. When your, when your palm is sweaty you feel more tense, that’s, that’s, that’s the whole point. Just rub it slightly or you can keep your handkerchief on your feet and you can go forward. One more request, when you are seated, please don’t sit cross-legged and shake your leg. Cross-legged is fine. Okay. Cross-legged is fine because mostly, most likely it will not, it would not be visible. It will not be taken note of. But if you would sit cross-legged and you shake your leg which is on top, like yeah, it’s going to be a problem. Now if you’re not sitting cross-legged and still you shake your leg, so I have this dirty habit of doing it, it’s only those 15 – 20 minutes that I know I’m not going to shake my leg, because I have, I have told myself, “Pravine please don’t do it.” So, in that scenario when you are even not crossing but just sitting, please don’t shake your leg and think, the, I don’t know, some of our parents would have told this, this is very bad for the family and some dangerous, you know, piece of advice because of which we have tried, they have tried to stop us in an early age but some people like me would not learn otherwise. Okay. I am like scientifically it makes no sense. I don’t care. I want to shake my leg. I feel nice. Okay. But not for the interview. Because it actually shows this person is nervous. There is nothing else to it. So if you continue doing it throughout the interview it show that you’re, your nervousness is going on and on and on and on. So that is something that I am not going to prefer. Okay. So please try and avoid that. These are very simple things we can anyway work on the later, you know, um, gestures for all of you that’s not a, that’s not too much of a problem. Now, when you’re talking about your, your, your talk right, you need to have your introduction done correctly and when you’re doing it you need to speak clearly. Some of us might have small issues, we might, we might start stammering if we talk too much but that can only be taken care of with practice. So this is a classic scenario where you need to look at the mirror and talk. All your preparation intr.. introduction preparations, strengths and weakness preparation, your interests, your 5-year plan, everything can be done without even having a single mock interview just by looking at the mirror. In the bathroom no problem. You don’t need to go outside and show anyone else. My point here is you can do it to yourself. The moment you look at yourself, when you get the confidence to tell that to yourself, it’s done. So the speaking clearly, all of that happens very, very, very easily. Now if you have relevant work experience, there is no harm, there is no harm in using relevant jargon, relevant industry jargon. Okay. So, uh, you, you can, you can talk about, you can talk about your design, let’s assume that IT is the, is the core area that everyone works in, okay, uh. You can say, uh, you know, we have a tracker, fine. But tracker is actually a jargon. It is, it is not really something that everyone knows. What tracker, which tracker? You have something like, I don’t know, RFD for requirement, dialog.. requirement document and all. Unfortunately this RFD is something else, somewhere else it’s something else some other place. So whenever you are using industry jargon that is an acronym ensure that you expand it. Ensure that you expand it. So because of, because of the, because the sole reason that all these acronyms or jargons might be specific to your company culture or your college culture. So please try and expand it once. Maybe using it 2-3 times you don’t need to expand it again. Because if they will not go for enough, excuse me what is that? Because “what is that”, it shows that they don’t know the thing, so they will not ask. They will probably say this guy does not mee… make sense. Or this, this lady what she is talking is very relevant to what she is working, she doesn’t know the whole world view. So that’s the reason why when you’re using industry jargons, use it but ensure that you are showcasing the actual meaning of it. So it’s important that you do that. Now when it comes to interview I wanted to understand this core reality okay. There are three kinds of interviews. There are only 3 kinds. That’s the good part. One is a traditional interview where they will start, they will have a nice little introduction, they will talk to you, they will ask you, they will ask things related to you and they will go forward and wrap things up, okay. They might ask you do you have any questions or you.. uh. they will say is there anything else left and they will stop it. Okay. Nice little interview. They will look at your sheet, they will ask questions, generate and go on. In which they might even ask questions on current affairs, general knowledge, do you know about this. Okay. You don’t know fine. They will not say anything, they will continue. Right. It’s a traditional interview. There is absolutely no issue with that. They will ask you introduction and all the core questions. The other interview will be like a typical HR interview. Okay. We are talking about a, a behavior based interview. So this might happen, traditional behavior might happen at the same time. You might not realize. There will be one person who is just trying to understand your behavior. So to do that they will give you a lot of example of scenario based things. They’ll, they’ll say okay, you have, you have gone forward and done lot of things in sports, uh, do you think it has helped you? So you might think it’s trying to showcase. Yeah you know I was a captain, I was very good, I was, I was a star striker. I scored a lot of goals. But when they say do you think it has helped you, you should ideally be trying to show character traits. It has helped me yes because I, I got a team, I got, I got to cultivate a very good team spirit. I understood what losing meant and I, and I, and I, and I caved, and I brought myself out of that particular scenario. I tried to make myself win the next time. I was very, very humble loser. So all of this is trying to showcase a good character trait. So it might happen, most likely it will happen parallel. I am saying this traditional behavior and the traditional and behavior, both of them might happen together. So this is one type that, that you can definitely face. The other one here is stress. Everyone feels when they have a stress interview, though I am telling you all of this, when you feel that you have going at, to a stress interview, you’ve lost it. You have, you have not getting through. But the reality is the percentage conversion for stress interviews, people who come out of stress interviews like in one piece, is a much, much better conversion ration than at normal traditional interview because in traditional interview everyone comes out in one piece. Right. You don’t have a very clear idea about how, how exactly it’s going. But in stress interview, it is good if you have a stress interview because you know that you’re going to get through if you can just reach the finish line. Now what is the meaning of reaching the finish line in stress interview? It means maintaining your composure as far as possible. There will be scenarios where you’ll be super pissed, okay. But what is a, what is a solution when you’re super pissed? What is your weapon?
