IIM-K : First Blood...

There are times in your life when you know you have worked really hard for the occasion you’re about to face. Times like these, you can feel the adrenaline rushing through your veins, your heart drumming a frenzied beat – and your face wearing the determined look that would easily put any of your fellow competitors to severe discomfiture. But at other times….. oh well – there are experiences like the one I am going to narrate.

At this point in time, I think there is something about me that you need to know. When I say that I have actually had the craziest of experiences on Valentine’s Day, I mean it. From decorating red envelopes with mini-red hearts to avoiding security-chowkis by climbing walls to actually spending an entire day in bed – (hang on) – down with cold and viral fever, and sadly exchanging the absolutely wrong kind of virus.

And I thought I would limit the feathers in my already-colourful cap to that. Apparently, not.

I had been in town for about two days already – and although my initial plan was to make judicious use of the time in hand to prepare, I actually ended up shopping for formals and stationery for the better part of my stay. The remaining was of course carefully allocated to serially bugging three of my best friends ever – Bikram, Roshith and Sohini – guys I was staying over with in Bangalore.

February 14th, 2006 : My IIM-Kozhikode interview @ Bangalore.

Now my ideal time for an interview is about 11:30 in the night – you know, the time you’re not too sleepy and not too drunk in case you’re out. Oh heck, in any case you can wrap it up in half-an-hour to be in time for your ‘midnight mistletoes’. IIM-Kozhikode apparently thinks otherwise. When they say 0930 hrs, they actually do not mean 9:30 a.m. – they mean even earlier.

‘Candidates are requested to report to the centre well in advance for the group discussion and interview’ – Drat !

And thus on an otherwise uneventful Tuesday morning, Sleepy Kaushik and Zombie Bikram inched through the Banerghatta road traffic to reach IIM-Bangalore, which was my centre for the interview. Well, little did I know, that it was about to get pretty pretty eventful.

The façade. Now that’s what I’m talking about – although I do admit that I haven’t seen those of the other IIMs, but this one was very very impressive. In fact, so much so that I was literally scared that in answer to a probable interview question – ‘Why do you want to join IIM-Kozhikode ?’, I would have probably replied – ‘I want to join IIM-Bangalore because…’ J

Focus shifted with a jolt when I suddenly noticed this all-important guy with a display book in hand, suited-booted like it was winter in Seattle – yes, an interviewee. To think, that I had barely begun to cope with my restricted movements in my formal attire. Yes, a tie, shirt and trousers is formal enough for me, thank you !

After meandering through a maze of corridors, I landed up at a corridor where a couple of edgy-looking (if you know what I mean) aspirants shifted uneasily on their chairs. There seemed to be just a handful of them, say 8-9 and I decided to make conversation to do the proverbial ‘easing myself into the situation’ bit.

‘Hey, this is the IIM-K interview thing right ?’

‘No. This is for IIM-L’

End of conversation.

:o L ? ‘L’ as in Lucknow – hey, I was pretty sure it was K! K for Kozhikode, man ! Thankfully before my blood-pressure decided to do a Bubka, I was told that the Kozhikode interviews were on a different floor.

Walk…walk..walk.. oh freak !!! 9:10….jog….trot…wait! no trot – me not a horse – jog…scamper…set tie straight…see a few people…. Slow into a huffy-puffy walk. Ah, we have arrived ! But woah – what was this mini congregation over here ? This was no 8-9 semi-nervous students – some 30 of them. And everybody seemed pretty nice and happy about being there. As if the proverbial ‘nerves of steel’ were suddenly on sale and that too at a 50% rebate….oh heck.

I was done with submitting my interview form and academic certificates and decided to make a quick trip to the restroom to check if the formals were in place – and by that, I mean no weird bulges at odd places. Hate it when the shirts decide to balloon out in all weird direction – ummm, I might be battling a bulge – but NOT the MRF Zappers you see on TV.

No sooner did I return than they started splitting the mob into three different panels. I was a part of the first panel – third in number, and on cursory inpection found my panel-mates to be pretty civilized. Ideally, if you go by what the gurus say, you ought to break the ice within your group before you hit the Group Discussion – it gives you a feeling of familiarity when you speak. And if you go by what actually happens, the IIM profs are too smart - they whisk you away before you can spell IIM and before you know it, you’re actually in the hot seat.

Well, I did meet this one guy fourth-year guy who had scored a 100 percentile in DI and PS – and trust me, it did not do any good to my confidence. Our names were called, as the two interviewers indicated the position where we would be sitting.

