IIM-Ahmedabad Group / Interview
Interview date : 1st March 2006
Time : 2:00 PM
Venue : IIM-Bangalore
Lot of hype and hoo-haa surrounding the IIM-A interview ... several opinions and views like .... "Ahmedabad interviews are generally stressful ....", "the panel's decision is not arbitrary ... they never makes mistakes ... even if they were to interview all over again, they would choose the same set ....", "toughest to crack ...." blah blah blah ...
Finally, the day DID arrive ....
There were 3 people on the panel .... not sure if all 3 were professors or if one of them was an alumnus of the institute ...
There were 9 candidates on my panel .... All guys .... 1 was absent .... that brings the net count to 8 of us .....
Profile : ALL were from TamilNadu - 8 freshers - I am the only experienced candidate. Call it coincidence or something else, 5 of us in this panel happened to be grouped together under the same panel for the IIM-Lucknow interview also ! In that sense, we had an introduction to the way each person handles a GD, even before we started .... Another view - out of these 8, 5 were final year students from IIT-M.
GD: It was a case study .... A cola company wants to introduce its product, a new one in the rural areas .... a drink with a macho image .... we can use bollywood heroes for the promotion .... distribution was a challenge .... it was 3 million sq. km. of unchartered territory ... no distribution n/w, no dealers, no retailers .... everything has to be done from scratch .... Market is seasonal .... Farmers do not have money throughout the year .... but, there is a huge potention which can be tapped over the next few years ... there are already several local players with a small market share .... the cola company has appointed a Mr. Raman to do the needful .... what should he be doing .....
5 minutes to read the case. 20 minutes to discuss it. 5 minutes to summarise - write it on a piece of paper ...
I did pretty well ... Talked about the 4P's of marketing ... Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place .... Proposed that the final distribution (apart from shops) can also be done through a guy on a cycle who visits all fields around a village .... like the icecream vendor ..... displaying advertisements / festoons in trade fairs (shandhai) ..... selling it in places which farmers frequently visit ... like fertilizer shops .....
Pretty well taken by the other candidates ... At some point, I had unchallenged air-time .... went on well....
Interview:
P1 asks questions.
Where do you work?
Told
Nature of work?
Told
What technology?
Told
How many divisions in COBOL
Told
Does COBOL support recursion
Told
What COBOL
Told
What is the biggest program you have written
Told
Why is COBOL suited for business applications?
(1) Readability of code
(2) Easy documentability - we can have a program which can scan the program and document the same (much like what our metadata/datashopper team does)
(3) Natural affinity to external entities like database, flat files, indexed files ...
Anything else ...
Mmm ... thinking (he was looking for something else - never got to that)
How does COBOL talk to DB2
Told
Diff. b/w ISAM and VSAM
Not Sure
P2 takes over
What other self-documentary language are you aware of ?
Not sure
What are the diff types of databases
Told
What flavour is DB2 ?
Told
What is a n/w DBMS ?
Told
How is n/w DBMS different from Relational DBMS?
Attempted .... Was not sure
What is datamining?
Told
How is different from a normal database
Told
P3 asks
You seem to have visited every other college in Tamil Nadu. How did you manage. How did you bunk classes?
Told
Everything has been OK till now. Now, is when the screwing starts.
P1 takes over - Mathematics
How comfortable are you in post 10+2 mathematics
Fairly good (This was my biggest mistake. I should have probably said that it has been atleast 6 years since I had been through a formal Mathematics course)
What is Ramsay's theorem
Dunno
What is Binomial distribution
Told
Probablity for r successes?
Told
What are the two assumptions that it is based on .... Tell me them and this will be your last questions
Mmm ... mmmm .... the coin/whatever involved is unbiased.
All panelists in unison : NO. That is not one of the two.
Not able to tell (Upon exiting the building, I realized that a major assumption is : the trials are independent events ... Shucks - no use remembering it now)
Does prime numbers have an upper limit
No
We basically want to know how good you are when you rate yourself as "Fairly good".
Me : Ya ... I understand your holy intentions ..... (of course, I did not say this out loudly)
Prove that prime numbers do not have an upper limit - I will let you go if you can. There is a very intuitive/graceful/beautiful proof to this.
Not sure.
Thank you.
My take : GOT SCREWED - ROYALLY ;-(
20 minutes interview.
Please do leave your comments ....
Time : 2:00 PM
Venue : IIM-Bangalore
Lot of hype and hoo-haa surrounding the IIM-A interview ... several opinions and views like .... "Ahmedabad interviews are generally stressful ....", "the panel's decision is not arbitrary ... they never makes mistakes ... even if they were to interview all over again, they would choose the same set ....", "toughest to crack ...." blah blah blah ...
