ARTICLE NO. 1

HOW TO FACE JOB INTERVIEWS?

contributed by,   nivedita sinha, 1st year ece, delhi college of engineering.

Description: I feel that job interviews are perhaps the single most important part of the selection process—for both you and your future employer. Once your resume (or/and a written initial test has been taken and some candidates have been shortlisted amongst the lot...in short it has been established that you meet the basic skills and background requirements, it is the interview that establishes you as a candidate who will fit well into an organization’s culture and future plans.

While most interview questions are generally straightforward, unambiguous inquiries, some interviewers will throw in surprises specifically intended to explore your thinking and expectations at a deeper level. Or they may be meant to throw you off guard to see how you react in high stress or confusing circumstances. Or they may not be intentionally tricky at all. They may merely be invented by the interviewer, or borrowed from lists of questions available on the Internet, with no idea what their value is, or how to assess your response as it relates to the requirements of the job.
How you answer tricky questions could determine whether you would receive an offer from the organization. But it’s also important to remember that what those questions are, and how your answers are received, can tell you volumes about whether this is a company you want to work for. Here are some of the questions you might want to consider as you’re preparing yourself for a job interview:
1) What aspects of your career do you feel especially good about and how can you make sure those are discussed in the interview?
2) What aspects of your career so far do you feel especially worried about discussing?
3) Can you formulate answers to questions about those aspects in advance?
4) How can you use the interview to learn about the potential employer?
Interview: The interview is an opportunity for an employer to get to know the candidate behind the resume. It is also the chance for candidates to get a sense of a company’s culture, values, and plans for the future.
Interviewer: The interviewer is the person seated directly across from the candidate and charged with leading the conversation. Sometimes this person is a professional especially trained to assess candidates for fit. More often, however, he or she is doing this work in conjunction with a larger job description. In this case, the interviewer could be burdened with a difficult attitude about the meeting—for example, being resentful at having to be pulled away from his or her regular duties, or shy, or confused about what kinds of results to expect from the interview.
Tricky questions: These questions make a candidate uncomfortable for any number of reasons—they’re too personal; they’re not obviously related to the open position; they require fast thinking under hypothetical circumstances, or they prompt the candidate to reveal crucial information (such as salary expectations) before he or she is ready to do so.



FAQS on interview anxieties...

1.) What if I don’t understand how the question relates to the job I’m applying for?
...Some questions—especially questions in which you are given a scenario and asked to think your way through to a solution—are designed to help the interviewer understand your ability to make tough decisions, or be a leader in high pressure situations. True, it’s reasonable to expect that you won’t ever find yourself stranded in a lifeboat, charged with deciding which fellow survivor to throw overboard to conserve rations. But the way you reason out your decision may tell the interviewer much about you—for example, how you would choose which product to take out of inventory to conserve valuable warehouse space. Try to answer these kinds of questions based on business strategy.
2.) Some questions ask me to divulge my greatest weakness. How can I answer these questions without disqualifying myself for the job?
...Such questions are usually designed to discover the extent of your self-knowledge. We all have weaknesses, and it’s unreasonable to expect you to be perfect in every way. Keep your answer short and dignified. Identify only one area of weakness that you’re aware of, but also describe what you are doing to strengthen that area. Don’t try to be too clever by turning a negative into a positive, saying things like, “My biggest weakness is that I’m a determined worker and won’t give up until the job is done well and completely.” You aren’t fooling anyone.
3.) Sometimes I get the impression that the interviewer doesn’t know why I’m being asked a certain question, and that my answer would be beyond his or her understanding. How do I salvage that situation?
...A Company that hires unqualified interviewers to select qualified candidates may not be one you would like to work for . . . so you may not want to salvage such a situation. But if you’re determined to give yourself the best chance to work at this organization, help the interviewer out by exploring the reasons behind the question and what exactly is being looked for in the way of response.
Even though you may not answer the question itself, you will still benefit from the conversation. You will position yourself in the interviewer’s mind as someone who is not rattled by ambiguity, but instead works calmly and cooperatively with team members to arrive at the best possible outcome.
The interviewer would end up taking it as a positive trait of the candidate in all probability...


Striking the final blow in your favor ...
1.) Understand the purpose of the interview...
The best job interviews are respectful encounters that allow mutual discovery. It may feel as if the employer has all the power—after all, it’s the employer who will decide whether to offer you the job. Ultimately, however, it is you, who hold the power, because it will be you who decide whether to accept the job. So interviews are just as important for you in the selection process as they are for the interviewer.
Keep that power balance in mind, and it will help you stay calm, dignified, and clear thinking when tricky questions are asked.

