The Quintessential Outsider

I had mentioned in my last post that I am currently unaffiliated, i.e. I am not associated with any institution (academic or professional). That state is going to end soon, as the result of my eleventh interview tells me. Also, all the ideas for future posts that I currently have in mind are mostly ‘non-personal’, so I thought it would be a good time to interrupt that chain with a post about myself.

I have appeared for eleven formal interviews so far, i.e. interviews that had or could have had a significant impact on my career (basically this means that I am not including the ‘interview’ for Placement Representative, etc. in this list).  In chronological order, two of these were with McKinsey, two with BCG, four with Inductis, and one each with IIM A and B. The last one, and the successful one, was with IGIDR.

The McKinsey interviews (on 21^st Dec., 2005) were a disaster, to put it succinctly. I had been really enthusiastic about it, but on the eve of D-day, I fell ill, though I now think it would not have made much of a difference to the final result even if I had not been ill (at most, I would have got the opportunity to wait until evening before being disappointed). The two interviews with BCG (on the same day) were slightly better, but the result was still the same. In retrospect, I can see a lot of mistakes I made that I could have avoided, but I do not really regret the final result of those interviews (no, it is not a case of ‘sour grapes’ ). What I essentially regret is that I did not use the opportunity to ask some ‘interesting’ questions to the representatives of the two biggest consulting firms in the world. In fact, I did ask one such question to one of my McKinsey interviewers, about their work with the TDP government in AP, which was probably quite cheeky, more so after my own ‘dismal’ performance. However, I could not avoid the temptation, especially as I was really amused by the way the McKinsey-BCG rivalry unfolded in the run-up to our campus placements.

After this, there was a gap of four days before my next four interviews, with Inductis. Quite oddly, it was my being impressed by BCG that also got me interested in Inductis and a few other companies, or in campus placements in general in the first place. However, this also meant that I compared everything that I saw about Inductis, with BCG, and was soon disappointed. My first two interviews went reasonably well, but for many reasons (among them a conversation with B. Vinod ), the next two ‘did not go well’, and I didn’t make it eventually.

That was the end of campus placements for me. It was almost two months before I went for my next interview on 18^th Feb. 2006, to the IIM campus in Ahmedabad. Sadly, they asked me some questions on maths, which I stumbled on. I also did not do well in the areas I was supposed to be comfortable with, so all in all, it was a disappointment. My next IIM interview (on 22^nd March) was with IIM-B, and this one was the best so far. In general, it was a nice experience, and the interviewers were quite pleasant, very much like McKinsey and BCG, and quite unlike IIM-A. I mentioned early on that I am aspiring to be a diplomat, but they still went on for the full duration of the interview, and asked me questions on history, diplomacy and international politics, instead of what they normally ask engineers (or physicists). However, even though this interview was ‘good’, I was still unsuccessful. Whether it was because of my interview (specifically, the assertion about diplomacy) or for some other reason, I shall never know.

Finally, last Friday (7^th July), I faced what would turn out to be my first successful interview. It was the ‘biggest’ so far, in that there were about eight interviewers on the panel, compared with just one each in the eight company interviews, three at IIM-A and two at IIM-B. This meant that I had to constantly turn my head from one side to the other, as they took turns at grilling me. Again, I stumbled a bit on the maths questions, and was also not very comfortable with other ‘technical’ questions in general. They also asked a few basic questions on economics, which I believe I answered satisfactorily enough for a person without a background in that. I am not sure whether it was my performance in the interview, or the fact that the ‘competition’ was ‘not so tough’, that finally saw me through. Probably it was a combination of both.

The reason for concern is that I have consistently underperformed in all my interviews so far, including the last ‘successful’ one, and notwithstanding the fact that I was not really keen about the institution in question in at least six of those interviews (by the way, I was/am keen about IGIDR). I know (and have always known) that I am better at the written word than the spoken word, but considering the fact that I might face some really tough interviews (tougher than any of the above) in the next couple of years, I believe that I should do a better job of speaking with confidence. For now, though, I can live in peace.