IIM-I : Split Wide Open...

Green…? Really – jeez, you know seriously, aren’t they supposed to stick to lighter shades with black trousers. And before I could push any of my arguments further, Bikram whips out a green tie to match. Now trust me, I’m really not a green person. But given that it was past midnight, the night before my IIM-Indore interview, I decided to invest my time in going through the last minute budget predictions and economic survey report.

The day had started out on the craziest not possible. I land up at Bangalore and was in the process of making my way to what had by then become my second home in a strictly meter-ke-hisaab-se auto. I had reached Koramanagala when this innocuous ‘charming-grey’ (as the Hyundai guys insist..lol) Santro overtakes me and skids to a halt by the left. KA-01-A-0466 – heck, what the hell is Bikram’s car doing this early – get off the auto and shift my stuff to the rear seat to notice… woah ! The lady in the front seat and a sleep-drugged Rose sprawled all over the backseat. WTF ? Apparently, the three stooges and two other ‘friends’ (humph!) of mine had been to a Pondicherry road-trip and were returning only now. Without me ?!?!?

Yes… unending swearing fights and emotional blackmails ensued and even as I turned in for the night, if there was one thing I promised myself – then it was that come April 2006, the journey would be done – time to whip out my 223cc ZMA-beast and hit the highways…

February 28th, 2006 : My IIM-Indore interview @ Bangalore

Kaushik, wake me up at 7:30. If I don’t wake up – try again at 7:45 – and if that doesn’t work either – try 8:00, will you? I’ll try dropping you off in the morning. Now the guy's actually driven 780 kms in 36 hours, while the others took turns at catching a little shut-eye in the car. I decided against waking up Bikram.

After the first few snooze rounds, I managed to stagger to my feet @ 6:10. Feeling mighty pleased with myself for having managed to wake up to the alarm, I decided to reward myself with another 20 mins of sleep. Come 6:30 – a hurricane of facts revision, clothes ironing and newspaper glimpsing followed. By 8:15, I was in an auto and hoping to reach in time. Well, thankfully the traffic was light – I was there with fifteen minutes to spare.

Indore was a jump – the weightlessness you feel when you’ve just hit a speedbreaker @ 80. And then, the impact - where the rubber meets the road – and you know that you’ve gotto get back into the groove and fight for all that its worth. As expected, there were 20 of us and what took me by surprise was that almost every face was new to me. We were split into 7-7-6… and as luck would have it, I landed up in the group with 6.

A quick look at my peers. 4 out of 6 were freshers… busy chatting away nervously. The other guy seemed a little lost and little benevolent. Suddenly… the devil in me stirred up. Could I… could I make a killing of the case-study? The others did not look like the kinds who would spit out their rehearsed opening sentences and gobble up the controversial kitty of points traditionally reserved for the initiator.

Now as you might have realized from my previous experiences, I normally do not begin group discussions. After all, somebody would definitely and unprofessionally elbow his/her way with some factual example or the other. But case-study… Hmmm – that’s structure. That’s logical. That’s clarity – besides it would be a litmus test to see if I could entertain thoughts of beginning the case-study for IIM-A. I decided to take the plunge.

The puppet-masters…

William Shakespeare, in his play ‘The Merchant of Venice’ once used the phrase – ‘a villain with a smiling cheek’ to describe the wily Shylock. You’d come across them in all walks of life – the prof who’s make mincemeat of your answer sheet, the girlfriend who’d pluck out all the petals of the bouquet you might have given her with her own rhyme ‘he loves me not – that **&&@$*(!^@)!)^ LOVES ME NOT !!!’ and probably her new boyfriend who could shake your hand and coolly say ‘Hey!!! Nice to meet you. I’ve heard such a lot about you ’. And they do it all with a smile on their face. Middle-aged, balding and friendly – with a smile that makes you wary. I’ll call him Smiley.

The other gentleman was the quintessential Bean-spin-off. Leaner – the goofiness replaced by an irritating knack of asking the wrong questions at the wrong time. Meet Beanie.

