Interview Techniques

Interview Techniques

Some typical questions asked  at an interview

1.    Tell me something about yourself or your personal life or your family background?

2.    What are your strengths and weaknesses?

3.    Why do you want to leave your present job?

4.    Why have you chosen this line/field?

5.    What are your salary expectations?

6.    Are you willing to be transferred out of this city?

7.    What are your hobbies? How do you spend your free time?

8.    In what way will you be an asset to this company? or why do you consider yourself suitable for this job?

9.    This job is not a good job? Why do you want to take up this job?

What do the Interviewers look for in a candidate?

1.    Personality Projection

2.    Knowledge / Intelligence

3.    Education and Experience

4.    Communication Skills

5.    Past Achievements.

6.    Personal Qualities

Interview Session

The objective of interview:

a     To evaluate whether the interviewe is fit or suitable for the particular job.

Relevance of interview in a social environment

a     A social conversation with a new acquaintance or someone senior (friend’s father, father’s friend, etc.) is similar to an intrvie

Importance of grooming in an interview.

a      The interview is conducted in a short duration (Ranging from 15 -20 minutes for a junior position to a few hours for a senior position).

b      The interviewee has to make the most of the time available and use every opportunity to score points over his competi tors.

c      The first opportunity to make an impression is your groom- ing.

d      It makes the interviews comfortable and adds to his confi— dence.

e      The interviewer also uses every action of the interviewee and extrapolates them to real life situations.

f        e.g. The interviewer looks at the candidate and tells him self.

i       This is how he will represent us (Will I proud to say he is our employee)

ii      This is how he cares about himself, he can’t care better for us.

e.g. If the candidate is well dressed - “He cares for his self image and therefore

will be concerned about corporate images also.”

e.g. If the candidate is not well dressed - “His job will be shabby or his sales pitch

will be mediocre or his pack aging ofjob will never be Perfect.

Suggestions for good grooming

Men

a     White shirts (Opaque), only exception (Corporate blue shirt)

b     No designs, no prints, should be 100% plain

c      Dark Trousers

d     Sock hould be dark and match with trousers so that they don’t stick out

e     Please do a research about the dress culture of the organiza tion along with other research.

1.    Formal organization (like Citibank, ANZ Grindlays, P&G, HLL, etc Senior position -. Wear your suit or blazer

2.    Difference betw suit and blazer

3.    Formal organisation: not so senior position - Wear a good tie

f       Good Tie

1.    Should be broad

2.    Sober colour (Magenta or red, blue, could match with one’s trouser)

3.    Neat knot

4.    Should cover your belt

g     Other organizations (Even if you are sure that your inter viewer doesn’t wear a tie). It is preferable and advisable to wear a tie and create a good first impression.

Women

h      Good sober punjabi dress

i       A pleasant coloured plain sari

j       Women can also wear a blazer over a white shirt with chinese collar (round) along with trousers.

Questions Asked

a     Can be placed in three categories

(i)    Opening questipns

(ii)  Technical questions

(iii) Closing questions

Objective to each category of questions

a     Opening Questions

(i)    Make the interviewee comfortable

(ii)  Find out the candidate’s career plans

(iii) Examine the interviewee’s clarity in thinking

b     Technical Questions

(i)    To evaluate the candidate’s skill and compare it with the skills required for the job.

(ii)  The interviewer recognizes that nobody can know eve rything required for a particular job, so the approach to the job is very important.

c      Closing Questions

(i)    Wants to take a view on how the candidate will fit with the organization culture.

(ii)  Find out the candidate’s attitude towards work / people

(iii) The bottom line, i.e. How much will it cost him to em ploy the interviewee?

What’s the candidate’s negotiating power?

Opening Questions

a     Remembering that the interviewee just wants to know from the candidate his plan and he won’t lead the conversation. He will only ask questions initially to fill the gap.

b     His first questions could be: Tell me something about your self?

(i)    Give an opportunity to direct the conversation.

(ii)  Henceforth the questions will be now more on the topic emphasized by the interviewee.

(iii) E.G. I have accomplithed a Diploma in Engineering and now I have decided to make a career in Industry. I look forward toworking with L&T.

c      So the interviewee’s next que Why do yo want to work with us is partly answered. Now his next questions is Why do you want to join L&T?

d     The answer has to be very concise, direct, logical and con clude ensuring the next questions is.

