MDI Prep Team

PSP Series
[Preparation for Summer Placements]
General Questions
Instructions:

You are required to consult your mentors for improving the quality of

answers
The soft copy of your initial draft is to be mailed to your mentors with

prepteam@mandevian.com in cc by EOD 15 July 2015

The soft copy of the complete document is to be mailed at
prepteam@mandevian.com with placecom@mdi.ac.in in cc for

finalsubmission
o File naming convention : <RollNo>_<Name>_PSP-01
o Mail subject line
: <RollNo>_<Name>_PSP-01
One Hard copy of only this page signed by the mentors shall be

submitted at the pigeon box outside Placement Office

Deadline for final submissions (soft copy & hard copy): EOD 18 July

2015
Font: Candara | Font size: 12 | Line Spacing: 1.5
Spaces provided for the answers are only indicative
All the questions are mandatory

Name
Roll No.

: Hansika Jain
: 15PGHR17

Sign:
Name: Rishabh Gupta

Sign:
Name: Vishal Beotra

Mentor 1

Mentor 2

MDI Prep Team

Question 1:
Tell me something about yourself.
The ability to adapt and the hunger to learn are tools that can ensure
success in the dynamic world of business. I draw my strength from the
mantra Nothing is constant. This belief always helps me to get over
failures and setbacks in life. I was born and brought up in Delhi. I am
computer science engineer after which I have worked with Accenture. During
my tenure at Accenture, I have worked on two major projects- first, a
transformation programme with a major UK retail client and second, an
online portal with the charity CAF. The latter was a CSR initiative by
Accenture. As a mark of appreciation for the excellent work done in
Accenture, I was promoted from an Assistant Software Engineer to a Software
Engineering Analyst. My parents are the greatest source of inspiration for me
since coming from humble background; they have achieved professional and
personal success only through hard work and power of education. If I was
asked to describe myself in two words, those words would be flexible and
non-judgemental. I always invite varied perspectives and respect others
views. Apart from developing a balanced personality, this makes me a well
admired person and an excellent team leader. I love reading fiction as well as
non-fiction books. My favourite author is Jhumpa Lahiri. I like her work
because most of her works talk about struggles of balancing multiple
identities which I find interesting.

MDI Prep Team

Question 2:
Mention 3 strengths. State one instance associated with each.
ADAPTABLE:
I am comfortable with new people, places or situations and quickly adapt
myself to changing circumstances. In college, we, a group of four people,
decided to use JAVA as the technology to develop our product. When we were
very close to the submission date, we realised that the chosen technology
could not serve the purpose for a very critical functionality. Since we were
very close to the deadline, due to this unexpected circumstance, our team
became fragile. In this situation of high stress, everyone started blaming
each other but I kept my cool. I did some research and found that a second
technology DOTNET would be able to do the job. We worked very hard for a
few weeks and re-coded the entire project in DOTNET. Finally our project was
successful.
RATIONAL:
I always base my opinions and decisions on concrete facts and logic. It is my
habit not to believe in pre-conceived notions or hear-say of any kind but to
rather look for proper reasons before taking any decisions. A colleague at
workplace suddenly started taking a lot of workdays as off. On being asked
to explain this behaviour, she always used to change the subject and not
give any concrete reply. My teammates, in absence of credible information,
started judging her and jumped to the conclusion that she has found some
other higher-paying job. Not believing the hearsay and not forming any preconceived notions beforehand, I asked her in private about the reason for
this behaviour. She explained that this was due to his suffering from a
chronic disease and the need for regular treatment. When she recovered, we
were able to collaborate effectively in team assignments and developed a
very good rapport.
STRONG WORK ETHIC:

MDI Prep Team

I believe in labouring diligently for all tasks assigned to me. As soon as I am

required to complete some work, I feel responsible for my job performance
until I complete it to the best of my ability. The summer training after 3 rd year
of engineering was optional in our university. Since I was interning at the
place where my parents worked and our co-ordinator there was a colleague
of both my parents, I could have managed to get a certificate without
working very hard. But I forcefully asked for a project and worked for website
design of the organisation. I worked with utmost dedication, learnt new
technologies like Adobe Dreamweaver in the span of two months for
developing the graphics portion of the website and consequently my work
was very much appreciated.

MDI Prep Team

Question 3:
Mention 3 weaknesses. State how you plan to work on each of those
weaknesses.
OVERTHINKING:
In some situations, I tend to over-think a bit which creates unnecessary
stress in my mind.

In order to overcome this weakness, I have started

making conscious efforts to set short time-limits for decisions so that I can
put things into wider perspective. I try more and more each day to become a
person of action rather than a person of vague fears.
SELF-CRITIC:
Sometimes, I am bit critical of my own work. Though I have always prided
myself on producing excellent and error-free work, which is beneficial to my
job performance, it is possible to sometimes go to extremes. Now, I try to
develop trust in my work and have confidence on the quality of my work.
MORE TIME FOR CRITICAL DECISIONS:
Sometimes, I take more time in taking critical decisions. But in many
situations it has hampered my decision making ability and consequently
slowed my work. Hence, now, I work on it by analysing the pros and cons of
a situation, learning by experience and trusting my instincts for taking swift
decisions.

