A New Hope-1 (XLRI Interview)

So after about a month and a half of preparation, MOCKS and playing Rise of Nations the day of the XL interview finally arrived.

My XL interview was scheduled for 10 March at LIBA,Chennai. I went to Chennai a day before and stayed in a hotel. The next day I reached the venue pretty early (about 90 minutes before the interview). Actually XL guys love to keep it short. Normally their interviews don’t stretch beyond 20 minutes, and many a times they finish off (quite literally) people quite early.

Anyways I reached LIBA. There were quite a few other candidates, though most of them were there for the PMIR process which has a GD as well as an interview. Three of them were there for the BM interview.

I just sat there chatting with the others, waiting for my turn. The guy who was supposed to face the firing squad before me was in the interview room for about 20 minutes or so. As soon as he came back everybody crowded around him in order to know how it went. I purposefully kept my distance.

After a few seconds an old gentleman arrived outside the waiting room and called out my name. I stepped out of the room and we began the long walk to the interview room (just building up the drama, the walk was no more than 45 seconds).

I was intentionally walking slowly and a step behind that old gentleman out of respect. And then without any warning my interview started.

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I will refer to this old gentleman as OG.

OG cleared his throat and said "So what did the other guy say? What questions did we ask him?"

I had overheard what he had said and so replied "Well, Sir he told us that you people asked him questions on evolution".

OG smiles and adds "So what did he say, have we lost our tails yet!!"

Just then we entered the room. There were two other middle aged gentleman in the room M1 and M2. OG repeats our conversation to the others and everybody laughed. Everybody took their seats and I was asked to sit as well.

I handed over my file (the one with all the certificates) and my resumes. They took the file and returned the resumes. OG said "Don’t worry, we have more than enough material with us, we don’t need this".

OG:- So Amit you came all the way down from Delhi to Vellore for your engineering, why not DCE or any other college close to Delhi.

I: Told them that I was getting Polymer in DCE and wasn’t very much interested in that so …..

OG:- You left Polymer!!! Do you know what is the scope for Polymer these days??

I: I do sir, but I was more interested in Electronics and Communication, so….

At this point I was really worried that they might start asking me stuff about my academics which I wasn’t very confident about.

OG:- Ok, so besides ECE what else do you do? I mean extra curricular activities and such…

I: Sir, I love public speaking. I have participated in various debating competitions…..

At this point OG cuts me short, and says

OG:-"Are these competitions about speaking sensibly or just talking senselessly"

I:- Well sir depends on the type of competition. In debate you have to make valid points whereas in competitions like Block & Tackle and Shipwreck its more about presence of mind.

M2:- Ok, Amit I am going to give you a topic now and I want you to speak on the topic for 2 minutes, alright?

I said fine.

M2:- Your topic is "Amit Tyagi doesn’t talk sense all the time that he speaks"

I smiled and repeated the topic just to make sure that I didn’t have it wrong. He nodded in affirmative.

I started speaking on the topic and kept speaking smoothly (as far as I can tell) and tried to make it light hearted. Very soon they were smiling and I kept on talking thinking that they would stop me once my 2 minutes were up.

Probably they expected me to stop after sometime and not make it through the whole duration, but I did and then they asked me to stop.

Now, OG-> Ok, Amit do you know what is ITBPF? What is its purpose?

I:- Told them that it is the Indo-Tibetan Border Police Force and it is there to guard India's border with Tibet.

OG-You know when was it formed and why?

I- Told him that it was formed after the 1962 war because a need was felt for upgrading the security apparatus.

OG-You know what CRPF stands for? And without waiting for my answer he continued" I once asked a CRPF guy this and he said 'Chalte Raho Pyare Force"

Smiles all around.

OG- He asked me for a solution to the problem faced by the CRPF guys owing to this constant shifting from one place to another and we discussed it for some time.

OG- Ok, what do you know leather industry in India? You have any idea where it is located in India?

(Leather industry!!! Where did this come from??)

I- Sir, I am not sure but I think Kanpur.

OG- It was there in Kanpur but then it was shut down. Can you tell me why?

I- Religious Reasons?? But then it struck me and told them it was shut down for environmental reasons.

OG asked what a tannery was and I thought how could he ask him such a simple question surely there must be a catch to it. I told him what a tannery was and waited for him to follow it up. But he just let it go.

Now the baton was passed to M1.

M1- Do you know about crocodiles? Where are they found in India?

Before I could answer, the old gentleman said he is not asking about the T-Shirts. Again smiles all around.

I- Told him that I didn’t know much about crocs. But still if I were to take a guess I would say they are found in backwaters of Kerala.