Finally, the day DID arrive ....
There were 3 people on the panel .... not sure if all 3 were professors or if one of them was an alumnus of the institute ...
There were 9 candidates on my panel .... All guys .... 1 was absent .... that brings the net count to 8 of us .....
Profile : ALL were from TamilNadu - 8 freshers - I am the only experienced candidate. Call it coincidence or something else, 5 of us in this panel happened to be grouped together under the same panel for the IIM-Lucknow interview also ! In that sense, we had an introduction to the way each person handles a GD, even before we started .... Another view - out of these 8, 5 were final year students from IIT-M.
GD: It was a case study .... A cola company wants to introduce its product, a new one in the rural areas .... a drink with a macho image .... we can use bollywood heroes for the promotion .... distribution was a challenge .... it was 3 million sq. km. of unchartered territory ... no distribution n/w, no dealers, no retailers .... everything has to be done from scratch .... Market is seasonal .... Farmers do not have money throughout the year .... but, there is a huge potention which can be tapped over the next few years ... there are already several local players with a small market share .... the cola company has appointed a Mr. Raman to do the needful .... what should he be doing .....
5 minutes to read the case. 20 minutes to discuss it. 5 minutes to summarise - write it on a piece of paper ...
I did pretty well ... Talked about the 4P's of marketing ... Product, Pricing, Promotion and Place .... Proposed that the final distribution (apart from shops) can also be done through a guy on a cycle who visits all fields around a village .... like the icecream vendor ..... displaying advertisements / festoons in trade fairs (shandhai) ..... selling it in places which farmers frequently visit ... like fertilizer shops .....
Pretty well taken by the other candidates ... At some point, I had unchallenged air-time .... went on well....
Interview:
P1 asks questions.
Where do you work?
Told
Nature of work?
Told
What technology?
Told
How many divisions in COBOL
Told
Does COBOL support recursion
Told
What COBOL
Told
What is the biggest program you have written
Told
Why is COBOL suited for business applications?
(1) Readability of code
(2) Easy documentability - we can have a program which can scan the program and document the same (much like what our metadata/datashopper team does)
(3) Natural affinity to external entities like database, flat files, indexed files ...
Anything else ...
Mmm ... thinking (he was looking for something else - never got to that)
How does COBOL talk to DB2
Told
Diff. b/w ISAM and VSAM
Not Sure
P2 takes over
What other self-documentary language are you aware of ?
Not sure
What are the diff types of databases
Told
What flavour is DB2 ?
Told
What is a n/w DBMS ?
Told
How is n/w DBMS different from Relational DBMS?
Attempted .... Was not sure
What is datamining?
Told
How is different from a normal database
Told
P3 asks
You seem to have visited every other college in Tamil Nadu. How did you manage. How did you bunk classes?
Told
Everything has been OK till now. Now, is when the screwing starts.
P1 takes over - Mathematics
How comfortable are you in post 10+2 mathematics
Fairly good (This was my biggest mistake. I should have probably said that it has been atleast 6 years since I had been through a formal Mathematics course)
What is Ramsay's theorem
Dunno
What is Binomial distribution
Told
Probablity for r successes?
Told
What are the two assumptions that it is based on .... Tell me them and this will be your last questions
Mmm ... mmmm .... the coin/whatever involved is unbiased.
All panelists in unison : NO. That is not one of the two.
Not able to tell (Upon exiting the building, I realized that a major assumption is : the trials are independent events ... Shucks - no use remembering it now)
Does prime numbers have an upper limit
No
We basically want to know how good you are when you rate yourself as "Fairly good".
Me : Ya ... I understand your holy intentions ..... (of course, I did not say this out loudly)
Prove that prime numbers do not have an upper limit - I will let you go if you can. There is a very intuitive/graceful/beautiful proof to this.
Not sure.
Thank you.
My take : GOT SCREWED - ROYALLY ;-(
20 minutes interview.
Please do leave your comments ....
posted by Naveenan Ramachandran | Wednesday, March 01, 2006
7 Comments:
Proof for Prime number theorem using contradiction.
http://primes.utm.edu/notes/proofs/infinite/kummers.html
here is my proof:
(by induction).
A largest prime number was discovered in 1993 with 1000s of digit. I thought that is the upper limit. but in 1994, another prime number was discovered which is greater than the previous one...
and the story continued till this year 2005. So, by theories of induction there cannot be upper limit. (i know you are searching for some sticks to beat me, escape!!!).
Mani,
Thanks!! Pretty intuitive, ain't it ;-( If only, I had known this by March 1st afternoon .....
Kicha,
Nalla Vaelai ...... I did not quote this induction proof of yours ..... They would have nullified my candidature and tore my certificates then and there - just so that I do not fool others !!!
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