Clearing GD Round

GROUP DISCUSSIONS (GD) and Personal Interviews (PI) are standard selection tools for admission into good business schools in India.

While your academic record, work experience (if any) and scores in the entrance test qualify you for an interview call, your final selection depends largely on your performance in the ‘last mile.’

I will talk about two things here – what the moderators/ interviewers are looking for, and how students should prepare for success.

We will also bust some myths while we address these questions. I have been a recruiter from prominent B-schools during my days in the corporate sector and am now part of the selection panel for Praxis. I also do some training in this area. So I have a fair idea of what it takes to win.

Let’s begin with GDs. A group of students is assigned a topic for discussion for 15–20 minutes. The panel is looking for an effective combination of knowledge and skills in the candidates. Knowledge comprises some understanding of the topic assigned, and also a good level of awareness of the world around us. Preparation – the only way to prepare is to read more, develop a keen interest in current affairs and seek opportunities to discuss these in groups. Knowledge gives the ‘content’ in a discussion – without good content you cannot score well.

MYTH: Candidates perform well because they are smooth talkers.

REALITY: Candidates perform well because they talk sense and there is sufficient ‘meat’ in what they say.

B-Schools seek a variety of skills in the aspirants. These comprise analytical skills, communication skills, team skills, ability to handle stress, decision-making skills etc. Let’s talk about the first three. Management is an applied discipline – students need to use their analytical skills to apply theory effectively to solve day-to-day problems. The panel wishes to see whether the candidate is able to think clearly about a situation, dig into his treasure of knowledge and apply it usefully in the short time he has to make his point. Preparation – students can train themselves to think analytically – it is an attitude that one can develop as opposed to not ‘think’ at all. Make it a habit to get to the ‘why’ and ‘how’ of issues – don’t take things at face value – think about them before you form an opinion.

MYTH: Academic brilliance equals analytical skills.

REALITY: Students with lower academic achievements sometimes demonstrate better capability to relate their learning to practical situations.

Communication skills are perhaps the most critical attribute of the modern manager. These include listening and articulation skills. Moderators look for the candidate’s keenness and ability to listen to others – mature managers are very good listeners because every time you listen, you learn.

Preparation – train yourself to be a good listener – develop the patience to listen attentively. Acknowledge that everyone has something valuable to say. When speaking in a GD, your job is to articulate your point of view in a way that is easy for others to comprehend. Preparation – inculcate the good habit of structuring your thoughts and presenting them logically. Writing essays on a variety of topics is good practice developing thought structure.

QUICK TAKE

* Train your mind to think analytically * Your GD arguments should have ‘meat’ * Respect other people’s views * Listening is important. Practise patience * Writing essays can improve thought structure

MYTH: Good communication is about speaking a lot, speaking in a stylish accent and using ‘big’ words.

REALITY: Good communication is about listening, speaking at the appropriate time, using easy-to-understand English and getting your point across in as simple a manner as possible.

B-Schools prepare you for jobs that involve being part of and managing teams. The GD is the first test of how good your team skills are. Do you listen to others? How do you handle points of view different from yours? Are you able to get across your point of view without appearing to be trying too hard?

Do you cross the line from being assertive to being aggressive? If you are a good team player, the other members of the group will tend to connect with you. This will be evident to a moderator even amidst the chaos that marks a typical GD.

Preparation – learn to respect others for what they are. Learn to be open-minded and recognize the fact that people think differently about issues. Seek opportunities to discuss topics of mutual interest in diverse groups.

MYTH 1: Candidates who try to ‘run’ the group and ensure everyone gets a chance to speak etc. demonstrate great team skills.

MYTH 2: People who dominate a discussion and reduce others to submission do well in GDs.

REALITY: Candidates who work with the group, accommodate diverse viewpoints and assert themselves without aggression score high.

 

STUDENTS’ HOWLERS!

* Starting with the phrase – Myself XYZ – there’s no better way to put the panel off. * Getting into details about siblings and cousins – especially the ones who seem to have done well. We wish to know about you, not about your extended family.

* Citing –‘making friends’ or ‘meeting new people’ – as their hobby. Wonder how one pursues a hobby like ‘meeting new people’!

