PGDBA 2016-18 Interview Experiences Part-1

This is a compilation of the interview experiences of the PGDBA 2016-18 students along with their profile, so as to help the aspirants in their preparation for the entrance.

There was a panel of 3 interviewers – one from each institute.

Himanshu Goyal –B.Tech. in Production and Industrial Engineering, 2011, IIT Delhi; 5 years of experience in BFSI, Global Analytics

Duration: 20-25 mins

Questions that were asked:

1. Tell us about your achievements
2. Why do you want to join PGDBA
3. Write equation for linear and logistic regression (was asked due to my background at work)
4. A puzzle which used the property of mean
5. A question on odds ratio and probability

Experience and Review:

1. Why PGDBA? or Why should we take you? needs to be very well prepared. You should be able to show that you are serious about this course and are making an informed choice. Everyone has a reason of their own and you will have to find one for yourself as well which you can pitch.
2. In case you have work experience, you should be able to explain your roles and responsibilities in a comprehensive and confident way.
3. My interview didn’t go well and I remember not being hopeful after it but my written test had gone very good which must have had a good impact.

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Waqar Sarguroh – B. Tech. in Chemical Engineering, IIT Roorkee, 2014; 25 months of work experience in Oil and Gas (Refinery) and EdTech Startup

Duration: 20 mins

1. Asked to explain the product of the EdTech startup that I worked for. Discussed customer segmentation based on usage of app.
2. Asked to explain classification and clustering and explain the difference. The interviewers were very helpful as I had only an elementary idea about the concept. They walked me through the thought process by asking guiding questions.
3. An algebraic expression of positive integers to be maximised given a constraint. (Using AM > GM)
4. What is BRICS? What is the economic situation of BRICS countries?
5. Did you write CAT? Why not an MBA?

SUGGESTIONS-The main focus was on the ability to think through a problem. Building on ideas and communicating your thought process appropriately.

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Anushree Parsai – B.E. in Electronics and Communication, BITS Hyderabad, 2014; 2 years of work experience at ARM

Duration: 30-40 mins

1. As my interview questions were mostly centered around current affairs, I feel the interviewers were looking for students who were good at academics and also kept track of current events of national and international importance. They asked me following questions – Which states will be having elections this year? Do you know about GST bill? How will it help? State 3 major achievements of Narendra Modi so far? Factors responsible for Syria conflict and views on it?
2. Based On Work experience: How are defects identified in electronic chips? Define defect and differentiate it from from fault.
3. There was one basic question on mathematics as well on finding continuity of a function.

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Naveen Mittal – B.Tech. in Computer Science and Engineering, KNIT Sultanpur, 2016

Duration: 20-25 mins

1. Most of the questions related to Computer Science such as complexities of algorithms, sorting, searching, N-P hard problems, etc. Also, questions from management subjects in B.Tech curriculum such as IM, IS, IP were asked.
2. Problems were given which required basic applications of statistics such as mean, median, mode, standard deviation etc. and drawing inferences using such measures.
3. Calculus questions were asked, theorems such as Cauchy-Reimann, etc. were asked.
4. Some HR questions like Why do you want to join PGDBA??

SUGGESTIONS-Be confident. Even if you do not know some of the answers don’t think that you can bluff with them. Say politely that you cannot recollect or remember the answer. I was able to answer Computer Science and Engineering related questions which happen to be my discipline during B.Tech. and maintain a positive attitude and confidence throughout the interview.

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Khushiram Sharma – B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering, IIT(BHU) Varanasi, 2013; 36 months of experience in BPCL as Retail Engineer and Asst. Mgr., Operations.

Duration: 25 mins

They asked me to briefly explain my profile of work. As I have been to many places during this time and the last one being Gorakhpur (UP), they picked a question from there. They asked me to give five cultural differences between UP & Rajasthan(I am from Ajmer) and also explain how they are different. They stopped me when I had explained  four of them convincingly.

They asked one question on maths which is as follows : We have identified four places in Rajasthan to be made headquarters of education for state. Out of these we have to finally select only three based on the distances need to be travelled by people in future. All other conditions will remain same for all places. Given this before jumping for any solution, I discussed about further assumptions like population density, shape can be assumed as per my drawing, people will travel to their nearest headquarter (as per straight line distance). Finally they said, all other conditions will remain same for all places. After trying for 2 minutes, they made little bit easier i.e. I have three locations and have to select two of them. Now I drew perpendicular bisectors of this triangle and then explained the solution.

They asked me whether I know coding, and I said” primarily no except that I studied C language 6 years ago.” Then they asked to write a code for printing my name(string) in reverse order, which I did.