To give you a clearer idea, if the interviewers were ‘Y’ and we were ‘X’, our positioning was actually somewhat like what is given below.

..........X..........X..........X..........X.....
Y -------------------------------------
Y -------------------------------------
..........X..........X..........X..........X.....

Oh, and I’m bold – well, usually.

Meet the Moderators

Well, there were two of them and unlike the proverbial ‘good cop-bad cop’ couple – they seemed more like a ‘I do not speak – yes, I speak’ pair. The gentleman in the left seat was one of those who look at you and most irritatingly, do not speak. The ‘70s black, thick-rimmed glasses, dishevelled hair and an attitude to spare. Umm… lemme name him ‘Snooty’. The one in the right seat, seemed like your over-the-hill HR executive – little squeaky and a little pesky with litte hair and a lot of questions… we’ll call him ‘Squeaky’ for now.

Squeaky : The topic for the GD is given on the paper in front of you. Please use it to note down any thoughts about the topic. The same will be collected at the end of the discussion.

Snooty : You have 2 minutes to read the topic and 10 minutes to discuss.

Okay, this is it – whats it gonna be ? Indian Economy – hah, I’ve mugged that one. Indian politics ? Hmmm….. might have to do a bit of ‘stealth-piggybacking’… Should I begin ?

Turn the page.

“History has taught us that nothing is often the best thing to do and the cleverest thing to say” - (forgot the name of the guy)

[:o ] Bamboozled. But only for the first 15 seconds or so, while I drew my customary three-column structure and separated my thoughts into examples, opinions and ‘trumps’. As a rule, I have never been very bullish on being the first one to speak in a GD, unless the topic is something I am well-versed in. Sure enough, no sooner had Snooty snorted a ‘Start’ – the one to my right shot off…History.. blah blah.

Okay..5….10…15 secs…bang ! interrupt – this lady sitting opposite to me jumps in with her thoughts on the topic… hey ! 2 speakers up already – awrite baby…. GERONIMO !!!!!!!!!!!!! ‘The good and bad of this society happens because of the sanction we give it’ – and yours truly had jumped in all guns blazing. Thing is, this first statement kinda took everyone else in the room by surprise – and to my glee and amusement, I wedged in a substantial amount of airtime – where I quoted the Manjunath Shanmugam incident and the pros and cons of being passive as opposed to being proactive. Very soon, it turned out to be a lively discussion. Lively – yet pleasant, no fish-markety stuff over here,

Examples galore – and everybody seemed to agree on the fact that in today’s world – we need a proactive stance with the right amount of caution to make the battle last. Last long enough to make a change. I pushed in the Indira Nooyi finger and the Southern Comfort whisky issue – and in the minutes that followed, everything from Jinnah to Khusboo was talked about. At this point, I decided to step in and underline the fact that yes, we had examples – but instead on showcasing them, we should move to deriving a conclusing from them.

The point was well-received, and although a few people did try squeezing in more examples, overall there seemed to be a consensus on the topic. In the last few minutes, the devil got the better of me and I tried playing on the word ‘often’ and examples where historical faux pas could have been avoided. A few more seconds, Snooty taps his pen on the desk – ‘That will be it. Thank you. Please wait outside for your interview’

All in all, a good discussion – and the eight of us exited the room feeling pretty nice about having broken the ice in a rather constructive manner.

Shaken not stirred

At this point, I had a reasonable feeling that the group had gone off the way I would have wanted it to. Not only had I managed the maximum airtime amongt the others, some of the points I had put forward very very close to the issue we were beating about. In the minutes before my turn, my certificates copies were checked with the originals and I even tried reading a businessworld issue about airlines in India, not to mention a sudden frantic call to Daddy-O to find out about the Governor of West Bengal. Man, all I needed to do was ace the interview….

You know, even as I say this – I have this eerie feeling that Snooty’s watching me… and actually chuckling from behind those horn-rimmed glasses. Why ? Lemme tell you why…

Snooty : Kaushik Mukherjee. Come in, please..
Moi : Yessir!

Party time !

As soon as I enter, I closed the door behind me. Squeaky was about to tell me to do so and stopped midway when he saw me in the process. Ah, Mr.Manners – there’s my first impression. Go! Go! Go!

Ah, they say the Lord is watching you. Well, in this case Mr.Murphy was.

