A Typical Group Discussion

Following is the Group Discussion experience of Jagatdeep Singh Jassal who got
calls from 4 IIM's and Finally went to calcutta.

My first experience of GD was at IIM Ahmedabad. We were given a case study regarding
an HR problem being faced by one of the managers. The problem was pretty complicated
and there was a long and heated discussion on that. It is necessary to speak during a GD
but at the same time one should be ready to listen. A candidate is judged on many criteria
and one should make sure that one is totally involved during the discussion.

My second GD was for IIM, Lucknow. The topic they gave was related to economic
liberalisation and its impact on poverty. It was a very short discussion, about ten minutes,
and because of this two or three people were always speaking simultaneously. It was a
very tense situation and the seating arrangement, which was almost a straight line, didn't
help matters. Again in this GD also, nobody was listening to the other person. Anybody
who could manage to speak for around 15 seconds, without being interrupted, would
have done well.

Compared to the IIML GD, IIM Calcutta one was much better organised. We were seated
in a circle and we all had desks in front of us. The topic here was 'fundamental learning
has lost its importance in education'. The time duration was 25 minutes. The group
discussed the various philosophies about education and then we drifted a bit to discuss
about the examination system. We spent quite some time on discussing them. In the end
we were randomly asked to summarise the discussion.

For the IIMK GD we were given a news clipping regarding the infrastructure
development in India. There were no instructions regarding the issues to be discussed,
and the group was asked to identify the issues on its own. It was a small group of around
7 people seated in a semi-circle and the time allowed was 15 minutes. There was a
healthy discussion on various issues related to infrastructure and many examples were
quoted.