IIFT Group Discussion and interview experience

Before I dwell into my experience let me let people know what IIFT means. Contrary to popular belief IIFT is an abbreviation for Indian Institute of foreign trade and not fashion technology. Its one of the top 20 b-schools in India and offers a specialised MBA in International business.

I had my essay writing, group discussion and interview process which comprises the second phase of the admission process, on 1 st Feb 2010.( It was my birthday). Though I did attend a few mock interviews and participated in a lot of GDs as part of my preparation, I wasn't particularly confident and the desperation to convert this call as I had no other calls made this exercise extremely nerve wrenching.

The interviews were held in coffee board,Bangalore and though we were supposed to be at the centre by 9:10 ,I reached by 8:40 as I didn't want to take a risk with Monday morning Bangalore traffic. To my surprise I found a lot of aspirants had arrived much before me. I took a newspaper with me just to while away my time and to know at least the day's headlines as I have heard interview panellists do quiz people on it.

The first step was essay writing. They gave us a high school level topic to write on, pretty weird as IIFT's topics are reputed to be on the lines of the current happenings and I was expecting something on telengana or Climate change or Recession etc..We had to write an essay of about 300 words on " Domesticated Animals are man's best friends" in about 20 minutes. I did take a while to get a grasp of the topic and wrote a few interesting points about how man has domesticated animals from his early days, what is current scenario etc.. I also dwelt into the ego aspect of man-man relations etc.. I touched upon the exploitation of animals for material gains. All in all a fair amount of points though in hindsight I wasn't happy with logical flow of ideas. I couldn't conclude the essay too as I had exhausted the time and the paper was snatched away. :(

The next stage was the GD. We were divided into 4 groups and despatched to various halls according to the group allocated. IIFT gds are quite different from the normal ones. Here each participant is given about 2 minutes initially to express his/her views and then there is an open discussion and then each participant is given a chance to summarize his/her views. Since it is well structured the fish market scenario was avoided to a certain extent. The topic was on Climate Change a topic which I was praying to get since I had prepared a awful lot on it. Thanks to the radical views thrown to me during my preparation phase at TIME I was able to give an all new perspective to the GD. I did took the stand of a sceptic and since I had prepared well I did have valuable points to contribute. I was surprised to see me being the only person speaking something contrary to the established beliefs. Everybody was taking about Kyoto,Bali, Copenaghan,IPCC etc...That I took a different stand is a big advantage but at the end of the day it depends on how the panellists view it. That I had to speak 2nd during the initial introduction was another advantage as my views sounded original. Thank god the guy before me wasn't a sceptic like me. In the open discussion I did chip in for 5-6 times though I felt I was a bit aggressive.The GD really helped my confidence though and it rubbed on to the interview as well.

The interview was a very cool process and the panellists were extremely amicable and tried to make us feel as comfortable as possible. It was very general and most of my questions were related to my father's business(I had written a awful lot about it in my CV form) and how would I compare it with my experience in TCS. There were questions like important learnings from TCS, what are certain things in TCS that can be implemented in my father's firm,how can they be done etc...Since I had also taken up a certification on stock markets I was queried about what are shares,bonds,stocks etc...The whole interview lasted about 10 minutes and I felt really good.

Since I was the second person to be interviewed all the process was complete by noon and I had the rest of the day to roam around Bangalore.

I do feel I have put up a decent show but looks like everybody has had a similar kind of interview. So no idea of what to make of it. Just need to wait for the results, a long wait as results are likely to come by 3 rd week of march.