Arundhoti Nayak

PrePlacement Preparation, Procter n Gamble, Round 1, Round 2, Round 3, General Fundae

Profile at a Glance

Pre-Placement Preparation

• Practiced aptitude daily from Indiabix
• Placement Aptitude Test (pariksha.com), from here I got to know what are my weak topics and practiced accordingly.
• Core preparation from the material shared by Department Placement Coordinator
• MOST IMP FOR PnG: “64 HR INTERVIEW QUESTIONS”
• Read a book: “How to make friends and influence people“

The last 2 bullet points were the most important for my PnG prep. From 64 HR interview question I prepared/ discussed the first 45 questions, from here I got to know how to frame my answers (keep some loopholes in your answers from where they can ask the next question.)
Since I was sure where I want to work in I filled only 14 Jafs and PnG as my only Day 1 company (its okay to fill less jafs, don’t get intimidated by your friends filling 30+ jafs). Do your research well on the companies.

Procter n Gamble

Round 1

The interviewer gave a brief intro about himself.

1. Tell me about yourself.
2. What does your father do?
3. In which places have you stayed during your father’s transferable job? What is your hometown?
4. Proudest moment of your life.
5. Tell us about a situation where you had to present something in front of a panel (the question was something related to it). They wanted to know where I have defended myself before.
6. Tell us about a situation where u have saved significant amount of resources (human, money and time). Told them about my 2nd year in IIT Bombay Racing where we designed BMS (in house) saving 1 lac and got it done in a couple of months. completely technical
   a. What is a BMS?
   b. What exactly does it do?
   c. What is passive balancing? Why does the measuring temperature of cells help?
   d. What is the definition of power density?
   e. Why don’t you use high power density cells?
   f. What is iso-spi communication? Why do you use it instead of can?
   g. What is spi communication?
   h. How the BMS data does exactly helps? Can the driver manipulate anything in the BMS from the dashboard?
   i. How do you calculate the total energy required by the battery?
   j. How do you cool you battery? What are the total number of cells
7. Explain a very difficult situation and how did you overcome it. explained an incident from racing
   a. What are the types of motors?
   b. Is it two wheel drive?
8. How do you ensure knowledge transfer in your team?
9. Explain a decision in which everyone wasn’t on board, how did you explain others and bring everyone on board.
10. Tell us about a situation where you had very limited resources with a time limitation. How did you overcome it?
    There were 2 situational questions among which I remember only 1.
11. How would you prioritize 4 projects whose submission deadline are as follows: next day, a week after, a month after, a year after respectively.
    The interview ended with me asking him what exactly does his job description is, just to gain an insight and to end it on a good note.

Round 2

Interview started with a brief introduction of both of them. They gave disclaimer that they will be taking down notes on my answers and I shouldn’t be bothered about it.

Tell me about yourself.

Explain us about the summer internship project
a. How was it impactful?
b. How did you base your data from? Is this the only way to get your results? How did you validate your results?
c. What is the innovation you did?

Explain about your current position of responsibility- core team member, IIT Bombay Racing.
a. How did you inspire your team members after the disaster in dynamic events in UK this year?
b. Why do you think people should be there in team, what is in their minds to stay in the team

1. What is one of the situations in which you have taken a lead, and how did you overcome the situation?
2. Tell us about a very difficult decision
3. Tell us a difficult phase in your life, when no one was standing with you. How did you face it, what did you learn from it?

Now starts the situational questions. They told me now we are starting the situational questions, we want to study your behaviour, your body language, how you react in the situation and your thinking process.

1. Given you join in PnG in a managerial position, there are 15 employees working in the company for past 5 years, there is a reform in the company’s rule, 5 of them are neutral, 5 of them optimistic, and 5 of them pessimistic about it. The 5 of them who are pessimistic are working at the end of the manufacturing line (i.e. if they don’t work no product gets delivered). How do you convince them?
2. Suppose you work in a group of 2. Your co-employee is always behind your tail, disagreeing with you always. Now one fine day she started shouting on you in the cafeteria because you forgot to give her some update on something. How do you deal with the situation?
   a. Will you be able to keep your calm?

Then the interviewers wanted to know if I had any questions for them so I asked again from both of them what their scope of work is. Each of them explained their work in jest. But interviewer 2 wanted to know why I asked them these question so I mumbled that oh my god that’s a lot of work. They laughed at this comment and we started talking about general life. The interview ended on a good tone.

Round 3

Again started with brief introduction and tell me about yourself

1. Proudest moment of my life.
2. Do you want to be in manufacturing or supply chain
3. Will you do an MBA in future?
   It was a general discussion about my likes and dislikes.

General Fundae

• Have a chewing gum before you enter the interview, it eases your mind.
• Sit upright, back’s straight (practice it if necessary)
• Don’t cross leg (an extremely defensive position)
• Don’t lock your hands (again extremely defensive position)
• It’s okay if you stammer a bit, but rectify it and consciously keep in mind not to do it again.
• Be patient, don’t show a slightest amount of annoyance on your face though however pissed off you are at inside
• Try to say limited and important things, mention the points you want them to know, keep the ball on your side of the table. Maintain eye contact with your interviewers.
• Be confident, don’t be afraid, smile a lot, you can even crack jokes if you want. Take your time to answer the questions.
• Last don’t follow any of the above and do the way it naturally comes to you. In the last minutes whatever others say doesn’t matter a lot.

Philosophy

Think consciously about what you like and what you don’t like. A bit of soul searching never hurts anyone.
For me I was very sure that I want to work in either supply chain/core companies, and don’t want to do my Masters/PhD right now.
Talk to your friends/ seniors whom you trust, and limit those number of people whom you turn to for suggestions, because too many suggestions can be confusing!