Beanie called us in order and I found myself fifth. Once we were seated, he explained the basic rules to us and gave us the Case Study sheets. 5 mins to go through the case individually – 12 minutes to discuss – and the last 5 minutes to note a summary down on the back of our interview form. All this while, Smiley never budged from his far corner of the room. Something just did not seem right… or if I may say – safe about this guy.

Beanie: You may start going through your case.

Oh well…Here we go again.

The puppets…

A tale of two guys. Friends and joint MDs of a BPO Company X. Say A and B. Now A is the media face and the operational head of the company, whereas B handles the finances. Over the past few months, their employees have been facing racist taunts from US & UK customers. The issue of safety of women during night-shifts has also been hyped by the media. To add to that the Govt. was on the verge of issuing a law beefing up the security of working women at night. All this needed money to be invested – A gives B a presentation and detailed report on it, but Mister-miser-B had clearly said that he could not give a financial commitment to any plan whatsoever – he has allocated his funds in upgrading the overall strategy of the firm to beat the competitive domestic market.

What does A do ?

Dunno what that poor fellow would do, but I’ll tell you what I did. And I’m might proud of the fact that I did it. I started the case study. Awrite...Yeah! Full credit to ‘The McKinsey Mind’ for the invaluable case-study analysis-tools. Was able to lay down a neat structure and literally compartmentalized the 12 minutes into the discrete ‘problem-hypothesis-assumptions-solution’ cycle. Overall, it did go off well. Had a minor slip-up in the middle when I accidentally mentioned the domestic wing as another avenue for discussion, when the case-study talked about US and UK customers – managed to turn it around in the nick of time, by faking as if I was talking about the domestic competition and not the customers…phew !

Amidst suggestions of rolling out the financial investment in two phases and pointing out to ‘B’ the role of human investment in his plan of beating competition – we suddenly heard Beanie squeeze in.

Please start with your summary. You have five minutes.

Like hell we had five minutes. I had barely scrawled eight full lines and was in the middle of a sentence, when - BANG! Please put down your pens. We will collect the forms now.

“The long term implications of the proposed - ” yes, that was my conclusion ! And as usual, there are a few points that strike you only after the moderator blows the whistle. Anyways, I decided to keep them in mind, in case they quizzed me on the case-study during my interview.

From the frying pan into the fire - and back again

Statutory warning : The following piece of literature contains potentially hazardous and mind-numbing material. Please do not try this at any of your interviews. Ever.

Now, this is where I get a little red-faced. Sure, sometimes the situation turns into an evil monster waiting to gobble you up, but at others – things go pretty fine, unless you’re caught with half-a-marie biscuit in your mouth when your name is called for the interview :o !!! Beat that. And that too, after I had read in the pagalguy forums about Indore-interviews not being in order. Oh hell, you just don’t expect to be called in first when you’re "legally" 5th out of 6.

And so I was gaily chatting with Alaap, telling about how well I though the case-study went. In fact, I was even considering grabbing a quick bite. There was this voice in my head that was telling me to take a seat and get into the groove – seriously, I’m the kinds who needs to be left on his own at times. Like the day of CAT 2005. November 20th – I squeeze myself into this ladies college seat – and the guy in front chats up about Ganguly’s latest innings. Yes, my centre was in Calcutta. 10:40 ! and this guy breaks to confide – actually, I’m talking to you so that I don’t get nervous before the test !!! Muhahaha – you should have seen his face when I told him – Dyu know what I do before a test? I keep quiet. Lol !

Beanie: Kaushik Mukherjee…. ?
K: Oh no.. I’m first..Nooooooooo !!!!!!!!!! Yessir !

Hastily swallowed the Marie and walked into the room. It was nothing short of disgusting. Hyyuck ! I could feel the ‘marie’ form a lump in my throat. And oh… btw - me shall myself ‘K’ for this journey.

