Shivesh Bajpai, is a 2nd year PGP Student of IIM Trichy. He is a part of the B-fest committee and also enjoys his time as a Core Member of the Drama Club. He has cleared CFA level 2 and awarded a badge of excellence in the FLIP National Challenge 2014.
In September 2015, Cognizant Business Consulting organized CXO Challenge, a competition open to students of premium B-Schools of India. This is a one-of-a-kind competition as one participates in it as an individual, not a team and also gets the opportunity to be mentored by an executive team of CBC.
The marathon event was organized in 5 stages over a period of one and a half month. Around 3000 students contested in first four stages, touted as one of Cognizant’s toughest customized evaluation systems. The first stage was a MCQ aptitude test testing Quantitative and Verbal skills. The second stage was an Excel Simulator where we had to solve calculation intensive business problems covering the areas of Finance and Operations. The third stage was Case Study round where we were presented 2 mini cases with a problem and a list of 100 questions for each case. Based on the problem at hand, we could select around 30 questions out of the list which would direct us towards solving the problem. The fourth round was Guesstimate, where huge amount of data was given and we were supposed to crunch it and find out the exact solution to a given quantitative problem. Post this, 10 candidates qualified for the final round. The key to qualifying these rounds was reasonable quantitative and data interpretation skills coupled with the application of business sense to some extent.
The fifth round was the most interesting one as it involved a rigorous case study in three completely new and unrelated businesses and required me to research in depth on enablers like Internet of Things & Analytics. Apart from brainstorming sessions which were arranged with CBC executives at timely and extensive secondary research, I took guidance from some of college seniors working in CBC. I also discussed my ideas with my friends who had worked in the industries at hand. One valuable feedback I got from my mentor was regarding the presentation. The presentation should have a visual appeal which allows any layman to understand a complex issue in a minute; to solve which you had taken 10 days. So, I invested two full days going through the final presentation, tweaking it to look like different CBC client presentations I could find on Internet.
The CXO challenge was an experience of a lifetime. Within 4 weeks, I had interacted with top decision makers of a reputed consulting firm. My ideas were verified and fine-tuned by top level strategists in the consulting industry. I had been mentored by a CXO team and got to present my case solution to the Director of CBC. Winning the event was the cherry on the cake!!
This is part of the Meet the Batch Series powered by the External Relations Team at IIM Trichy to help the aspirants to get to know the batch and about life at IIMT.
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