The Settings :- My IIMI interview’s venue was PES management institute(PESIT campus), As usual, again I got very late, left my flat at
Never knew that it is that far away.. almost drove out of City limits.. finally reached the campus at
just then I saw a group of well dressed guyz going upstairs in a herd, followed them quickly, finally saw a Prof who was holding some papers, informed him about my coming(should I say arrival). He gave me a hard look and then ticked my name and told me that I belong to group number 3.
Straight away we were asked to enter respective rooms for the GD.
I just shuddered to think like what would have happened if I were late by few more seconds, I am sure that getting this info that the whole group has gone to the fourth floor was not easy. I mean nobody was there on the ground floor to inform this.
But then nobody expects that morons like me will descend there after almost half an hour of scheduled time(
The GD:-
I am trying to reproduce the case to the best of my memory, while omitting minor details(though it is possible to come up with winning points from those details in many of the GDs..but nothing of that sort happened here)
An IIT grad Mahesh joined a petroleum company. He had other offers as well but opted for this one as he was very much impressed by the company’s policies of giving emphasis on ethics and integrity. He was posted in heartland UP and around 100 dealers were under his area of supervision.
After getting a hang of the things for a while, he was displeased with the way things were going on. He sent a letter to the higher management about the complaints that he received from the dealers and customers about the inferior quality of their oil, He wrote that no customer wanted to put their sluggish product in their vehicles. He said that their product was quickly loosing its market to their rival and something needs to be done in this regard..blah blah.
Within a few days his Area manager called him, he asked him if he has sent a letter to the Higher management and said that the management is very displeased about this. He said that you need to send only the things that please them and not the truth, and that such things are never viewed in correct light…
He felt very disappointed and started thinking about if he should leave this job to join another company or about going for higher studies..
The topic asked us to discuss about what Mahesh should do..
The group jumped at the prospects of portraying the Area Manager as the real culprit and the need to talk clearly to the higher management..(someone even suggested to register a formal complaint against un-ethical behavior of AM).
I started with a mature sounding(or is it too cliché ?) pitch of looking at why exactly the AM behaved in this manner, what are his stakes in this-
1.He may actually have some links with adulteration racket.
2. and more naturally he felt bad about not being included in the process, after all Mahesh sent the letter without taking him in confidence.
I could not continue much as someone else grabbed the airtime. :-@
But I came back again saying that there is some fault in the approach that Mahesh adopted.. He should have talked to his AM before sending anything to the higher management, by involving the AM not only his report/letter would have had higher value in the eyes of management but he could have also won his AM’s confidence.
Only after confirming that he is not getting any support from his AM, he should have thought of doing something on his own.
Now more guys pitched in to find faults in Mahesh’s approach. We all came up with very valid points like
*He should have been more specific about the problems the product has rather than saying something like it is sluggish.
* Rather than saying that customers and dealers complain that …. , he should have attached their responses with his report to make it more authentic.
I also added that he should not make sweeping remarks against the product without much research.. like Firstly he should confirm if it is happening only in his area or elsewhere as well. He should –
Talk to his peers to know if they also feel the same.
See if they are loosing the market share countrywide(by going through reports)?
To this we added that the geography or climatic conditions of this area can also be a reason behind poor performance of this mobile/automobile oil.(too far fetched may be..but we were just giving more n more breadth to the discussion..)
[nobody really cared to discuss about how to tackle AM if he is really the culprit or discuss about leaving the company/higher studies point :D]
Finally we got the stop signal after about 15 minutes of discussion. Good one for me, contributed well enough and always remained active in the discussion.
The Interview : – Then the interviews started, but first let me introduce the panel-
LP- the Lady professor, about 50 years old.
KP- The kind looking Prof, about 40 yeaars old, was very helpful and polite in the GD.
I was quite skeptical of LP, coz of her stern and shrewd look.
KP started the proceedings,
KP: Similarities between Windows
(my first impression was that he is talking about Vista and Windows multimedia PC, probably there was some confusion.. I tried confirming it and he said yes, then as he still didn’t look convinced by this multimedia name I further said that is he referring to the XP variant that was released in smtime in 2004, now he was shocked and said that he is talking about Windows 95 and Windows Vista.. huff donno wat happen here..)
I started with differentiating between the two when again he interrupted by saying that he asked for similarities 😐 .
(Ohh.. am I having hearing problems or are they just playing with me? Maybe I lost the original question in this 95/multimedia thing.. anyway lets carry on)
Me:- As for the similarities both are GUI based, as a matter of fact with 95 itself MS started its GUI based OS systems ..prior it was command based DOS.. so we can say that being GUI based is one of the similarity.
KP: – what do you mean by GUI based?