Audience members speaking.
Faculty: Thank you. Smile. That is your solution. Now, obviously when they are beating you saying you’re useless, 100% you know, you will not study, you will not clear this course. 100% not clear because you’ve 57 in engineering. You did not get it. Okay. But I am saying definitely you’ll not clear the course. So if you, if you smile.. obviously it’s a yeah, I agree with you boss, I agree. Okay. So you cannot have those kind of smiles but you should be able to say I, I, I would beg to differ with you because you’re comparing me, comparing a scenario where I was not interested to do something that I was trying to get into for a lot of time and I feel I am really connected to the work I have done, the other I Q T’s that I have participated in it is something that gives me a connect to, connect to this course, so I feel if I am connected to it I am passionate about it, the marks would definitely come. And you just have a small little smile, he will definitely not give you time to smile for too long, he will continue. The simplest way to find out if it is stress interview is you’re not given time for anything. That’s the simplest way to identify. So you need to identify what the interview is. If it’s going cool you don’t need to be aggressive. You can also be very cool. If it’s going, if it’s going into a stress interview mode you need to ensure that you’re getting your answers right. The moment you say ‘no’ in a stress interview, they will circle around that ‘no’ and keep pecking at you for a long time. And you can keep telling “Sir, I am very sorry but I will look into it.” So these are the ways to come out of that particular circle. The circle where you’re getting attacked you’ve to come out of it by, by apologizing, okay and by saying that I don’t think that’s the right answer but I am very sure, you know, that it’s something that I can learn, I can look into. And you should try and come out of it because they will anyway not circle around you for too long. Uh.. I will give you a classic case of a, of a, of a stress interview okay. I will, I will come back to it because a stress interview also has a same kind of interview lifecycles. The same kind. The 5 minute, uh, breaking the ice, evaluating summary and all that. Only thing is this summary might not happen for a stress interview much. There is no summary right? Okay get up and go. Right? But most of the times it’s just this three, the introduction, general layout and summary. This summary will not happen for a stress interview. So you know it has not been a traditional interview so you need to be prepared right. Now, uh, what is actually happened is, uh, in the interview methodology, I’ll, I’ll come back to it, what has actually happened is, uh, this is a classic case of one of, one of the people you would have obviously met, there is a person called Vinay. I don’t know how many of you have interacted with him? He is, uh, he has made himself present all throughout, uh, uh, the classes in Bangalore, he has travelled to couple of other places, to look at student queries. Uh. He is someone who had got the IIM-C interview call along with B and L and I and K last year. Okay. So, he is supposed to get what he got, because he, he wrote a wonderful SOP to IIMC, and that’s, that’s now become kind of world famous. It’s, it’s, it went like… this is a SOP. Can you read it? Why do you want to get into IIM C, the answer was ‘No A, no B, so C.’ That is his answer. So this happened before the interview. So obviously what will you do to a guy who comes with this answer to the interview? You’re not going to give him a garland welcome, glass of milk, one Good-Day Biscuit. It’s not going to happen right? So obviously he knew it’s going to be a stress interview. Probably that helped him slightly. But he was very sure about what, why he wrote it, okay. And very sure about what he want to do. So they started off by saying you spent a lot of time writing this particular SOP. Definitely a lot of effort to write these things right? So we will also give you a lot of time, you can get up and go. So he said, “Sir, but I feel I am a very good candidate. I have just listed the facts. The fact here is I, I, I don’t have a A call, I will not take up the B call. I want to come for the C call. So, uh, I am attending the interview. I am, I am here to show you that I am interested. Uh, just give me a chance.” So he said “okay, I’ll give you a chance, uh, explain to me what is the reason that you want to do an MBA?” So he said “I am the education sector and I really believe educational sector that, that needs to, you know, go forward, it, it’s, it’s only going up. It’s not even a sunrise sector. It’s just about rice. So it’s a sector where we can actually bring in a lot of management tactics and intervention and go forward and showcase that particular growth. Uh. I feel a program here will not only help me in understanding the finance aspects of things but even the