* Saying things like – I studied this in my first year – as an excuse for not knowing some basic stuff related to their subject of study. The panel members studied this about 20 years back – they still remember it!

* ‘I will get to learn how to manage people’ as an answer to the question – ‘What do you expect to learn in your business management education?’ An MBA is a technical course that teaches you the fundamentals of a number of functions of running a business.

In short, the GD panel is testing whether you know the topic well, are able to present your point of view in a logical manner, are interested in understanding what others feel about the same subject and are able to conduct yourself with grace in a group situation.

And now the very last phase of the selection process – the PI. Some of the GD attributes we have spoken about remain as important in a PI – knowledge, analytical skills, communication skills.

However, the PI is a little more predictable as there is a set of questions that is likely to be asked to a majority of the candidates. It makes sense to know what these questions are and to be prepared with the answers. Let’s look at some of these questions:

The most frequently asked first question is – Can you tell us something about yourself? It makes ample sense to prepare a comprehensive answer to this – the trick again being able to structure it effectively.

A necessary condition is to understand your own self – your strengths, weaknesses and nature – before attempting an answer. Other common questions relate to your reasons for doing an MBA, your career goals, reasons for switching streams or giving up a job etc. Students often ask me for help in answering these types of questions.

Please remember that these are questions about you and only you can give honest answers to them. A counsellor can at best help you structure the reply.

The candidate should be prepared to face questions on his areas of interest in academics and his area of work. He has to demonstrate the capability to think and present his thoughts cogently. Highlight your areas of strength – try to direct the interview towards your area of comfort.

A panelist looks at a candidate with two things in his mind – would I like to have him on campus for the next two years, and, will I be able to place him with a good organisation two years from now. The interviewee should thus come across as an honest, capable and sincere person.

Speak the truth while answering personal questions – nothing works quite as well as truth. Diligence, genuineness, maturity and an awareness of the environment around you are positive traits.

Cynicism, arrogance and indifference are negative traits. A seemingly innocuous question on who your role model is and why he is your role model can yield lots of information about you across these dimensions.

Highlight your learning from your academics and your job. Emphasise your interest in pursuing an MBA, and that too from that B-school. Avoid running down your college, your current area of study, your current job etc,. to justify your decision to pursue an MBA. Learn to say ‘I don’t know’ instead of making wild guesses!

There is no substitute to preparation. Listen attentively to each question asked and keep your answers brief and to the point. Hope you enjoy the GD/ PI process and get admission to the B-school of your choice

A genius approach to web security

Song in a study area in her Berkeley office By Michael V. Copeland, senior writerMarch 18, 2011: 4:26 PM ET

 

FORTUNE — The prototypical computer security expert is some ponytailed guy with a three-day beard and an uncomfortable habit of telling hacker war stories that make you scared to go online for weeks. Then there’s Dawn Song, a 36-year-old associate professor at the University of California at Berkeley and a MacArthur Foundation fellow (also known as a MacArthur genius). With her broad smile and laugh, Song puts a visitor at ease, then begins mapping the Internet out on a whiteboard. The whole genius thing quickly becomes apparent.

Song and her research team aren’t looking to simply patch holes in the Internet that online baddies are constantly trying to penetrate. She takes a more holistic approach, designing technology tools that can act as building blocks for an overall secure computing experience — on any device. The proliferation of smartphones and tablets means more people are trying to share sensitive information via the public Internet instead of private networks, a practice that makes Song shudder. “If I have uploaded my data naively into the cloud, the best I can do now is cross my fingers and hope that whoever is storing my data is doing a good job with their security,” she says.

By studying the underlying patterns of how software, hardware, and networks interact, Song has become expert at understanding the flow of both “good” data and ill-intentioned hacks. Song’s groundbreaking research has become the basis for two important platforms: BitBlaze, which analyzes malicious software code, and WebBlaze, which focuses on defending web-based applications and services against it. (The WebBlaze approach has been used in the design of mainstream web browsers.) Song is also working on the privacy side of things, so that people can trace where their sensitive data have been and know that it is either secure or has been sold or breached.