MDI Prep Team

Question 4:
What are your short term (3-5 years) and long term goals (10-15 years)?
In the next two years, during my stay at MDI, I would like to hone my
interpersonal and communication skills so that I am adept in the skill sets
required of a HR professional. In the next three years, after passing out of
MDI, I would like identify a position in middle management roles where I can
create difference as per my abilities. Apart from gaining as much knowledge
as possible from my seniors and peers, I would also like to polish my
technical skills so that I can do my job effectively.
After gaining relevant experience in various HR roles, I would like to go for
certifications which will help me fine-tune my technique. I would like to
target senior management roles and subsequently roles in higher echelons of
management while developing a particular specialisation.

MDI Prep Team

Question 5:
Give an instance when you stepped in, took charge, mustered support &
influenced the outcome of a project by taking on a leadership role.
During my stint at Accenture, a few days before the go-live of an important
deliverable, an issue was discovered. The owner of the product was out of
station since the delivery date was near the Diwali festival. Due to holidays,
other senior resources were not able to give a lot of time to it. I volunteered
for the task and persuaded some junior resources to join. After I transferred
knowledge about the deliverable and project to others, I worked with them
tirelessly for three days to complete the task before the deadline. Our work
ethic and zeal was appreciated by our senior management.

MDI Prep Team

Question 6:
What has been your greatest achievement? Justify.
My biggest achievement was successfully co-ordinating with the onsite team
i.e. team from Accentures London office during our project. Since I was the
sole resource having the know-how about the tool, OTMM DAM apart from my
manager, I was made the Point-of-Contact (POC) for that team. My
responsibilities included taking regular and scheduled conference calls to
conduct Knowledge Transfer sessions, solving their individual queries, assist
them in making the functional design documents for the project so that they
can be brought upto speed on what has happened in the project so far. I also
changed my shift timimgs so that I could co-ordinate with them. Even though
the team consisted of qualified business analysts, my contribution was much
appreciated by the team and senior management.

MDI Prep Team

Question 7:
What decisions have you most regretted? Why?
My decision to go for coaching for IIT-JEE in class XIth and XIIth which led to
my inability to get into engineering college of my choice is my most
regretted decision. As I was the eldest child, my parents were a bit overzealous in getting inputs for me during classes XIth and XIIth. I was taught
advanced questions in school and I took tuitions every weekday. In addition, I
used to attend coaching institutes on weekends. This meant that I was not
getting any time to assimilate what I was being taught. A backlog of one new
concept compounded hugely and before I knew it, I was lost. The entire
experience has been a big lesson for me since I have understood the
importance of smart-work and strategy apart from hard work. Now, I make it
a point put in extra efforts before a learning session of any kind- I
meticulously prepare for it. I do extensive reading before I go and also follow
up with a revision afterwards. These techniques have stood me in good stead
and with this strategising; I am able to effectively handle such situations
now.

Question 8:
Tell us about a situation when you faced an ethical dilemma and how you
overcame it?
As part of training, I was sent into a different team which had the same work
as us. My manager requested the Team Lead of this team to share the
Functional Design document but this request was refused. My manager then
implored me to download the FD document from Sharepoint- a team sharing
tool, of which a friend of mine from the team had access, without letting
anyone know. I was faced with an ethical dilemma- the document would have
been of immense help to us but taking a confidential document without the
requisite permissions was against ethics. I politely refused citing the reason

MDI Prep Team

that doing so would be against my values. My manager respected my views

and did not press me further.

MDI Prep Team

Question 9:
Why Finance/Marketing/Consulting/HR/Operations/IT? (Answer according to
your first preference of specialization)
Human Resource Management is one of the most challenging, yet one of the
the most important, verticals in any organisation because companies
nowadays are fighting over the most valuable of their resource- workforce
talent. The new age HR function is shifting from managing the monetary
levers of human resourcescompensation, benefits, and other expensesto
increasing the asset value of human capital, as measured by intangibles
such as employee engagement. This makes HR a very exciting field to be in
with new and exciting opportunities every day. As I have a passion for
learning diverse things, I think that this challenging position will offer diverse
exposure, creative thinking and leadership skills, all of which intrigue me. I
also feel that my qualities flexibility, empathy for others, patience further
help me. Thus I am quite confident that these strengths coupled with hard
work and dedicated efforts will develop me into a very competent HR
manager.

MDI Prep Team

Question 10:
What are your key interests? What have you done till now to pursue them?
(Describe instances)
My key interests are:
Reading books: I read fiction as well as non-fiction books. I have read
books of authors like Salman Rushdie, Gabriel Garcia Marquez-both of
them write about magical realism, Jane Austen, a classic author. I love
her books because she finds stories amidst commonest of characters
and situations. Jhumpa Lahiri, an Indian- American author, is my
favourite. Her books often talk about the struggles of balancing
multiple identities for first or second generation Indian immigrants

which I find very interesting.

Working for the cause of child education: I have been involved with
Chetna Welfare Trust, which worked for the cause of education of street
and disabled children. Since I am a computer science engineer, I took
basic computer literacy classes there. We taught very elementary stuff
like input output devices, MSWord, Browser, internet and using Google
to students.