(i)    Why do you want to change yourjob and ensure that the same question is partly answered.

e     L&T is one of the largest Industry in the country (if asked the candidate should be able to provide quantitiative details i.e. 15 branches, turnover of Rs 50,000 crores). It set up the first Engineering Company in India. It has variety of prod uct manufacturing & number of divisions. It has various fields of operations like I.T., Construction, Heavy Engineer ing, etc.

f       Never highlight the Money Factor

(i)    Money is not a taboo, but most of the time it is obvious.

(ii)  The inteiviewer doesn’t want to know your obvious need now. First the candidate had to establish a need for the interviewer to employ you.

(iii) Once that is done your remuneration package becomes important to him.

(iv) Normally this would come at the end of the interview, When eventually the question is raised, the interviewee has to be clear about his negotiating range.

g     Why do you want to change your job?

(i)    The candidate has to ensure that his answer is construc tive, positive, directed towards his career goal and shouldn’t be negative about his previous job.

(ii)  Common stories about the present job: My present job has been a terrific experience & a good stepping stone (if your present job was not a good learning, how would you be of any advantage to him) but now it is limited in terms of opportunity for economic growth and self de velopment also. e.g. Small scale Industry

(iii) Being a small scale industry production is limited, and so there is no product innovations. I like to be on the forefront of change & innovations. My creativity and ideas need to be absorbed etc. All of which is not pos sible in a Small Scale industry.

(iv) Never speak about inter-personal problems with col leagues. Do not reveal your hatred for your boss.

(v)   There are always genuine shortcomings in each and every organisation, state them as your reason for change.

(vi) Avoid making statements like, “We don’t have any work...” or “I have wasted my time at....”

h      What are your achievements in the current job?

(i)    e.g. I achieved a production of Rs. #### against a target of Rs. f I/fi

(ii)  e.g. I changed the system to accomplish the quality con trol & increases the productivity in the last year.

(i)    What are your Strengths & Weaknesses? Strengths

(i)    Good at persuading

(ii)  Good with Numerical Work

(iii) Good Computer Literacy-

(iv) Easy to talk to / Friendly personality

(v)   Time management: the most valuable use of your time.

Weaknesses

(vi) Can’t think of anything right now.

(vii)    if the interviewer persists, admit that you are not perfect, but you can’t think of one right now.

j. Where do you see yourself five years from now?

Technical Questions:

a. take your time to answer (Think and Answer)

b. ask for a Scribble pad and scribble if necessary

c. What skills do you bring to our organisation? How can you be an asset to our company?

d. Talk about the approach to the situation if you do not have

an exact answer

i. c.g. Q. Cost of launching a new product

ii. Ans: Rs. 10-15 lakhs minimum to a few crores

iii. Identif the elements of cost

(1) Direct advertising cost

(TV, Radio, Newspapers, Hoarding, etc.)

(2) Sales promotion (Brochures for Distribution Network, Free Samples for distribution net

work)

(3; Event Marketing (Sponsoring event, Free Schemes for target)

iv. when the candidate exhibits his approach and thought process, his end result becomes irrelevant. His estimate could be totally wrong and yet he can get the job.

v. E. 2. Which Quality control syGtem would you rec ommend?

vi. E.g. 3. Research analyst’s job (to expand).

c. Give elaborate answers and touch as many issues as possi ble briefly

i. to show awareness (talk about other firms, talk about your earlier experiences, your contacts)

ii. to lead the conversation

f. The interviewer is trying to find what the candidate knows and he recognizes that the candidate Can’t know everything.

g. If you do not have any clue to a particular question, please admit. Regardless of anything the interviewee’s answer

should sound positive .e.g. “I’m sorry, I need to learn this / I am planning to read about this. Philip Kotler has dealt with this in his book. I will definitely read the book”.

Closing Questions

a. What do you do on ‘week ends? (wants to know your atti tudes)

i. if there is no work, I go to the sports club to play Tennis.

ii. Leading question: Oh! You work on week ends.

iiii. Yes if necessary. I am basically a workaholic (use this term every one wants to hear it)

b. Q. Are you a team player or an individual player

A. Say you are extremely people oriented. Should demon strate how you ensure team spirit. E.g. Delegation, Trust, Social Habits & Attitudes, etc.

c. Where do you see yourself in future? (this question could come in the first part after why do you want to change).

