1. Tell me about yourself.

Hi, I am Aakash Sonar. With 29 months of experience in IT industry, I have developed great
interpersonal skills. I am very inquisitive of learning new technologies to cope with the growing
demands of the industry. This helped me take up opportunities which no one else agreed upon. I
am also a very dedicated and hardworking person. This was acknowledged and appreciated by the
clients for my efforts in upgrading one of their systems which increased the speed of operation by
around 10%. I am always ready to help my fellow teammates. I volunteered to take the
responsibility of one of my members to complete all his tasks when he was leaving the
organisation and delivered all the tasks successfully. I have worked on project with close
deadlines, which helped improve my abilities to work under pressure. Throughout my career, I
have been a consistent performer. Since my school days, I have been an active participant in both
academic and extra-curricular activities. I am passionate about badminton and have won District
level competition.

2. Where do you see yourself 5 years from now?

I’m really excited about this position. In the next five years, I would like to be recognised as an
expert in the analytics sector. This job will for sure provide me with an opportunity to do the same.
Since I already have a few years of work experience, I am excited to take up managerial
responsibilities in the coming few years. Besides, I have the potential to lead projects, and if I am
able to deliver, I am sure this organization will give me the chance to become one of the
forerunners. I will keep the same fire alive within and I hope I will achieve my goal.

3. Why do you want to work with our company?

An opportunity to work in your organisation provides a stage for accelerated career growth and a
chance to work across various industry segments. This will provide me an exposure to a variety of
business perspectives and broaden our horizon of looking at a business problem and come up with
an efficient solution. Digitization is playing a key role in our daily activities. Your company is
working towards this idea and has developed perspectives around this using the analytical ways
like machine learning to improve our lives as we pave our with towards adding technology in our
lives. This encourages me further to join your company as being an Analytics student, I can
contribute in the growth of the company and his will help me also grow multidimensionally.

4. Tell me about a situation when your work was criticized. Or what challenges did you face in
your job? Or what was the biggest roadblock you faced in your job? How did you overcome
that?

Situation – I had got the opportunity to work on a new technology called Tibco for upgrading the
systems of a major banking client

Task – I was given the task of upgrading the communication systems of a major banking client. I
had to work on a technology called Tibco which I had never worked on.

Approach – Since I had never worked on this technology before I started searching online for
resources to study and understand the Tibco technology. But there were very few resources online
which were not of much help to me. So, I got it in touch with my team members if anyone could
help me with the same. Unfortunately, no one in the team also had worked on Tibco. Then I
gathered some information on who used to handle the systems before. Eventually, I got the details
of a team of my company, seated at a different location which was working on Tibco. So, I got in
touch with them and finally was able to understand Tibco.

Result – The initial timelines were affected due to the learning time of the technology. But the end
target deadline was met on time and the project was delivered successfully.

5. What are your Areas of interest?

I have great interest in sports. I love to play Badminton and Table tennis. I have won district level
tournament in Badminton. Apart from sports, I love adventure activities. I have done rock
climbing, cliff jumping, river rafting all of which were a great experience. I am also fond of
travelling. I have visited various places across India like Andaman and Nicobar Islands, Sikkim etc.

6. Are you willing to relocate?

Yes, I am willing to relocate. Though I have completed my high school education in Mumbai and
have been working in Pune, I chose to take up my graduation course to Delhi in order to interact
with people from different regions and improve my interpersonal skills. It also helps understand
how people from different regions understand and react to the same situation.

7. Can you handle pressure at work?

Situation – I had got the opportunity to work on a new technology called Tibco for upgrading the
systems of a major banking client.

Task – I was given the task of upgrading the communication systems of a major banking client. I
had to work on a technology called Tibco which I had never worked on. The duration of the project
was less compared to the amount of work to be done.

Approach - Since I had never worked on this technology before I started searching online for
resources to study and understand the Tibco technology. But there were very few resources online
which were not of much help to me. So, I got it in touch with my team members if anyone could
help me with the same. Unfortunately, no one in the team also had worked on Tibco. Then I
gathered some information on who used to handle the systems before. Eventually, I got the details
of a team of my company, seated at a different location which was working on Tibco. So, I got in
touch with them and finally was able to understand Tibco. But with the time lost in the learning
phase, the actual time to work on the project reduced drastically. The deadlines of the project
were non-negotiable since the project was on top priority and was necessary for their plans ahead.
Hence, I had a lot of pressure to complete the tasks on time to meet the deadline of the project. I
had to work on multiple things at the same time and also extend my working hours to meet the
deadline.