Me: Explained(Menus, icons, mouse coming into picture etc)
(by the confusion about 95 and so I got an idea that KP is not a harcore techie as such, and maybe this question came to his mind coz Vista is recently released, I was founding this similarity question a bit awkward to handle, so thought of leading him to a territory that will be totally alien to him and conquer him in the process 😀)
Me:- sir as I worked as a windows programmer so I can say that the basic windows architecture is going to remain the same.. I mean that though I am not sure about
KP:- Ok that is fine but can you tell me something on the marketing and sales front as well.
(this came as a spark, and this fool, who was loosing it badly till now got the control back.. the voice got louder and more assertive)
Sir, if we look at this from that angle,
With 95 MS hoped to change the PC landscape and in fact they did it, now with
KP – looking a lot more satisfied)U could have come to that point in the starting itself….
Me;- Sir being a technical person(ohho ..funde to dekho :D, please don’t take my manager’s views on this) and being from the windows programming background that was the first thing that came to my mind..
Now he started asking about various specs of
I didn’t have much idea ..so I said about ideally it requires 2GB of RAM,
KP:- Do you mean that it will not install on a PC that don’t have 2 gb OF ram
Me:-No sir I was talking about desired config.. I don’t know the minimum config ..but I feel that till 512/256 there should not be much problem in installing the
Some more question followed and I gave some non committal answers ..giving general funde.. He asked me whether I have not gone through the
Me – I have gone through that sir, but probably the flashy release party that featured dances from Priayanka Chopra n Akshya Kumar were noticed more than the specifications. 😉
Smiles and laughs all over ..
KP – have u heard about xyz?
.. NO
KP – Have you heard about Tablet pc? ..YES
WHAT IS IT?
Small portable PC, blah blah..
What should be the functionalities of Tablet PC according to you?
What should be its size?
No idea .. should be small enough to be hold in one hand while operating with the other one 😉 ..and bigger than mobile 😀
He further grilled me on this size and asked me to choose between A4 size paper(the board he was holding) or its half or fourth or ..
I betted on ½ of A4 size .. (had to ..no idea as such)
KP-OK have you heard about Windows Mobile OS?
Yes sir ..designed specially for the mobiles as there are limitations with mobiles wrt processing power and memory etc.. MS came up with windows mobile version5 recently
KP -What is the difference between this and Desktop?
Again reiterated the same points in different wordings and the need for specialized OS for mobiles..symbian etc
KP – What will be the difference in case of a word software?
Blah ..blah, clarified that both will be compatible to open documents with extensions like .doc or .txt etc.
And if the question is asked from the design point of view, then as developer I will try to keep it as light..i mean of smaller size and memory print as possible, keeping the limitations in mind.
KP – What will you consider?
Striping the flashy features while keeping it just as a reader.. like all animations or cascading effects will be removed to keep it simple and light.
KP seemed quite satisfied( or maybe fed up with this continuous globe from my side J)
LP takes over…
LP – Was there somebody else as well with the same name?
Nobody very popular as such, but yes as far as I relate this name there was a politician in UP with the name Bhanu Pratap, but not much sure..
Is he still active?
No, definetly not
LP –From which party?
Congress
LP –Are you sure?
Yes as he was active in 80s, and till 1989 we only had congress govts in UP, except one govt by then janata dal(though I wasn’t too sure about this JD thing).. so he has to be from Congress.
LP –Do you follow Football?
No..not much..
LP –OK bhanu then what are the sports that you like?
I like VolleyBall and Cricket
LP –OK assuming that you know something about VolleyBall and Cricket, tell me the names of players of some other sports?..
If I take tennis then Bhupati, Paes, Sania MirzaJ etc if we take football then Wayne Roonie, the there was Maradona from argentina then Ronaldo, Ronaldinho Carlos etc from Brazil etc, Shooters like Jaspal Rana ..etc ..
LP:- OK thats fine
LP-Have you heard about Orkut?
Yes
LP –How is it ? good or bad?
Definetly it is a great thing..talked about networking and finding your old friends etc.
LP –Who is owner?
LP –Some other products of Google?
The flagship product is the google search, apart from this they have google earth, gmail, spreadsheets, answers..which is discontinued know, picasa etc.
LP –OK how is Outsourcing ? good or bad?
Good, creates value..lower cost and beter service for the company that is outsourcing and revenue for the one which is getting it. So over all good from the business point of view.
LP –What different types of Outsourcing?
Outsourcing within the country and Offshoring.. explained
LP –Only these two?
Actually that is when we look from the geographical point of view, we can similiarly differentiate on the basis of kinda responsibilities that are being outsourced. Like outsoursing of just the customer support/call center services, or maybe outsoursing of just one of the processes/modules , or in an extreme case outsoursing the whole manufacturing and other processes…blah blah
LP –What is BPO?(coming from answer)
Blah blah..
LP – (probably overwhelmed by my answer) OK tell me in a single word, what is the most difficult problem that the BPO industry is facing in
Employee retention (wah wah .. maza aa
LP –Second?
Data privacy
LP –explain
Explained …
Thank you..
Exchange of smiles ..
I came out with a real good feeling, kind of knowing that I should make the cut.