Personal Interview (PI) is the final and crucial step in the entire MBA admission process. This round is focused on getting to know the candidate better by gauging the clarity of his / her thinking process, future plans, etc. In its endeavour to help students crack the PI level, (and also because we have been receiving requests from students who want to know more about the questions asked during this round) PaGaLGuY asked its users to send in their PI testimonials. While we already published Archit Garg’s interview on Thursday, here’s a second one in the PI Testimonial series. Vishal Gori, an Information Technology engineering graduate from KJ Somaiya, is pursuing MBA (Finance) from Sydenham Institute of Management Studies, Research and Entrepreneurship Education (SIMSREE), Mumbai (2016-18) batch. He speaks to PaGaLGuY about his PI round, to give aspirants a glimpse into the kind of questions asked during this important selection and elimination level in the MBA admission’s process.
“In interviews, the candidate is often asked to ‘introduce himself / herself’. So the first question that I was asked, was, ‘Tell me something about yourself which is not on your resume.’ So, I told them about my past work experiences which were not mentioned in my resume, various projects undertaken during my graduation, national level technical projects that I participated in the past, my hobbies and special areas of interest. This was then followed by questions related to my family background, my previous work experiences and academic performance.
The next question is the most frequently asked question in PIs, which is ‘Why MBA?’ To this, I replied that engineering helped me get perspective and brought me closer to technology, which is crucial for any business setup existing today. I also mentioned that a majority of all successful startups in India and abroad were brought up by engineers. I made it a point to mention that despite a good academic performance in engineering, my ambition pulled me towards a management career. I highlighted my skills, particularly my people skills and gave a couple of instances that corroborated that.
The next question was about my specialisation and why I decided to choose it. I replied that I wanted to pursue a specialisation in Finance. To elaborate on that point, I mentioned that an engineer’s job is to develop good mathematical and analytical skills during graduation which helps greatly in understanding subjects like Accounts and Economics. Finance as a subject adds a lot of value since it covers the most important components of any business, like accounting, economics, business law, portfolio management to name a few. I confidently stated that an engineer cum MBA Finance is an excellent combination.
Finally, the last question they asked me was related to my educational background and on how I would relate my IT graduation knowledge to Finance. Here, I would like to state that the question was tricky and made me a bit nervous. However, I went ahead with it and told them about quantitative finance, fintech boom and algorithmic trading, all of which convinced them of my decision of wanting to take up finance post-engineering.
To conclude, I would like to mention just one thing. Make sure that your basics and application-based questions pertaining to your educational background are clear, as questions pertaining to that are often asked.”