Consequently, I was asked to book my PI slot and keep all the relevant documents (both soft and hard copies) ready beforehand. This was one of the most important things to do for all the B-school interviews that I've faced and hence, kept a separate folder on my desktop as well as the hard/original copies of all those documents ready.
Before the interview, all the shortlisted students were also provided with a 'Personal Interview Buddy' whom we could ask different aspects of the interview, what to prepare, how to prepare, and a plethora of other questions which they would answer in a very friendly and honest manner.
Due to the pandemic going on, we had all our interviews done on online video calling platforms like Zoom or Google, but I think I had the most unique online interview experience with SJMSOM. For starters, the whole admission process was conducted on the 'Gather' application. For those who don't have any idea about it, it is basically a video calling application where multiple users can even interact with each other in a virtual environment of 2-D spaces with various other functionalities. There you can choose a character which will be your avatar in the application. Just like the Mario video game, here also you could easily move your avatar to different places with navigation keys. It looked something like this -
Here, as you can see, there are 3 document verification rooms, 3 interview lobby rooms, 2 help desks, and an auditorium where everyone waited for their turn. The auditorium looked something like this -
So, during my interview, there were in total 3 panelists. All the panelists asked questions turn by turn. The first panelist asked questions related to my engineering subjects and current affairs related to India, the 2nd panelist asked me about ongoing international news especially related to economy and business, and the third panelist was mostly restricted to my home town and questions related to them.
Although I could answer almost all of the questions especially the ones asked by the 1st panelist, but there were few bouncer questions that I had no idea about. Most of these bouncer questions were from the international news part which was asked by the 2nd panelist.
But inspite of all those things, I managed myself to keep my composure and not be stressed out at that very moment. And personally I think, this is one of the major aspects the interviewers look for in a candidate during the whole process.
All in all, the interviewers didn't put much stress on me. Although, remebering back, I think there were few questions that I could have easily answered.
But, none of that matters to me now. I have got myself selected in SJMSOM and that is the most important thing - the result.
I hope my answer could give you a hint about how the interviews during the pandemic situation were being held in SJMSOM.
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