Song’s hope is that BitBlaze, WebBlaze, and her privacy initiatives become fundamental Internet tools that are deployed when any person or company builds a new cloud-based service or overhauls an existing one. Her team is working on commercial versions of the security platforms that would offer custom analysis to paying customers.

Song is no fear monger, but she stresses that the risks are mounting as everything — phones, tablets, even wireless health-monitoring gadgets — gets connected to the web. “We are always playing catch-up,” she admits. But if Song and her team are successful, consumers and companies won’t have to simply keep their fingers crossed — and she may even put a few of those ponytailed security experts out of business.  

Ofcom launches next-generation 4G consultation

he telecoms regulator has launched a consultation on how best to sell off the rights to the next generation of mobile wireless networks.

The auction of the fourth generation, or 4G, spectrum will be the largest ever, equivalent to three quarters of the mobile spectrum in use today.

The last time an auction was held, for 3G in 2000, it raised a record £22.5bn for the Treasury.

The auction itself is expected to start in the first quarter of 2012.

The additional spectrum to be sold off should mean faster speeds for downloading data – such as music and movies – to phones as more capacity is made spare for all the networks.

The actual parts of the spectrum being sold – at the 800MHz and 2.6GHz bandwidths – will be parts of the wireless spectrum historically used by analogue TV, which is being switched off as digital is rolled out.

“The auction is not only critical to the future of the UK mobile telecommunications market but it is also of significant importance to the wider economy. It will support a wide range of data services that are fast becoming essential features of the modern world,” said Ofcom chief executive Ed Richards in a statement.

Competition concerns

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

If they were to leave the auction open they risk a player leaving the market and further consolidation; possibly to the detriment of consumers”

End Quote Matthew Howett Analyst, Ovum

Smartphones such as the iPhone, Google Android and tablet devices are big users of bandwidth, which means there has been a squeeze on what is left.

Ofcom has even allowed mobile phone carriers like Vodafone and O2 to use parts of the old 2G network until more of the spectrum is made available.

The UK network Three has complained about that, and about its fears for the auction.

The country’s smallest mobile phone operator is worried that its rivals will outbid it at auction, buying up larger slices of the available bandwidth and squeezing Three out of the market altogether.

The regulator said it would impose a cap on the amount of new airspace companies could win at the auction to try to ensure fair competition.

“The use of spectrum caps is bitterly controversial since they effectively distort what is otherwise a market mechanism designed to allocate spectrum to those who value it most,” said Ovum analyst Matthew Howett.

“However, Ofcom is essentially stuck between a rock and a hard place. If they were to leave the auction open they risk a player leaving the market and further consolidation; possibly to the detriment of consumers,” he added.

Rural coverage

Ofcom said it would make any successful bid conditional upon a licensee agreeing to extend their coverage to 95% of the UK population.

Ofcom points out that current mobile coverage, particularly 3G coverage, is less comprehensive in rural areas than in urban areas.

The regulator said it wanted to ensure more “uniformity of coverage” for 4G services.

Ofcom proposed a supplementary obligation that would mean licence holders would also have to cover a certain proportion of the population in rural areas.

3G auction

The dramatic growth of phones such as the iPhone means that mobile carriers need more bandwidth

Ofcom will also hope to avoid the mistakes of the last auction in 2000.

Then, the biggest bid for 3G was from Vodafone, which paid £5.96bn.

BT Cellnet – which eventually became O2 – paid £4.03bn. Orange paid £4.1bn and One2One paid £4bn.

But most carriers and observers believe that operators overpaid for those licences and were not able to invest in the infrastructure as a result of paying those huge fees.

The German government raised 50bn euros (£71bn, £43.6bn) at its 3G auction in 2000, but managed to raise only 4.3bn euros at its 4G auction last year.

Already behind?

Japan and the US already have 4G networks – though these are often defined in slightly different ways by different countries.

The biggest mobile phone companies in the US – Verizon Wireless and AT&T – back a 4G network powered by Long Term Evolution (LTE) technology.

Verizon launched its LTE network in December, promising speeds up to 10 times faster than its current 3G network. It is planning full nationwide coverage by 2013.

AT&T this week bought T-Mobile USA from Deutsche Telekom for $39bn (£24bn), creating the largest US wireless network.

