HR Interview Questions

Word Limit: 200-500 words per question (Minimum: 200 words, Maximum: 500 words)

1. a) Tell me about yourself (Academic life/ work experience/ personal life leading up to
IIMU)

-Being born and brought up in small town of Katihar, I completed my early education
i.e. up to standard 10 from there only during my school days I was house captain and
gave me the inspiration to do my further education in the field of commerce so to do
that I moved to Mumbai where I joined Prahladrai Dalmia lions college of commerce
and economics and from there I completed my higher secondary and bachelors degree
as well. I did my bachelors degree in accounting and finance. During my graduation
days I was also preparing for Chartered Accountancy and even I cleared the group 1
of IPCC as well after completion of my bachelors I wanted to joined armed forces and
I was preparing for the same but unfortunately in the month of September of that year
I met with an accident which made me ineligible to joined but I never loosen my hope
after my recovery I started working with Bright Cleaning And Maintenance Services
as a business development manager where I increased the turnover of my company by
6x in a span of 2.5 years and post that I thought since I do have the business acumen
how it really work in really life then why not verify it with the theoretical aspect of it.
So, I thought lets go with MBA and here I am in IIMU.

b) Now tell us something that is not there on your resume (What makes you stand
apart from others?)

- I Feel that I am an empathic person and at the same time I have the skill of utilizing
the limited resources in most optimum way to explain it I want to take a scenario of
my college days. In 2017 I got the opportunity of interacting with the police
department of Maharashtra for the first time because my home got robbed and at that
time I got to know that they have a lot of responsibility and at the same time they are
not able to fulfil all because of limited number of personals that’s the reason some
time we see that some police officials behave with citizens a little rudely.

Coincidently at that time I had watched two movies named Jolly LLB 2 and PINK
and from there I got the inspiration lets do something for them and I got the idea to
digitalize the FIR system. It will not only reduce the work pressure of police officials
at the same time it will make more transparency in the judicial system which will
again help the whole country.

2. Describe yourself using three adjectives. How would your friends/peers describe you
using three adjectives?

-Be it, my college friends or childhood friends, I always tend to hear from them, that I
am a very good interpreter. I am able to decipher the text pretty easily and with
utmost comfort. Thus, allowing me to generate a better interpretation and draw a
better conclusion.
 -My friends always say that I am a good team player. They take references from the
plays in which we used to take part. I never took the acknowledgment from the crowd
after a successful ending and used to stand in the corner. I always pushed my juniors,
my mates, to do better.

-My friends say that I am a very organized person and give importance to even the
minutest of things. I always note things down and make an organized note sheet of all
the relevant things consequently helping me in decision making and analysis.

3. a) What are your three major strengths? Illustrate each with an incident in your life.

-Creativity-As I have already explained one incident of my creativity in question 2

apart from that when I was working with Bright Cleaning and Maintenance service
we faced a huge problem during the first wave of COVID, And my employer had
given me the permission to just increase our turnover at any cost it can be in the
same business or I can find a completely new business opportunity and after
analysing all the market I came with an idea of arbitrage of maize as it was the
harvesting season so we use to procure it from Bihar and was selling it in
Maharashtra at a considerable profit margin.

-Discipline- I follow one simple philosophy if you fail to plan you are planning to
fail and if you want to complete the planned activity you have to be discipline
otherwise you are going to procrastinate it.

-Patience- since I know that if you want to achieve something and you have
planned and analysed it properly you have to give time and after that all you need
to do is to wait for results. For example from 2018 to 2022 I have made 16x returns
in crypto market.

b) According to your peers/ friends what are your three strongest abilities? Provide
instances to support the qualities.

-Networking- when I joined IIMU within a span of 3-4 days I was able to know a
minimum of 40-45 person and to achieve that I had followed only one strategy before
joining college I contacted 7-8 persons of diverse background and post that when I
reached college I use to meet them so through them I got the opportunity to know
there groups as well.

-Humility-I have the philosophy that every persons have their own merits and
demerits and we should always respect there nature of struggles and ease and the best
part is you get the opportunity of learning from them.

-Strategic thinking- my friends you to tell me that you are professor(money heist) as I
have always plan b available if the first strategy didn’t worked.