A. The General Manager (Engg. Industry) in 10 years or the CEO in 20 years.

d. What is your current package ? What do you expect? Be comfortable when you are talking about money.

e. Towards the end of the interview the candidate will be granted an opportunity to ask any questions and that should be fully utilized.

Please ensure that there 4s communication about way for ward.

Do not be submissive (do not close the interview by ex pressing to the interviewer that you are at his mercy). Ask question and confirm things. Don’t accept anything.

f:.

General

a. End all your answers, showing the objective, i.e. you want to join that particular job.

b. Know all details about your present job.

c. Collect know-how from the employer’s balance sheet, bro chures, visit to their office, use of their product I service

d. Read Business World, Business India, Economic Times, etc.

e. Sit in a relaxed manner but formal

f. Keep smiling

g. Be energetic & show enthusiasm

h. Your handshake should be firm

i. If nervous, ask for a glass of water.

j. Use humour and be down to earth

k. Show willingness to learn. Be positive, don’t be cynical.

i. Sir, my resume may not contain everything but I am willing to learn.

ii. I may not have the prerequisites for the job, but I am willing to learn. Do consider that. Thank You! It was nice being with you. (Compliment people, and use the technique of complimenting even in an interview).

I. Be clear in you answer and direct to the point.

m. Use ‘you’ language. Show how you will be of benefit to the potential employer. How will that help them make more money. usiness is after all making money.

 

Improving your learning ability

“You cannot teach a man or woman anything; you can only help them to find it within themselves.”
Galileo



The only way to make study work for you is to avoid BOREDOM – the worst enemy of learning.
From a very early age, we vary what we do to stop ourselves getting bored. We look for new tasks and seek new ways to do things. Sometimes even this fails and we fall into the boredom-trap. We cannot be bothered to find ways to cure our boredom because we are too bored.
Over time we develop a concentration-span – the time between starting a task to the time we find our minds wandering. This is because your brain deals with information in a very special way.
The brain receives information from our senses. This is then passed on to our short-term memory where it is stored for a short time. From then on the information in short-term memory must be passed on to long-term memory or we end up “forgetting” the information. Your brain’s ability to do this depends on how you feel.
If you are bored, short term memory is lost very quickly and so can never be passed on. You may be surprised to learn that it is not lost forever – it is stored away often never to be remembered again.
The best way to learn is to limit study periods to the length of our concentration-span. This gives the brain the best chance to store what we are studying in long-term memory.

DETERMINING YOUR CONCENTRATION-SPAN

• Go to your study area and get settled.
• Read a large section of the text book belonging to your least favorite subject, preferably from part of the book which has not been covered before. Note the time you start.
• Make an effort to LEARN and RECALL the information you read.
• Note the time at which you find your mind beginning to wander, no matter how little. This will be your minimum concentration-span.
• Repeat the task with your favorite subject. This will be your maximum concentration-span.

You will probably find that your concentration-span varies between ten and twenty minutes depending on the subject, how you feel, the amount of rest you have taken, and your eating habits.
Now that you know what your own brain can cope with you can sort out your reading and revision to suit.
NEVER study beyond your concentration-span. You may still be reading but your brain will be losing most of the information it takes in. This makes it pointless to go on. You may satisfy your need to feel as if you are working hard, but the amount you actually remember will get less and less.

MAXIMIZING RECALL

After studying for the time you found was best, you must then take a rest for about five minutes. Do something else not connected with your work. Listen to music, have a snack, refresh yourself – but don’t stop thinking about what you were reading.
This may be an unusual thing to do in the middle of a study session, but your brain needs that time to sort out the information in your short-term memory. At the end of the rest period, the information you were reading will be much clearer than it was to begin with.
Short-term memory lasts between 12 to 48 hours. If you stopped at this point you would be able to recall only about 10-20% of the information you read.
To get the information into long-term memory you must REVIEW.

