If you are about to appear for PI round of IIMs or any other B-School selection process, this article will certainly give you better perspective o answer the most critical part, i.e. The “YOU” aspect.
You need to know well about yourself. That sounds strange. Of course, you have been living with yourself for 20 to 25 years. You know everything about yourself. But sadly, this is not true. Many people who have given multiple interviews have told me that they were unable to answer simple questions like what is the latest news about the city that you are born in? For this section, You can never say that you don’t know the answer to this question, at least. Right? So, let’s understand more about how to answer this question.
This section is about you, your personality, what kind of family you are brought up in and son.
1. Know the meaning of your name
Commonly, the meaning that you think about your name might not be right. You never know what the interviewer knows the meaning of your name. Please remember that the “name” section can come across in two ways. Firstly, the interviewer might ask you - what is the meaning of your name. Secondly, you can deliberately use this part while answering “tell me about yourself”. You can even connect the meaning of your name to your personality, any activity that you do or your work life.
2. Know your city
Apart from the name of your city, you need to know the unique points about your city. Let’s say you are from Nagpur, Maharastra. Many people don’t know that Nagpur is the origin of Buddhism. That’s where Dr B. R Ambedkar took the oath of Buddhism. Also, it is the geographical centre of the country. So, you can connect these kinds of facts to your answer and tell your interviewer how informed and interested you are about the things around you.
Interviewers directly ask about the news related to your city. The city can be of two types — the city where are born in and the city where you are currently living in. It would be best if you were prepared with both the cities. Some of you who are born and lived in the same city, this part is slightly easier.
The best way to prepare for this section is to go to the Wikipedia page of your city. After that, search the name “yourcityname news” on google. For example, “Nagpur news”. That gives all the information you need to know about the city.
3. Know about your Schooling
If you have studied in the same school from nursery to high school, life is easier as you only need to be prepared with one school. Some of you would have changed multiple schools because of defence schooling or any other reason. The key here is to connect your personality with your school. Because most of your personality gets shaped up during school days, for example, people who have changed multiple schools can say that they could be able to work with students from different parts of the country and so on. Apart from this, there may be questions on CBSE, ICSE and state board.
4. Know your family
They would surely want to know about your parents and siblings. You can connect your parents’ profession and siblings to your personality or the choice of a particular branch of MBA.
5. Your education and work experience
Start with school and mention about the extracurricular activities and achievements during your school days. Next, the undergraduate has two parts:
Firstly, why did you choose the particular field? The most dreaded question is - why did you choose Engineering? It would be best if you had a real answer. Please do not try to copy the solution from the internet. It has to be your answer. You can connect this “why” with your family you come from or your interests.
Secondly, it will be about the college you attended. The questions can be:
Who are he famous alumni of your college?
What is the ranking of the university you studied in?
What is the number of courses that it offers?
Next thing you need to talk about is your internships. This should include why did you choose that particular internship and what are your learnings and takeaways from it.
If you have some work experience, you may tell about work experience, the company you worked for and your learnings from it.
Hope this helped — all the best for the first question of your interview.