My Interview Experience At SJMSOM,IITB 2021- Vishnusai Reddy

My Interview experience with SJMSOM , IITB (2021)

Profile
Class 10: 89.6%
Class 12: 95.4%
BE: CGPA 9.21 CSE, RVCE, Bengaluru
Work Experience: 2 years as Developer Associate, SAP Labs India
CAT: 97.95 percentile
General category

Interview with SJMSOM, this year, was very different when compared to interviews I attended from other B-schools. While most B-schools conducted interviews on Zoom application, SJMSOM chose a very innovative process to remove the monotonous online experience and mimic the offline experience of the interview.  The Gather platform used by SJMSOM made for a very engaging event where we could network with the seniors of the college and fellow aspirants interviewing at the same time.

Every aspirant was grouped according to his/her profile and interviews were taken by a professor from the domain and two alumni of SJMSOM.
I will list the questions asked to me for your reference.

Professor
1)Introduce yourself in a minute
2) Describe your role and work in your company
I talked about my role and responsibilities in my work.
3)Why do you want to do an MBA?
I spoke about my interests to learn about business, management and leadership.

Alumni1
1)Asked some technical questions about REST services
2)Questioned about SAP company and SAP software
Answered about the company and latest cloud solutions of SAP

Alumni2
1)Asked me to name the competitors of SAP
I answered that Oracle, Microsoft and Salesforce have ERP solutions
2) Asked me to pitch why a business using a competitor of SAP must use SAP - to pitch SAP over its competitors as a Sales Executive
I attempted but used a lot of technical jargon and pitched like a developer. The interviewer provided me with this feedback and asked me to attempt the pitch again minimising the technical jargon and attempt it as a Sales executive this time.
I attempted the pitch once more with this feedback.... this time slightly better than before.

I was asked if I read the news regularly. I answered that I follow it at times.
I was asked to talk about recent Farm Laws. I talked about the Farm laws at length.

My interview ended but all of us were instructed not to leave the Gather platform. I came back to my virtual room where I could help the other aspirants with my interview experience and also talk to Seniors about the college. We were taken to a different room for our document verification. While we waited for all the process, the admin team even played Tom and Jerry to make us less nervous and less anxious.
The interview experience was unique and was fun to attend.

Result: I secured admission to SJMSOM in the first list and I am very happy to share this interview experience. Looking forward to a great MBA life at IITB. :)