REVIEWING YOUR CHOSEN STUDY TOPIC

After your five-minute rest, read the same information again. Concentrate only on those points that are most important.
Then take another five-minute break and re-read once more, fitting all the bits of information together.
Both of these reviews would be made even better by note-taking in whatever way you find easy and helpful. Make sure that the notes you make are well organised!
ONE WEEK and TWO WEEKS later review the topic again using your notes. By now you should have found that there has been a huge improvement in your ability to remember, understand and use that information.
Finally, you must REVISE. This is simply a way of drawing loose ends together with the same study method but this time using your notes only.
If you use the above methods while you are still following a course of study, your final revision will be made much easier. Some students who have used these methods early find that very little final revision is necessary. They became so good at remembering the work during the course of the year that they didn’t need to do any more!

The Read / Review / Review Graph

IMPROVING YOUR MEMORY

Study is like building a jigsaw :

Lay out the pieces

Sort out the edges

Build inwards towards the most difficult parts

Put in the final pieces

Stand back and appreciate!

In learning, the pieces of knowledge you have can be swapped between several jigsaws in your mind – but there is no pattern which you can follow.
By making patterns yourself all the pieces fall into place. Soon, that wonderful feeling of excitement hits you when you look down and see how the jigsaw fits together.
If you make patterns within your work then several pieces can be missing from the middle, but by looking at their neighbors a guess can be made as to what the missing pieces should be. In other words – you do not have to know everything!
By improving your reading and note-taking skills you can speed up the building of the jigsaw and increase your ability to remember the pattern.

BETTER READING (THE “Q-S-R” TECHNIQUE)

Q: QUICKLY read the page or chapter you wish to study.
S: SCAN each page at a time noting key words or sections as you read through fairly quickly.
R: READ the page or chapter carefully and thoughtfully, making more notes as you go if you like. Concentrate on the key words or sections you highlighted, using them as trigger points for recall.

NOTE TAKING

The purpose of notes is not to copy out great chunks of information from books. They should only act as a trigger to help you remember what you have read. Key words are more easily remembered than long sentences!
Notes should be short, to the point, well-organized and easily read. The exact style is up to you and you only. Some tried and tested methods are given in the next section.
SUGGESTED METHODS OF NOTE TAKING
SERIAL NOTES
This is a simple note-making style and is best for making notes during lessons. Don’t write everything you hear or read but select out the most important points. Concentrate only on those pointers that will help you recall the lesson content. Improve upon them later when time allows.
Use lots of headings, sub-headings, numbered points, “bullets”, etc.
For example:

Heading
        Sub-Heading 1
                Note 1.1
                Note 1.2
                        Sub-note 1
                        Sub-note 2
        Sub-Heading 2
                Note 2.1
                Note 2.2
Or:

and so on…
MIND-MAPS® (based on the work of Tony Buzan)
Useful for making short notes for revision. Stretch points outwards from a main point or key word. These are best drawn from notes made during lessons which have then been added to with further information from text books.

KEY-WORD INDEXING
This requires the use of index cards which can be purchased at any stationers. As you revise notes write down key-words in two categories: HEADERS and LINKED WORDS.
Use the HEADERS as titles for the index cards, and beneath this write a list of the LINKED WORDS. When revising a topic have the index cards in front of you. With practice, just the thought of a HEADER word will trigger recall of most, if not all, of the rest.
BRAINSTORMING
Brainstorming is best used when revising in groups (but can be used by someone working alone) and combines all of the above techniques.
This is especially good for working out what to put in an essay or extended assignment. Think of everything you can to do with a topic, no matter how odd or unusual. Note down the words and/or ideas, discuss how important they are. From that discussion develop a pattern that makes sense of the things mentioned by getting rid of those that stray from the point.

Who compiled the world’s first encyclopedia?

Who compiled the world’s first encyclopedia?

Ans: in all probability, the first encyclopedia was compiled by the Greek philosopher Plato’s nephew, Speusippus, who recorded his uncle’s ideas on mathematics, natural history and philosophy in about 348 BC. Speusippus also included Aristotle’s lecture notes in the encyclopedia. The Chinese, on the other hand, claim that the Yongle Canon or   Yongle Dadian, compiled between 1403 AD and 1407 AD and running to more than 11,000 books, was the world’s first encyclopedia. The whole work was too vast to print, hence only two manuscripts were made.

