Of all what my percentile speaks of me, is ridiculously
risible. But we can always get back to it later. What I intend to write here is
how inexplicably challenging B-school interviews can turn out to be and how it takes only one question to digress on a whole new unwanted course, thereby rejecting
you out right. This I say, at 99.8 percentile, which retaining all modesty,
seems respectable enough. In the same sprint, I’ve been giving quite a few
interviews lately; quite a few meaning, every weekend and that, for the past 3
months. Of what share here are some of the interview questions I’ve been
grilled on, after reading which you will not be culpable if you think it was
sheer luck that steered me through some of them.
Interviewers are sweet little butchers, strangling people
with their smiles throughout. And the questions can be as easy to understand as
this:
Tell us something
about yourself.
Now this is one of those rare times in life when you are blanker
than Rahul Gandhi being asked to throw some light on how 1984 Sikh riots and
2002 Godhara riots were different. Chances are, you’ll end up giving a less
informative reply than – they are not same, followed by the very famous
I-am-done pause. Interview after interview, my respect for Rahul Gandhi has
only grown exponentially. So not wandering much, I told them about my punishment-laden
formative years, my recently-cultivated-only-to-answer-this-question hobbies, my
utter lack of interest in engineering and what leads me to take up MBA as my
next career option, which brings me to facing the following cliché.
So, why MBA?
These words fall into your ears like honey drops because
this is one of the very few questions you are prepared to take up with the
spirit of Aaaaan-de. You feel both lucky and unlucky to confront this question
because where in on one hand you know you just have to spill the well-framed
thoroughly-mugged words in a fluent manner, on the other hand your experience
is bitter enough to tell you that no amount of preparation for this is going to
satiate the thirst of those butchers, because truth be told, you’re doing it
for money. Tell you what; I’ve given over 10 interviews till date only to land
up with over 20 odd answers to this question and still, my search for one good presentable reason is on and doesn’t
seem like ending anytime soon. I wish I could tell them the genuine reasons. I
wish I could tell them what a hopeless coder I am. I wish I could tell them
that an MBA degree could be the sole saving grace of my academic career. I wish
I could tell them that my pointer should speak volumes for why not MS. I wish I
could tell them I am technically challenged and technologically paralyzed. So coming
back, in every interviewer’s eyes I want to be an entrepreneur. Selling what?
Making what? Doing what? I have never bothered myself lying beyond a point
where it starts becoming obvious as hell.
-Anubha, you come
from DA-IICT. What is that?
--Sir, Dhirbubhai Ambani Institute of information and communication Technology.
-That’s one college?
--Yes Sir. Sir, actually the branch is also there in the name only.
(Yes, this is a real life conversation. Apart from the
endless stares that you already registered in your name during the one hour you
were saying the full form of DA-IICT, there are a couple of doors more that you
yourself opened to lead their way.)
- So Anubha, You’ve
done your BTech. in ICT? Could you please elaborate?
--Yeah sure. Sir, this branch is a complex
amalgamation of all the possible branches on the face of this earth. To name a
few, Information Technology, Computer science, Electronics, civil, mechanical,
chemical, aerospace, communication, metallurgy, mining and any possible new
domain also that you can or cannot think of.
-This sounds
interesting. So you’ve done communications also?
-- You can’t deny, because they have your transcripts. You can’t accept,
because you don’t know what’s there in the transcripts. You can almost see your
end nearing at 500 km/hr whenever something like this is thrown at you. God
bless the UP people, for they never thought knowing communication technology
was as important for faring well in MBA.
-Anubha, there’s this
subject ‘Stochastic Simulation’ in your transcript. What was it about?
-- (Sir, you are not supposed to ask anything from the morning 8:30
lectures. That’s almost a rule).
After smiling like an idiot for quite some time, I told them whatever little I
remembered, heads, tails, some stocks and shares, call option, put option, only
hoping they wouldn’t pick on any of these jargons next. And the next moment, it
wasn’t as bad! It just got worse.
They asked me to draw graphs for Normal distribution, uniform distribution,
relation between them, generate a random variable using excel (on which I reconfirmed
if it was Microsoft excel they were talking about, answering which they said
‘No, surf’). Anyway!
-Okay, okay. Here’s a
bowl of toffees in front of you. Please sell them to us.
-- (That was one God forsaken toffee I’ve never had, chloromint! How does one
even promote it without stealing the punch lines of other toffees?) Anyway, I
had to appear excited about this whole oh-wow-chloromint-This-is-my-breakfast-everyday
thing. Trust me, if there’s any last thing you’d want to be turned on by, its
mint. But then I thought Dobara mat
poochna would be quite discourteous as that would mean depriving the
interviewers of their sole job, so I controlled that urge and instead spoke:
Chloromint khao, khud jaan jao. To which both of them went ‘Really?’ together. And when they mocked with ‘You’re already so
good, why do you want to do MBA? (Sentence unedited)’, I knew my chances of
getting a B-school were bleaker than Pappu’s chances of getting the PM seat.
I have a long list of these humiliating interrogations but I
don’t think I can write further on. Some insults are better lived once.
But I’ve had the time of my life in these 3 months. There is nothing I can
think of which can excite you, scare you, get on your nerves, test your
patience, make you plan your future life, force you to scrutinize your past
life and expect you to know the whys, hows, whens and whats of every little
thing you can/cannot think of, all at the same freaking time. You talk to your
peer victims, and feel good about it. You learn that you’re not the only one back
firing stupid answers for stupid questions. And that is probably all you need
then.
And so now, the must awaited clichéd – All’s well that ends
well.
All Hail the Almighty. All Hail His majesty. Amen.
