During the good old days, an aspirant would have gotten the opportunity to visit multiple cities in order to attend the interviews for his/her dream B-School. But due to the pandemic that has struck the whole world as a lightning, all these processes were moved online. I had given multiple interviews during the period of Feb to April but the interview experience of SJMSOM was truly unique.
Before the day of the interview we were sent an email directing to a platform known as ‘Gather’. Gather is a virtual engagement platform where the organizer can design a virtual meeting arrangement and other users can move around in that virtual world in their tiny avatars just like a video game. Initially I was quite perplexed, but as I deep dived into the platform and its UI and UX, I was quite amused at how intuitive this was.
On the D-day, I logged into gather via my creds and started exploring the place in my avatar. We were grouped into different groups and there was an adcom member in each group to guide us. There were designated rooms for interview and document verification, and we had to wait for our turn.
Each interview panel had 3 members. My interview started with the generic ‘Introduce Yourself’ and then I was asked about some basic questions from my undergrad subjects. There were approximately 4 to 5 questions from various topics of mechanical engineering and I was able to answer most of them with confidence. Then there were few questions on my current job profile and what impact does my role have on the firm. There were also some questions on current affairs which I was able to answer as these were some of the big events in news those days (Farmers protest, Covid Vaccine). Overall my interview lasted for about 12 to 15 minutes.
I believe Gather is the closest we can bring ourselves to the actual world while being at home and this made the whole interview experience unique and one of a kind.
