IIM CALCUTA GD/PI EXPERIENCE QUESTIONNAIRE

PERSONAL DETAILS:

Name: Vishal Haria

Education: B.E. (Comp. Sci.)
Year of passing out: 2004

WORK EXPERIENCE:

Duration of Total work experience: 21 months

Company last worked for: Wipro Technologies
Position: Project Engineer, Team Leader

CAT PERCENTILES:

Overall: 99.23
Verbal: 96.05
Quantitative: 96.43
DI/Reasoning: 98.39
IIM C calls: PGDM/PGDCM/BOTH PGDCM
Final calls: PGDCM
GD/PI venue: Mumbai

GROUP DISCUSSION:

Topic of the GD: Ethics are not absolute

No. of participants in the GD: 9
Time Limit and any other instructions: 2min thinking, 17min discussion, 3min conclusion
Whether asked to summarize the GD: Everybody had to summarize, in the random order asked by
interviewers
Whether a written summary of the GD was asked: Yes

THE GD EXPERIENCE: (please provide at least 5 lines of description)

Being a little less abstract topic, ppl were able to speak something initially… but the group soon realized
that there was not much to discuss, so it wasn’t a fish market… it was well structured from the
beginning… meaning of both terms was explained… most points were plain, simple, direct… few ppl
touched on philosophy, religion etc…

How would you rate the Chaos level in the GD (on a scale of 1-10, 1 being most peaceful 10 being most
chaotic): 3/10

Any observations on mistakes you committed in the GD:

I bought in a very good point – a management angle and a jargon – very late in the discussion. Fortunately,
they asked me a question about that term in the interview, and I explained it well.

Any observations of what you could have done better in the GD:
Cant say

Any tips for GD preparation:

Have a structure ready for each GD type – case, abstract etc… it helps if u have some framework to think
points on (something like SPELT, PREP etc.)… for IIMC GDs, since they are a little abstract, u need to
think out-of-the-box and explore dimensions not directly visible in the topic…

PERSONAL INTERVIEW:

No of interviewers in the Panel: 2

List of the questions asked and your responses:

(Intro questions/acad based questions/work experience based/general awareness/personal questions)
1. Tell us something about yourself
2. Hobbies (trekking, traveling, hockey)
a. Don’t you read? (yes)
b. What? (mix of everything)
c. Which books do you read (recently read Goal)
d. Don’t you read non-management books? (yes, fiction – Jeffrey Archer)
e. Who wrote Quiver Full of Arrows?
3. Trekking – where to? What do you observe / note?
4. Have you got other calls?
a. What’s your performance at IIMs? (70% IIMA, 60% IIMK, 90% here)
b. So do you think we are not taking you to task? (No, I guess I am performing good today .
Performance depends on the situation, confidence, panel, perception)
5. What’s your role at Wipro? How will MBA help there?
6. What is Azim’s ranking according to wealth? (just previous day there was the ranking by Forbes)
7. Name 5 ppl from Gujarat in performing arts.
8. What’s your take on BPO? (it is advantageous to both, but we should also look more into delving at
depth… like KPO)
9. Have you ever come to Calcutta?
10. Asked 2 logic questions. I was able to answer both. So they asked – did people coming out of interview
tell you these questions?
11. In GD you mentioned a very beautiful point – Cost/benefit analysis. Explain
GD topic was ETHICS ARE NOT ABSOLUTE. I explained them using example.

Any observations on mistakes you committed in the PI:

Was not prepared for Q6, even though it was very much current news, and related to my company too.

Any observations of what you could have done better in the PI:
I could have helped with a little more confidence, though finally I made it 

Any tips for Personal Interview preparation:

Know ur resume well – acads, workex, personals – most questions can be anticipated, hence u can prepare
answers beforehand and drive ur interviews