[2004] IIM-I GD/PI experiences

[tavaishnav]

Hi,

I couldn't find this thread, so am starting it. Please post ur gd/pi experiences of IIM-Indore here.

I'll start off.

Date: 28th March, Time: 2 pm, Venue: IIMB campus, Bangalore

Two batches of 8 people each were there, with 3 profs. in a panel. After assembling in a classroom and taking a roll-call, both batches were taken to diff. rooms for the gd.
GD was a case-study of a person called Ramesh (who graduated from my college, REC Surathkal ), and how various important things clashed at nearly the same time for him - like his PhD defence exam, flying out to the US for a new co. project with a promotion, and marriage. The question was: what should Ramesh do?
Prep. time of 2-3 mins. and GD for 15 mins. It went quite well and at the end arrived at a general consensus in terms of the schedule Ramesh should follow. I made two good entries with well-supported points and this was my best gd perf. so far. We were then asked to write a summary in 5 mins. at the back of the Personal Data Form, but I don't think they quite gave us 5 mins. Asked us to stop abruptly after 3 mins. or so and took away the papers. Couldn't complete the summary.

Now for the PI, they said we will call u in random order which turned out to be good for me becoz I was called in 2nd for the intvw (otherwise i was 7th in order). PI was pretty weird, and I am quite sure I bungled it. Read on to find out how....
Let P1, P2, P3 be the 3 panel members and M=me.

P1: so u r from gujarat and studied in rec surathkal?
M: yes sir
P1: u work for?
M: novell india
P1: what's novell's most famous product?
M: novell netware, the NOS sir.
P1: what's the status of this product?
M: it's a dead product sir, no further dev. is taking place on it
P1: what r the reasons it has come into this state?
M: becoz of comp. from windows NT on one hand and linux on another, both grabbing market share, NT mainly becoz of good marketing and customer lock-in, and linux due to great features available at lower cost
P1: what situation do u see in the next 3-4 years in the OS segment?
M: linux popularity will grow by leaps and bounds and it will increasingly be seen on desktops. it will also gain more share on the server-side. however, ms will continue to be the leader, what with one more next-gen windows (longhorn) coming up...
P1: what's ur current assignment?
M: i'm working on product called eDirectory. it's basically like a database optimized for read access. used mainly when ratio of reads:writes is very high
P1: what's the diff. between this directory and 'text mining'?
M: (what the heck is 'text mining'?, i assumed 'data mining' and gave an answer) text mining will be the intelligent search of large volume of data and collation of it, directory is just a storehouse of data, nothing else.
P1: oh, so it's like a data warehouse..
M: (again i don't know what a data warehouse exactly is..) not sure sir
P1: what's the diff. b/w. database and data warehouse?
M: (some ppl just don't understand ) i suppose data warehouse refers to much larger stores of data..probably distributed stores
P1: how large? even oracle db and others are dist. databases..
M: not sure sir
P1: have u worked with olap?
M: (i heard it as ole) object linking and embedding?
P1: no, i said olap.
M: no sir, haven't worked with it
P1: what abt oracle db?
M: haven't worked with it
P1: does MS have any product to compete with oracle?
M: it has MS SQL Server
P1: any other db co.?
M: Sybase..
P1: what is the name of their database?
M: i think that is also called Sybase...
P1: r u sure?
M: no sir

P3: ok, what do u mean by a 'workstation'?
M: (what a question) i don't know of an exact def. but it's somewhere b/w a home pc and a server...
P3: how? what differentiates it from a pc or server?
M: (gave the specs of my machine at work as an example , besides some other fundae)
P3: u have studied maths - statistics at college?
M: maths yes, stats no
P3: what is a random no.? how are these generated?
M: random no. is one of a series which have no relation to each other, or any relation is just coincidental....a comp. program can never produce true random nos., but only pseudo-random nos.....i don't know of any specific algo. for pseudo-randoms, but generally such things work with a seed number which is manipulated in various ways to arrive at the first no. and so on...

P2: who r MS's competitors?
M: (what a question, went on abt. diff. competitors in diff. market segments)
P2: recently MS was in the news, why?
M: (MS is nearly always in the news , plus i forgot abt the EU and antitrust fine issue ) sir they released windows server 2003 sometime back....and have announced longhorn for 2005-06
P2: last q., what do u mean by computer literacy?
M: sir, a basic understanding of the functions of typical hardware devices, plus basic operations on one OS, and knowledge of basic software like word processors, spreadsheets etc. , if possible in ur vernacular language/mother tongue.

P3: what other calls?
M: B, L, K
P3: only K intvw. left?
M: yes

Offered me biscuits at the beginning and end of the intvw. Perhaps the only good thing to occur
Anyway, all the best to others.