            The prototype of the modern encyclopedia was Ephraim chamber’s Cyclopedia published in 1728 while the first English language encyclopedia was the Encyclopedia Britannica published in 1768 which became available on the Internet in 1999. The encyclopedia Americana was the first multi-volume encyclopedia which was published in thirteen volumes between 1829 and 1833 in the United States and had expanded to thirty volumes by 1919.

Tradition and Modernity: Friends or Foes?

Tradition and Modernity: Friends or Foes?

Modernity in the Indian sense is, in any case, a command from the West. India did not get enough time to develop an indigenous idea of modernity because of the intervention of colonialism. At the time of Independence, urban India had inherited a rather basic problem: this was a contradiction between imposed modernity and age-old traditional values. There were, as a consequence, three options for the average Indian urban man: whether to embrace the Western model of modernity; or to go back, if possible, to her traditional roots; or to try to create a synthesis between the two. It was colonial education that brought to us a historical understanding of our culture. Western education gained currency which taught us to value our past and it became fashionable to talk about our heritage—Jyotindra Jain, Former Director of Crafts Museum, New Delhi.

Jean Baudrillard, a major theoretician of the European present, characterizes the present state of affairs, at least in the Western context, as “after the orgy”: the “orgy”, according to him, was the moment when modernity exploded upon us, the moment of liberation in every sphere—political liberation, sexual liberation, liberation of the forces of production, liberation of the forces of destruction, women’s liberation, liberation of unconscious drives, liberation of art. It was an orgy of the real, the rational, of criticism and of anti-criticism, of development and of the crisis of development. There has been an over-production now of objects, signs, messages, ideologies and satisfactions. When everything has been liberated, one can only simulate (reproduce) liberation, simulate the orgy, pretending to carry on in the same direction; accelerating without knowing we are accelerating in a void.

The impact of technology is fast changing our everyday too: the major difference may be that we are not in the age “after the orgy”, for, our revolutions have not succeeded, but have aborted, got stopped midway, our utopia has taken an atavistic (reappearance of characteristic or quality not seen for many generations) turn, our Janus now has both its faces turned towards the past. Our struggles for emancipation—social, sexual, aesthetic—seem to have left us half-way, having failed to bring about a transformation that embraces all the layers of society.

Nevertheless, tradition gives a sense of identity. There is an element of security in it; yet innovation is necessary to prevent stagnation and rot. Society must and will continue to innovate. Cultural exchange is the stuff out of which social processes are made. Traditional medicine, for example, was humane and modern medicine is merciless; traditional science had built in correctives, but modern science and technology is aggressively domineering; in tradition there was respect for plurality, but modern societies are self-consciously homogenising. Modern societies may breed fascists, but traditional ones had their share of Changez Khans too.

True, modernity has got many emancipatory possibilities. But then, modernity is not free from its discontent—dislocation of the individual from the protective context of family-kinship ties, alienation from the communitarian ideal and loss of collective memory.

Perhaps, in matters of faith and fashions, it is neither the hard stands taken by both, nor the rigidity of their arguments that brings them nearer to each other. Just as all that meets the eye may not be the only reality, in the same vein, to assert with authority that tradition and modernity are incompatible is to rush in where even the angels would pause and ponder to tread. Seemingly, both tradition and modernisation look to be at loggerheads with each other, but on deeper analysis, one finds that even the most traditional/orthodox societies have prepared themselves, though reluctantly, to accept new realities which modernity has unfolded with an unprecedented speed. It is almost hypocritical to disown the advantages of modernisation in our daily perceptions and practices.

Since no age or generation is fully static in thought and action, there are always some prudent persons who take on the untenable and anachronistic spell of traditions and prefer new ideas and concepts (that) are born out of the existing realities. For analytical/inquisitive minds, tradition is stagnant in nature and nuance and modernisation is consistent with change and challenge of times. If some knowledgeable persons opine that tradition and modernity are not friends, they are not much off the mark. To them tradition is a morass of beliefs and customs that refuse to liberate human minds from its stranglehold. On the contrary, modernisation is a process that tries to update men, minds and machines. Since the trio holds key to all material progress and prosperity, it is not unnatural that both tradition and modernity should live in a ‘love-hate’ relationship with each other.