marketing and general management aspects of, of education and you can look at the major players. There are only a handful of players globally and there are literally one or two players who are there in the education segment. Two of them are there in the normal education segment and two of them in the competitive test prep segment.” This is what he told in the 1 or 2 minutes that he got. And they started drilling him. “But you are very confident right. You are normally teaching students, we don’t care. Uh, uh, you can still continue teach students. It, the sector is anyway disorganized. There are, there are institutions like us who was trying to bring, bring some kind of security to it.” They went on and on and on. The only thing that they wanted to understand is does he stick to his point? So he stuck with education, he stuck with the fact that management and education are not running parallely as of today so we had to go forward and bring that kind of a synergy into it. And he felt that he would be able to make some kind of a mark or change into it. Interview went on for 35 minutes. Okay. Uh, uh, Vinay has his, sp, special characteristic and trait, when he is being bashed, he goes red. Okay. But even through all that redness and pain, he was still able to go forward and get the answers going. Obviously there have been scenarios where he, he has not been able to go forward and answer some kind of current affairs, GK questions, saying that okay what are the policies the government has implemented. Uh. When do you think the Aakash tablet is coming out? What’s the exact date? Right. These are, these are areas Vinay actually did not go forward and make, uh, you know, mark the right answers, but the whole point is he knew it was a stress interview. He was sticking to his core points. So that is very, very important. And he expected it. If, if that’s not your case, at least understand that it’s a stress interview and go forward. Because if you don’t know why this is being asked, that’s a, that’s a problem that students face. If you don’t know why you’re being tormented like this, you’ll obviously start questioning yourself. Why is this happening to me? They don’t like me. Uh, this interview is not going well. This is all running in your mind. Right. But the simple point here is, it’s a stress interview, they, they’ve chose me to have this stress interview. Let me just sail through it. That’s all. Let me just at least cross the river. That’s it. No need of sailing in a ship and all. Small little boat is enough. Just row, row, row and get through. Get it? That’s enough. That’s all they need for a stress interview. So it’s, it’s, it’s good if you get through it. Now, one unsaid rule: please don’t cry. Okay. So I have, I have witnessed a few outbursts. Okay. Uh. Outbursts where tears fall down and then it’s taken off. That’s fine. That happens. So there is a little bit of satisfaction in my mind, yes success. Look now I am in the panel right. So, uh, I actually felt good. Yeah. But I will not give any brownie points to students okay. Outbursts where the student actually is crying and cleaning his nose, I was like Ugh. Yuck. This is not happening to me. Uh. So outbursts with respect to emotions coming out, please don’t do it. So there is one way where you are very, very meek, okay, you feel vulnerable because and you end up crying. That’s not accepted at all. And the other extreme. What is the other extreme? You give it back to the interview panel. What are you talking about? So it’s, I’m, I’m not using any MBCD, you know, gaali, okay, but the point here is the way in which you are putting it across, it’s over boss. You just put a full stop, another full stop, another full stop next to it. The interview is over. What are you talking about? No, no, no, that’s not the case. You don’t know anything. It’s over. Or if you say, uh, I don’t agree with you. It is fine. I don’t agree with you. It’s different. You get it? It’s, it cannot happen that way. The moment you feel you need to answer in any tone that is not going to be good catch your fist, beat yourself up without showing them, okay. It’s fine. But, but that ex…. both the extremes for any interview, traditional interview, behavioral interview, you will not face that extreme okay. But stress interview they are trying to take you there. Don’t allow them to take you there. That is your victory. So don’t go to this extreme which is anger, the other extreme which is like sadness. Don’t. I am a loser. I don’t know what to do. It’s not going to help. I agree with you but please give me the chance to become a winner. So it you, you feel that you know, you agree with them, the poor guys will understand your plight. What they will think is out of 5 possible candidates who I need to, from whom I need to select 1, 1 is anyway out. Nice. I need to select from the remaining 4. That’s what they are doing. They are eliminating you right. So you cannot showcase yourself in a bad light.
