Has the CAT been belled?

Now that you have successfully completed the first stage of the selection process – the CAT, you must continue your preparations for the Group Discussions (GD) & Personal Interviews (PI).

We are sure all of you have been told about the GDs & PIs – in fact, many of you would also understand the normal Do’s & Don’ts – things like starting the GD is an advantage, cutting off someone earns negative marks, focus on the discussion, don’t point fingers etc. Let us therefore discuss three aspects of GDs & PIs that you might have not come across normally.

1. Relevance of your points to the topic: Everybody can talk about their favourite topics; but how relevant are they to the topic given? In other words, do you have enough knowledge about all the subjects that can contribute to the GD topic? Can you talk about art, nanotechnology, mergers & acquisitions and human genocide with the same ardour as cricket, Shah Rukh Khan & the BSE Sensex?

2. Perspectives: In the modern era, the ability to see things differently has been the factor that differentiates great people from others. Can you see something that others can’t? Try and find out – Instead of analysing a case-study on a factory issue from the boss’s view, include the employees’ view, the media’s view, the shareholders’ view, the bankers’ view or simply, a third person’s view; and then observe your findings – we are sure you will be able to deal with the situation in the best possible way – which is essentially, what the B-Schools are looking for!

3. Truthfulness: If you have words like exceptional, extraordinary, outstanding etc. on your form, you better be in a position to prove it. Action-verbs & superlatives look great on the paper but are difficult exhibit in an interview. For e.g.: If someone says he has extraordinary motivation capabilities, he will be asked to narrate an occasion when his “extraordinary motivation capabilities” made the difference; and if he talks about how he motivated someone to do their work, it is not a given that he’ll score a lot of points. So leave those huge words alone & do not include anything just because they look good.

IMS training programs like Achievers workshop & Communication Skills Building Program have been specifically designed to help B-school aspirants cross the final critical step of GD/PI.

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