“Your attitude, not aptitude, will determine your altitude” – Zig Ziglar
From studying for CAT to landing up dream corporate roles, a CAT aspirant needs to climb several stages in this pretty long journey. This entails building a great profile, ensuring decent academic grades, decent percentile and most importantly clearing all possible interview calls that a candidate gets. This struggle doesn’t end here, even once you enter your dream B-school, you will be continuously subjected to personal interviews be it for committee selections or for summer internships and final placements.
As I have already mentioned in my IIM story how I have been successfully clearing all interview opportunities that I have got time and again and how this skill has really helped me in the successful journey from SSCBS to SPJIMR to IIM Lucknow to JP Morgan Chase, I earnestly feel the need to craft a story on these lines to help my juniors and peers. I want to use this story to iterate and emphasize all my learnings and strategies that I have adopted for my interviews.
If you have decided to pursue MBA, it is imperative that you start working on your profile and academic performance from your under-graduation days itself because this is the platform that offers maximum opportunities, and a budding ground for an impressive profile. My excellent academic record throughout school and college life, CFA and varied extra-curricular like public speaking and management competitions helped me to get calls from many good colleges like IIM Lucknow, Indore, Shillong and SPJIMR even at a poor percentile of 94. xx. While I converted IIM Indore, Shillong and SPJIMR in first list, I narrowly missed IIML with a final waitlist number of 4. When I was studying at SPJIMR, I appeared for CAT’18, scored 96.83 %ile, got calls from all IIMs except A, B and C and finally cleared IIML in one go even though it was the only interview I decided to sit for.
Whether it was any of my IIM interviews, or my interview with the world’s biggest bank JPMC, my approach has been fairly constant. I work a lot on knowing myself, my CV and honing my personality. A large part of your interviews would always constitute HR answers like tell me about yourself, your strengths and weaknesses, your favorite pastimes, and why you want to go for a particular degree/college/company. ‘Tell me about yourself’ is a very powerful and most frequently asked interview question, that can make or break your game in terms of the interest that interviewers take in you amidst a long list of interviewees for the day in front of them. Include points that are unique to you and bring about your interesting journey of life. Highlight your greatest achievements and link them with your journey and career decisions. It is only you who can write your HR answers enriching them with your life experiences and learnings from each of these experiences.
Besides that, you should be well versed with your domain-specific knowledge and prior work experience/internships if any. Try being aware of all the latest happenings/technological transformations/policy changes that may be impacting the domain/role you are applying for like Finance at SPJIMR or Product Management role in Amazon or Microsoft. Irrespective of the domain you belong to, it is very important to remain aware of some of the important current affairs and latest happenings in India and worldwide that may have taken everyone with a storm. Last but not the least, always ensure that you keep your positive attitude intact and a pleasant smile on your face. This will help you to comfortably sail through all unexpected and tense questions. In the end, interviewers are not looking for the most learned candidate, rather they are on a hunt for a person who has got the most suitable attitude for the organization.
I would like to summarize some of the above mentioned tips for your easy wherewithal:
· Consider interview as a chat where you have a great platform to speak at length about yourself
· Build a strong profile from the start itself that would help you to maximize shortlists and their conversion
· Know your CV in detail and collate varied experiences of your life for interesting HR answers
· Give your best shot in ‘Tell me about yourself’ and bring about your uniqueness
· Prepare your domain specific knowledge and develop thoroughness with your work experience/internships/live projects
· Maintain a pleasant smile and positive attitude throughout the interview