Let's do a bit of a flashback today..recently saw Kill Bill 2, so am in some sort of a 'Quentin Tarantino-ish' mood;) Aldo, talking about myself in the same breath as him is almost blasphemous..if his movies are anything to go by, the guy's a friggin' genious!!

So, we zoom past the last few months, to the time that the CAT results had just come out..IMS announced some workshop in Mumbai..two days, from sunrise to after sunset..rigorous rounds of GDs and PIs..

There was junta there from all over the West-Zone..MBA aspirants crawling all over Wellingkar's like ants! :) Must have been close to 400 people!

Well, the first day was all GDs, the second some seminars and a couple of PIs..the GDs were to be of different types..Factual, Abstract, Controversial and Case Study!

We all know what Factual and Controversial is, a lil bit of gyaan about the other two-

Abstract - Here, the sky is the limit! You can be asked to discuss anything on earth..most of the times they give you an extremely esoteric sounding statement and throw the GD open..

Some examples:
# Pink pajamas at the Red Fort!
# Golden boys and girls, like chimney sweepers must eventually come to dust..
# . - yeah, tats right! A Dot, fullstop, purnaviraam..now discuss that!
# Which first - Chicken or egg?

So, you see, this sort of a GD usually had people racking their brains to come up with the craziest stuff..stretch your imagination to its break-point and somehow connect the most abstract thing to stuff like 'India's ecomony, GDP growth, China, Nucluer power, fuel' etc! No kidding!! People used to come up with these fundoo comparisions!

Case Study - Here they give us a situation. .Could be related to business, ethics, relationships, whatever..but the main characters are in the throes of some major dilemmas! They have to make some difficult choices or think of a way to extricate themselves from whatever jam they have landed in..be it, a CEO of an organisation and his employees shirking work, or a doctor who has to make a choice bteween his career and ethics! Can turn out to be miniature masala potboilers at times;)

I was given terrible feedback for three out of four of those GDs..

GD # 1 - I had this 'altercation' with some guy..he wasnt letting me talk..almost told him to shut it:) Then the whole thing went into this huge mess..I started laughing coz I just cldnt understand why people were in such a hurry to talk!
Feedback - 'Had I been on the panel, I would have asked Shreya to leave immediately'..btw, the 'Panel' were these IIM students who had taken out the time to come and criticize us..they were doing a pretty good job too, methinks;)

GD # 2 - This was controversial - in the feedback, I was told that I should learn to listen to the other people, to quote - 'from your attitude, it seemed like you were treating the others just as mannequins, try to listen to them and remember they are people too!' Gawd!! Wat-ever!

GD # 3 - Abstract - I was told that nothing I had said had made any sort of impression on them. The panel could, in fact, while giving their feedback, not recall anything that I had said!! There goes my 'Love me, hate me, but can't ignore me' excuse out of the window! LOL!

GD # 4 - The Case Study - Here I was in my element;) I did it all right. The thing was ur typical 'fish-market', but I managed to get my stuff across and finally this - something that shone out like a beacon over the muck that the day had been - 'If I had to choose one person from this group, it would be the lady there'! :) No prizes for guessing who the 'lady' was! :)

The second day was even worse!

We were asked to fill up a couple of forms..stuff like strengths and weaknesses, career goals, etc, ur regular pre-interview form..based on these forms, the panelists would conduct a mock-PI for us..these forms were to be filled up by us in all sincerity and taken to the Interviews! Me, being the smart-ass that I always aim to be, treated the form like some piece of shit..I filled them lying in bed at 1 o' clock at night (to be fair, inevitable circumstances had led to me being extremely tired and not in the mood to fill out forms)..so I did a very lousy job..my thinking was that they (the panelists) would discuss the form with us, like IMS staff usually do, and not model the whole thing on a real PI, down to the whole stress-test thing! My mistake, it was supposed to be a MOCK-PI!!

So, you can guess that my interviews sucked! They tore me apart, both times, I was told that I was arrogant and did not listen and my answers on the form were not very convincing..and all this was coming from my badly filled out forms. .It seems they had formed an unfavorable opinion of me by just glancing at the forms..and I cannot blame them..some of my sentences were not even complete!

So, all in all, I had a terrible time! And I must have been one of the few people to have had it so rough, as mostly everybody else came out with decent feedbacks..

But at the end of it all, I knew 'What not to do' ;)

That is when I did some more introspection and realized that there was no point in trying too hard at the GDs..just listen and follow the flow of the conversation..as for PIs..the golden rule here would be - FILL up the damn sodding form well..like your life depended on it!