The Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM A) offers a one-year full-time residential program known as the Post Graduate Program in Management for Executives (PGPX). This program is designed for professionals with substantial work experience who are looking to enhance their managerial skills and leadership abilities.
The selection process for the IIM A PGPX program typically includes an interview round. The interview aims to assess various aspects of a candidate’s profile, including their academic background, work experience, leadership potential, and motivation for pursuing the PGPX program. The interview panel may consist of faculty members and industry professionals.
Here are some of the interview excerpts from 2022 and 2023
Profile of the candidate : 5 years work ex as a Software Engineers in E-Commerce Industry. B.Tech and M.tech (from IIT-Bombay)
Result : Admitted . Click here to read the tips and tricks by the candidate for future applicants.
Questions asked :
Q1) How have the learnings of your master’s degree been helpful in your job?
Q2) What are the recent trends in retail industry in UK and India? How is Tesco dealing with it?
Q3) What have been the biggest challenges for Tesco in the recent past?
Q4) Questions about “Aldi Price Match” – a project that I had taken up at work. Detailed analysis about strategy and outcomes of this project
Q5) How many employees does Tesco Bengaluru have? Would it have been better if it had outsourced its software division to some service-based company?
Q6) What excites you the most about your job?
Q7) Discussion about challenges that UK economy is facing.
Q8) Why do you think this program is best fitted to your career goals? Q9) Do you have any questions for us?
Profile of the Candidate : 4 years of Work Experience in Automobile Industry as a Product Manager, Female, Engineer
Result : Admitted- Click here to read tips and tricks written by the candidate for future applicants
Questions asked
1. What does your day at work look like?
2. What are Agile and Scrum?
3. Why is digital transformation needed in automotive industry?
4. What is the value of my product that I am working on for the market?
5. What are your views on EVs being carbon-free?
6. Why do you wish to pursue an MBA?
7. Why PGPX?
8. Have you talked to any alumnus? What were their views on PGPX?
9. Have you applied to any other school? What is your Plan B?
10. Do you have any questions for us?
Profile of the Candidate : Male, Engineer, Reapplicant, 5 years of Work Experience in Maintenance and Operations in a PSU
Result : Admitted
Questions Asked
There were two people on the panel: Associate Professor Promila Agarwal (P1) on my left and Associate Professor Vineet Virmani on my right (P2) .
- Extempore: Reservation for women in parliament will lead to nepotism as political leaders will give tickets to their family members.
- I said yes it will lead to nepotism and spoke on the topic.
- I was met with several questions in response to my stance on the topic. These were:
- P1: India has one of the highest number of women MPs, why do we need women reservation.
- P2: Do you think men cannot think good for women and cannot make laws that are good for them too?
- P1: Do you want to say that women are incapable of getting a seat in parliament on their own?
- How do you think having women reservation and hence more women will make a difference? What kind of difference?
- Going on these lines, we should have 50% reservation for women in PGPX too. What do you say?
- What business sector are you reading about? Answered: Supply chain and logistics. What are the challenges the sector is facing?
- Could these challenges have been avoided?
- What companies are you targeting?
- Why do you want to do an MBA now?
- How would you contribute to IIMA?
- Do you know when were the first IIMs established? We have low percentage of women applying. In fact, it was a bad decision to open higher education management institutes when the nation’s primary education scene is so terrible. What do you think?
- Conversations around the above: In fact these colleges are only accessible to the privileged, we only get applications from privileged people, women reservation won’t open doors, only people who are already privileged will get benefits. How do you think the common folks are benefitting from IIMs?
- On these lines, I think ISRO’s programmes such as Chandrayan is also of little value. We are spending tons of money, how is moon landing going to help the masses?
- Any questions you want to ask us?
Profile of the Candidate : Male, Engineer, 5 years of Work Experience in Product Management
Result : Admitted
- Tell me something apart from things already mentioned in the application ( I mentioned my interest in sports and medieval Indian history).
Continued questions on History
- Ruler of Hyderabad in Medieval history ( partially correct answer. They told “phaas gaya bolkar. I insisted my interest in it)
- Thoughts on Slave Dynasty.
4.Learnings from Medieval history
5.What is better model of Governance -Centralised or decentralised
6.How do compare enterprise to medieval empires ? What works well here -Centralization or decentralization
(Wasn’t asked to pick chit . My interest in Medieval history was treated as an extempore)
7.Why PGPX?
(They cut me off in between and tested me by saying your consultant has prepared the answer. I reanswered it by being more conversational to which he replied-“Mai batata hu kyu karna hai , kyuki paisa zyada kamane hai. I replied that I am a process oriented person and money is side result of it .He slightly made fun of that as well saying not many people think of money as an afterthought.
8.What do you want to do after MBA? ( I said product leader)
9.Name 3 companies you want to join post MBA ?
10.What colleges have you applied?
11.Which is your preference?
What will be your preference-
12.ISB or IIM B? Why ( This was a bit tricky question, instead of IIM A vs ISB , he asked me ISB vs IIM B)
13.What is your current role at Brane Enterprise
14.Mention a project and what do you do?Your contribution.
Kumar Anshul 