Indian Institute of Management, Bangalore (2018 - 19)

The selection process at IIM B consists of essay writing (WAT) followed by personal interview.

Average Duration: 30 minutes

Word Limit: 250

Average Duration: 20-40 minutes
No. of Panelists: 2-3

Candidate profile: B.Tech (Mechanical), Work Ex of 3.5 years in BPCL

So, you are a Bengali from Assam? How is the railway system there? Which places have you been to in India? What do you look after in BPCL? Why MBA then? So, BPCL imports lubricants? Where do you manufacture? and where are the plants located? So, with introduction of BS6, what changes will take place? What is its primary purpose? What is velocity? and its difference with speed? What is differentiation of acceleration with time? What is brent crude and other standard crudes? What is its current price? How changes in crude price affect us? What is inflation? How is inflation calculated? What is CPI? What is going on in Assam? What is Citizenship Amendment bill? and how it impacts Assam? Why the outrage? What do you think should be the solution? What should government do? Do you think the illegal immigrants will be taken back by their country? Have you been to Dawki? Any questions for us?

Candidate profile: BE (Chemical), Work Ex of 18 months at Tata Steel

Are you in hurry? So, you are a Chemical Engineer. How come you are working in steel industry? You are working in Odisha. Why did you come to Bengaluru for giving your interview? Does your work involve any application of Chemical Engineering? So you must have studied about Water Treatment in Chemical Engineering. Where does the waste water come from? Please explain in detail. Tell us about the project that you have mentioned. (It was related to some problem we were facing in cleaning of waste water only) Why did you have this problem? It must be a standard process across all the steel industry? Aren't the pollution norms set by Central Government and hence same all over the country. Tell us about your work. Do you work in teams? How many people work under you and will you be rating them? So have you visited any other Steel Plants apart from Tata Steel? What are the changes that can be made in the process in your area to improve operations? Have you done any course on probability or statistics? Please draw a graph with X- axis representing income and Y- axis representing the percentage of population holding that income (for India). Is the number of people earning 10 Rs a day more than 100 Rs a day? Why does your graph not having maxima for % population on 300 Rs.? What is this course named Climate Fiction and Films in your form? You have done a course on supply Chain Management as well. Can you explain about it? Tell me about the impact of climate change on supply chain. In case the transportation costs rise, how will TATA Steel deal with it as they have a very large supply chain network? Just tell the location where you will set up new factory. What will a country like Japan which has got no raw materials and exports most of its manufactured good do if transportation costs go up? What is the biggest threat to the steel industry? Isn’t already most of the car body being made of fiber? How would you go about making lighter steel? Why will rise of driver-less cars decrease car ownership? But we already have that system present through services like Ola and Uber. Why will I stop owning car just because of driver-less cars? Tata Steel is the largest steel producer in the country, right? Who is the largest steel producer in India? Why did Tata Steel acquire Bhushan Steel and how has it affected its profits? Why Corus was in loss and how has TATA Steel dealt with it? Can you tell me something about the US-China Trade War?

Candidate profile: B.Sc Statistics, Work Experience of 6 months

Your name is so unique? What does that mean? You could have changed it? Weren’t your parents aware of this mistake? So you don’t have separate letters for p, f and b in Tamil? And for Ga, Ca, Ka? But you have three la’s? Why statistics? And why not engineering? Then why not NIT Trichy? Then how did you score in CAT? What is confidence interval? Are these two definitions same? When you have 100 samples, how would you get a 95% confidence interval? Is exponential distribution a sampling distribution? Why normal distribution is so important? When sample size is more than 30 we tend to use normal rather than sampling distribution. Why 30? When and why do we use Z over t-test? You did your schooling in vernacular medium? But you are talking well, how did you improve? How reading helps? What do your parents do? What was your first job? Why did you switch? Isn’t CMC in the main part of city, nearby railway station? What did you learn from the IIM B alumnus? Isn’t your organisation Fermat Education? What do you do? What is Piverb? Give me an example. What is your role? Who are the competitors and how are you different from them? Where do you see yourself after an MBA? Then why MBA? Why not MS in analytics or M.Sc Statistics?

Candidate profile: B.Tech (CSE), Work Experience of 3+ years (Infosys, Capgemini)

So, you worked with Infosys. Do you think Narayana Murthy is right poking his nose on every action taken by Vishal Sikka? What is your opinion? What do you do at Capgemini? Why has your client outsourced it? In your SOP you have mentioned something as Entrepreneurship. What exactly do you wish to do? What kind of skills? Please elaborate. You told the motive is non-profit. So where will the money come to pay the teachers? Why will people crowd fund? Are crowd funders investors? What do they get in return? I pay a beggar Rs 10. Did I crowd fund? You love to do gardening. Tell me what is organic farming? I am a common man. I go to Big Bazaar and see some apples. How do I know it is organic? So I put sticker on an apple and increase its price. Does it become organic?