Now, I spoke about one particular scenario which uh I did not speak about one particular scenario which I skipped. Those are the, those are the characteristics that you want. There is a last point there, if you notice, honesty and integrity. Okay. I just want to bring that out because this is a mistake that we do. Uh. A scenario will be put forward where your, let’s assume that you do not, you’re in a port and they want to go forward and get a, get a particular, you know, shipment put across, but you find that there is a lot of inconvenience on the port. You go and meet the official, just speaking to them, everything is cool. But they want some kind of a percentage cut. Okay. What is the meaning of a percentage cut, to a port official?
Audience members speaking.
Faculty: It’s a bribe. Okay. Now, they will present it in such a way that they will not use the word bribe. They will use nice sophisticated words like percentage cut. They will go forward and say, uh, if it, if this does not happen, your company will fire you because it’s a 10 crore shipment loss, okay. One more delay is the end of it. Okay. You will make that loss happen for the company and your job is anyway gone. So obviously it’s your job versus the port official’s. What do you want to do? And you will say if that’s the case then you know I will pay from my salary, okay. So you are not taking any money from the company. There is no 10 percentage cut. You’re suffering, your whole salary and savings you’re taking and giving it. You might feel all these things right. But it is the end of your interview. Because it shows that you’re willing to take a shortcut. I know, you know, uh, a percentage cut, commission, friendship handshakes, okay, small envelope exchanges. All of that happens in, in, in India and the world but you cannot mention that in your interview. You cannot mention that in interview. I am very sorry you cannot do that. So there cannot be a scenario where you’re talking about a negative attribute coming out. Especially bribery, dowry. No chance. Girls anyway you can, you can talk against, against it. I hope no one will talk about I want to give my, my would be two cars, and five bungalows, so I want to do MBA sir. Okay then only he will marry so tha.. I am very sure you will not say that. But men, if that scenario comes where they talk about marriage and all of that, you can, if something comes where they talk about a th… social event you should be very, very unbiased in the fact that you’re not supporting it. At least you should not support it. We can say that there are different segments, cultures but I, I am not, I am not a personal you know personally I am not for it. But you should definitely not be positive. You should, you should be towards the negative part with respect to bribery, dowry and all those social issues, 100%. Now there is one particular hot issue that is, that is roaming around. What is that issue?
Audience members speaking.
Faculty: The rape issue. Okay. Uh, now, people who are from Delhi, or from the northern belt, I am not typecasting anybody here. Please forgive me. This is just a general talk. People from that location, men and women, so this is my last tip for the day. Uh. Have this feeling that, hota hai yaar. Okay. It happens. There are lot of women who are raising a human cry, people have joined the cause, but there are people, and I have, and I have met them in person okay, who have told this happens. As far as possible you try to avoid it. Okay. Now you understand the problem with this? Hota hai. It is, it is, it is happening. This is normal. Now, bef.. before I used to see 20 cases in the paper, now it’s only 10. It has reduced. Why are these ladies cro… you know stopping the traffic. My traffic situation is bad. I need to go to office. I am 5 minutes late, 10 minutes late. Get it? All those issues will be there in your mind when you are talking about this. Obviously an interview board, you will not be saying things like, uh, rape is good. Okay. You will not say things like that obviously. Right. But when the topic is put forward and you’re trying to when, when they will probably say what are the measures that India can adopt, uh, you should possibly think about some measures. When they say these measures will not work because it has been happening in Delhi all this time yaar. You’re from Delhi, you’re from nor… North India, or, I have heard of situations like this happening in metros, you should know about this. This is not going to change. Yeah sir. It’s not going to change, I understand. It’s a very tough thing. We have to wait and see sir. 10-15 years, we can give. By that time this situation will get, will, will move out. So all of the things that I told before, where you support this ca.. support this evil, is anyway not going to happen. And I am very sure all of us don’t believe in it right. We are educated and we have our opinions. But this attitude where there is a issue, it is a hot issue, it can come to you and you might relent by saying yeah, there is no solution because actually there might be no solution that you, that you see right. And you say that there is no solution you’re in trouble. So accepting that there is no solution is also a negative. Please don’t do that. So in this case bribery, dowry and all, it is almost been solved. At least you have ways in which you can, you can, you can, you can inform the vigilant cell after a day, after a week. It is okay. But this is something that has to be taken from the root, at that particular instance. It requires a lot of police force, lot of public awareness, right and you know that in some sections public awareness is not there. It’s not possible to take care of it in a month or two months’ time. It will take a year or two years. But accepting that it will take 5-10 years or 2 years is not, not correct. It’s not going to give you any positive points, so there is a possibility you will get more positive points or you will get some negative points. So please don’t support it. Support the, I am not saying support the cause, so you understood. The first point where I said you might support the cause which is not going to happen. I am hoping all of you are with me on this. The second point is you will support the apathy of the cause, like it is not going to get solved. That is also something that you should not do. You should not do. You should try to listen the point