Interviewing Skills

I was supposed to take interviews of the first year students for the events Delphique and Imperium. I interacted with about 20 odd students of the first year batch. Following were the things that I learnt from the experience…

1. There are better people than you are. There were about three or four people who were excellent in terms of thought clarity, were street smart, could deliver the message effectivly and above all were humble.

2. I learnt that interviews ARE really effective in judging people. I am not among those specialists who would know how to talk to people, judge them but I defintely could find when someone was lying, someone was talking the truth etc.

And finally a few random thoughts …

Since we take these events very very serisouly, the people who are out there to select other people mkae sure that they take in only the absolute best for these events’ and the managing teams. Sounds alright when you first think about it but as far as I understand, the real objective of being at a BSchool is the to learn through these events and enhance your personality (apart from regular things like studying etc). Now lets say someone tried real hard and cracked the selection process for a BSchool and now he wants to groom himself, an excellent way to do it would be through these events and committees. But the paradox is that the people who are in the selection committees wont pick him cos hes not that great. I cant think of another way to help this guy and let him develop himself. Any thoughts?

ORIGIANALLY POSTED ON July 13, 2005
REPOSTED FROM ABOUT2EVOLVE TO SEPTEMBERTHE22ND

I wish …

I wish I had a HUGE bike, specifically an Enfield or the good old Harley. Ofcourse getting a Harley is kinda tough but I don’t think Enfield would be a problem once I start working.

On my way back from dinner I saw this guy on a bike, he was arrogant all right, the wa he talked to the ticketing assistant, I absolutely hated it but I liked his bike. He had this Enfield that was as big as a Maruti 800.

He had modified this bike with changed front fenders. The seat was lowered to the level of the speedometers. I can think of kAgE’s Bullect Electra. He had’nt done any modifications but his bike looks royal. May be the royal blue color on the bike makes it prefect or may be that he uses this wax daily on his bike… I can also think of WalkinEagle who has this sexy bike whose name I cant recollect right now but it is one of most expensive bikes around in India.

The best part about these bikes is the put-put-put sound they make when they are being driven around. People notice it from atleast a hundred miles. Its a very distinct sound and I don’t know about other people but I am full with envy.

ORIGIANALLY POSTED ON Sunday, October 23, 2005
REPOSTED FROM ABOUT2EVOLVE TO SEPTEMBERTHE22ND

Happy Birthday – Sandeep Agarwal

Sandeep Agarwal aka Sandy aka Sandiago celebrated his 126th birthday on 27th March at MDI. With his birthday, he is officially a member of the oldie club at MDI. Other notable members are Nishant Nigam, Amrit Rao Pejawar, Shiva Kumar Chikkamath, Siddharth Sinha, Sandeeep Pandya… and few more names… They are so old that I can’t remember their names. They have been lost long time away.

So dear Sandy was so exited about his birthday that he sent a mail to the entire batch himself and asked people to come out and give him a bashing.

Talking about birthdays and bashings, I hate being a friend of someone who has a birthday. Reason being the free kicks and smearing with the cake that you get …

More to follow soon (may be after the exams…?)

DL 1S M 8101

DL 1S M 8101 – The Yamaha RX 135. Sandyz Bike.

When my dear Kawasaki Bajaj Caliber Croma (with disk brakes) is not working, this is the bike that I roam around on.

I can recall four incidents when I was out with someone on this bike, and the petrol finished. I had to drag the bike to a good distance.

Twice I was with Aastha and guess what, next moment I was dragging the bike with her. Luckily I found the petrol pump in the next instant.

Next I went shopping with Surbhi and while coming back from Delhi (yes from Delhi) I had to drag the bike all the way from Delhi to Gurgaon over the border.

Next I was out to get a cake with Shubhi and as usual I was found dragging a bike to the Cake Castle. This time I had to call Jeetu and he came all the way from library to the Sector 14 market to rescue us from the place.

Bottom line… even though the bike is Yamaha, roads are ok, city is Gurgaon, I have great people to take along with me but somehow I don’t have a bike. And when I have it, its the same good old RX 135.

I think its a jinx. Whenever I am out with someone male… it somehow never happens and when its the ladies, it it bound to happen !