I think your approach to the given problem will be a crucial factor in cracking the interview.

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Himanshu Jain – B.E. in Electronics and Communications Engineering, NSIT Delhi, 2013; 11 months of experience in IT Advisory (Analytics) Consultancy, KPMG; 24 months of experience in Samsung Data Systems (IT industry)

Duration: 15-20 mins.

P1: starts the interview asking me about my college history and Delhi Current political scenario, what I think about Arvind Kejriwal and what has changed in Delhi since AAP came to power & then asked about some Co-curricular activities.
P2(IIT professor of around 40+ age) asked about my work experience as I was working in analytics field
Me: I explained about my current client project and what different domains I was working on over the years.
P3(one having knowledge of Statistics & maths; must be from ISI):
Q1. Given a graph with a normal distribution of mean 30 marks. Also, 20% students have more than 45 marks. So how much % of students have marks ranging from 15 to 45?
Q2. Asked to draw a circle and how to find the centre of a circle.
I asked some questions in the end about what I can study before joining this course which would help me during PGDBA if I got selected. P2 smiled and replied just chill and enjoy.

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Yogesh Dewangan- B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering, NIT Raipur, 2013; Fresher

Duration: 25 mins

There were 3 interviewers sitting, 2 males 1 female.
Interviewer (I): So Yogesh, tell me something about yourself.
Me: Described a little about my background, education, then hobbies and lastly archery (I wanted them to ask on this only ).

I: Oh, so you are an archer. Tell us about your achievements in archery. Do you have any certificates related to archery?
Me: (showed all national and state championship certificates)

I(handed over the file to another interviewer): You can have a good career in archery, then why do you want to do this course? Do you plan to continue it in future?
Me: Of course sir, I am very passionate about archery. Our state does not have good facilities and environment for archery. I wish to set-up an archery academy in my state. It will have a great help to the archery community and will also attract new talents. Whatever problems I have faced as a beginner, I do not want the next generation of archers to face them.

I: So have you done something in this regard?
Me: Yes sir. We have formed a club and para-archery association which helps beginners and needy archers and promotes archery. I personally contribute annually to the club and I like training beginners.

I: You seem to be good at maths. Can you solve a few questions.

1. Gave two equation which I don’t remember, but were of the form
   x=…
   and y=…(quadratic in the form of x)
   and told me to prove that y is multiple of 9.
2. You have a triangle of sides a, b and c. Tell me the sufficient and necessary conditions for the triangle to exist.
3. Tell me the range and domain for x in:
   y = 1/(log|x|)

I: Can you tell me some headlines on today’s newspaper? You belong to Chhattisgarh. What are your views about Naxalism. What they want and what you govt is doing to tackle them.
Me: Told that they want to run a parallel govt and do not want govt to have any interference in their area. They follow violent route to get their demands fulfilled. Told about the kidnapping of District collector and killing of Congress leaders in 2013.
Then told about govt policies and incentives about bringing Naxalites in the mainstream.

FEEDBACK: Major criteria for my selection, according to me was my score in the written exam. It played a vital role. Next may be my 10th 12th percentages (both 80+). Then, interview, which I felt went well. I was able to make them ask on archery. I knew Naxalism would come and hence was prepared with it. Everything that was asked to me, I was able to answer. I would say it was totally an expected interview.

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Apoorv Agarwal – B.Tech. in Mechanical Engineering from NITK Surathkal, 2013; 30 months of experience in HealthCare Insurance, UnitedHealth Group Information Services Pvt. Ltd.

Duration: 15-20 mins

My interview proceeded as follows:
Tell me about yourself (2 minutes)
Work Experience (3-5 minutes)

Q: What was your work profile?
A: I was working as a database analyst in UnitedHealth Group, briefly explained about the project and my role in the company. They were more interested in analytics related work or if we were using any machine learning algorithm. Since we were not using any sophisticated machine learning algorithm at that point of time, I told him how we were doing descriptive analytics in SQL server.

Probability/Statistics Questions (2-3 minutes):
I was asked to write the probability density function, mean and variance of the Poisson distribution. Real life examples of Poisson and exponential distribution.
Bayes Theorem – He asked me to state Bayes theorem and its application.

Graduation (2 minutes)
Interviewer asked me to explain the principle behind swing bowling in cricket(as I did my B.Tech in mechanical engineering and mentioned cricket in my hobbies).
I explained it through Bernoulli’s effect, pressure difference and then there were a couple of questions on Bernoulli’s theorem.