and say this is something that the government is working on. I am sure that the change will come forward. So what does it showcase? It showcases your positivity towards that particular issue and I am sure the voices of people will not go, you know, into deaf ears. You might feel otherwise. Kya honay wala hai yaar? In your mind, but you cannot showcase that. It’s a request that I have. So this is the last point that I had in terms of honesty and integrity. Uh, you anyway have taken care of the body of the interview. All this preparation is done. Okay. Uh, when it comes to question and answering, okay, obviously you know the questions that can come pertaining to you know that the answers, if you know it. But when you are looking at questions and answer, this is a methodology that I want you to go forward and uh showcase okay. There are many methods. It’s called the SAR method, it’s called the 1-2-3 method and all that. Uh, this can happen even for a case study okay. This can happen even in an interview. So when you look at a case study, uh, it is slightly more elaborate because you are looking at your situation, okay. You are looking at the key constraints, so these are the two things from the situation, so I will just note it down for you here. If you look at a particular case study, or you look at a interview question, right. First you will be faced with a situation. The situation might be uh, give us an instance where you, you have some kind of issue with your manager at work. So the situation is issue with manager at work. Right. So the, the problem here is you are supposed to find a the key constraints that you will face. So key constraints here is it issue, what is the issue, is it manager, or is it work? Get it? So will you focus on the issue that’s what I am trying to say? Will you focus on the issue that you do not get your appraisal on time, or they don’t, they don’t accept your growth? They don’t, they don’t, uh, they don’t go forward and give you, uh, all the, uh all the acclaim that you actually deserve. That is the issue, okay. Because the HR policies are not right. That’s the core reason right why you’re not getting acclaim then others are getting acclaim and good performers and very good performers are not getting, not getting noticed. That’s a issue. Second can be you create a non-key issue as a key issue saying that my manager always was useless. He is not done an MBA, so the reason why I want to do an MBA is I want to become a good manager doing an MBA. So you, but so what happens is you make the key issue a manager a person. This is a wrong key issue. This is a wrong key issue. So identifying this key issue will be very, very important in terms of tackling this particular situation, thereby giving a solution. That is reason why I went forward and said when you’re looking at this particular case, when you are looking at this particular case it’s a situation, it a action and the result. In this you can most likely give examples and explain how this result can be, or how this result actually worked out. Okay. You can talk about products, services, so many things. This can happen in your college. It can happen at work. But you need to try and give this kind of an approach. You understand the situation, okay. You decide on what the issues are and take actions for it and say in the end what will happen. This is the best way to go forward and summarize. So, if you are, if you are getting a question you will typically have half a minute. Understand, you can tell “Sir I believe the issue that you’re talking about is this, uh, and I fle… and I believe the main key constraints or problems are this and the only way that could have been solved at that point of time is this.” So if they would come back and say “What is a, what are the two things that you feel you could have changed?” Right. So you will obviously be saying the two main things are this and the change was required because of these reasons I would like to change, the way the company would have, has functioned in, with respect to HR policies. The way the company has function with respect to finance policies and it can be easily done if they make a cycle for it. So once they make a cycle every January they will be getting that appraisal process done. By March it will compulsory be done. Another thing that it can do to take care of solving this is implementing a ERP module. Which, which is not very expensive. So we need 2 solutions. Once the ERP module is done, it is automized and there are peop… with the same amount of people, without recruiting new people, you can follow the same procedures. So you are actually taking the solution, trying to give one or two solutions to it. You don’t necessarily need to give all your solutions in one shot. You can give solutions one by one by one. Okay. This is a very simple approach. But anyway, answering questions most likely half your questions will be, uh, information based questions, like you will ma.. most probably say a sentence, there will not be too much time to talk about a big scenario like in a company HR interview. It will not happen. Okay. So most of your questions will be like single statements like uh why do you want to do your MBA. So there’s no problem there right? There is no key constraint there. The only thing is you need to get into the college. So we will not solve it that way. You’ll say that I want to do my MBA because I feel that the work I am doing has, has really guided me to this direction and I know that I have the leadership skills after working for the last 1 or 2 years. Or what the kind of roles that I have assumed in my college, I have not been working in the right kind of code.. roles that I have assumed in a college helps me to understand that I need to go for and take a management role. I have done it in a couple of instances. Instances are 1, 2, 3, 4, or 1, 2, or 1 or 1, 2, 3. How many ever instances that you can give. And I feel I, I, I’ll, I’ll make a perfect fit. Then from that question they will go forward and say “Okay, so you feel that you are good in marketing. I think that’s what you are talking about. Why do you think you are good in marketing? Try and sell a pen to me.” Okay. It’s, it’s not going to come to you but I am saying a very, very, uh, sick random question. So my point here is this method is used only in case of a case study kind of a question that, that comes to you. Okay.