Why We Laugh

Why We Laugh

Humour is a subject that has attracted the attention and interest of some of our greatest minds, from Aristotle and Kant to Freud. It has also fascinated and played an important part in the work of some of the greatest writers such as Shakespeare and Oscar Wilde.

However, curiously, after thousands of years spent trying to understand humour, there is still a great deal of controversy about what humour is or why something is funny. There are some interesting theories, though, on this matter.

For Aristotle, comedy is based on “an imitation of men worse than the average,” of people who are “ridiculous”. Hobbes carried the same idea a bit further. He said, “the passion of laughter is nothing else but sudden glory arising from a sudden conception of some eminency in ourselves by comparison with the infirmity of others, or with our own formerly.”

There is another theory that is probably the most important and most widely accepted of the explanations of humour. This theory argues that all humour involves some kind of a difference between what one expects and what one gets.

One of the more interesting and controversial theories of humour stems from the work of Freud. The psychoanalytic theory of humour argues that humour is essentially masked aggression which gives us gratifications we desperately crave. As Freud wrote in his classic book—Jokes and Their Relation to the Unconscious— “and here at last we can understand what it is that jokes achieve in the service of their purpose. They make possible the satisfaction of an instinct (whether lustful or hostile) in the face of an obstacle that stands in its way.”

Freud also recounts a number of wonderful Jewish jokes in his book and alludes to the remarkable amount of self-criticism found in jokes which all Jews tell about themselves. “Incidentally,’ he wrote, “I do not know whether there are many other instances of a people making fun of such a degree of its own character”. His use of the word “fun” is important. He did not regard Jewish jokes as masochistic (gratification gained from pain, deprivation). Just the opposite.

It might be argued that since humour is an effective way to keeping in touch with reality, Jewish humour has been intimately connected with Jewish survival. Also, humour is not some kind of an idle and trivial matter but generally enables people to gain valuable insights into social and political matters.

The fact of the matter is that this seemingly trivial, inconsequential, common thing we know as humour is very enigmatic and plays a vital role in our psychic lives and in society.

Difference between C Programming and C++

10 Major Differences Between C And C++

C++, as the name suggests is a superset of C. As a matter of fact, C++ can run most of C code while C cannot run C++ code. Here are the 10 major differences between C++ & C…

1. C follows the procedural programming paradigm while C++ is a multi-paradigm language(procedural as well as object oriented)

In case of C, importance is given to the steps or procedure of the program while C++ focuses on the data rather than the process.

Also, it is easier to implement/edit the code in case of C++ for the same reason.

2. In case of C, the data is not secured while the data is secured(hidden) in C++

This difference is due to specific OOP features like Data Hiding which are not present in C.

3. C is a low-level language while C++ is a middle-level language

C is regarded as a low-level language(difficult interpretation & less user friendly) while C++ has features of both low-level(concentration on whats going on in the machine hardware) & high-level languages(concentration on the program itself) & hence is regarded as a middle-level language.

4. C uses the top-down approach while C++ uses the bottom-up approach

In case of C, the program is formulated step by step, each step is processed into detail while in C++, the base elements are first formulated which then are linked together to give rise to larger systems.

5. C is function-driven while C++ is object-driven

Functions are the building blocks of a C program while objects are building blocks of a C++ program.

6. C++ supports function overloading while C does not

Overloading means two functions having the same name in the same program. This can be done only in C++ with the help of Polymorphism(an OOP feature)

7. We can use functions inside structures in C++ but not in C.

In case of C++, functions can be used inside a structure while structures cannot contain functions in C.

8. The NAMESPACE feature in C++ is absent in case of C

C++ uses NAMESPACE which avoid name collisions. For instance, two students enrolled in the same university cannot have the same roll number while two students in different universities might have the same roll number. The universities are two different namespace & hence contain the same roll number(identifier) but the same university(one namespace) cannot have two students with the same roll number(identifier)

9. The standard input & output functions differ in the two languages

C uses scanf & printf while C++ uses cin>> & cout<< as their respective input & output functions

10. C++ allows the use of reference variables while C does not

Reference variables allow two variable names to point to the same memory location. We cannot use these variables in C programming.