1) Acknowledge mistakes

Every leader is going to make mistakes, and in a corporate setup it becomes important to
acknowledge glaring mistakes otherwise one might risk losing trust of fellow employees.
People who fail to humbly accept mistakes don’t retain their leadership positions for very
long.
Delegation
A good leader must be able to maximize the potential of his or her people. It is important to
trust other people’s judgement and give them the freedom to maximize their potential.
From a developmental standpoint, one of the best ways to maximize people’s potential is
through delegating higher-level projects to them. Much of effective delegation comes down
to looking at the skillset you need to get a certain project done, identifying that skillset in
one of your people and then combining the two. Rather than dumping a project on
someone, it should be a cooperative effort.
Be approachable and friendly
It is important for an effective leader to be approachable so that he is aware of what is
happening within the team, expectations of different individuals and to gauge his own
performance.
Serve selflessly
A good leader does have to be selfless. He or she should be a buffer against negativity,
whether it’s between critics and our people or what’s going on in the outside world and
what we’re trying to achieve. As leaders, we’re going to ask a lot out of our people. So, we
need to give some back when they need something.

2) I worked as an interior designer in the research and development division of Maruti Suzuki
India Limited in Gurgaon. As part of this job we got several opportunities to work on new
model development projects. I was handling one of such projects, where I was responsible
for the development of interior parts of a full model change. To give perspective, the
development life cycle of a full model change stretches over a period of 2 years excluding
the concept and design phases of the project. A development involved coming together of
more than 9000 child parts to build an automobile, this needed coordinating with 50
different teams which added a lot of pressure in terms of fulfilling demands and standing
true to expectations other departments.
Everyone has to deal with pressure, both in their personal and professional lives. In the
workplace, this pressure often manifests itself in the form of tight deadlines, demands from
your boss, employee performance issues, and other obstacles that get in the way of you
doing your job.
Apart from handling new development models, we were also looking after existing model
market feedbacks. These tasks comprised of making changes to the design of parts at a short
notice and implementing the change in models which had a volume of over 3 lakhs per
annum. These contributed to the pressure which we had to deal with as part of our job.

3) A good job is comprises of three important things. First, an opportunity to work on

something that you find meaningful and challenging. If your work does not challenge you
then you then your knowledge and skill base would not move forward. Your work must
challenge you intellectually so that you grow professionally. Secondly, there should be
autonomy in how you do your work. The superiors should not interrupt or intrude in
working methods of other employees unnecessarily. This creates a healthy work
environment and motivates you to come to work every day. Thirdly, there should be a
 certain level of healthy correlation between effort and reward. Incentives motivate people
to outperform each other, this builds an environment of healthy competition and
performance. Another motivation for a good job is an environment where seniors are willing
to accept mistakes. When mistakes are not accepted or are reprimanded, it creates a hostile
environment which demotivates people from being able to do effective work and stay
motivated for long. I am motivated by deadlines and work well with a clear timeline in place.
Meeting a deadline helps me feel like I have accomplished a goal and keeps me more
motivated to continue to exceed expectations. Having seniors that help in guiding colleagues
on hoe to accomplish tasks also motivates in difficult work environments. People want clear
expectations that provide a picture of the outcomes desired with goal setting and feedback.

4) An ideal company for me would be one which provides me with ample opportunities to
learn and grow. One where I can use my skill set gained during my education to push the
business forward and aligns with my previous work experience in the automobile sector. A
company which is willing to take up challenging projects, lays focus on teamwork and utilizes
the synergy of individual abilities to produce a result greater than the sum of its parts. In the
ever-changing world driven by technological advances it is important to keep updating your
skills, a firm must have training and upskilling initiatives a part of its culture. While I am
comfortable working close to where I live, I am open to consider other parts of the country
given the right opportunity. I am early enough in my career to be mobile and flexible in
terms of what work location I will choose. The work itself is what is more important for me. I
like working in jobs which involve studying external processes, looking for points of
inefficiencies and proposing methods to improve the way things are being done. In terms of
job content, I’m interested in roles that involve conceptualizing and designing strategies and
processes, I’ve been interested in doing such things ever since my graduation.

