IIMK GD/PI experience

Well after 2 months of CAT results here was the D day. GDPI for IIMK. My lone IIM hope this yr. So without any further BC let me start rolling as u ll find lot of it in experience below 🙂

GD : 10 people participating. All were active except couple of them who spoke very less.No fish market not much cross cutting.
Topic : A management institute is celebrating its annual fest. They have three bands whom they can invite. But all the students are split over which one to call and each band has 1/3rd votes by students. How should they decide which one to invite.

5 mins to think, 15 to discuss.

Scope was very wide could have included lot of points. I didn’t start intentionally. I usually prefer the 2nd slot to speak, so grabbed it here. Gave a lot of points initially. Also people were allowing me to speak at will  After around 10 mins it seemed everyone is out of points and no one was venturing to speak anything. So yours truly took the challenge and gave not so intelligent point of considering the base city of bands and how much will it cost to transport and keep at campus :):):) Amazingly all found it so interesting that it could lead to a discussion for 5 more mins presenting an impression that people are full of ideas here.

Overall I would rate myself somewhere around 8/10 in GD. Would have given 7 myself after GD but you will find reason in PI experience for additional mark.

PI: I was 9th to be grilled. For previous 8 it was ranging from 15 mins to 40 mins. Most were grilled on maths …. Mainly stats and probability even though all of them were workex guys.

Prof P1 : Accounts n Finance prof.
Prof P2: HR prof.
M : Me

P2: So Sumeet you gave a lot of points in GD and talked a lot. (Oh yeah +1 for GD score)
M: sir I participated in lots of debates n all. Its natural for me to talk 🙂
P1: So that’s like one step further from there. All smiles 🙂
P1:Tell me one point which didn’t make sense. Anything that is not possible that you said.
M: Sir I made all valid points. I organised fest in college so I know wat it takes for such things.
P2: No no there has to be something which is non feasible.
Me: I don’t think so sir. All were feasible solutions.
P1 has my data form and joins in P2. Asks me something must be there.
Me: (Can’t drag it any further with no no kind ans) Sir I said lets go and talk to other colleges in city which band are they calling for thr fest. So if all of us choose diff. bands then the fest crowd which is same in most cases will get to listen all bands.
P2 n P1: No you said lets have poll at all colleges …. Both have smirks like they caught me redhanded.
M: Corrected I was targeting fest co-ordinators n not the junta poll.
Both seemed okay with my ans and moved on.

P2 has my certis n P1 has data form.

P1: You seem to be inborn teacher. Why do you want to waste time in management? Go for MS n Phd. (I had mentioned my parens being teachers n my alternative career option in Edu n Research)
M: (Had prepared this ans well before) talked about importance of both n which they are most effective. Gave reasons collating it with top down and bottom up approaches of progress. Talked about my leadership skills n how important they are for me …..

P1 : So do gud leaders have to be gud managers ?
M: gave fundas about both have importance in different scenarios. How it is imp for a leader to be gud manager n vice versa.
P1: He gave some funda about leaders delegating work to managers and asked so you mean Gandhi was a gud leader and he managed lot of ppl during dandi march without any manager.
M: (inner me: Yaar yeh kya ho raha hai !! ) Sir his ideals were so strong that he never needed any manager to manage ppl. They were controlled with his ideals only.
P1: Pushed further on same issue. Put it in different words and asked same thing.
M: Gave example of narayan murthy. Said he is like Gandhi to infy . I never believed in ideals can be really implemented but he proved me to be wrong. His ideas can be seem everywhr in company which is driving it. (Now I knew wat will be his next que. So already started thinking abt it :):))
P1: So infy shudnt need any managers to run it. (Yeah I knew u r gonna ask it :))
M: Managers have definite role in different ways. For ex. M D Pai is the reason Infy is so respected today. Had he not been there it would never have been wat it is today. So ideals alone are not all there are others things to it as well.
P1: Wat did he do ?
M: He opened up infy account books and made it all transparent.

P1 seemed totally satisfied with this duel of around 5-7 mins. But my big mouth had other plans and somewhere blurted out word ‘balance sheet’.

P1: You read infy balance sheet ?
M: (Had crammed all infy numbers ) Yes sir, but not very recently.

Then for next 1 min he gave me a lecture to make me believe that employees are not reported in balance sheet because they can’t be counted in money nos. like other ‘intangibles’ without saying the word 🙂
Like an accha baccha agreed to wat he said feeling like he is giving me gyaan.
P1: Ok when you go back read the infy balance sheet once :O:O:O
M: (Without any thought or any idea) Sorry sir :(:((dunno y I said that !! )
P1: Arre …. Y sorry … its totally okay 🙂

P2 was busy with my certis and didn’t pitch in much apart from couple of minor interjections.

P1 back in form again.

P1: So wats your fav subject.
M: Data mining. Told about basic ideas and why do we have it n various parts in it. Was goin fine.
But he had other plans in mind. Asked me something like that is not like quantitative n all. How would you know any algo is working fine for different datas n all.
I gave some fundas and then he talked about something which I didn’t get much and ended up saying to measure you can always compare the real case algo output with ideal case and gave an example from my line of work.

By now P2 was ready to push me further.
P2: How do your frens see you as a person.
M: gave funda about ppl writing to me in yearbook that I shud go to IIM 🙂 Said can mail you those comments as well. He was fine without them 🙂 Also pushed in concept of being true to my name (Su+meet = gud fren). So I have lots of frens.
P2: Okay how do they see you as in advisor, motivator, supporter, …… (couple more).
M: Sir I have this bad habit of talking a lot and telling everyone wat to do so I mostly fit in role of avisor n motivator easily. (All grinning like stupids :))
P1: (pitches in again) You know you can be a gud teacher. Teachers also talk a lot (oh no not again !! )
M: sir, prolly this skill of talking I got from my parens 🙂
P2: So if you talk a lot you can be prob to profs.
M: Sir IIMs believe in class discussions. Prof is actually a facilitator to coordinate discussion. So I will be gud value add to that 🙂
All grinning again.

P2: Anything you want to ask us ?
M: No sir, I am fine thank you 🙂

No ques on hobbies though I had mentioned movies bigtime and P1 was supposedly big movie guru as he asked some deep fundas abt movies frm someone else.
P1 was mostly busy with certis though he didn’t see much of them even then. He picked up one I got in infy and spent most of time deciphering it 🙂

That’s all for close to 20 mins. Don’t know wat to make out of it !!