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.