5) As part of my under graduation, I did my internship with Larsen and Toubro, there I worked
under the project management group. I was responsible for controlling quality parameters
in the assembly of major components of a nuclear plant. The quality control activities were
to be done intermittently during the assembly process. I was leading a team of 6 fabricators
to successfully complete the assembly process within the deadline. The fabricators were
much older and more experienced than me, it was a huge challenge for me because often I
had to direct them to do certain tasks on priority basis when they were engaged in some
other task. Along with that, I had to keep them motivated during times of inactivity as the
quality checks were to be performed intermittently. To keep them grouped together as a
team while at the same time being conscious about and pushing them about meeting the
schedule was something that I learnt gradually. Often, I also had to reprimand them for not
recording quality parameters as per the defined standards. As part of this on job training, I
learnt a lot about man power management.

6) During my under graduation, I was very fond of developing an interdisciplinary profile.

Although my undergraduate college didn’t offer cross disciplinary electives, I often found
myself talking to my friends in other departments about their projects and concepts. To
work upon my desire of developing an inter disciplinary profile, I enrolled in several online
 courses that spanned many disciplines of engineering. Apart from that I was heavily
occupied with extracurricular activities in my college. I was member of multiple clubs which
organized events throughout the year. By the end of my under graduation I was not able to
complete any of the courses I had enrolled for, largely due to the fact that I had enrolled in
so many of them. I believe I should have prioritized on my choice of courses and focused
only on a few of them. This experience taught me about the importance of task
management and planning to accomplish long term goals. If I had chalked out a day by day
plan proactively and laid down a path to walk upon, I believe I would have accomplished
much more than blindly shooting in the dark.

7) I can handle highly impactful projects effectively. I have a work experience of 2 years with
Maruti Suzuki in their Research and Development vertical. I also have interned for one
semester during my under graduation at Larsen and Toubro’s Heavy Engineering Division. As
part of my responsibilities at Larsen and Toubro, I was responsible for managing and carrying
out quality control activities for assembly of major components of a nuclear power plant.
This responsibility demanded a high degree of attention to details and minor deviations. As
part of my two years stint at Maruti Suzuki, I led the development of interior parts of a full
model change project the projected volumes for this model were more than 90,000 per
annum. I exclusively was responsible for development of tool worth over 10 crores. I believe
I am a good team player, I have played football at various levels. I have represented my
district zone and won 1st position in two seasons. I believe sports are a good platform where
team skills of a person are significantly tested.

8) During my under graduation, my team was the national qualifier in a business plan
competition. We were confident about our idea and the overall concept. As part of the
national round we were supposed to pitch our idea in front of top management of ICICI
Bank. We were given one month to prepare for the presentation. We were a team of 3 and
got on to the job from day one. We worked really hard on this project and did in depth
research to polish our idea into a comprehensive business plan. As part of the final round, 12
teams from campuses around the country were invited to ICICI headquarters in Mumbai.
Post our final presentation we were confident about our performance. Soon the results
were declared and we had to our utter disappointment failed to qualify for further rounds.
Upon analyzing why we had failed to make the cut, I understood that although we were very
confident about ourselves, we had failed to reach out to a third person and seek his opinion.
I think at some level we had failed to gauge the competition. We should have asked our
seniors to review our presentation and include their feedbacks. It is very important to get
your work reviewed from a neutral observer.

9) The toughest decision that I have ever made is to opt for higher education. I had a great
interest in pursuing a post-graduation but I was also very comfortable with my job. The
decision was tough because I could not convince myself that whether I was ready in terms of
my knowledge and maturity. I was working as a design engineer at Maruti Suzuki and took
opinions from my seniors. I also seeked opinions from people who had been in similar
situations. There was a certain amount of risk involved in the decision, because the course
demanded a high monetary investment. Upon taking opinions and collecting ample amount
of data from various sources I still could not come to a certain conclusion. I realized that m y
bias towards my current situation was influencing my decision at certain level. In the end I
 opted for a Masters in Business Administration, because I felt I had become complacent with
my current state of affairs, it was hurting my personal growth. Higher education seemed
challenging. It presented uncertainties but also ample opportunities.

10) Yes, I have an inclination towards opening up a business in the alternative energy space.
India is one of the countries with the largest production of energy from renewable sources. I
believe that there is a huge potential if we can tap into renewable sources of energy for
making a significant impact in order to meet the energy demands. The field is competitive
but the key lies in innovating new technologies. To design a technically feasible and
commercially viable business model around such a solution. I have participated in ICICI
Trinity where we were the national qualifiers in innovating sustainable green solutions for
the banking sector. I also won as campus finalist in Scheider Electric Green Energy challenge
where I proposed a technically feasible green solution to tap into heat energy dispated by
electric bulbs. I am also ISEED Youth Idea Champion, where I pitched an idea which revolved
around making ATM machines more efficient.