He just shook his head in negative.

I said then probably Sunderbans.

Bingo!! That was the right answer.

M1- Do you know what is Law of Torts?

Luckily for me I had read John Grisham's King of Torts.

Told him whatever I knew and also added that I had read it all in a novel. Everybody started smiling and he asked him about the ending of the novel.

Now the baton was passed to M2.

M2- What is Trojan Horse?

Told him about the Greek gift.

He seemed impressed. Asked me about the virus. Could not give a very satisfactory answer here.

Then he asked me what standard deviation was ? Told him the correct answer and also gave a relation with the stock market.

Then he asked me what does a standard deviation of 1.4 means? And I being the idiot that I am totally messed it up.

And that was it, my interview was over. As I was signing the sheet OG asked me how I was going to go back to Vellore and how far Vellore was and how long it took to reach there.

After that I wished them and walked out of the interview.

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If you had ask me how I felt after the interview, I would have said that it was an enriching experience. More than an interview it was an interesting conversation that I had with those learned gentlemen. And to be honest I really enjoyed it. Other than that question on Standard Deviation I thought the whole thing went well.

But then you cant send guess the professors. And there wasn’t a lot of time to think about it as well. I had another two interviews in the next four days.

Life After CAT-10 (FMS Result)

The FMS result was taking a long time!! I remember checking the FMS website daily for the result, only to find a notice for their Alumni Dinner being displayed prominently on their homepage.

One evening when I asked my roommate if he was done using the Reliance phone so that I could check whether the FMS result was out or not? He said checking daily is not going to make a difference, they will release it when they feel like. I said fine I wont check it tonight.

The next morning Dad called after breakfast and we had a routine conversation. Ten minutes after that call he called again and I was wondering what was so important. He told me that the FMS result has been declared. He asked me my roll number so that he could check the result and let me know. I hesitated, the thing is I never like anybody else seeing my result before me (the college results are a different matter altogether), but he insisted so I told him the roll number.

And I logged on myself, and voila!!! I had cleared FMS as well. They wanted to see me for the GD and interview process.

Meanwhile MDI had also released their list for GD and interview and they had decided to call me as well.

My interview calls were as follows

XLRI (BM)-> 10th March (Chennai)

MDI (PGPM)-> 13th March (Bangalore)

FMS (MBA-FT) -> 14th March (Delhi)

I tried getting the dates for MDI shifted but approached them a bit late so it couldn’t be done. I decided to give my MDI interview in Bangalore on 13 which was in the afternoon and then catch a flight to Delhi on 14th morning and appear for my FMS interview.

Looks like Life after CAT wasn’t all that bad. As another series comes to an end, we approach the climax of this tale (I bet Arabian Nights was shorter and not to mention far more interesting).

Read about the Interviews, results and more gyaan in the next series "A New Hope". I hope George (Lucas) wont sue me for this.

Ekta, you reading this??

Life after CAT -9 (Mock Interview)

Well interestingly just as the MI series (the Tom Cruise one)had three parts I also had three MIs(Mock interviews in my case). (PJ!!!)

Most of the people interviewing us in TIME were IIM alumnus and really really brainy people. Probably some of the smartest people I have met in my entire life and that includes that person in the mirror who I see daily. I had a total of three Personal Interview Sessions and I will recount one of them so as to give you an idea about the Mis.

My first interview was taken by two guys probably in their early to mid thirties. While one of them did most of the talking, nevertheless whenever the other guy asked questions they were equally incisive.

I will give you a conversation type account of this interview.

They already had a copy of my resume and also details regarding the calls that I had from various B-Schools.

I went in and wished them good morning. They responded warmly and asked me take a seat.

I will refer to the interviewers as M1 and M2.

3rd Degree

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M2 (with a smile)- Before we start asking any questions tell us something about yourself

I:- Gave them brief info about my family, talked about my school life, and then college life, talked about the various activities I was involved in college.

M1:- Oh so you are interested in Hindi Literature (I had told them that I was involved with the Hindi Literary Association in college), tell me something about the writing style of Premchand.

I:- (I was lucky that I had read one of Premchand's novel-Godaan) Told them how Premchand's characters are very close to real life, how they are not defined in black and white and all have shades of gray and stuff like that.

M1 looked impressed.

And now M2 took complete control of the interrogation.

M2: So you have done your B.Tech from VIT in Electronics & Communication. Tell me why did you take up Electronics.

I: Told him how much interested I was in Defence Aviation and since there were not many options available to do Aeronautical Engineering this was the closest I could get to my field of interest.

