Group Discussion & Personal Interview Hacks To Crack Your Interviews

"A good start is half the battle."  - Plato

I am overwhelmed with the “Thank you” notes from my friends and mentees I helped during their cat preparation. Here is an interesting part of the conversation, when I asked them, “what’s your strategy for GD-PI-WAT?”. Most of them were blanked. So, I shared the knowledge I have with them and will share the same with you through this article to get a lucid picture of the next phase.

So, Kudos to you if you have got the percentile you wanted, but that will be half the battle won. The latter half of the war, which is the GD-PI-WAT process, is more difficult to crack than the first.

CAT score constitutes only 20-40% of the 100 marks in the admission criteria of top B-schools. The rest of 60-80% is divided into work experience, academic marks, and GD-PI-WAT scores (constitutes a significant chunk). This makes it hard to get into the b-school you wanted, as for every seat, there will be more than ten candidates (1:10+) who will be fighting with you to get into the dream b-school. This time the process can be more tilted towards Personal Interview only, so more weightage to PI.

So here is what you can do for the GD-PI-WAT process:

Group Discussions

Dos-

• Do go through the important highlights of the past six months; this will help build content for GDs. This pretty much covers the WAT portion too.
• Do mock GDs with your friends and families and rehearse in front of them.
• Do try to be a good leader and structure the discussion.
• Do use body language as it says a lot about us, making a significant impression on the panelist.
• Do try to use facts and figures to support your arguments.
• Do try to make multiple entries in a GD, each of at least a minute.

Dont’s-

• Don’t just reject the ideas given by other candidates. You should portray yourself as a good listener.
• Don’t try to be aggressive in a GD because it is a discussion, not a Debate.
• Don’t crisscross your own ideas.

Some important topics you can expect:

• Government’s strategy for Distribution of Vaccine
• Farmers Protest & Farm Bills 2020
• The relevance of the MSP system in agriculture in modern times
• Work From Home - Pros & Cons
• Every cloud has a silver lining
• How India fared battling COVID-19 when compared with the US
• Union Budget 2021
• Impact of covid-19 on Indian economy (can ask for sectoral wise impact in PIs too)
• Lessons for the world from COVID-19 pandemic

Personal Interviews

It is important to have clarity about yourself, what you have done, and what you want to achieve by doing MBA from the prestigious B-school you have applied to. Be ready with your answers to hygiene questions.

List of Hygiene Questions:

• Tell me about yourself?
• Where do you see yourself in the next five or ten years?
• What are your personal goals?
• List three strengths and weaknesses.
• Why MBA?
• Why did you do graduation in this stream?
• Why did you take a drop?
• Questions related to your hobbies
• What motivates you?
• Why this B-school?

Most of the time, your interview revolves around what you say in “Tell me about yourself?“ which gives you the advantage to drive your interview towards your strengths. So, prepare an answer that is in alignment with your strengths. Also, use the STAR approach to structure your answers; this will help you present a clearer picture to the panelists. So,  if you cover all the above-mentioned hygiene questions, then you are good to go.

Break a Leg!

If you're preparing for the upcoming WAT-PI season, we at InsideIIM have come up with The Final Push' (TFP), a WAT-PI training program where we put you directly in touch with business school students and alumni from your dream institutes. These MBA students and alumni, having gone through the grueling WAT-PI process themselves, will train you to smash any and every b-school interview that comes your way!