Reading, practicing English, discussing hot topics. In these hot topics I want you to dis… look at economic topics, social topics. Third priority is political topics. Okay. Your first priority is economic topics, your second priority is social topics, your third priority is, your third priority is political topics. Okay. All of you are okay with this. That’s your third priority. Okay. Now that is done.
Now, I’ll just tell you the last thing that I want to talk about – Group Discussion. In a Group Discussion, there are a couple of things that you need to do. These are the only things that you need to do actually. Right. I am not even showing you the slide for that. It’s very simple. So, uh, what you would need to do very simply for a Group Discussion here is, if possible, this is if possible, start the Group Discussion. The rumors are true. For starting the Group Discussion you get extra points. Okay. But you will not get any points, in fact you lose points if you are start makes no sense. All of you got this? So if you are just trying to start, “Yes friends we need to talk about this topic. Just love marriage and arranged marriage. I really like love marriage. You talk about arranged marriage.” You, you started, you are very happy. “Yeah I started.” So you will say 1 point plus. But that’s not the point right. That is not a start. You need to give, lay a context. So starting a Group Discussion is basically laying a context. So this is a place where you can actually use a situation-action, uh, the SAR method, or you don’t need to mug up any method here. But you are saying the situation here is we are being asked to compare between one and the other. Okay. I will just give a very random, very popular example. Love and arranged marriage. We can talk about anything else. Okay. So we have, we are, we are supposed to, uh, discuss about the, the Toyota economic crisis. So Toyota’s economic crisis, they have recalled their cars 2 times. So that’s, that’s the whole point. Can a market leader remain a market leader? Toyota economic crisis, classic, classic example. That’s, that’s your Group Discussion topic okay. So maybe you are asked to talk about the Toyota economic crisis and a market leader and we understand that they are, they have been facing issues but please do keep in mind that they are the world leaders and number two in the largest automobile market, which is the North Americas. So you have some data with you. You’re not using numbers but you have some crude idea right. So you put in that crude idea and you say that in this scenario we definitely have doubts about Toyota’s, Toyota’s capabilities but the fact that they have identified, uh, their issues and they are trying to correct them lays a foundation for a good strong ethical company and I feel that is the most important thing. There are obviously more core issues to talk about and by the time you say this much, take it from me, someone would take it from you. By the time you say this much, somebody will pinch it from you. So, saying, laying the small foundation is enough. But saying that “I like Toyota, Toyota is a nice company and I think you know we should all discuss about Toyota but maybe you should discuss what Nissan and other companies also, can you all discuss?” is not laying the context, right? So I hope I have set the example for this. This is laying the contest, context. A typical Group Discussion, if it’s 10 minutes, 15 or 20 minutes, your first 20% of the time or first 10 percentage of your time, whatever will be the time, is your start and the last same percentage is your ending, right. That’s the reason why when you go for a Group Discussion, if you don’t have an interview, no problem. But when you go for a Group Discussion, you need to have a watch. I know there will be a clock in most of the group discussion rooms but if your luck is so good it will be behind you. Right. So if it is a lucky day, the clock will be behind you. So you cannot anyway turn around and look. People will be like what is this person doing. So that’s one of the reasons why for the Group Discussion especially you need to have this particular accessory with you. If you don’t have an expensive watch, don’t worry, you get these 100 rupee watches which work for 1 day. So buy it the day before, use it the day of the Group Discussion, throw it off. Okay, 100 bucks, I think that’s the cost of a biryani nowadays. Okay. So it’s fine enough. Don’t buy the watch. You can save, I don’t know, 1 crore rupees and get the Tag Heur or something okay. So you need to have it because this to this, the transition is very fast. The in between body portion to the end of the Group Discussion, the transition is very fast. So you need to ensure that you are keeping track of this line here. Very important okay. Now before we reach the stop or the summary, in between what do you do? Number one, you listen to others. So if you need to listen to others and actually take away things from what people are talking you need to have a pen, a piece of paper, if it’s not provided, keep something with you. At least a pen you should have with you. Piece of paper hopefully they will provide or you can carry a small little post it kind of a note in your pocket, or in your handbag. I don’t think they will have issues bring it out. 99% of the times they will give you a piece of paper. 