Result – The initial timelines were affected due to the learning time of the technology. But the end
target deadline was met on time and the project was delivered successfully.

8. Why BE? How did it help you?

During my higher secondary education, I had electronics as my elective subject. Due to my

personal interest in electronics and with the guidance from the good faculty, my interest
developed further in electronics. In order to keep this interest going I decided to pursue BE for my
under-graduation. The degree helped me to understand the importance of a single small mistake
in the overall problem. It also helped me to understand the various ways how communication
takes and how signals are transmitted from one place to another.
9. Why MBA? How will it help you? How companies are progressing and how MBA added value
to these companies.

After completing my graduation, I worked in L&T Infotech for 2.5 years as a software developer. I
worked on development and maintenance of an application of a banking client. During this time,
I understood the various steps involved in a project and the technical side functioning of the same.
But I was not able to completely understand the business perspectives of my work. During one of
our regular business meetings, our business analyst explained us the business side of our project.
It was then that I decided to go for MBA in order to study and understand the business skills
required for running a company or business.

MBA gives us the skills and understanding of the effects of the various factors on business. It
provides us the domain knowledge required to run a business successfully. It develops our
perspectives to various aspects of business, the decisions taken and how these decisions would
possible affect the company.

10. Why PGPM? Why did you choose?

PGPM program is for students have minimum of 2 years of work experience. PGPM would provide
a platform for me where I could interact with people coming various academic, professional and
cultural backgrounds. Everyone has had an experience in various domains. PGPM gives an
opportunity to learn from their experiences and look at problems for various perspectives. This
helps us come up with better solutions.

11. Why GLIM

GLIM has a great faculty for Analytics. Being in the era where data is playing a key role in almost
all the activities, I planned to study analytics.

12. Why specialization? Questions will be asked for other specializations as well

Analytics – all the domains are working on data and analytics plays a very important role in getting
insights from data

Finance – Any firm’s proper functioning depends how the money in the firm is managed. I had
interest in this field and my project in the previous company also intrigued me to study finance.

13. Would you want to join your previous organization?

With the current skills I wish to possess, my previous has limited opportunities for me to grow in
that field. Hence, I would look forward to join a company where I can implement the skills the
knowledge I have gained during my MBA.

14. How will you guide your subordinates? Or how will you manage people in your team?

I will try to assign them work as per their strengths and their areas of interest. I will encourage
them to take up training or courses which can be helpful for the work. In case they are facing
difficulties in their work and are not able to get help from anywhere, I will try to get someone who
could help them with the task at hand.

15. Situation based questions? If your team is not performing, how will you motivate them?

There may be some conflicts in the team due to which the performance of the team might have
not been up to the mark. I will understand the conflict and try to resolve it asap. I will also talk to
the people who under-performing in the team and how their work is affecting the overall
performance of the team. I will make sure that everyone’s work in the team is appreciated which
would also keep them motivated.

16. What are your achievements in your previous organization? Or what are your proud
moments? What certifications have you done? Or what was your major contribution at work?

Working in my previous organisation taught me to work under pressure. Taking responsibility of

your actions is equally important. Even under pressure, you need to stay calm and keep moving
ahead in a logical manner. This will definitely help you meet your objectives and come out of the
situation. I had to complete at project in 4 months which ideally would have required close to 6
months. This was due to further activities planned by the client. Even with this short deadline, I
had delivered the project as per the schedule.

17. Why did you leave your 1st job/last job?

Wanted to study the business side of any project or a company. Hence left my first job to study.

18. Why Analytics? What have you studied in Analytics?

all the domains are working on data and analytics plays a very important role in getting insights
from data. In Analytics, till now we have studied Clustering and Regression techniques and studied
various classification algorithms.

19. How will you handle long working hours in the company?

I have experienced the long working hours in my previous organization. I believe during urgent
delivery, critical problem, the long working hour is very common across all the organization and I
am perfectly conformable with that.

20. How do you handle a tough client, criticism and escalations?

In all three conditions the client should be handled with utmost respect. The first step should be
to identify the exact requirement the client wants and then analysing the factors due to which we
are unable to fulfil those requirements. If those criteria’s can be fulfilled then we will try to
complete the task as per the exact requirements. If those requirements can’t be fulfilled then we
need to apologize to the client for the same and make him/her understand the exact reason for
the same so that both of us are on the same page.

21. Any questions for us? Anything you wish to ask us?

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