Quantum computing device hints at powerful future

Although comparatively small, the system’s “scalable” architecture speaks to a bigger future

Continue reading the main story

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• Quantum computer slips onto chips
• Limits of quantum world stretched

One of the most complex efforts toward a quantum computer has been shown off at the American Physical Society meeting in Dallas in the US.

It uses the strange “quantum states” of matter to perform calculations in a way that, if scaled up, could vastly outperform conventional computers.

The 6cm-by-6cm chip holds nine quantum devices, among them four “quantum bits” that do the calculations.

The team said further scaling up to 10 qubits should be possible this year.

Rather than the ones and zeroes of digital computing, quantum computers deal in what are known as superpositions – states of matter that can be thought of as both one and zero at once.

In a sense, quantum computing’s one trick is to perform calculations on all superposition states at once. With one quantum bit, or qubit, the difference is not great, but the effect scales rapidly as the number of qubits rises.

The figure often touted as the number of qubits that would bring quantum computing into a competitive regime is about 100, so each jump in the race is a significant one.

Continue reading the main story

“Start Quote

We’re right at the bleeding edge of actually having a quantum processor”

End Quote Erik Lucero University of California, Santa Barbara

“It’s pretty exciting we’re now at a point that we can start talking about what the architecture is we’re going to use if we make a quantum processor,” Erik Lucero of the University of California, Santa Barbara told the conference.

The team’s key innovation was to find a way to completely disconnect – or “decouple” – interactions between the elements of their quantum circuit.

The delicate quantum states that they create must be manipulated, moved, and stored without destroying them.

“It’s a problem I’ve been thinking about for three or four years now, how to turn off the interactions,” UCSB’s John Martinis, who led the research,” told BBC News.

“Now we’ve solved it, and that’s great – but there’s many other things we have to do.”

Qubits and pieces

The solution came in the form of what the team has termed the RezQu architecture. It is basically a blueprint for a quantum computer, and several presentations at the conference focused on how to make use of it.

“For me this is kind of nice, I know how I’m going to put them together,” said Professor Martinis.

“I now know how to design it globally and I can go back and try to optimise all the parts.”

RezQu seems to have an edge in one crucial arena – scalability – that makes it a good candidate for the far more complex circuits that would constitute a quantum computer proper.

“There are competing architectures, like ion traps – trapping ions with lasers, but the complexity there is that you have to have a huge room full of PhDs just to run your lasers,” Mr Lucero told BBC News.

The team has been steadily increasing the complexity of their quantum devices

“There’s already promise to show how this architecture could scale, and we’ve created custom electronics based on cellphone technology which has driven the cost down a lot.

“We’re right at the bleeding edge of actually having a quantum processor,” he said. “It’s been years that a whole community has blossomed just looking at the idea of, once we have a quantum computer, what are we going to do with it?”

Britton Plourde, a quantum computing researcher from the University of Syracuse, said that the field has progressed markedly in recent years.

The metric of interest to quantum computing is how long the delicate quantum states can be preserved, and Dr Plourde noted that time had increased a thousand fold since the field’s inception.

“The world of superconducting quantum bits didn’t even exist 10 years ago, and now they can control [these states] to almost arbitrary precision,” he told BBC News.

“We’re still a long way from a large-scale quantum computer but it’s really in my eyes rapid progress.”