99%. But they will not give you a piece of pen, a pen or a pencil or anything, any piece of instrument to write down. It’s not, it’s not 99%, 50-50. Okay. So that you need to carry. Now if you use that, the time between is, the time that you used to think because usually all your points are not collected before the Group Discussion or the discussion starts. So don’t expect to do that also. Don’t make ten point to say I am done. Let me just keep putting these points between the Group Discussion and disturb others. Try to listen to what they are saying, branch out from their points. Another reason why you need to listen to their points is after the in between thing if you need to really summarize, you need to list other people’s initiatives and points. If you don’t do it, it is not a good summary. Telling what you spoke about, is not a summary. That is like I spoke about this, all of you remember no? Fine. Thank you. It’s not a summary. You have to talk about what the group has discussed. In your summary you will not use words like ‘I’. In the summary, you will not use words like ‘I’. And you’ll be explaining to the group that the time is coming to a close so the safest way to go forward and put forward your summary is not by saying “Our discussion is getting over, let us summarize. I feel we are coming towards the end of the discussion right now, so this is a good time to go forward and analyze what we have discussed”, does not mean that you are going to stop after your state… or they are going to stop after your statement is done. You get my point? But be sure to do it towards the end because they will tell you that this, you can have a discussion for 10 to 15 minutes right. So around 13 minutes, if it’s 15 minutes, or around 9 minutes when it’s 10 minutes, you can start your summary. You can interrupt someone and do it. Okay. But in that do not use ‘I’ and ensure that you don’t keep it closely coupled in terms of, or tightly coupled in terms of, uh, having to stop the Group Discussion once your talk is done. That is not good because if the Group Discussion, the people who are conducting the Group Discussion thinks that there is 3-4 minutes left, your calculation was wrong, something like that happens, you will be highly like, very badly penalized. You get my point? So your summary need not be let us close this discussion, I am summarizing. That should not be the way it is. I feel that we have come to a point where you can, we can go through our discussion till now. Uh. And you go forward and give the summary. So even if 1 or 2 people talk after you, it’s fine. You have done the job of doing the summary. But it should be in the last 10 to 15 percent of the Group Discussion time. Every time in between, listen and take note. Two simple things that you should not do in the Group Discussion – 1) raise your voice, it’s very difficult for you to do it, very easy for me to say it, okay. So 1 is that, raising your voice. I understand that it’s very difficult to, to actually implement it. Second, is a very simple thing. Try not to touch or contact any of the people sitting near you. The Group Discussion might not be a very large room where there is a lot of space between you and the other person. It might be very constricted. So try not to hit the other people. You start getting into other people’s space, it is 100% it’s going to be taken note of by the people who are managing the, the panel who is managing the Group Discussion. They will understand that this person cannot contain himself or herself. It’s a very bad thing. Or lying over and thinking. Okay. And then this person can barely sit. He is like wondering what is going on. It’s a circular table right, most likely. Not going to work out. Another thing that you should not do and this is in continuation of point number 2, ha.. you know cross leg or spreading your leg over, because, because there is no space, if you, if you cross, sit cross legged, your shoe is probably going to hit someone else. And if it’s taken note of, it’s very, very bad. Sitting like you are sleeping, the Sri Krishna mode, okay. Not going to work out. I know that you’ve already started the Group Discussion, you’ve introduced yourself so many times, you’ve spoken 4-5 times, you’ve had typically out of 10 minutes you had a 2 minute coverage. It’s all good. But showing that now my talk is done, I am not interested in what these people are saying, over. Then all the good things that you have done is gone. Typically in a Group Discussion where, uh, there are 10 people and it’s 10 minutes, very easy to calculate right. You should at least speak for 1 minute. Simple logic right? You cannot time your talk. So it has to be like small spurts, 3 to 4 different spurts. Interventions when you’re talking. Right. If you are speaking for 5 minutes out of 10 minutes it is superb but will never happen. It will never happen. It will be like presentation. It’s not a group discussion right? It will never happen. So