THIS IS JUST AN APPROXIMATE TRANSCRIPT OF WHAT HAPPENED . APPROXIMATE AND
ALMOST
IIM AHMEDABAD
Venue
IIFT , New Delhi
3.10 - 3.25 pm
GD Case Study
boy,me,boy,boy,boy,boy,boy,boy,boy
overall satisfactory performance
3.42 4.09 pm
Interview
m= me panelist1 = young man = p1
panelist2 = man = p2 panelist3 = old man = p3
p1 was technical expert with long face covered by beard . p2 was a man with plain glasses and wide face . p3 was an old man with white hair . All the
questioning was done in a cyclic order of p2p3p1p2p3p1....
Last time my grinning caused my plan to go haywire as I was grilled on marriage . So this time I thought of not smiling during the interview which was a blunder .
Again I had some particular strong points which I wanted to tell at any cost , like magazine , mathemagic , tennis , movies and my memory. |
m
may I come in sir
p1
yeah come in manish
m
thank you sir . good afternoon to you all
p2
good afternoon manish . See there is a lizard at that upper extreme corner of the wall and an insect at this point on the ground . Whats the shortest distance the lizard has to cover to get the insect ?
( ok so cud there be
a worse start than this . I was midway thru sitting on the chair and paused right there only to search for these creatures from the lost world , the lost world because they were not there . So while I was hanging in the air , I
didn't have a seat under me, I didn't have any creatures before me and I didn't have an answer with me . I had to imagine them to be there . I first seated myself and then tried to visualize the answer . The walls of that room were
not meeting like the normal 90 degrees but at about 60 degree. The room wasn't a 4 walled either)
p2
did you get the question ?
m
yessir , it will be square root of .....
p2
arre bhai , its a lizard . It can't do these mathematics .
m
In that case sir , its going to fall down and rush to its prey .
p2
fall down ? and get itself killed ?
m
but sir its a lizard ? lizard doesn't gets hurt on
falling . Moreover , the time taken during fall will be much less than than during sliding on the walls .
p2
so thats what you think
m
yeah
(a moment of silence. I got the impresion that may be I was going totally wrong. They didn't want a logical answer at all, but instead a mathematical one)
p2
don't you think this wud be the shortest path ?
(draws a path on the paper . Its from the lizard to the opposite point of the wall touching the ground . then
straight to the insect)
m
sir in that way , this shud be the shortest path
(I gave my interpretation with a straight path from the lizard to the
insect passing thru the centre of the inbetween wall)
p2
you say that will be the shortest path
m
yeah
(another moment of silence)
p3
ok manish why is APJ Abul Kalam so famous ?
m
well sir apart from being the current president of our country , he was one of the few people involved in the nuclear tests carried out by India on may 11th , 1998 , monday .
The operation with the code name ' buddha has smiled ' made him famous throughout the country because even I didn't know him before that date . Afterwards he was in news for being rejected a post of teacher at IIS due to some
unavailability of degrees .
p3
you may have seen this xavier institute , xavier school etc . Who was this xavier ?
m
Sir I don't have the exact idea but I suppose he may have been some great person in the Christian field .
p1
ok manish what are you currently studying ?
m
Computer Engineering , final year
p1
how many bytes in a kilobyte ?
m
1024
p1
1024 ok whats the latest speed in the desktop equipment ?
m
p4 1.9 ghz
(fluke, this was as per my latest information)
p1
whats this hz in this 1.9 ghz
(oops I didn't knew that)
m
this hz is the frequency . number of instructions executed per second
p1
number of
instructions executed per second ?? you are a computer scientist ! you are supposed to know this.(this comment broke my heart .I didn't have anything good to cheer about in this interview till now and that mistake seemed to
be like the final blow. I thought its a gone case now)
m
actually what happens is when an instruction is executed, data flows thru the data bus and
its fetched from the memory (pin drop silence)
p2
ok manish lets say we got a nth order polynomial . you know how thats written
m
yea sir a0+a1*x+a2*x^2+.........an*x^n
p2
yeah suppose all the a's are known and I want
to find the value of this polynomial for a particular value of x . in such a way that I have to do minimum multiplication. (as disappointed I was at that moment, I heard all a's are UNKNOWN)
m
first we need n-1 equations to find these a's (another stupid mistake I did)
p2
no no but all a's are known
m
all a's are known ? well then it can be simplified as
a0+x(a1+x(a2+x(.....))))))
p2
ok thats right . but whats this principle called ?
m
I don't know the name of this principle
sir but this is the same principle used in nuclear fision , nuclear fission i mean . 1+3(1+3(1+.......)))). I read it in my 10th class
p3
you are in final year
m
yes
p3
what are you doing in your final year project ?
m
we are implementing a proxy server
p3
its a group project
m
yes its a group project with me and 2 other people
p3
so what exactly are you making
m
then I started the longest stretch of my speech. I made a thorough
description of my project. whatever I knew. even though irrelevant, I just went on and on and on. (after finally I stopped)
p1
whats the fastest sorting method you know ? ( i wasn't sure )
m
quicksort
p1
and the slowest ( this time I was sure that i wasn't sure )
m
in the worst case bubble sort .
p1
quicksort and bubblesort , are you sure ?
m
yes sure
p1
can you explain quicksort ?
m
in quicksort we divide the array in
half , and continue to do so till we are left with single elements , then we reverse the process and keep on joining them while sorting the individual elements ( totally wrong answer but I explained all this using my hands , so he
was more looking at my hands rather than listening to me )
p1
can you write the algo of quicksort ?
m
since I don't remember it , I'll have to make it .
p1
okay
p2
where are you from manish ?
m
we are basically from an agricultural rural family in village lala district
rewari. but I've been here in delhi through out my life and the
credit goes to my father . Even though from being a agricultural family , he had the foresightedness to visualise the importance of education . He got himself educated , his brothers educated and today if my uncles are earning
their livelihood they owe it to my father only.
p2
what are the various problems people face in a village ?
m
the most important one is lack of literacy
p2
and ..
m
and those people aren't aware of whats happening around the world.
p2
but that is because they aren't literate
m
oh yeah
p3
what % of India's population is beyond the poverty line ?
m
I don't know the exact number sir
p3
whats the literacy rate of India
m
its above 50 but I am not aware of the exact figure
p3
whats the literacy rate of Rajasthan ?
( oh yeah well sure , I don't know rate of India , I will sure know that of Rajasthan )
m
I don't know
p1
you have been doing programming
m
yeah
p1
what happens to the code you write
m
this source code is converted to the object code and then its complied and linked to form the exe file
p1
this exe file is in which language ( i didn't knew )
m
asembly language
p1
asembly language ? who understands assembly language ?
( obviously assembler )
m
compiler ??
p1
you are doing computer engineering ? you are way distant from accuracy ( that was it . I had lost it , I didn't have the fuel left )
p2
whats this magazine all about ? you have written it quite many times
m
so finally something which was one of my strong points , something which I
was totally sure of . I just went on and on in full detail
p2
anything else
p1
no
p3
no
p2
ok manish, best of luck
p1
nice attempt with the magazine
p3
why are you looking so pensive
m
thank you sir
I left the room , dejected
Nothing to cheer about . I did't have any hope in this one . If first
impression is the last impression then I was doomed . I didn't do anything in my
academics . Magazine was discussed but other strenghts were not touched .
but still
Its the result and not the performance which matters !! |
