Interview Experience -
I had my interview with Karen Conway on 1st November 2011 for admission to the Richard Ivey School of Business, London, Canada. I had submitted my application in the 2nd round. Overall, I thoroughly enjoyed the interview experience but its very difficult to assess what will happen and in my opinion it's best to let the process take its own sweet time rather than calculating the odds. The process went on for roughly 50 minutes where I had a chance to ask questions towards the end. Here goes the interview experience: -
Karen : (Introduced herself). Tell me something about yourself.
Me: I started talking about my personal and professional life. Within 60 secs, she interrupted and asked me to give her more details about my transition from Infosys Technologies to ZS Associates. I explained that and then followed it up with the remainder of the introduction.
Karen : Explain in detail how your career has progressed at ZS over the years.
Me : 120 secs, standard answer
Karen : What did you learn from your international experience? How did you handle a conflict situation while you were at client site?
Me : Long answer, shared 2 instances with Karen
Karen : What is your involvement with the client while you work from India?
Me : Described my current load and participation in the global delivery model
Karen : Have you done any strategy work till now? Can you share your role and responsibility in brief?
Me : Long answer. Not very well structured.
Karen : Define Leader. Give me one instance where you exhibited leadership qualities.
Me: Talked about 3 attributes of a leader and followed it up with 2 specific examples - professional and personal.
Karen : What do you want to do post your MBA? Give me specifics - company name, profile and location.
Me: Talked about my short term goal and then got into specifics - dream company, profile, etc.
Karen : What is your back-up? If this company doesnt hire you what do you plan to do?
Me - Answered her question by telling her about my back-up option. She asked me if I had a back-up career option.
Karen: In which geography do you want to launch yourself?
Me: Spoke to 1 minute about the positives of Canada. Its a tricky question when you have work experience in the US. The question goes more like why Canada and not US? So I ended the answer by talking about me being flexible as far as geography is concerned.
Karen : You have less experience than the average experience of the Ivey class. How will you cope up and manage to add value?
Me: Talked about what I bring to the class at Ivey even with my background.
Karen : You must have a formal review process to get feedback from your superiors at work. What feedback did you receive in the last cycle?
Me : :D Well this is something I wasn't expecting and talked about my areas of improvement.
Finally, she asked me about the research that had gone in from my end. Website, current students, alumni? She then signaled that she was done asking questions and asked me if I wanted to ask any. I did. She then explained the admission process to me and who will take a final call on my application. Have my fingers crossed now and waiting for Dec 16 :)
Sunday, November 6, 2011
Wednesday, November 2, 2011
What's the truth?
A lot of people ask me "सच क्या है"?
My first memory of fun goes back to the early 90s - weight balancing on a seesaw. Its interesting that both 'going up' and 'coming down' gave me thrill and I wanted to go faster each time. There was a similar appeal while taking a swing and I would ask my friends to push as hard as they could. There was then an inquisitive stage in life where I wanted to know about everything - how did cars work, aeroplanes, universe, how were babies born, etc. I was interested because I was still exploring. I grew up and started going to high school and that's when I began chasing my friend's dream or my parent's dream or probably my neighbor's dream. Nothing around me had changed and no one was forcing or feeding things. I now realize that the change happened because I was done exploring around myself and felt comfortable in that shell. I did not feel like venturing out for 2 reasons, 1) I feared the unknown ; 2) I had lost the drive.
In this process, I changed the definition of fun for stage #2 - It was now called 'doing nothing'. I followed the crowd blindly and went to college. During college, I did not apply thought to any of my actions. I was deriving fun by following others and in the process I lost my confidence. I was so lost in my own reverie that I would spend 10 hours in front of a book and not flip a single page. The biggest concern however was that there were no thoughts. My brain had actually stopped thinking and working. It had gotten accustomed to the sleep mode.
This continued into the next stage of my life - professional life. It was my new found slavery and I was now being forced to do something. I did not have the thought process to analyze what I was doing. The fact that my sleep was being disturbed was irritating. I started looking outside the professional arena and was back to exploring. I wanted to go to a new place, meet new people and just get away from the routine. I was instantly able to connect and started deriving fun from my old source. The catch however was, that I was no more free to explore at will. During stage #2 in life, I had build around myself a huge chain of constraints which were not so easy to let go off. I was beginning to feel miserable.
The reason I am not ending the story is that I haven't seen the dream beyond this point and well the 'I' here represents most people I have come across in life. There is no right or wrong. This is just my version of truth as I see it.
My first memory of fun goes back to the early 90s - weight balancing on a seesaw. Its interesting that both 'going up' and 'coming down' gave me thrill and I wanted to go faster each time. There was a similar appeal while taking a swing and I would ask my friends to push as hard as they could. There was then an inquisitive stage in life where I wanted to know about everything - how did cars work, aeroplanes, universe, how were babies born, etc. I was interested because I was still exploring. I grew up and started going to high school and that's when I began chasing my friend's dream or my parent's dream or probably my neighbor's dream. Nothing around me had changed and no one was forcing or feeding things. I now realize that the change happened because I was done exploring around myself and felt comfortable in that shell. I did not feel like venturing out for 2 reasons, 1) I feared the unknown ; 2) I had lost the drive.
In this process, I changed the definition of fun for stage #2 - It was now called 'doing nothing'. I followed the crowd blindly and went to college. During college, I did not apply thought to any of my actions. I was deriving fun by following others and in the process I lost my confidence. I was so lost in my own reverie that I would spend 10 hours in front of a book and not flip a single page. The biggest concern however was that there were no thoughts. My brain had actually stopped thinking and working. It had gotten accustomed to the sleep mode.
This continued into the next stage of my life - professional life. It was my new found slavery and I was now being forced to do something. I did not have the thought process to analyze what I was doing. The fact that my sleep was being disturbed was irritating. I started looking outside the professional arena and was back to exploring. I wanted to go to a new place, meet new people and just get away from the routine. I was instantly able to connect and started deriving fun from my old source. The catch however was, that I was no more free to explore at will. During stage #2 in life, I had build around myself a huge chain of constraints which were not so easy to let go off. I was beginning to feel miserable.
The reason I am not ending the story is that I haven't seen the dream beyond this point and well the 'I' here represents most people I have come across in life. There is no right or wrong. This is just my version of truth as I see it.
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