Feb 10, 9 am slot 3 panelists.. 2 professors (ladies), 1 alum (guy) WAT Topic: Why indigenous products couldn’t compete with international brands in consumer market PI: q: Welcome Vijay.. So u have worked more than all the previous candidates (23 months!!).. Tell us something about your work experience and why u r different from […]
Feb 10, 9 am slot
3 panelists.. 2 professors (ladies), 1 alum (guy)
WAT Topic: Why indigenous products couldn’t compete with international brands in consumer market
PI: q: Welcome Vijay.. So u have worked more than all the previous candidates (23 months!!).. Tell us something about your work experience and why u r different from rest all b.e candidates
Me: told about my job nature which involves lot of travelling, my adaptability of working in north being born and brought up in Madurai.
Q: so what was your key learning from it? Say with an example
Me: my first project in bawal Haryana. It was a big project with 18 machines. Planning the schedule along with customer everyday and executing it accordingly. Communicating what work I want clearly to my sub ordinates to be completed on a particular day.
Q: So u had people who were reporting to you for certain period of time? How was that experience?
Me: It was not easy initially as most of them were elder to me.. then once I mingled well with them I managed better. But we won’t have the entire team for the full duration of installation. Like out of 8 people, 4 will be sent after 1 month and so on. So things like when to send them back and if I send them back and after that if I need more people then how to manage.. things like these were difficult to decide. But I learnt them with experience.
Q: you said you are working in titan.. titan makes watches and jewellery right? What is this business you are talking about?
Me: You are right mam. Titan started this division for supplying machines to its own watches factory. Later in 2007 they started this as separate business and started selling machines for outside customers. We sell machines for tier-1, tier-2 automobile manufacturers and electrical component manufacturers as well like abb, Schneider.
Q: who are the major players in this business and what is the USP of titan?
Me: Bosch, GE are the major ones.. titan has its own manufacturing setup for mechanical parts.. so titan’s major USP is its costing.
Q: What u felt when u visited Haryana or north for first time, how were the people over there?
Me: Stuttered a bit.. talking about mode of transport there and all.. but they wanted to know about life style of people there.. then I said about people being more religiously divided there.. very common to see saffron and green colour flags on roof of households which is not the case in south.
Q: There would be lot of local manufacturers who have costing as their usp.. so apart from that based on what else titan is getting their orders?
Me: spoke about value added services and technical expertise.. we do marking, vision system and lot of test rigs. Also titan is into medical industry as well..assembly line for syringes etc. this expertise helps in getting new orders.
Q: Y do u feel everyone should travel more? Benefits of it..
Me: (I didn’t interpret it properly and started telling my own experience.. they stopped and asked tell in general for everyone.) I spoke about how important is knowing about new people, new culture what they are good at, by which u can know how good u r.. what are ur strengths and weaknesses.. also travel is very refreshing ur spirits..
Q: 1 final question.. u r not working for past 6 months.. what are u doing all these days?
Me: I faced few shortcomings in my last job which I didn’t want to repeat when I work next time. I went to gym, did yoga etc and joined ngo where I was working earlier.
Q: Then u didn’t enroll for cat coaching? U would have joined coaching in time right? (started laughing) (I told ya that too..) So how did that help you?
Me: Our medium of commn in office is tamil and to customers too I speak in hindi. So my language skills got diminished and coaching helped me in building the vocabulary.
