The XLRI-HR is the most sought-after graduation program in the field in India. Having been the pioneer of this field in the nation, every year they see the some of the best candidates competing for a seat in the program, with all coming down to the final frontier of the interview round.
My slot was in the later half of the day, with many students already done with their part.
When I entered the room, I saw three panelists waiting for me, all of them being middle aged, one female and two males. They already had a copy of my profile which they were looking at.
They began by asking me something about my work experience with a leading IT firm. I explained them that I was an Application Development Analyst there, and my major skill, as it was defined in my organization, was into data analytics. They enquired further about the kind of analysis I was referring to. It is here when I explained that my work revolved around extracting, transforming and loading operations of the data from the client’s data base and developing data maps to derive the required analysis the clients needed to make business decisions about. I also explained them about the specific tool we used to do that.
They asked me about any HR operation I had seen in my organization I was critical of. My company had a very sound staffing and training system. They had made sure that the people they recruited from college campuses got the appropriate domain according the skill requirement and the background in their graduation days. For example, I new recruits who had graduated in Computer Science Engineering being assigned to development tasks like coding and programming in Java script, while recruits they had picked from the background of Civil Engineering were tried to fit into domains like testing where coding skills were not a priority and the training part was enough to make them prepared for taking up live projects.
Adding to this I also explained how they took the security of the employees and discipline very seriously, and hence my answer to their question was negative.
After this they proceeded with the gap, they found between my work experience and my application for college. I told them that I had taken some time off for civil services preparation. They asked me if I felt awkward moving between sectors, from Technology, to Civil Services preparation and now trying to pursue management in Human Resources. To this, my reply was that almost all of them had a component of utilizing the resources in hand correctly, so while the domains seem distant, the main goal is never different, may be with some variations, but never different at the core.
Following this, they informed me that they were done with the process, wished me luck and I left the meeting room.