M2:- Oh so you are interested in Defence Aviation

M2:- Ok, Amit tell us how does an airplane flies and please keep it simple because we don’t have much knowledge in this field (with a smile on his face).

As I found out later besides being an IIM alumnus he was also an aeronautical engineer from IIT.

I:- Told them about the forces acting on an airplane; Lift, Drag, Gravity etc. wind flowing under the wings and above the wings, low pressure and high pressure zones and other things.

He said, " have you read the Bernoulli's theorem". I replied in affirmative. "Can you tell us using the Bernoulli's equation how does a plane work". Wrote down the Bernoulli's equation for them and then explained the working of airplane through it.

At this point he said can you draw a diagram. I drew an aerofoil for them and explained everything using the diagram.

I thought this should be enough to convince him.

M2:- Oh this is getting too technical for us people (looked at the other guy and smiled). I want you to explain as you will to a layman about the working of an airplane. Lets just say you have to explain it to my 5 year old child who doesn’t know what is lift, drag and other things.

I tried to explain again without using as many technical terms as I did the first time. He didn’t look completely convinced but didn’t pursue it any more.

M2: Ok, Amit you are studying to become an engineer and you are interested in Defence Aviation. Don’t you think that by selecting you we would be taking away a bright young engineer (you must be kidding me!!!) from this country.

I: Absolutely not, Sir. As you can everywhere in the industry and especially in the DRDO there is a lack of managers with technical knowledge and that is why we have so many projects running behind schedule and stuff. Therefore there is a need for managers who have technical knowledge……. And went on and on with more gyaan.

M2: Oh so you mean to say that in DRDO we have projects running behind schedule. Do you think those people really do any original work. I mean don’t they just copy Russian designs.

I: Told them this was not exactly the case. DRDO had worked on some projects with high percentage of indigenous technology. Said that there was a steep learning curve with these kind of things and sometimes you have to borrow technology from other countries so as not to let the armed forces down.

M2: Next he wanted to know about Main Battle Tank of India, the Russian technology behind, the shortcomings of the design and in what respects the M1A Abrahams of USA were better.

I: Told them whatever I knew about tanks which wasn’t much. But he looked pretty happy with the answer.

M2: Next he wanted to know about some business terms like the difference between Pvt. Ltd., Pte. Ltd. And stuff like that

I: Answered what I could about they being conventions used in different countries.

M2: Next he wanted to talk about the automobile industry, what place was the hub of automobile industry in USA, the Big Three, the top automobile company in the world, how long has it been at the top and what was their philosophy.

I could not give very accurate answers to the automobile industry part, but managed to save some face.

Next he was all inquisitive about the recent (this happened in Feb) IPO of Reliance. He wanted facts and figures.

While I could tell him the facts, I didn’t have much clue about the figures.

Next he came to the work culture in various countries. Why were the Germans considered so industrious and the Japanese too. And why the current perception of the Indians.

The end part of the interview was even more exciting. He started talking about Reservation and my views on it. I tried to be very diplomatic about it. But he took the offensive and started talking very passionately against reservation. He said probably some people don’t deserve to reach the very top. He mentioned genetic studies and stuff, but I stuck to my point that it is the responsibility of the society to help in the upliftment of its downtrodden and neglected.

At this point he seemed willing to end the ordeal for me. Turned to the other guy and asked him if he had anymore questions.

M1 asked me some questions related to electronics, which luckily I could answer.

M1:- Amit, with all these allegations against missionaries regarding conversions and we (XLRI) being a missionary run institution, how do you feel about that?

I: Told them that I had studied in missionary run institutions before and I knew the reality behind these allegations and therefore had no such problems.

And that was it, the interview was over. It lasted for about an hour and twenty minutes (against an allotted time of 30-45 minutes). Yes that long!! At that end I was just waiting to run out of that room.

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Now it was time for their feedback.

They thought that I had done decently well, handled incisive questioning on my hobby pretty well.

They felt that my technical knowledge seemed sound (you must be kidding me!!!) but I needed to work on business related news.

Moreover they observed that I had a tendency to jump at questions. Told me to take it easy and wait for a second before answering the questions.

Well that was the first MI for you. Now you must have realised that I was right when I said that in an interview you can be asked about anything under the sun.

Mock was fine, but to find out how the actual ones went, stay tuned!!

Life after CAT-8 (MOCK GDs-II)

Well I had the opportunity of meeting some really interesting characters in TIME MOCK GD sessions. For fear of offending people I am not using real names here (in most of the cases I don’t even know their real names) .