anything above 1 minute, less than 3 minutes, it’s very, very good. In a Group Discussion where everyone is shouting at each other and you’re also speaking for 5 minutes, 3-4 people next to you are also speaking for 5 minutes. It’s only 5 minute Group Discussion right. There you know what is going to happen. It’s a market. No one is going to get anything. So in a market based scenario, please try and concentrate and calm things down. Okay. Easiest way to do these things, in the Group Discussion other than you, I am hoping you consider yourself to be a leader. Other than you, you will always identify people who will talk well. Or talking sense, not talking well, talking sense. Connect with them because others will also have the same feeling as you are having with respect to this person X. So moment you are connecting with that person, you’re actually creating a ring of leadership. So they will, even if they want to interrupt you, they will not interrupt because you’re connecting to this other person who might be nodding at you. Or you might be talking in agreement to this person. So it’s always important and this is a very, very silly trick that has been used and misused, okay. The trick of agreement. Even if you don’t agree with someone’s point, he might be a good guy or this, uh, good guy like, like we mention the, the so called guy with some good thoughts or some fool who is just continuously blabbering. Okay. Uh. You need to interrupt and bring people onto your side by agreeing. So if you take the classic example of love marriage or arranged marriage and you say, “Yeah, yeah, I agree with you. Love marriage is really good: and he is going on and on about, you can immediately say I agree with you but you can go forward and start and continue by saying ‘but’. So you say I agree with you, this amazing point that I have put forward, we all agree with him, and you can say ‘But I feel this is another angle that we need to look at’. So for the time being he is happy. He is not going to interrupt you. He feels okay I got a supporter, let me just bask in my glory. And you get to talk about your points. Okay. If there are people creating a, a lot of noise that marketplace scenario, as far as possible, it’s like a circle most, most likely right. Try not to look at that side. Try to start another conversation and then look at that side. Unless you are a bigger lion that person. So if you are a bigger person you can roar more loudly, not shout okay, you can roar more loudly it is fine. Uh so there are all these things that, small little things that you can do. These are all theoretical that I am talking about in a Group Discussion. I would like all of you to actually uh go through a Group Discussion experience today or tomorrow. Uh, we are anyway, uh, made the schedule for, for the rest of the days. It’s a very simple plan that we have laid out. The most important takeaway for, for all of you today according to me what you can definitely do is number 1, prepare for the core questions, okay, the core questions. Core questions are your intro, your strength, weakness, okay, your goals. These are your core questions. And something that I feel will help you, please try it out, is to create your map. These two things 100% you have to do it. If you can do this there is nothing better than this. These two things you need to do. If any of them comes, doesn’t come it doesn’t matter, but these are like highly likely. More than 50% chance. So that’s, that’s good enough right? So out of 10 questions, you’re only required to answer around 6 to 7 questions properly. You’re not required to answer 10 on 10. Any interview in the world, for any, any application, you’re not supposed to get 10 on 10 right. Even though you might feel, 10 on 10 is the target. Definitely it’s a target, but 10 on 10 is not a requirement. So it’s not a bad interview if you skipped a couple of questions. It’s fine. Okay. So that’s something that I wanted to keep in mind. Other than that we will give you one to one reviews, once your Group Discussio and Personal Interview happens. Uh. I want all of you to take a very positive approach towa… towards your interviews. Please don’t think something is less important or more important because both are harmful. The moment you think that you don’t want to get into an institute, that, that lazy attitude shows, okay. The moment you feel this is the most important interview of my life that will also show. So that, that pressure will weigh down on you. So please don’t take any of these extreme steps. Try to take it as easy as possible because obviously if you take the case of so many students around us, uh, they have only gone farther and done better things by not getting through one particular, uh institute. They have probably gotten into a better one the next time. Get my point? Next time means I am saying in this same attempt. If any of you have any strong opinions about what you need to do an MBA is just one of your options, MBA is just one of your options. That’s also a very good scenario. Crack all the interviews, okay, crack all of them and you can take a call as to whether you want to take it or not later.