Snooty suddenly extends his hand to me – amidst a split second confusion of whether he actually wanted to shake my hand or take the display folders in my hand, I handed him both my folder. One with all my certificates – and the other with wait.. lemme see – businessweek, printouts, businessworld, rough sheets. Kaushik… do something !!!! If he opens that – you’re fuckin’ fried meat.

Moi: Umm… Sir, this folder’s got my personal belongings.
Snooty: So why are you giving it to me ?

Moi: Sir, its got my degree certificate, if you’d want to have a look.
Snooty: Not necessary.

Whew! Just-in-time… now I understand what this JIT philosophy is all about. Snooty peruses through my certificates as Squeaky takes over.

Squeaky: So…almost one and a half years in Oracle CRM, tell me about what you’ve done.
Moi: Told them about the importance of our team - initially planned as competition for Siebel Loyalty - airline frequent flyer program - joined the team at its formative stages - saw the entire process of requirements gathering, technical and functional designing and in the last 6 months developing.

Squeaky: So u developed a CRM application for Oracle ?
Moi: (What the…!!!) Sir, I'm owner of a module - Customer value assessment module - blah blah - clubs and tiers - priviledge classes.

Squeaky: Have you used Data-mining techniques in this ?
Moi: [:o] No sir, I have developed a concurrent program to pick a batch of 10,000 member records and assess their chances (suicide no 1) of getting upgraded or downgraded acros a hierarchial listing of priviledge clubs.

Squeaky: So what technologies have you worked on ?
Moi: Mostly PL-SQL and Oracle Forms interface - the Oracle Concurrent manager.(thought I'd say Java - but really didn't want to give them a scope to screw my happiness).

At this point, Snooty breaks in which his own question….

Snooty: So what is the highest level you have achieved in anything ?

Oh, by the way, did I tell you ? I’m planning on directing a movie called ‘As vague as it gets’ – Snooty plays the lead in it, by the way.

Moi: Mmm... sir are talking about extra-curriculars or just academics..


Snooty: No… everything.
Moi: Disctrict level Swimming championships where I represented my university and won a gold and a bronze medal in the 50/100m freestyle events.

Thought it would settle down and create the kind of effect you see in the movies – you know the background music crescendo types. But Squeaky had to break in, of course.

Squeaky: {back to work !!!} So do you lead a team at Oracle ?
Moi: That would be incorrect Sir. [what a stuck up reply !!!] I joined as an Applications Engineer - and although I've had opportunities to lead teams of new recruits through the initial stages at Oracle, my designation reads 'Applications Engineer'

Squeaky: Okay, so in your field 'conditional probability' ought to play a big role - do you know what it is?
Moi: Yes sir (Suicide no. 2), Conditional probability - blah blah - theory of event A happening, where its occurence depends on the probablity of event B happening - where event B precedes A.

Squeaky: {blank look} I do not understand.
Moi: More bullshit - should have just said I'm not sure - damn ! In the middle - I drew an analogy of bals and cubes of different shapes and sizes in a bag split them into black and white colours…. and the guy just looked as if he wanted to add my 'two-bit' to the kitty as well !! Mentioned a P(A).P(B) somewhere – and then….BANG !

Squeaky: So conditional probablity is P(A).P(B) ?
Moi: Noooooooooo !!!! Beat a hasty retreat - repeated some stuff - he appeared pretty dissatisfied.

Squeaky: That is not Conditional probability. Again, how does this probablity apply in your field...
Moi: Apologized for the unsatisfactory explanation. Rambled on about probability of a person achieving a specific priviledge club, tier - etc. based on his attributes against which the evaluation process is done.

Squeaky: So can probablity to attributed to an individual ?
Moi: (What is this ? KBC – final round ??!!) Mumbled something about member attributes and the rules based on them, so better the member attributes higher the chances of satisfying a rule to gain access to a priviledge club. [should have mentioned Frequent Flyer Points, drat !!! forgot…] mentioned miles flown as a parameter – some MPC – miles per customer that I suddenly seemed to have invented out of nowhere…

Squeaky: Oh - so Jet ?
Moi: Why does Priviledge have to be only Jet ? I guess 'jet priviledge' - said - No, but one of the biggest airline players in the world.

Squeaky: What ? Oh – American Airlines ?
Moi: I had to specified Australia - I think that satisfied him !

Squeaky: So coming back - all individuals having say same attribute values, like miles flown would have equal opportunity ?
Moi: The way our model has been designed, it works on certain parameters - and yes, members having the same values in a specified attribute would stand the same chance - HAD to bail out - this was getting on my nerves.

