MBA Admission 2023: Read Avi’s XLRI Interview Experience & MBA PI Tips Here!

Avi Shrivastava converted the XLRI admission call for PGDM (BM) admission. He recalls his Interview experience and thoughts after the interview here.

XLRI Interview Experience 2023: Avi Shrivastava secured a 99.58 percentiler in XAT 2023 and 99.91 percentiler in CAT 2022. With his CAT and XAT scores he received PGP/PGDM admission calls from multiple institutes, including FMS, SPJIMR, XLRI, and IIMs including Bangalore, Calcutta, and Kozhikode. As of now, he has converted admission call from XLRI and waiting for selection results of IIMs and FMS.

Currently, Avi is working as an Alliances Manager at Turing. Coming to educational qualifications, Avi completed a Bachelor of Engineering from BITS, Pilani, in 2021. Besides a full-time job, Avi likes creating content on LinkedIn across varied topics, including business model analysis, and deconstructing business decisions.

Also Read: CAT 2022 Topper Interview: Know How Avi Secured 99.91%

XLRI Interview Experience

The selection process for XLRI includes a Personal Interview (PI) round. Avi shares his XLRI Interview experience and his thoughts and tips for Personal Interview here:

Date of XLRI Interview: March 12, 2023

Place of XLRI Interview: Online

Number of Panellists: 5, all male

Duration of Interview: 30-25 minutes

Also Read: Tips to Appear for Virtual GD/PI

XLRI PI Experience: PGDM (BM)

Panellist: How are you doing Avi?

Avi: I was recovering after a brief illness. They asked me if I was comfortable continuing, and I said yes. Had a small laugh about the weather in Delhi. Since this was on March 12th, I mentioned the increasing summer heat, how I had arrived just a few months back, and how the place was.

The environment was not tense at all and seemed like they just wanted to have a casual conversation, so I went with that flow. Tried to go with the flow by answering in an open-ended way rather than typical interview-like answers.

Panellist: Why did you move to Delhi?

Avi: I had to shift to Delhi due to a job switch. I told them about my job switch to Turing (my current employer), from Searce (my former employer). Further explained why and how I had made the switch.

Also Read: MBA PI Questions: How to Answer Why MBA Question? Sample Attached

Panellist: Describe your present work and the work in Searce?

Avi: I explained in very simple terms what I was doing which they preferred. 

Panellist: Why didn’t you use any industry terms? 

Avi: I answered that I generally try to look at a conversation from a listener’s perspective, and jargon makes it difficult to understand.

Panellist: How does one simplify a topic to write on Linkedin?

Avi: This question was in relation to my content creation on Linkedin. They weren’t grilling in the typical sense of the term but were going deep into whatever was being discussed. They just wanted to know how well I knew what I was speaking about.

On the LinkedIn part, there were a lot of back-and-forth questions and arguments about “should one write?”, “How does it help in thinking”, “Is LinkedIn the best platform”, “How should one bring about clarity”, etc.

Panellist: Can complex topics be explained with an understandable and crisp approach?

Avi: My argument here was yes, and I explained using two examples. Then they countered using very solid logic. Since, I couldn’t counter it fully, I mentioned that a part of their logic can be countered but for the other part, it’ll take more understanding from my end, so I cannot answer at the moment. They seemed satisfied with this.

Panellist: Do you want to share something from your end?

Avi: I told them about my Udaan work experience. They asked me detailed questions about my project there, which Mathematics models I used, which functions, why did I use them, what were the alternatives, and how was the grading done.

Panellist: What are your thoughts about the freemium model used by multiple organisations?

Avi: In the context of Udaan, I mentioned that I worked on a freemium model of an app. They then went deep into what a freemium model is. They asked me to give them a few examples of freemium models. Almost all of my answers there were wrong. And they countered by contradicting my logic. I understood that I had a flawed understanding of freemium - so I told them this is what I thought freemium is. Then they explained with an example of Zoom, what freemium is, and what it isn’t. I learned that there and then asked them if chatGPT would then qualify as freemium and they said “Yes! You’ve got it now”.

So this was a real-life, in-interview teaching that I experienced.

Verdict: Convert

Thoughts After XLRI Interview

Post the interview I had a feeling based on the conversation that this would be a convert. There were many instances where I wasn’t able to answer questions, or was contradicted. That’s perfectly okay. Interview panellists don’t expect you to know everything. They should feel that you are willing to learn and have a positive outlook towards learning something new. Interview panellists also analyse how you react under slight pressure. Since I was able to handle that well, I was fine.

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