4. a) What are your three major weaknesses? What have you done to overcome these
weaknesses? (Or, according to your peers/ friends what are your three weaknesses?
How do you plan to overcome these?)
 -Communication- I don’t feel confident enough in English communication as I had
never got the opportunity to communicate in English but to eradicate this problem I
joined the course of Cambly and at the same time I try to communicate with everyone
in English.

-Too detailed oriented- since I believe in perfection due to which a lot of time I am
not able to accomplish my work in time even in the first week of induction process I
was not able to accomplish every task then I learn that the most important thing is to
accomplish the job in timely manner and it should be given the highest priority post
that if you get time you can work on perfection.

5. Who is your role model? How does he/she inspire you?

-Elon Musk
Elon Musk inspires me because he is a true visionary. His ability to dream big and
then implement brings me hope for the future, especially as we continue to face
climate change. The way that he thinks about the future and what can be done with
technology is amazing. I think he does a great job of thinking about how people will
interact with the world in the future, rather than just how things will look or what
people will use. He has created an entire network of companies that are focused on
making a difference in the world, rather than just selling products to make money.

6. What are your hobbies? What have you done to pursue your interest/hobby seriously?
-Cooking- for last 10 years I use to cook my food by my own and if there is some
special dish I use to cook it with the help of YouTube

-Watching Movies- As of now I have watch all action genre (specially war related)

-Travelling- I have done bike riding for more than 1.5lakh km in which my record of
riding the bike for 2000km in 30 hrs non-stop.

7. a) What are your short-term goals (3-5 years)? How do you plan to achieve them?
-Having been in this field for more than 2 years I have come to see the importance of
short term goals my previous position and responsibilities allow me to achieve steady
growth and learn new skills along the way I have also been assigned various
responsibilities that let my skills flourish presently I'd like the opportunity to display
my leadership skills by becoming a team leader who helps other achieve their own
goals and to achieve that as well I would like to join the leadership program of various

b) What are your long-term goals (5-10 years)? How do you plan to achieve them?
-my long term goal is to manage the marketing department of a company and I think
that to achieve that by first getting to manage a smaller team within the next 2 or 3
years and generate enough result to be considered for department manager after
another 2 years. I have prepared for this in the past year by taking sales jobs, and I
plan on taking up new opportunities.
8. What does “success” mean to you? How successful have you been per your
comprehension of success? 
- Success has no end its a journey where we try to fulfil our dreams and the
satisfaction is converted into success. Success cannot measured its life long process.
And I feel that I am successful.

9. a) What differentiates you from others? Why should we hire you over anyone else on
this campus?
-Having entrepreneurial mindset and at the same time experience of sales and
marketing sets me apart from rest of the batch as majority of them are engineer and
they might have the skill of jugad(being engineer) but they don’t have the taste of real
world.

b) Now tell us why should we not hire you? What are the qualities that would weaken
your candidature?
-I believe that in current situation the only reason due to which I might not be able
reach upto your expectation would be my communication skills.

10. What are the attributes of an ideal job for you? What would be your expectations from
this job?
- My dream job is to work with talented people in a respectful work environment with
mutual trust. I value teamwork, and I look for a job that offers a collaborative
environment where I can be part of a team, help my teammates, learn from them, and
where we can hold each other accountable.

11. Tell us about your life transforming experience. How has it changed you and what
was your learning from it?
-Up to my graduation days I was very overconfident in terms of education I was like
for me graduation is like cup of tea even I never use to study for it but when I got KT
in the 5th semester I got scattered I wasn’t able to believe in it but at that time I learned
that always put your feet on ground never do the cloud walking.

12. What has been your greatest achievement? What were the major hurdles and how did
you overcome them?
-During my work I had achieved 4x increase in turnover by changing the structure of
the organisation and at the same time finding new opportunities of business for them.
No doubt I faced a lot of hurdles during that tenure as we were not aware of what kind
of problems we can face in new venture and at the same time my employer is of old
school philosophy so convincing him was also a challenge.

13. Have you ever had any failures? What was your learning from it and what could have
been done to avoid it? 
-Up to my graduation days I was very overconfident in terms of education I was like
for me graduation is like cup of tea even I never use to study for it but when I got KT
in the 5th semester I got scattered I wasn’t able to believe in it but at that time I learned
that always put your feet on ground never do the cloud walking.

