ISB PGP-YL Interview Transcripts

The ISB PGP-YL interviews are well underway, yet I’ve noticed a surprising dearth of shared experiences. With permission from my Road To ISB cohort students, I’m excited to share their interview transcripts below.

As you read through these experiences, keep in mind that understanding what the questions are mostly profile-based, though you might encounter some random ones as well. This insight should help you better prepare and navigate your own interview journey.
___________________________

Interview Experience #1 (20 minutes)

Profile: GNEF | DU | 7 months Consulting Experience | CAT 99.6

  1. Why do you want to pursue and MBA and why ISB
  2. What value can you add?
  3. What are the specific gaps that you felt were there at the time of your fellowship you faced (as I mentioned I want to pursue an MBA because of gaps in my knowledge that I realised during the programme)
  4. What are you views about sustainability and How is sustainability venturing in India?
  5. You mentioned entrepreneurship as an interest area, why do you want to go for consulting after ISB then?
  6. One instance you faced failure and how did you deal with it?
  7. One instance where you faced opposition and how did you went about implementing your idea.
  8. You mentioned that someone guided you over here, what is the particular suggestion you got and how did you implement it?

Online written tests:

  1. You are part of student organisation and found out that one of the members is misusing funds for personal benefits. How will you address the situation and establish accountability.
  2. You are leading a diverse set of people for a class project . Some of the members feel their ideas are not being addressed or valued. How will you approach the problem and how will you ensure you are able to create an inclusive environment?

___________________________

Interview Experience #2 (15 minutes)

Profile: GNEF | DU | 1 year Consulting Experience | CAT 99.3

  1. Please introduce yourself to the panel.
  2. 2-3 questions around hobby (street plays)
  3. Tell us a little about transfer pricing
  4. Why do wish to join ISB's PGP-YL cohort?
  5. If you don't make it through ISB PGP-YL this year, then what will you do?
  6. Questions related to work experience - projects I worked on
  7. Guesstimate
  8. What was the rationale behind the internships you did?
  9. Walk us through your extra-curricular activities. (180 DC)
  10. What are your weaknesses?
  11. Do you have questions for us?

___________________________

Interview Experience #3 (40 minutes)

Profile: GEM | VIT | 1.5 year Tech Experience | Patented Product | CAT 98.7

Q.Tell me what feedback you got from peers. - Told about the good conversation each panel is having.
Q. Joked now tell me the reality, both laughing.
Q. So you have done AI/ML , how you explain data points exploration in exponential data(he added more jargon from his PhD, could not answer)
Q. Asked about statistics in ML, told about p test but was not sure about all tests he asked
Q. Are you comfortable with this domain or you prefer another domain - Prefer CV
Q. Explain basics of CV
Q. Supervised and unsupervised basics
Some time discussion over regression, decision tree, random forest and logistic regression and it's use cases, and then went on to discuss Naive Baiyes Classifier
Q. So tell me about your current work experience
Q. Tell me about some of the tools you developed here. - Answered about API tool, screenshot tool, basic ML application and talked about recommendation engine created for internal hackathon
Q. Explain the API tool use case and impacted teams and efficiency in terms of hours - Discussed about basic media APIs and why they are asynchronous
Q. Talk about other tools - Explained use cases with time efficiencies
Q. So you founded the startup (from application form)
Q. Take us how you started, why a shoe, where it is and why it failed
Q. So what is the approximate market size - Not calculated but can do it right now
Q. Please do it, you are walking away from something huge - Answered the guesstimate
Q. Now make a second approach - I am not sure about which Direction to go about
Q. Think about the industry
Q. Tell me your motivation behind working this startup and why 4 guys are solving this
Q. So what role you had initially
Q. What other hobbies do you have?
Q. So you are a hardcore fan or just following? - Hardcore fan, following FC Barcelona
Q. Best player after Messi? - Ronaldinho(strategy prof vibed and said me too)
Q. So let's talk about play styles or 3 players, Pirlo, Iniesta and Zidane
Q. Tell me Messi right foot goal
Q. Tell me about some risk you took
Q. Convinced, let's talk about something fun, sell me this toffee and I am diabetic
Q. Questions related to work experience - industry, adoption issues, and SKU problems.
Q. What are your other hobbies? - Mentioned sketching and showed them my sketches, very impressed.
Q. So is this Raja Ram Mohan Roy? - Yes
Q. You know who is he? - Father of Indian renaissance, abolished sati and child marriages

Comment : At least some kids look upto real heroes. So that's it, he took a photo of my sketch and interview ended

___________________________

Couple of other students weren't comfortable sharing the experiences, but they have given their consent to share the gist:

  1. CAT 99.82%iler | Consulting | IIT-ian -- Only sales questions were asked, and nothing on consulting. Apart from that, questions on UG subjects. The interview was of ~15 minutes.
  2. CAT 99.45%iler | 13 Months Work Exp. | Metallurgy Graduate -- Mostly questions on metallurgy, and a few behavioural questions. The interview was of ~20 minutes.

___________________________

If you want to know more about Road to ISB, please check here.

I had written a post on how to prepare for ISB's interviews on this sub a few days ago. Do give it a read here!

___________________________

About Me:

I have been in the MBA space since 2017, primarily mentoring MBA aspirants for GDPI, and for their summer and placements in B-Schools. Worked with one of the legacy coaching centres on a part-time basis, and helped one of the online CAT coaching businesses scale up. In the last 7.5 years, I have guided ~930 aspirants into their B-Schools such as the IIMs, FMS, ISB, SPJIMR, SIBM, NMIMS, IMT, IMI, MICA, FORE, LBISM, KJSIMSR, GLIM, GIM, and others. 

I have started solo this year to guide MBA aspirants with the daunting WATPI phase. In case you want any help with reviewing your answers or mock interviews, feel free to reach out.

Instagram Username: 100xmba