New Participants’ Assessment Document (NPAD): PGP 2019 - 21

The following set of questions are an important part of the evaluation of the incoming batch for a
number of campus activities such as the suitability of applicants for various positions in the Institute
such as clubs and committees. Similar questions are also an integral part of ‘Summer Placement
Selection Criteria’ across various companies and are important from a preparation perspective.

Since all the questions pertain to your personality and ask for examples from your own experiences,
we do not see any reason for you to copy the answers from anywhere. It is suggested that you
conduct a thorough self-assessment on 3 P’s – Your Past, Potential, and Priorities, which would be
helpful in answering the questions. Plagiarism of any form will be subjected to the most severe
consequences.

Please make deliberate efforts to answer the questions keeping in mind the following parameters:
• Intent of the question - An understanding of what is being tested in the question
• Clarity of thought - Ambiguous statements or contradicting yourself over the course of the
document should be avoided
• Structural flow and comprehensiveness – Adopt best practices to maintain a structure and
logical flow
• Written language - Grammar errors, typos are to be avoided, use language which you can
reproduce later, remember that it is not creating writing
• Substantiation – Use suitable examples when asked
• Word limit – The answers should not be less than 90% of the word limit specified. For
questions without the word limits, you shall clearly present your ideas without any upper limit
on words used.
 Please make an effort to utilize your discretion before approaching for clarification on any question(s).
Participants with work-experience are expected to preferably give examples for the same. However, in
case of lack of such instances, suitable examples from academic/extracurricular/personal situations
may be included.

It goes without saying that these questions form an integral part of the placement pre-processes and
failure to complete the form will be taken up seriously in the college placement and committee
selection process.
Please note that for the benefit of the participants, variants of the same questions have been added
so that they can be answered along similar lines. However, if someone feels that the variants can
have different answers, they are free to answer it separately. However please make sure that the
answers are numbered correctly.

Please ensure that your answers are formatted as Calibri Font (Size 11), single line spacing.

All the best!

Self-Assessment

• Please describe yourself as a person. What are your strengths and areas of improvement (at
least 3 each)? Cite situations to exemplify each. (WL: 600 words)
(Note: It is expected that strengths are substantiated by examples and have had helped you in
past. Weaknesses should be written in a positive light, possibly with remedial action. The
assessor wants to know your managerial qualities through these traits, not nuptial suitability)
Answer- I am an ambivert person and I love to make friends. Sometimes I handle the situations where
calmness is needed. I am calm person and can work according to the situations. My biggest strength is I
am good in having information regarding the things happening around the world. I love to have
knowledge of current affairs. I am a cricket enthusiast and football lover. I have strengths like I can
perform beautifully in a team as I have been in various team sports like cricket, football and
counterstrike. I have strong convincing power with which I can convince people easily with some
explanations. My biggest weakness is I am too emotional regarding my surroundings which means
sometimes I get too much attached to some things. This trait of mine sometimes acts as good and
sometimes bad for me. I have worked hard to protect things which were too much attached to me. Due
to this trait only I have worked out of my comfort zone. I think this weakness of mine has helped me to
bring my best in difficult situations. My weakness is that I am not able to present myself the way I want.
But I have improved alot in last four years during my graduation times. I have improved alot in past few
years as I have seen changes in my approaches towards the group activities which I initially used to
avoid.

• What is your single largest achievement so far? Why do you consider it to be your biggest
achievement? What is your biggest failure to date and why? (WL: 500 words)
Or
Please describe a situation where, despite the highest level of efforts from you, the outcome
was far from satisfactory. What did you learn from this situation? (WL: 300 words) (Note: the
latter half of the first question can be rephrased in this manner as well)
Answer - When I got admission in engineering college there was no facilities for football. I noticed this
thing and discussed to my seniors about the problem. The response from seniors was not good about
the sporting culture of college. The reason for this situation was less batch strength. I convinced some of
my seniors and batch mates to talk to college administration. College administration heard our problems
and they were willing to help us and they provided us the infrastructure like ground and electricity but
main kits and sports equipments were not provided. We went to get some sponsorship and we
managed to get some sponsorship. We managed the equipments and kits from the sponsorship
amounts. Now we had the problem of sporting culture which was absent in our college students. It took
two years to train the college football team and we went to various tournaments and we played well. I
think we played well as comparison to others team because we had lack of infrastructure and interest
towards sports. But year by year it is becoming good and college football team has started winning
tournaments now. My biggest failure was to not able to get admission in any IIT because I prepared very
hard for the entrance exam and in last one month I lost my track and ruined my JEE Mains and Advance.
But now I have move on as I have realized that IIT was not everything .

• Illustrate your ability to build and maintain collaborative relationships (with an example)
between you and the people with whom you have to deal with. (WL: 450 Words)
(Hint: Highlight the aim and difficulties you faced during the process and how you used your
team's ability to get the best results)
Answer - I have good convincing powers and I discuss things with some good facts and figures. In my
first year of engineering I saw there was no facilities for sports like football. So I went to meet the
college director with my seniors and batch mates to provide us the sports facility and sports committee.
College administration was looking in no mood to provide us those facilities but pressure from our
continous meetings and talks changed their attitude towards the sports facility. I think we should keep
on trying to make things happen sometime it takes some time but at the end of tge day we will succeed.
Our team had students from all the years and branches and some of them were meritorious students
and because of them we had an advantage. We made them understand the usefulness of sports in
building the characters of students and we made them understand that the studies gets affected by not
participating in sports activities.