-Ted.

[Vibhavan]

I had my IIMI GD/PI on 29th at 2PM in IIMB.

We had a case study on this marketing trainee, Satya, who sees his area sales manager involved in cheating a customer, and his reaction to it. It was a fairly boring GD, with a pretty average performance from me. I spoke 4-5 times, but it was just for the sake of speaking! I didn't really have any point to make.

I was the first to be interviewed - the order for PI was random, unrelated to the positions in the GD. They asked me lots of technical questions on IC engines since it was my favourite subject. I could answer most of them convincingly.

Then, they moved on to GK questions, noting quizzing as one of my hobbies. I messed up one question completely - I forgot that Lyngdoh had retired as CEC!! But I answered most of their questions quite well.

So overall, IIMI was one of extremes, the worst GD of the 3 that I have had so far (BLI) and the best PI of the 3.

[nickspeedster]

Hey everyone

Had by GD/PI today

Time : 9 AM
Venue : IIM Bangalore

As expected the GD was about a case study. This guy Ram is a union leader of a company planning to shut down a factory. The factory then gets mysteriously burnt down. What are his options?

The discussion went fine and everyone was of the view that the burning of the factory was more than a coinincidence.

The PI also went fell.

It started out with revenue estimates of the ITES industry in India. Then to the problems about outsourcing from the US. Then a discussion about US politics( Republicans, Democrats, John Kerry, Bush etc.). Then from New Jersey bill it came to how a bill becomes a law in India. From that to the structure of the Indian Parliament. Roles of Lok Sabha and Rajya Sabha. Then the economic implications of a Bill. From that to the Women's Reservation Bill.

The breadth of the interview was simply amazing. Then there is this one guy who asked questions about the kind of work I do. Went into some technical aspects of that.

The last guy then asked about computer hardware(bit, bytes, word, ROM, RAM, Hexadecimal addressing and stuff like that)

Managed to answer all these questions...so in all a good one.

Here is a bit of advice:

Freshers should try brushing up some concepts from engineering. Once mech guy was asked a lot from his subjects.

Experienced people should be ready to answer anything under the sky!!!

Thats the update from here. Big B coming up next so wish me luck!!!

[morpheus_5798]

Hello all,

I haven't yet recieved my Indore APp form. I was told to get it the da before the interviews. Are there any essays in the form? Pls revert ASAP.
Also I heard that IMS has sent a pdf to all their students which has the application forms of all the IIMs. If anyone has this could you please send that to my id : svidhyut@hotmail.com

Thanks
Vidhyut

[tavaishnav]

Originally Posted by morpheus_5798

Hello all,

I haven't yet recieved my Indore APp form. I was told to get it the da before the interviews. Are there any essays in the form? Pls revert ASAP.

When is ur gd/pi date? Indore form has lots of writing to be done I've been told that their form is very similar to IIM-A form. So if u have the A call and form, u can get an idea of the I form.
Descriptive answers are asked for (AFAIR):
1. Academic scholarships received
2. Strengths and weaknesses as a student
3. Job responsibilities and accomplishments, if applicable
4. Why do u wish to go in for a mgmt. career?
5. If not mgmt. education, what else wud u go for in terms of career and/or education?
7. Extracurricular interests
8. Rewards, prizes etc. in extracurrics
9. Describe one significant incident from ur own life, describe its nature, its importance to u, and how u handled it (one whole page is given to write the answer)

Originally Posted by morpheus_5798

Also I heard that IMS has sent a pdf to all their students which has the application forms of all the IIMs. If anyone has this could you please send that to my id : svidhyut@hotmail.com

Thanks
Vidhyut

I haven't rec'd anything from IMS. Besides, in case of I, the CAT reg. no. and call letter no. have been handwritten on the form, so I don't know how this can be scanned and distributed by anyone.

-Ted

[nickspeedster]

Hey morpheus...

There are lots of essays in the IIMI form...
Better get it fast. It will take a day or two to think about it and write the answers.

Here are the questions. Prepare the answers before hand.

C. Academic Career

a) Scholastic Achievements
Please list scholastic awards and scholarships conferred on you.

b) Please describe your strengths and weaknesses that you have identified in yourself as a student.

D. Employment Record

In your present/last job, briefly describe your job responsibilities, achievements and failures.

E. Discountinity in Career

If work experience and academic/professional qualifications do not account for the entire period from the time you completed the 10th standard till date, please specify the time gaps, with full explanation.

F. Career Plans

Why do you wish to go in for a management career?

Besides management education, which area/field would interest you most for a career and/or for further education?