Smiley: Come in…. come in. So Kaushik, you did your schooling in Delhi.
K: Hell... where’d he get that from? No Sir – I’ve done my schooling at Don Bosco, Calcutta – ICSE/ISC exams are conducted by the CISCE board, New Delhi.

Smiley: So what does your father do?
K: Now I had hardly settled down and this question caught me completely off-guard. The worst thing – I had actually read about one particular panel starting off by asking about one’s father – and yet, I didn’t prepare. Sheer negligence, and to be honest it turned out to a major confidence-killer. Sir, Projects Manager in Techno India Pvt. Ltd. (wtf? where did that come from – he was Deputy general manager – (projects) of Techno India Pvt. Ltd)

And thus, it began on a wholly unreal note. I was supposed to walk-in and cash-in on the good case study performance, and here I was making a pancake of it. Try making it the first time – you’ll know what a REAL mess is.

Smiley: What specifically does he do?
K: Installation and maintenance of generator plants. No no… what was this ? Was I nervous – I bungling facts.. and by the way, screwing it up. Sir, supervises setting up and maintenance of electrical power plants and the generators in them.

It was clearly as further away from the perfect interview as it could have been. The abrupt beginning was taking its toll on me. The ‘stress’ part of the interview had not even started and I already felt out-of-breath.

Smiley: So how much do you think these generator ratings are? After all you are EEE ?
K: Sir, they're in KVA - Kilo-Volt-Ampere. I’m afraid, I did it a while back. Don't have a very clear idea - I think about…. 500 kVA.. I’m not sure if I said this or mumbled this in my mind, the guy in any case – did not seem to take notice.

Smiley: So what is this KVA ?
K: No – technical… Kaushik, make a run for it – wrest control. Change topic. Sir, unit of power.

Smiley: And Kilowatt ?
K: My brains were getting knocked all around my head. Umm… Sir, that is also unit of power.

Smiley: Smiling the evil-est smile you could ever imagine. They're the same ?
K: And now.. my brains were splattered all over the wall. Sir, large generator capacity is usually denoted in KVAs.... Watt is what we know as I-squared-R, V-squared-by-R... whereas VA - is Volt into Ampere.

Screw you Kaushik Mukherjee !!! Volt-into-Ampere is V-I that’s exactly what you described as KVA. Guys, don’t hold this against me – but I’m really no EEE-ite. And I assure you, my dad was pretty pissed when he had to explain the concepts of active, reactive power and phase-lag over the phone that night. And there in the interview room, which seemed very stuffy and hot all of a sudden – Smiley was not amused AT ALL.

Smiley: You say you did EEE..? listen, you cannot be so casual about it - after all EEE from BITS Pilani.!!! And I swear to you, he was still smiling… !!!!
K: Dumbfounded. Beaten black-and-blue. Tail absolutely between the legs. Did it a while back, Sir – mumbled some vague excuse which one look of his ripped apart.

Smiley: That is why I’m asking you! You should not forget. CRM you will tell me, anyday. College course – if I ask you to study, you will tell me...But you should not forget…So can you code software with electrical - lets say you have to make a software for your father - give me a project plan.
K: Mommy !!! Help !!! There’s a monster in front of me, and he’s not letting me go. Umm.. okay lets try bullshit mode. Sir - for example, we could monitor the operational environment of each of the generators by taking input parameters such as the heat temperature, the operating voltage, the oil-level of the generators - the core software processing model will have to be done in a software language - but based on the results we could channelize the output to the generators - compare the present state with the optimum state - and take corrective actions if necessary.

Smiley: Oh - but what kind of corrective measures - be more specific.

Now, this was exactly when I proved myself wrong. I had thought things could not get any worse than what it already was. But I had to make one helluva profound statement, which in retrospect was the dumbest thing any EEE-ite could have ever uttered. Shame on me! Thinking of it now, has me in splits.

K: Sir, Generators do not exist in isolation. [:o] Say what ? LOL !!! OMG ! ROFL !!! But I carried on, undaunted – even as I saw a contemptuous smile spread across Smiley’s face. We could put parallel generators in a load-balanced circuit, and we could take the input from one of the generators - through the software program if we find out that the generator is overloaded, we could channelize it to the other generator.