Bike, my life, when ever I am down, very happy, very sad, I just need to go out on a bike for a ride …

Ruchi Pokhriyal – My Mentor

Mentor – Dictionary.com defines the word mentor as a wise and trusted counselor or teacher. Ruchi through this first wonderful year at MDI has been much more than that.

I have talked about her previously too on my BLOG and here are the links to the previous posts if any one is interested…
http://septemberthe22nd.blogspot.com/2004/10/ruchi-pokhriyal-my-mentor.html

Today we bid adieu to our seniors here at MDI and as a part of the MDI tradition we were supposed to present momentos to our Mentors and somehow I got this wonderful feeling when I was on the stage with her – WOW. It was like parting with one of the best friends…

I wish her all the best in all the years to come and a few wishes to myself ๐Ÿ˜‰

Nishant Nigam – Happy Birthday !

4th March – Nishant Nigam’s Birthday.

Nishant Nigam – yet another very good friend at MDI. Call it luck, call it chance, he was in my first sem academic group and the again in the second sem. In these two sems working with him I realized that he is of the best people that you would ever find. Cool, Calm, Composed, Understanding everything you want from a friend and a person, he has it.

Then came Imperium where I found that he and me had SO many things in common that I lost track. There I learn how to stand for each other, how to care for each other, sacrifice yourself to make sure tht the other person is doing well. The first two semesters and then Imperium bonded us as friends – Friends Forever.

If I start talking about him on a post, I can go on for ever. I can talk about the times when we – a group of 10 people – would sit in his room for hours and do nothing but talk, when we would just kill time by roaming around in campus. When we all would study in his room ! Yeah actually Study ๐Ÿ˜€

So it was his birthday and since he has no roomie, I had to get all the cakes etc and we got em. The number of people that came to greet him birthday was probably the maximum for anyone. Simple enough measure of the popularity of the chap.

Here is the end of this post and wishing him all the luck in life and best wishes.

(copy-pasted from my other *secret* BLOG)

Mansi Balwani

Nishant asked me if I had Yahoo id of Mansi Balwani and I realized I din’t have it. I tried searching on Yahoo People Search but could not find anything on her. Then out of curiosity, I tried Googling her and there was only one return and that too from a competition that she participated in.

Crux on the entire thing is that my friends don’t have a e-identity ! I try hard day and night to be among the top few results at every search engine for Saurabh and/or Garg and some of the very good friends are absent from the internet. So here is the post, mentioning all the names…

Mansi Balwani – did BFIA from CBS and worked with McKinsey Knowledge Centre for a year

Nishant Nigam – Chemical Engineer from IIT Roorkee and two years with TCS

Surbhi Gupta – Mechanical Engineer from IGIT

Shubhi Sood – BIS from Delhi University (yes same as mine)

Siddharth Sinha – Electronics Engineer and two years with Baan

Satyajeet Gandhi – Computer Engineer from Indore and six months with Syntel

Jeetendra Bhojwani – Computer Engineer

Aastha Gupta – BIT from KMC (again Delhi University) ๐Ÿ˜€

And in the end a disclaimer – These are the names of the people who are going out on Surbhi’s birthday. The list of friends at MDI is huge and in due course of time, I would post the details here.

Prakash

There are loads of things to be done, including the optimisation for the Best Indian Business School Blog contest which curentt Prateek is leading, completing the paper on Dutch Auctions and updating the blog template but before all that, there is something more important to be done here. I need to talk about Prakash.

Prakash left for his home somewhere in East India. Prakash is an excellent singer, plays guitar very well, a drummer and a member of a professional rock band back home.

Before he departed he wanted a second hand mobile phone and a few songs on a disk. I wasnโ€™t able to get him that phone, I am sure Piyush would have helped him with the disk.

I knew he was leaving on morning around 4 AM and I decided I would wake up and see him off but I couldโ€™nt do that. I met him a day before when I was running for my class, last words exchanged between me and him were good bye and all the best for your studies etc.

When I have achieved something worthwhile, I would make it a point to go find him and talk to him again and see how his world has changed over all these years.

And if you donโ€™t really know who he is, he was one of those few people who worked in our mess and made sure that we get good food.