G. Extra-Curricular Activities

Indicate your extracurricular interests.

Please give details about your accomplishments, awards and position held (a) in sports, games, and hobbies, (b) in associations and voluntary organizations. (Please show original certificates to the interview panel members)

J. Identify a significant incident or situation from your own life. Briefly explain its nature, its importance to you and the manner in which you handled it.


Thats pretty much it. Do well and all the best dude!!!

[morpheus_5798]

Thanks for the reply. It seems that both A and I have the same type of essays. I will get ready with them.

Regards
Vidhyut

[talk2mike2001]

Hi guys,
had my indore i/w today...
after the cake walk at L and B, indore went terribly wrong..

Havent spoken much in the case discussion either

this was the most arbitrary interview i ve ever attended..cuz it looked like they had already decided upon the guys and were jus tryin to kill time

looks like technical interview is a norm
they asked me some remote concepts abt mech engg..
shall post the transcripts in a day or two
lookin fwd to my C i/w
hop that goes well...
Regd
-mike

[ChangezKhan]

Had my gd/pi yesterday at b'lore. Back in chennai now. Went on for 30 mins. Will post experiences soon.....

Changez The Mongol

[G O V A R]

I had my I iv on 29th... couldn't quite gauge how it went.

G.D: Nick_speedstar was in my GD... as he said it went ok for everybody. I guess I started last or penultimate, but I made up for it I guess. Almost the same group that met for L, so it was all the more cordial . Everybody got and gave others chances.

PI:
There were 3 guys. One guy in the centre was reading a paper all the time, before the iv, during the iv, and aft the iv. Probably to try and scare us out. But then, the paper was TOI, and it was news to me that one can read it for 1 hour.
The panel was looking quite young, and there was no way they can psyche students by the looks alone...

P1-Prof1
PP-Prof with the paper
P3-the other one.
-- means usual BS


I: Good morning sirs
P1: take your seat. Give me the certificates...introduce yourself
I: The usual bla-bla... made sure that I quoted that my mom opted the VRS in the new IRDA bill <expected them to take the lead>
P3: Which college are u from
--
P3:How did you get in to your college?
--
P1: What do you know about quality of hardware?
I: It depends on the robustness of the hardware.. we can use the outage time to determine the efficiency of hardware
P1: And about software?
I: We have several metrics. We can measure the expected behaviour vs the obtained output.
P1: What are the main products of your company?
--
P3: What does all that do?
--
P3: What is the market share of those products? and who are the competitors
I: Mentioned abt the gartner surveys... also made a casual mention abt oracle - peoplesoft takeover. <thot again they'll take the lead>
PP: Who are the main leaders in congress?
I: <politics...Duh!> Sonia..rahul..priyanka..
PP: BJP?
I: ABV, LKA.. and George fernandes <Guess i was very casual here >
PP: George Fernandes???
I: No sir.. sorry.. he is in NDA, not in BJP <still donno whether Im correct. I hate politics!>
<Yuck! so many stupid names in congress and BJP.. none striked me at that moment! >
PP: WHat are the different coneheress parties?
I: Congress parties?
PP: yeah coneheress parties..?
I: <Didnt still understand it was congress or sth else..> Factions inside congress or regional congress parties sir?
PP: Differnet coneheress parties.. congress I etc... What are all those?
I: <blank> Donno sir
PP: Have you been to delhi?
I: No sir.
P3: How many districts are there in Karnataka?
I: Donno sir
P3: How many states in India.
I: tol'em
P3: New states?
I: tol'em
P3: Who the CM of chattis..
I: last I heard was Ajit Jogi. He had some problems during a sting operation, was caught red-handed. Not quite sure what happened after that.
P3: How are your company's products rated?
I: The TQC rating. <Dont know I got the letters right>
P3: Is it an international standard?
I: Yes sir
P3: How do they do the rating?
I: They take a machine with a standard configuration.. like specific ram, OS, harddisk. Then they install the different products and rate them. Basically benchmarking.
P3: What are the latest quality initiatives?
I: Donno. I only know SEICMM, 6 sigma and QM/TQM. <Pls ask abt SEI/CMM...>
P3: Can 6 sigma be used for software?
I: I dont know the definition of 6 sigma, but my roomate works in honeywell software. They use 6 sigma. So I guess it works.
P3: Thank you
--
Who said we can lead the i-v?? I tried like hell... but they just didn't take a cue..

My tone was very confident throughout... my language was also very good. No sign of nervousness anytime <Basiccally wasnt nervous >.. Just thought that my worst in the form of L i/v was over before.. so no chances of going even more worse.


I really dont know how it was... lets see.