Smiley: Okay - so what is the first symptom which tells you that the generator is overloaded.
K: He had already had me for breakfast. I think he fancied a bit of me for lunch as well. Stumped. Ummm... Sir, the power output goes beyond its prescribed rating. Bluffmaster versus Godzilla.

Smiley: No, its frequency drops.
K: Bedazzled. Well, blow me down - he's a ‘eee’ guy !!! Who was I trying to bluff all this while ?

Smiley: So would you use Java in building this application ?
K: Oh Lord. What next? We could build it with Java - but it need not be built in only Java.

Smiley: Give me reasons why you would use Java?
K: Classes and inheritence would help in accessing specifics of different generators...object oriented programming - open source - cheaper. WAT NONSENSE – although I think I had stopped making sense about ten minutes back, this was taking it to new heights… actually, make that depths.

Smiley: But the main thing, it is... you can put it for one station – tomorrow you can put it for another station – a different setup – so it is….
K: Suddenly, it hit me as a bolt out of the blue – and I literally interrupted him to be the one to make the point. Sir, plat-form independent.

Smiley: Oracle CRM - in a nutshell what do you do.
K: Phew! I could breathe again. I narrated my role in developing the customer value assessment module in a ‘next-gen’ frequent-flyer program. Me and my high-sounding words. Told them about the upgrade-downgrade chances of memberships along a hierarchical tier depending on a set of parameters. But thankfully, this is one area where I know my basics – thanks to over eighteen months of work. I could feel familiar waters ahead. And yes, I would regret thinking of ‘waters’ very very soon.

Beany finally decided to stop perusing through my certs and speaks up.

Beany: So what are these parameters that determine the membership fate?
K: Sir, we can look at them in 2 different levels - a) program parameters b) individual parameters. Apparently the all-structuring ghost of the McKinsey Mind had not let go of me even then. Explained in detail – the impact of the parameters and the outcome.

Beany: Oh, so its just an algorithm with works on these parameters..
K: WHAT ?!? how dare he !! Just you wait. I looked at him evenly. Sir, it’s a concurrent processing program – and given the fact that it weighs on over 65 personal attributes, 10 program parameters and innumerable rules - it is one of the most critical parts of our application.

Beany: So do you have class segregation? How do you determine the value of a customer..
K: FrequentFlyerPoints gyaan - different clubs and tiers.... I was having my best run yet – in fact, I even told them that nobody could join in a platinum tier directly and would have to earn his way up (what a lie!!! But what the heck – they wouldn’t know !)

Smiley: You swim. So what are the dimensions of an international swimming pool…
K: DAMN IT! This – I should have checked up. Sir.. the width length not sure - its got 8 tracks... and the length would be 50... Ummm...or was it 100.. our college had 25m !!! typical Kaushik Mukherjee defensive maneuvers. pathetic !

Beany: 50 or 100?
K: Swallowed hard. I should have kept my mind and though of the 100m track in school where I’d finished first in the XII Sports meet – surely they would not have 100m long pools. Well – at that minute – I was busy making intellectually-stimulated thinking faces. Ummm… I’m not sure - I would guess it is 50m.

Smiley: How many strokes are there?
K: Salvaged my pride here – told them about the four official strokes, but also the beginner’s crawl – just to imply that its not bookish knowledge.

Smiley: Okay, when you dive… you come up again – what is that called ?
K: Straight up. Buoyancy

Smiley: Who discovered it ?
K: Archimedes…

At this point I could almost sense Smiley gear up for another question. I could not help but blurt out.

Me: Sir…in his bathtub.

Trust me – I was so happy at knowing something – I even felt tempted to talk about how that bugger went running all over the city with his Willie doing a ding-dong between his legs – shouting ‘Eureka Eureka’


Smiley: You're in Jet loyalty..
K: Yessir – Jet privilege ! Why.. why do I have to interrupt.