The nick names that I have used here are the ones I assigned and we (me, Sripriya and Yuvaraj used to refer to them in our conversations). The prominent ones being Amma ( a really fiery female), CA (really irritating, pretending to know it all guy who was a CA), Stylo (really dumb guy who was working and had a fake accent).

Here is a GD which was really interesting.

There were twelve people in the group including me, Yuvaraj and Amma. If I am not wrong it was a case study about a female executive who was finding to difficult to balance her job and personal life and we were asked to recommend solutions.

The GD started off, Amma always made it a point to start off in all the GDs that she participated. It was peaceful (at least on the surface) until Yuvaraj decided to cut Amma short as she was taking too long to make her point. Amma simply raised her voice and kept on speaking at a rapid pace and simply didn’t let Yuvaraj make his point.

After sometime when I was speaking, she cut me short. I was left seething and being the super-ego that I am I had to get back at her. I tried to cut her off in mid sentence sometime later but she simply refused to stop speaking. What followed was is exactly what should not be done in a GD. We started making our respective points at the top of our voices while everybody else just sat and stared at us. Well somehow it all came to an end and as soon as it was over I realized what a fool we had made of ourselves.

I was sure that I was in for some heavy lecture by the mentor. But the guy just stood there, smiled at us . And then he talked about the need to be patient during the GDs, about not letting anything disturb you, and again most importantly the need to maintain a positive body language. All that the professors at B-School are looking for is that one deviation from the cool composed posture that people carry with them and that gives away everything about the person in question.

Well to cut a long story short lets just say I took away a very important lesson from that GD and tried to avoid making these mistakes in subsequent MOCKs and the actual ones.

Another very interesting GD that took place had me in the center of the storm along with this CA guy and ten other people. The topic had something to do with International Trade, and I could not believe my years when I heard that CA guy say that MRTP and FERA are related. For those of you who have no clue as to what I am talking about, MRTP is the Monopolies and Restricted Trade Practices Act and FERA is Foreign Exchange Regulation Act. In simple words MRTP looks into antitrust kind of activities by companies, FERA/FEMA is about the rules and regulations involving foreign currency exchange.

I tried to point it out to him but since he was not willing to budge from his position and I was not about to get into another shouting match I just let it go. And boy was it a good decision. Another guy tried to correct him and both of them got into such a huge shouting match that my previous one just paled in comparison.

Well these were some of the interesting MOCK GDs that I attended in TIME.

Next up are the MOCK interviews. Trust me when I say this, these were some of the most interesting minutes of my life.

So don’t miss them!!

Life after CAT -7 (MOCK GDs-I)

Well, GDs are probably that part of the admission process which people are least prepared to handle. Blame it on lack of maturity (of applicants) or whatever GDs don’t end up serving the purpose they were meant to.

Infact it seems some of the institutes don’t have GDs and others are removing them from their admission process because of this very reason. XLRI doesn’t have GD, and from what I have heard some of the IIMs did away with the GDs this time.

Still, TIME left no stone unturned in preparing us for the GDs.

Gyaan Segment

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There are three or four types of GDs

• Article based GDs -> Group is asked to discuss a given article.

• Case Study base Gds-> Probably the most popular form. Group is given a case and then asked to discuss it

• Abstract Topics -> Group is asked to discuss an abstract topic.

• Table/Chart based Gds -> Group is given a Table or a chart and asked to discuss it

In a GD you are supposed to present logical points on a topic with total conviction (without taking sides for as long as possible), be prepared to listen courteously to what others have to say while at the same time ready to be forceful to make your point if the situation calls for it. And obviously the impact of a positive body language cant be emphasize enough.

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The Mock GD sessions started off with a mentor assigning the group a topic and then telling the group about the format for the discussion (time for thinking, discussing and summarizing) and then backing away till the end of the discussion. At the end of the discussion he would give us his inputs about the discussion, about the totally irrelevant points made by the group (there were too many of them) and about what could possibly have been discussed (and was missed).

While some mentors concentrated only on teaching how to analyze the topic properly (Mr. Bala, Director TIME Chennai; a big time follower of this approach) while others concentrated more on Group Dynamics.

Funny thing, this group dynamics. People tend to behave strangely when sat alongside others and asked to discuss a topic.

While some just pull themselves in a shell and refuse to utter a word while others get hyper excited and are impossible to stop. They vehemently make their points, get irritated when cut short by someone, try to get back to that person and more often than not get into top of their voice arguments with other members of their group. (Doesn’t it paint the picture of someone you might know?)

Well I was thinking of putting some of my GD experiences in this post but it seems it is getting too long. Will post the details of mock GDs in another post after couple of hours.