cloud computing continued



cloud computing

The total market of cloud computing in India stands at US$ 110 million today and is expected to reach a figure of about US$ 1,084 million by 2015, finds a research study. In the cloud computing market in India, Software-as-a-Service has witnessed the most rapid uptake until now. As a component of the overall cloud market, Software-as-a-service (SaaS) in India is likely to reach a mark of US$ 650 million by 2015, while Platform-as-aservice (PaaS) and Infrastructure-as-a-Service (IaaS) markets cumulatively would touch US$434 million each, by then. The domestic market for SaaS is estimated to be about US$ 66 million and is currently dominated by Collaborative Applications, CRM, ERP and Email workloads.
There are several multinational and Indian companies entering the cloud space and trying to drive business relevance of its solutions for the Indian customers. Cloud computing has allowed the smaller ISVs access to global customers, thereby, significantly reducing their cost of sales. On the other hand, this has also increased the flexibility for end customers and increased the choice of products and services.
In addition to the global providers of PaaS, Indian companies have also sprung up offering cloud
based Platform-as-a-Service. India being the
world’s fastest growing mobile market with
over 20 million subscribers added every
month and the money that companies have invested for 3G services showcases the belief the large telecom providers have on data services in the Indian market. Also, over 500 million people form the middle class in India, and the products and services consumed by them are relevant to other emerging markets as well. All this clearly suggests that Indian customers are ideal for cloud offerings.
As Indian SMBs tend to lack budgets, want business improvement, lack management bandwidth required to manage internal IT and are looking for rapid growth in the next few years. For all of this put together, ‘Cloud Computing’ is indeed the answer”.
Public, Private or Hybrid CLouds?
Cloud computing comes in three forms: public clouds, private clouds, and hybrid clouds. Depending on the type of data you are working with, you will want to compare public, private, and hybrid clouds in terms of the different levels of security and management required.
PUBLIC CLOUDS
A public cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are provided offsite over the Internet. These clouds offer the greatest level of efficiency in shared resources; however, they are also more vulnerable than private clouds. A public cloud is the obvious choice when
Your standardized workload for applications is used by lots of people, such as e-mail.
You need to test and develop application code.
You have SaaS (Software as a Service) applications from a vendor who has a well-implemented security strategy.
You need incremental capacity (the ability to add computer capacity for peak times).
You are doing collaboration projects.
You are doing an ad-hoc software development project using a Platform as a Service (PaaS) offering cloud.
Many IT department executives are concerned about public cloud security and reliability. Take extra time to ensure that you have security and governance issues well planned, or the short-term cost savings could turn into a long-term nightmare.
PRIVATE CLOUDS
A private cloud is one in which the services and infrastructure are maintained on a private network. These clouds offer the greatest level of security and control, but they require the company to still purchase and maintain all the software and infrastructure, which reduces the cost savings. A private cloud is the obvious choice when-Your business is your data and your applications. Therefore, control and security are paramount.
Your business is part of an industry that must conform to strict security and data privacy issues.
Your company is large enough to run a next generation cloud data center efficiently and effectively on its own.
To complicate things, the lines between private and public clouds are blurring. For example, some public cloud companies are now offering private versions of their public clouds. Some companies that only offered private cloud technologies are now offering public versions of those same capabilities.
HYBRID CLOUDS
A hybrid cloud includes a variety of public and private options with multiple providers. By spreading things out over a hybrid cloud, you keep each aspect at your business in the most efficient environment possible. The downside is that you have to keep track of multiple different security platforms and ensure that all aspects of your business can communicate with each other. Here are a couple of situations where a hybrid environment is best.
Your company wants to use a SaaS application but is concerned about security. Your SaaS vendor can create a private cloud just for your company inside their firewall. They provide you with a virtual private network (VPN) for additional security.
Your company offers services that are tailored for different vertical markets. You can use a public cloud to interact with the clients but keep their data secured within a private cloud.
The management requirements of cloud computing become much more complex when you need to manage private, public, and traditional data centers all together.
Transition Inhibitors
Despite its innate value, cloud computing has a few inhibitors that seem to impact the speed at which implimentation takes place in India. From the infrastructure standpoint five major parameters that can enable or inhibit enterprise customers (and SMBs) from moving to Cloud. Performance; wherein Application performance needs to be same or better than before. Reliability – here enterprise mission critical applications have a very high level of reliability – the current cloud computing platforms are not matching the requirements Security – This is the biggest inhibitor of adoption at this time, where organizations are not yet comfortable of moving their data to public environments outside their firewalls or even visibility and control of the Cloud infrastructure (for users) – the Cloud environment needs to provide extensive monitoring, logging and reporting support to troubleshoot the environment SLAs – Cloud Computing environment providers, while claiming a very robust environment, have yet to provide high levels of service guarantees, at operational level and security level. As the provider community practices mature, these would be in place On the application/solutions front, the biggest inhibitor is the lack of clarity on what applications (from their portfolio) make good business sense to move to cloud. The second inhibitor is that while the application in the cloud is very economical, the transformation of applications to be “in the cloud” is expensive and takes time and effort.