2.) Assume that the interviewer is probably as uncomfortable with the process as you are...
Put yourself in the interviewer’s shoes, and assume that he or she is slightly uncomfortable with the process as well. Few people relish meeting someone new and peppering them with probing questions. So the interviewer may feel tired of the same old questions and the same pat rehearsed answers. Remember also that the interviewer was once sitting in your seat, applying for his or her job within the company and worrying about the same surprise questions that you are. The resulting empathy will help break down the barriers of tension and perceived judgmentalism.
Prepare yourself in advance by identifying the topic areas that might be the trickiest for you. Then think carefully about how you might answer them. Broadly speaking, there are eight areas of questioning that could pose a challenge for you:
.... Your experience and management skills
...your opinion about industry or professional trends
.... The reasons why you are leaving your current job
.... Financial or other value of your past achievements .
...your work habits
....your salary expectations
....your expectations for the future
....your personality and relationship skills or problems.
....Imagine which of these areas might be discussed and formulate in advance
....the general thoughts and responses you want to express. But don’t rehearse answers to anticipated questions word for word.
3.)Never lie...........
many interviewers do this work for a living, so they are more experienced at hearing the answers that candidates think they want to hear than you are at delivering them. Be candid and clear, and use lengthy answers only when you see that demonstrating your strategic thought process in detail will add valuable information.
When in doubt, try to understand the business reason behind the question. Ask questions of your own.... certain questions like ...
“What do you mean?” or “Could you rephrase that question?” are perfectly acceptable queries in any civilized conversation. Job interviews are no different.

I hope that some people would feel somewhat better informed and aware after reading this ......

ARTICLE NO. 2

contributed by, N.MOHAMMAD TARIQ, 3rd year btech cse, CRSCE,murthal

Description: first and foremost ... u need to know about the kind of questions that are normally asked in CAT... the CAT basically attempts to test you on the basis of quantitative ability(analytical reasoning), data interpretation and English ( verbal reasoning and reading comprehension). as such, there is nothing in the curriculum that u have not studied already. The catch is to maximize your score and deliver your best in the duration of the exam. There are a number of challenges that lie in front of you. One of them is to be prepared for the unusual, the not so obvious and sometimes something you would wish to avoid( refers to the CAT leak). The biggest challenge perhaps is to hold your nerves and realize your true potential -- imagine competing with over a lakh students for 750-800 odd seats?? What do they want from you?---->managerial skills... right? How do they test over a lakh students in a single day??? My understanding of the format is that-
1.) You should have time management skills -- trying to attempt 150 questions spread over three different sections is very difficult. The majority can crack almost the entire paper in a period of 6 hours. The catch is to do it in around 2 hours.
2.) You should have a strategy in place -- as you attempt a lot of mock exams (and compare your scores with others); you would be able to decide upon the ideal strategy for yourself...
3.) Crisis management -- the fact remains that the IIMs are notorious for changing the patterns almost every yr. so no single strategy can be assumed to be foolproof. Infact the only thing constant about the CAT is that the pattern is never the same... so u got to be good at handling crisis situations.
4.) Analyzing different approaches to a problem -- most of the problems are such that u need to decide one or the other method to approach it (which means there r a no. Of possible approaches). You will have to decide which one of those is gonna be most efficient for you.
5.) Balancing act -- it might be that u would be easy with one or more sections but not that much with some others. But as there are individual cut-offs as well as a total cut - off ... u will have to ensure that u clear all ... so on the exam day... u will have to keep that in mind as well.
6.) Efficiency -- though the IIM’s never disclose the actual marking scheme, there is a good reason to believe that they have a progressive negative marking. What I mean by that is that say for example you have a total of 10 wrong questions. And in another scenario you have 20. Then its quite possible that the penalty for wrong answers could be more than double for the latter cases u dont just need a good score.... You need a good score with efficiency...
7.) Lots of other things. To sum up some of these.... Efficiency, temperament, speed, strategy, self- belief, crisis management skills, time management skills...
Isn’t it so exciting ... so much at stake ... so much pressure ... such a refreshing change from the normal routine of the boring exams that we are used to giving. A fresh challenge in every mock exam.... And then the D-Day... the day of CAT.
GET STARTED ! (IT TAKES GUTS)

The article is basically specific to CAT … there are some other exams as well … like FMS, XLRI , JMET, IIFT etc. which I have not touched. This caters to all those who nurture a passion for CAT ( like me ).