How To Crack IIM Interview - Kriti Jindal, IIM Indore PGP Participant

10th : CGPA 10 12th : 91% Graduation: B. Tech in Information Technology (83.85%) Work Experience: ZS ASSOCIATES (10 Months) The Day of the Interview Interview Date: 12 th March’2018 Venue: Vivanta By Taj, Dwarka, Delhi Time: 1 p.m. The process started on time. All the candidates for the afternoon slot were assembled in a hall and were given general guidelines as to how the process will be carried out. As soon as the instructions were over, we were given our topic for WAT and a 20 min window to pen down our thoughts. WAT topic – ‘Growing role of women in various aspects of business and society at large’ (I wrote about prejudices and difficulties faced by women in earlier times, how education and changing mindset has helped bring about a difference, gave various examples of women leaders in business and social work, highlighted areas with scope for improvement and gave my suggestions to further improve the same)

After WAT, document verification was carried out by the officials and simultaneously people were being called for their interview.
After around half an hour, my name was called out and I was escorted to the interview room allotted to Panel 1.

The panel consisted of 3 members (All males). One in his late thirties and other two in mid-forties. After going through my profile, it seemed all the three members had decided what specific areas to evaluate me on as each one of them asked me questions related to a specific area turn wise, while the other 2 just observed.

Panellist 1 - I was mostly asked questions related to my work experience. What was my
role? What aspect of the job I liked the most? Since I was working on a project for a US pharmaceutical company, I was asked
questions such as - How many states are there in the US? Name 5 states and 5 cities of US, How is the healthcare scenario in India different from US?

Panellist 2
The questions revolved around academics and general knowledge. Having done engineering in IT, I was expected to answer questions such as: What is object-oriented programming? What do you know about big data? Where do you see its usage?
What is internet of things (IoT)? Look around in the room and figure out its application if any? Then I was given a situation where I had to answer how the internet of things can be used. How will you explain Machine learning to a layman?

Panellist 3
Now came the time for extempore. I was taken aback by surprise since I was one of the first few candidates to be interviewed and I had no idea that extempore also was to be a part of the interview.

The topic of extempore – ‘Liberalization’
(I started with a general meaning of the word – ‘liberalization’, spoke about how this concept holds a different meaning for different people. To add a business sense to it, I also talked about liberalization in business sense citing an example of government regulation regarding FDI)

The interview lasted for about 30 minutes after which the panellists seemed satisfied and wished me luck.