• What type of team members do you dislike working with? (WL:250 words) (Hint: While
describing the team members, you need to highlight your thought process which lead to the
dislike. Also. try to mention how would you keep up with these team members)
Answer - I dislike working with members who does all the talking but practically they do not perform the
alloted task. The members who just speaks and does not performs are the one whom I dislikes the most.
Things which I do not like about them is if they will not be able to perform the task then they should not
accept the responsibility to perform the task as it affects the result of whole team. Sometimes team
members who are not able to perform as per their potentials are also irritating. But those team
members are bearable as they can perform according to their potential after giving some confidence. I
have been part of the teams which has team members like this and I have worked succesfully with them
because they were continuously motivated by me to perform their task as per the teams requirement.
For the team members who just speaks and does not performs well I make sure that they are given
proper training to make them understand the tasks in which they excells.

• Describe a situation where you had to make an important decision within constraints. How did it
turn out?
Or
Describe a situation where you made a split-second decision. (WL: 250 Words)
Answer - I have not faced such situations where I had to make decisions in split seconds. But as a
football player I have habit of using my reflexes in a matter of seconds and in the team sports we have
full responsibility of our team. In team sports our actions decides the fate of whole team so it makes us
more responsible. I had made some bad decisions which has costed us whole match.

• What are your professional goals? Please elaborate in three separate categories: Short-term (2-
3 years), Medium-term (5-6 years) and Long-term (ultimate objective). (WL: 500)

• On a scale of 1 to 10 how organized, creative and responsible would you rate yourself to be?
Answer separately for each quality and substantiate with examples. (WL:200 each)
Answer - I will give myself 8 out of 10 in organized category as I have spent my last four years in hostel
away from my home. Before coming to hostels I had the habit of organizing every little things
related to my daily life.

• What are the three most important values that guide your thoughts and actions and why? (WL:
300 Words)

• Who is your idol in life and why? Identify one of his/her weaknesses and elaborate. (WL:250
Words)

• What are your hobbies, interests and the extra-curricular activities you engage in? How do you
intend to pursue them during your MBA and in the future? (WL: 400 Words)

• A) Which industry fascinates you the most as a career option after MBA? Why?
B) Which domain fascinates you and why?
Refer to primers for info about domains.
(WL: 450 Words)
Note: Domain refers to the different functions of a business. For example, Marketing, Finance,
Operations, IT, Consulting, HR.
The industry is a classification that refers to groups of companies that are related based on
their primary business activities. For example, Energy, Metals/Mining, Pharmaceuticals,
IT/Computer Services, Financial Services/Banking, Electronics, Fast Moving Consumer Goods,
Media/Entertainment & Arts.
 • How does your current educational qualification and skill set qualify you for it (the
domain/industry you chose)? How would an MBA help you with this? (WL: 600)

Or

How does an MBA fit into your scheme of things right now? What new skills do you intend to
acquire?

Visualizations and Decisions Making (For Q13-Q14: WL 250 words)

• Describe (up to) two incidents that have had a deep impact in your life and brought about a
significant change in you? (Hint: Try to highlight your learnings or managerial traits even if your
answer involves a personal story)

• Describe two situations when you faced a moral conflict and had to choose between two
seemingly right alternatives. How did you resolve them and what were the repercussions, if
any?
Or
Describe a situation where you had to make a choice between two equally important
obligations. How did you decide which obligation deserved your attention?

Demonstrated Acts of Competence

• When was the last time you got into a major argument with friends/colleagues? What
happened? What was the issue and how did your point of views differ? How were things
resolved? What is the situation like now? (WL: 400 words)
Or
 How did you handle a situation where you had difficulty with a co-worker/teammate? (Note: It
can be asked in conjunction with Question 4)
Or
What would you do if you see two co-workers/teammates fighting?

• Describe a situation in which you effectively developed a solution to a problem by combining

different perspectives or approaches. (WL:350 words)
Or
How do you handle situations where you have to deal with people who disagree with your
beliefs/points of view? Describe an instance where you had to convince a group of people on
your point of view.
Or
Give an example of a time when you were not happy with the way things were being conducted.
What did you do about it?

• Share the details of one of your key projects, major learning from the project, recommendations
made, and recommendations accepted and implemented as well as those not implemented.
(WL: 400 words) (Explain in non-technical terms)

• Have you been a member of any organization? (Yes/No). If yes, please detail your position and
accomplishments in the organization. What was the key purpose behind your decision to be
associated with this entity?
Or
Briefly describe your position and nature of work in your last job. (WL: 500 words)

• Describe a challenging project or a seemingly impossible task which you have undertaken. How
did you go about it and what was the outcome? (WL: 300 words) (This is to test how you
address work issues. Instead of highlighting the issue itself, focus on how you tackled it)

• Give two examples of how you have demonstrated leadership and inspired people towards the
achievement of certain goals. (WL: 400 words) (Describe how you took initiative to assume a
 position of leadership and led a team towards a collective goal and how you overcame challenges
while doing the same)
Or
Tell me about a time when you influenced other people and why.

Questions worth pondering on (no word limit)

• How would you rate your last boss on a scale of 1-10? Give reasons
• Tell us something about yourself which is not written in your resume. (The interviewer is trying
to understand you as a person and how well you know yourself. Do not repeat the points in the
resume in a different manner)
• How do you respond to criticism in general? Tell us about a time when you responded to
constructive criticism.
• What do you do if someone at your workplace is being a disturbance or cause of irritation?
• Suppose you don't agree with what your boss is asking of you, what will you do? (The ultimate
autonomy lies with your boss but getting your opinions heard without offending anyone is a skill
that recruiters look for)