Students' Speak: Tips to ace your personal interview preparation

By: Abdullah Salman

A Personal Interview-PI may be a conversation during which someone is asked about their background, lifestyle, and experience.

The reason for Personal Interview for the candidate is where the panel evaluates them as to whether they are genuinely interested in doing a Management course and have required potential and skills for excelling in the Management course.

Be thorough with graduation project and work experience as they're mandatorily asked in every interview. Basic questions are going to be asked on the graduation stream also to assess your understanding. Prepare about your UG basics, any work-ex Projects or any achievements.

Few things to be taken seriously into consideration before and during the Personal Interview process for a serious Management aspirant as follows:

1. Do not Bluff, be honest and be simple. Answer Intelligently. It is usually said that “you drive your own interview” and this is often true.
2. You need to form your story fall in line.
3. Apart from that, some interviewees might find yourself asking random abstract questions just to see your presence of mind and thought process. Typically, on an average,, the interview lasts for about 20-30 minutes depending on the panel and candidate’s background.
4. If you don’t know the solution to an issue, it's perfectly fine to simply accept an equivalent, instead of shoot within the dark. Go through at least the latest 3months newspaper for current affairs and also revise your UG basic to standard concepts and topics. Most important thing is to practise a lot of times before appearing for the actual PI.

There a couple of key questions that one MUST prepare for:

1. a) Tell me about yourself: Briefly ask past education, life journey and future plans. It is all about a STORY.

b)Why MBA? : These type of questions don't have any right or wrong answer. Hence answer these type of question by keeping an MBA as a base for your holistic growth and development of your careers either by getting a job or taking the path of entrepreneurship but be clear and confident while answering it.

1. c) Where does one see yourself five years from now: specialise in skills development, increased responsibility while highlighting on your goals as an achievement.
2. d) aside from the above steel oneself against the following:

Personal information: Yourself, family, city, etc.

Education: Scores, favourite subjects, selection of specialization, Future plans after MBA

Extracurricular, Academic Achievements, Co-Curricular Activities, Hobbies, Interest

Work experience, internships, projects, clients and major challenges faced in work and how you overcome it.

Current affairs and your opinion about them

A coaching institute will assist you in each of those rounds if you're new
Good Luck!

About the Author:

Abdullah Salman M. is currently pursuing an MBA in General Management from TSM, Madurai. He has 15 months of work experience as a Network Engineer. He hails from Vellore, Tamil Nadu and has previously completed BE (ECE), from Anna University, Chennai.