Smiley: Yes, and you want to get ‘Sahara privilege’ customers to your side.. what would you do?
K: I swear to God I thought of telling him that Sahara loyalty was surely not called ‘Sahara privilege’. Sir - 2 ways of doing it - ethical way and unethical way .

Smiley: Eyes light up. Ahhh – yes.. yes, tell me more.. this will be my last question.
K: Sir..Ethical - campaigns, advertisements, better customer service. Unethical - poaching… what British airways tried doing to Virgin airlines. Classical gas – the kinds that would put even Vanessa Mae to shame :) !!!

Beany: Have you been following the Grammys?
K: Next time somebody says you can’t kill a dead man, kill him – quick. Then resurrect him and kill him again. Umm... no sir, I haven't really followed it.

Beany: But you say your hobby is music?
K: Frankly, by this time I was beyond attempts. I was pretty irritated with myself for having grandly filled up every little thing I ever did in my extra-curricular without taking the efforts to back them up with knowledge. I could have slapped myself.

Beany: Has any Indian ever won a Grammy?
K: It was as if someone had suddenly lifted my head above the water – giving me one last breath of precious precious air. Ah…this I know.

Yes… that actually slipped from my mouth. They heard it. They heard me say - 'I know this'. I think it was a new low I touched – my ‘nadir’ as I would call it. I was clearly at my unprofessional worst.

K: Sir, Pandit Vishwa Mohan Bhatt won it. He plays the Mohan Veena – a seven stringed adaptation of the guitar – with a separate set of strings beneath for added resonance.

Never do what I just did. If you have your trumps – play them one-at-a-time. All this info would have made sense had I baited them into asking me questions that would lead me to this. Opportunity missed.

Smiley: What for?
K: Umm.. Sir I’m not sure (for the bazillionth time), but I think it was for background score.

Beany: Suddenly switched tracks. So, your Assessment module actually does not predict anything – does not generate any new knowledge.
K: Sir, of course it does – and it produces babies and makes coffee as well. Bloody! But at that moment – remembered this one sub-module, which I felt I could twist to suit this guy’s question. Sir, we have a functionality called the ‘Upcoming Tier Assessment’ - 2-yr average, 3-yr average... safety net to catch such customers who would otherwise be downgraded. We can communicate to the party in advance - future prediction... we make him fly to retain his tier.

Smiley: You said “futuristic”…there is a term for it ... what is it ?
K: Sir.... is it - prediction? I could think of probabilistic determination – but I was determined not to mention anything sounding similar to ‘probability’. They would have buried me.

Smiley: You are in software, you should call it… - say forecasting?
K: Defeated. Okay Sir, ‘forecasting’.

The Vanquishers, in unison : Okay, Kaushik – thank you. You may leave.

The vanquished gets up – and beats a silent retreat.

And the most irritating thing of all – there was this plate of peanuts placed in the middle of the table. Actually, I felt a little more towards me. They kept eating off that plate – and never offered me even once! Peanuts man!!!!

In retrospect

Making things work out to our advantage takes a ready mind, an alert brain and a lot of hard work. Sometimes, when after all this – things do seem to be going our way, we almost accidentally end up ruining the very fruit of labour. What we oversee is that it is as easy to make a mess of an opportunity as difficult as it is to obtain it in the first place. Experiences like this interview explode the myth that people with 99.9+ percentile can go easy on their interview preps. It drags the kitten from behind the ball of wool and places it under a tap of running water.

Reality hits you harder than the ground below. You are spurred on to take action. Your hair stands on its end. And as in my case, you gather yourself to face the biggest day of year 2006. Tomorrow – the day of my IIM-Ahmedabad interview.

I’ll update you about my face-off with the ‘fortune at the top of the pyramid’ by Sunday.

Sing for the moment

Take away my pain...
Leave the cold outside.
Please don’t let it rain…
Don’t stumble on my pride.
…………………………………………
Take away my pain…
Let the cold inside.
Its time to let it rain…
There’s nothing left to hide.

- Take away my pain, Dream Theater.

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