14. Describe an incident when you resolved a conflict. What helped you manage it and
what were your learnings?
 - At my last job in sales, we had an issue with a client who was extremely unhappy
with the specifics of our arrangement. As her primary point of contact in the
company, it was my job to defuse the situation and help him come to a new deal that
worked for both our company and his. First, I spoke to him about the specifics he was
upset with, namely delivery costs and trouble he was having using our software. We
rehashed sticking points to the point where he was satisfied with the new
arrangement. Additionally, we assigned him a permanent customer success
representative to ensure he could take full advantage of our products.
While at the start, he was close to ending our relationship, by the end he was a happy
customer. He later subscribed to our full service package and became one of our top
five clients the following year.

15. Describe an instance where you had to persuade someone to do something they were
reluctant to do. (Talk about your approach to convince them and the major challenges
that you had to face) 
-In my last job in sales I tried to acquire a big customer. They didn’t respond
positively to my emails or calls. But I continued to send them more offers, relevant
for their business. I even sent the manager a greeting card when they had birthday,
together with a small present. I was persistent in my efforts, trying to build a
relationship with them. When they finally needed a big upgrade to their ERP system,
guess who they contacted first–they contacted me, and we eventually closed the deal.

16. Tell us about a time when you had to work under pressure (deadline/ boss/ peer/
family/ performance etc.). How did you handle the situation and what advice would
you give to someone if they were in your place?
-As a sales person in maintenance service industry our pick season is festivals time
and at that we use to have a lot of work and responsibility and to manage the pressure
we use work as a team, allocating each and every work to those person who are
proficient enough to execute the same in most optimum way and second important
advice is planning.

17. Have you ever held any leadership position or managed a team? What were the key
challenges that you faced?
- In my role as the sales manager at Bright Cleaning and Maintenance Services, I was
tasked with increasing the overall sales numbers from one quarter to the next. I used
my experience as a salesperson to determine what methods work best for selling
products and developed a presentation on three of the best ways to increase sales.
When I gave this presentation, I encouraged the team members to share their insights
and how they could apply the methods to specific deals that were currently in their
pipelines. The following quarter, our sales numbers increased by 15%.

18. Tell us about an incident/ situation from your life that showcases following skills/
qualities:
a) Initiative taking/ Go-getter attitude
b) Problem-solving
c) Creativity
d) Entrepreneurial spirit
-During the first phase of covid when everything was shut, the worst hit sector was
Service and our company also falls under this category and at that time I took the
 initiative to strategize what other option we have to earn money for our company and
after analysing I came to the option of starting new venture and managed the whole
project and made a turnover of 3.4cr of turnover in a single season of 3 months.

19. Have you ever had a positive impact on someone else? How were you able to
influence that person to do well?
-my nephew recently had to make a final decision on his college measure although
he's a diligent student you always loved learning about so many subjects that he's
never been sure about his eventual career path I asked my nephew to meet me have
for lunch so that we could discuss his options he explained his potential measures and
his corresponding career options emphasising how he felt felt conflicted about which
one to choose.
I helped him created decision matrix so that he could evaluate his options from a more
objective viewpoint using the decision matrix it became clear that majoring in have
computer science was best for him. I also discuss with him how do you window this is
the best decision for now its okay he changes his major or career aspirations later on.
My nephew appreciated both my help in clearly laying out his options and in helping
his realise its okay to change our career goals later in life for now he's still happily
majoring in computer science.

20. Please select any one of the following alternatives and give reasoning:
a) Working from Home vs Working from Office
-working from office because it helps to interact with all the team members and at
the same time work done is more faster in this process
b) Empathy vs Logic
-empathy because if you want that your products get success then you have to first
empathise and understand hello what kind of difficulties customer is facing and
this can only be happen if you keep your foot in the customers shoes.
c) Stipend vs Brand vs Profile (considering summer placements)
-profile because it will help you to understand what kind of responsibility I can
handle whether it is a big brand or a small the work done by them is more or less
same all the difference is the brand name
d) Field work vs Office work

-field work because I'm a sales and marketing person and I really feel good when I
am in the market because due to this I am able to understand what is the need and
the crux of the market and accordingly I'm able to strategies for my company.