Snooty: (wakes up) So which bike do you own?
Moi: A Hero Honda Karizma, sir. (should have added more zing! to it - a 2004 black Hero Honda ZMA - oh, and by the way - which kicks ass.)

Snooty: Which is the longest road journey you have done ? (I had mentioned one of my hobbies as long-distance biking)
Moi: 562 kms - Bangalore to Chennai - in one day.(Proudest moment of my interview)

Snooty: Which do you think is the best bike in India ?
Moi: Sir, that is a very debatable topic...

Snooty: (Interrupts) Still.. what do you feel..
Moi: Took time off... thought and thought hard - Bajaj Pulsar DTSi 150cc (didn't wanna sound as if I was narrow-minded and only a ZMA fan) Ideally, should have pointed out affordability, which I was about to - when this guy interrupts - damn !

Snooty: Are you a member of any biking club ?
Moi: Damn - blindsided - hadn't prepared - suddenly, XBHP struck a chord - mentioned that.Told him that the trips were usually with friends who had bikes of their own - as for long distance trips - I would anyday prefer a bike over a car.

Snooty: What is it ?
Moi: Started by Sandeep, Delhi - forum for bikeowners and lovers of all sorts. (Again, I should have mentioned - the Hyderabad meets we have.)

Snooty: Why not a touring bike ? How many touring bikes are there in India ?
Moi: Told them about my bike preferences. Thought for a while - mentioned 3-4, Enfield Machismo 535 cc, Enfiels 350 cc, metioned Bajaj Eliminator - 180 cc, said Enticer would not fall into that category as it had a 125cc segment bike which mostly catered to the segment who wanted it for in-city riding.(Suicide No. 3)

Now, believe me – even now if you ask me, I feel that Snooty owned an Enticer..

Snooty: Oh, so the Enticer is a useless bike ?
Moi: No !! Its not ! Won the 'best bike' award 3-4 years back, but the engine is not conducive for long distances.

Snooty: So which is the worst bike in India ? Is it the worst bike in India ?
Moi: (Honest and direct) Sir, I love bikes too much to say that there is a 'worst' bike in the market.

Snooty: Not Enticer? That truly has no character...
Moi: [:o] I swear to you I was pretty confused as to whether he was talking about me or the bike !!! If me, I swear I was at my wit’s end and could have snowballed him the next minute… in any case, I decided to ignore this comment.

At this point, Squeaky points out something in my gradesheet in a pretty animated manner. Snooty takes a look at it… no reaction !! I'm praying - please, no EEE !!! God heard my prayers :) But oh heck, I screwed up in any case...

Snooty: (aha! gotcha) Principles of Management - what did you do in that course ?
Moi: [Oh no… of allthe thing !!!] Ummm - did it a while back – basics of management - 4 P's of marketing by Philip Kotler, entry-level idea about the course - rules such as 'work expands to fill the available time' !!! (Call me bluffmaster)

Snooty: (Looks to the left) – “4 P's and work expands” - so thats all you did in that course ? (the two of them share a snide grin)
Moi: (Damn !) Apologized and said 'my mistake'(which I shouldn't have) did it a long while back and not fresh in my memory..

Snooty: (all of a sudden) Do you dream ?
Moi: For a second thought that I had mis-heard his question. Then - I carried on - 'Yes Sir, I definitely do'

Snooty: So what is your dream ?
Moi: Launched into a tirade about passing out from a b-school - touring the world - gaining a global perspective - find out about India and its software from a foreign perspective.... (interrupts)

Snooty: I asked you about your dream.
Moi: To launch my company by my early thirties, Sir.

Tap of the pen on the desk.

Snooty: Thank you Kaushik, That will be it.
Moi: Thank you, Sirs.

20 minutes to make. 20 minutes to break.

In Retrospect

Well, if there is one thing which I learnt from this – it was that your fate gets decided by 2 people in about 10+20 mins. So, lack of preparation should actually be the last excuse one should possibly resort to after reaching this far. God’s been good, I’d say. No Engineering questions. Well, not that they won’t be asked in the next one. So as for now, time to hit the facts – do some smart, effective mugging.

I’ll see you next after the 20th – my IIM Lucknow interview.

Sing for the Moment

“I don’t mind spending everyday
Out on your corner in the pouring rain
Look for the girl with the broken smile
Ask her if she wants to stay awhile…”

- She will be loved, Maroon 5.

Verdict : Selected for the PGP batch of 2006-2008.