What motivates you to the field of analytics(2-4 minutes):
As I was working in the healthcare industry, so I started with the importance of data analytics in the field of healthcare insurance, how we can reduce the overall healthcare cost and serve patients in a better way. I continued my explanation with other sectors and explained how we can leverage data analytics to make effective decisions. They wanted to check my interest in analytics.

Extra Curricular Activities: Sachin Tendulkar Vs Virat Kohli- They were interested in statistical analysis behind my answer.

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Kapil Tripathi – B.Tech. in Electrical Engineering, NIT Allahabad, 2014; 18 months of experience in Manufacturing (Power Function), Trident Group and 5 months in a Project at BHEL

Duration: 20 mins.

My Complete Interview Experience –

Tell me something about yourself? 
Q- (IIM Prof) What is your motivation for joining this programme?
I told them about my start-up idea in power sector which deals purely with analytics and how this programme can help me achieve that.
Q- (IIT Prof) He said these things shall not be implemented in India.
Explained that how government of India has set up 1000 crores for the modernisation of electrical transmission quality and the function delivering those results shall be analytics
Q- (ISI Prof) You like electrical ? Can you derive RMS value for a sinusoidal current waveform?
Q-(ISI Prof) Given machines downtime periods how the spare parts in your store shall be taken care of ? Any graphs you can plot etc. 
After some thought, explained about frequency of various spares used in last downtime periods and based on that data we shall generate some bar plots etc.
Q-(IIT Prof) Any analytics experience?
I told them that I have seen implementation of Aspen tech boiler controller in which learning by controller was done for a month.

SUGGESTIONS – To be as frank and confident as possible. Decent communication skill and good applied thinking shall be enough for interview. Avoid saying extreme technical terms of which you are not aware of as they will cross question.

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Ishita Lohia – B.Tech. in Computer Science, College Of Technology, G.B.P.U.A.T., Pantnagar, 2014; 12 months of experience in Tech Mahindra (IT industry)

Duration-25 mins.

1. What all tools did I work on ? Why do we use SQL and not Excel for the retrieval of data. Some very basic questions on what our application was and how exactly was I contributing to the organization. Few questions were asked from JAVA and data structures too.
2. What is cumulative frequency? They drew a graph of the cumulative frequency for the number of girls vs marks they scored and did the same for the boys and asked who performed better(girls or boys). They asked me to explain normal distribution and few trailing questions on that.
3. They asked me about different raag as I had participated in singing events.

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Palash R Tatte – B.Tech. in Production and Industrial engineering, IIT Delhi, 2014; 23 months of experience in Healthcare analytics, IMS Health

Duration: 30 mins

1. Questions about my work, grilling me on fine details whenever anything regarding stats or maths was mentioned.
2. Based on previous answer, questions about moving averages when I mentioned forecasting as a part of my work; they tried to dig deep into regression, R square (they asked me to write down its formula)
3. It seemed they were waiting to throw hardcore math questions. But somehow discussion moved on to operations research (but be prepared for math questions, specially when you’re a fresher) and they asked me to solve a full LP problem. I tried to act smart and solved it graphically for 2 variables which did not go in my favor; they stopped me in between and asked me to do it using SIMPLEX after which I gave up.
4. Who do you think is a better player, Kohli or Tendulkar?
5. They asked about hobbies; on cricket, they asked whether I played any Inter IIT and which ones. They asked about my extra-curricular activities at college. Questions like if not PGDBA, then what?

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Kallu Chandra Mouli – B.Tech. in Electronics and Communications Engineering, NIT Trichy, 2014; 11 months of experience in FCA (Automobile industry)

Duration: 30-35 mins

Many questions were asked related to work experience. It began with questions like briefly explain a day in your office and questions were followed from what I answered.  Few questions were asked about the tools and projects at work. One question was asked about different types of schemas implemented in databases and then types of transformations in Informatica. How would we clean data before entering them into a database . Challenges faced at work . How would you explain a flat file to your grandma. They also asked standard HR questions – Why PGDBA. What are your hobbies- I replied cycling and then we had a small discussion regarding cycle prices in India and abroad.

There were very basic questions related to normal distributions. I was also asked to solve a question on permutation and combination and then one more from linear equations. Both of them were of CAT standards. I think they were looking for people with interest towards analytics and good understanding of fundamental maths and statistics.

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For the next part of this post:
PGDBA 2016-18 Interview Experiences Part-2

Here are the links to the interview experiences of the first batch of PGDBA:
PGDBA 2015-17 Interview Experiences – Part-1
PGDBA 2015-17 Interview Experiences – Part 2