Ruchi Pokhriyal – my Mentor

So at MDI we have a very very flourishing Mentor-Mentee system. Each student of an incoming batch is assigned a Mentor from the senior batch who would help the new student get used to life at MDI and other stuff.

This post would be about Ruchi. Yes this is going to be one of those essays that we wrote in school and were titled My Best Friend, My Favorite Book etc. I can title this one as My Mentor. Here it goes…

And hey Ruchi before you start reading this, please note that this would be a critical evaluation and might have a few good things and a lot of bad things. So before going ahead, kindly keep a glass of cold water next to you to chill you down just in case you dont find things according to your liking.

Before talking about Ruchi, I would like to talk about BLOGing. People say BLOGing is yet another way to express yourself. As far as I am concerned, BLOGing for me is one good way to kill time. I just love typing and penning down any random thoughts I may have. Probably this is reflected in the quality of the posts I make. Yeah ! yet another lame reason to cover my ass for the shitty posts ๐Ÿ˜€

Ok, getting back to Ruchi, when I entered MDI, I was supposed to make a two page report on my mentor. The rules of the game were very simple. We were to talk about all the good things on one page and all the bad things on the next page. All this info was to be collected by talking to other people. I could’nt talk to my mentor. Following are the things I can recall of that Mentor Report…

1. She is very good friends with Aarti, Geetanjali, Rasna and two more ladies from my senior batch.

2. She loves to dance. She is the first one to get on the dance floor and last to leave.

3. She loves to spend time on computer and often can be found chatting on Yahoo late at nights.

4. She is from Delhi and lives in North Delhi.

5. She would run away to home as soon as she gets a holiday for even a day.

6. She loves music.

7. She is very very hardworking.

Enough of goodies and now getting to the negatives (Yes Ruchi ! there are few)

1. She lost the Mentor Report I wrote about her.

2. She needs to do something about the way she manages her time.

3. She smiles a lot and people are sometimes suspicious of her for smiling all the time.

4. She #$% 34% 345#% #$%# $**$## (CENSORED)

That would do it. I can’ t remember anything else right now but would surely update the post as soon as I rememeber more.

In that Mentor Report I found out that she did her Engineering from M.I.T. and was Jyoti and Sugandha’s class mate. Recently I figured out that she also knew Deepti (I was so stupid that I didnt ask her before about Deepti. She had to know Deepti as Deepti n Jyoti were classmates). So she passed out in 2003 and cracked CAT n MDI and reached here. She is majoring in HR and Marketing. She is head of the Delphique Senior HR Panel and a member of the Alumni Committee. She recently won the HR Game at Imperium 2004 – The annual cultural festival @ MDI defeating teams from all the big B Schools. She won 6000 bucks and am waiting for a treat.

Talking of her hobbies, people say she likes to talk and indulge in general chit chat. Like Mentor, like Mentee, me too is very interested in talking about stuff. Lets see how much we have in common. She likes to spend time chattin on Yahoo, so do I; she can be found awake at any time of the day/night, sames true for me as well. She needs a crash course in time management and I cant stress more on my exploits as the worst time manager in the world.

So we have so much in common, let me highlight a few things where we are worlds apart. She is rated among one of the most hard working people of her batch. I am called the NPA (Non Performing Asset). I am the last person who would work in my group and I am so lazy that I wont even submit my resume for the summers.

Now getting on to few things I have noticed about her…

– She is very very helpful. When I was supposed to write that report about her, she helped me a lot cos she didnt want me to get into trouble. People might get curious what trouble? I cant write about it here but she saved me.

– I hate her for giving me a bag ful of notes to study. She should have understood that I am not one of those who would enjoy padhai likhai.

– She also is very good to talk to. A smile never leaves her face. She can be seen smiliing any time of the day irrespective of the mood she is in.

– I found her behaving strangely when I was being interviewed for the selection of the Alumni Committee. I wanted to be on that committee so bad and I thought I had a good chance but things turned out the other way.

– She would remember the small details. Observant. Careful. She is definately not in that category of “We see but we don’t observe”.

I cant think of anything else to write bout her and there are few things that I might have to ask her before I write em down.

And I need to send this link to her to make her happy ๐Ÿ˜€

Stuff to be covered in next posts…

Imperium

ITC Mera Gaon Mera Desh Business Plan Contest