My SBI interview

Date: 12^th january 2012, Hyderabad

Exam for SBI PO posts was held in july 2011. It comprised of an objective paper comprising maths, english, logical reasoning and general knowledge. The written paper comprised of letter writing and precise writing. After a long wait of 7 months results were announced and I was shortlisted for interview.

                On 12^th jan 11 AM I was called for interview to SBI Headquarters, hyderabad. I reached their campus around 10:30. It was a sprawling campus resembling a mini hitech city. A total of 18 people were called for interview. I had to wait for over two hours to get my document verified.  After which, they provided us lunch coupons and asked us to have lunch at their officers mess. After a quick meal, we were taken to a conference hall for group discussion. Again we were made to wait for another 2 hours as interviewers were busy interviewing people from morning batch.

                The conference hall was huge with state of art equipments. All of us were provided with a table mic. It was more a test on public speaking than a group discussion, as the format allowed no scope for countering others points. Everyone were given 2 minutes to talk on topic in 1^st round and another 1 minute to conclude in 2^nd round. The topic given was “villages in India are its strengths or weaknesses” . I said villages were once a strength and now have become our weakness and gave a few suggestions to convert our weakness into stength. After group discussion, the interviews started

                I was number 4 on list and hence didn’t have to wait for long . The interview board comprised of 4 old men. Unlike a traditional interview setting, this room had sofas on four corners of room and each was seated in one corner. I was made to sit on a chair in middle of the room.

Chairman: Welcome . please sit down.

Me: thank you sir

Chairman: So you have completed your graduation in 2010. What were you doing since then?

Me: I have been preparing for civil services

Chairman: What is the status now?

Me: I have written the mains and results are yet to be announced

Chairman: good. So if you get  through civil services, You would prefer it over this job

Me: Yes

Chairman: Did you write any other bank exams?

Me: Yes I did. I managed to clear the exam for a couple of banks but I couldn’t attend interview as they were too close to mains exam

Chairman: Ok. Do you know about lothal?

Me; Yes sir, it is a harappan site. It was an important port town

Chairman: Name some harappan sites in India

Me: Mohenjodaro

Chairman: its not in India

Me: sorry sir, its in pakistan. In India we have kalibangan, ranikhet

Chairman: Tell me one more

Me: I am not able to recollect now

Chairman: Name the person who designed delhi

Me: New delhi was designed by Lutyens

Chairman: Ok . what about chandigarh, rock garden is there na?

Me: I don’t know. I have stayed in delhi so I have an idea about it

Chairman: Ok. Name the tribes in meghalaya

Me: Mishmi…..gharo, khasi

Chairman: There is one more without which answer is incomplete

Me: I am not able to recollect not

Chairman: Its jaintia

Member 1: Can you give me technical definition of semi conductors?

Me: I can’t give technical definition but I can explain it

M1: ok please explain

Me: It is a material which has very low band gap and hence can be bridged easily and made conductive. So it can act as a conductor in certain circumstances

M1: Can you tell me how much that band gap should be?

Me: I don’t remember

M1: atleast resistivity

Me; No sir

M1: what about insulator?

Me: I ddon’t remember the band gap range

M1: Ok. Can you name a nobel prize winner who was born in almora?

Me: hargobind khurana?

M1: No.

Me: Am sorry sir. I don’t know

M1: name some nobel prize winners from India

Me: The latest was venkatraman

Chairman: what venkatraman?

Me: venkatraman ramakrishna

Chairman: no no tell me proper name

Me: I am not sure

M2; What is this? You have cleared prelims. You should saying these takatak

Me: sir the exam pattern has changed. It is more analytical and less bookish now

Chairman: but still, this is general knowledge. You will be asked these in civilis interview as well

Me: yes sir. I shall update myself in future

M1: Ok any other nobel laureates form india

Me: Amartya Sen

M1: Pandit amartya sen?

Me; No sir economist amartya sen

M1: that’s what. Pandit amartya sen

Me: eh??

Chairman : what he meant was you must address him as Dr Amartya sen. He has accomplished so much

Me: yes sir, he is professor emeritus, renowned economist

M2: Who is Rajat gupta? Do you know him?

Me: Yes sir. He is facing allegations of insider trading

M2: who was he helping?

Me: Rajaraman

M2: raja..what

Me: The srilankan Rajaratnam

M2; Yes. name some rating agencies?
Me: CRISIL, Moodys
M2: in India
Me: I only know about CRISIL in india

M3: Who was responsible for green revolution in India?

Me; M S swaminathan and Norman Borlaug

M3: Ok. What about white revolution?

Me: varghese Kurien

M3: where?

Me; at anand

Chairman: Ok thanks you may go

Me; I would like to thank you all for giving me this opportunity

Chairman: Ok all the best

The interview was for around 10 minutes. I left for home around 4 PM .

It was more a quizzing session than an interview. I have a feeling they have struck me off as my priority is civil services. Hence they didn’t ask anything related to banking or my background.

Anyways lets hope for the best. The results are expected in a months time.

Post your feedbacks and suggestions as comments

                

Bank interview

Bank of maharashtra interview , Hyderabad, 23rd march 2011
Keeping in view the changed pattern of civil services exam, I decided to write bank exams for practice. But later I realised that the marks are not disclosed by banks. Only the result i.e. whether you are selected or not is disclosed.
I wrote around 6-7 exams spread over 2 months(dec-jan). so far 3 results have been declared. Two banks (allahabad and vijaya) showed me the door. Surprisingly bank of maharashtra called me for the interview.Here is an account of what happened at the interview:
I had reached the place around 11 AM. It was one small multi-storey building. I was directed to the third floor. It was a video conference room. Then I realised that interview was going to be conducted through video conference. Ignorant of that fact, I bought new shoes and watch!! Alas all in vain.
I was second on list for interview. My certificates were verified. Most of the candidates were uncles and aunties(28-30 yrs). Hence the person verifying the certificates was doubtful about my age and I had to submit my driving license as proof of my age!!
The video conferencing room had an old Onida TV with a web cam sort of thing. At 12:30, it came up and a group of buddas and one aunty were sitting on other side. The group of buddas were restless to start off the interview. So we were shunted out of the air conditioned room into the corridor . Luckily I was number two on list , so didn’t have to wait for long. I pity others who had to wait in the hot sun and also the hot air blowing out of AC compressors placed in corridors
At around 12:40 , my turn came. I went and took my place. I could hardly make out the faces of the people. For me it was just 4-5 faceless people on other side, I hope it wasn’t so for them. Here starts my interview
Lady: So vaishnov, tell me about yourself, your back ground, your work experience, your parents etc
Me; I am bharath vaishnov,basically from hyderbad but my schooling has been across the length and breadth of country since my father is working in HPCL a PSU. I have completed my B.Tech from ASE bangalore. My hobbies are speed cubing and blogging. During my engg course, I got an opportunity to work with Bosch. [While working there I realised that IT sector was not for me. Out there people work in a narrow field. All work they do is going to serve only the needs of a small strata of society]******* . I want to work in a sector where 30-40 years down the line, I feel that through my work I have been able to serve the needs of a wider section of people. This is when I decided that banking is one sector which is on a rise and is serving the people at large. With the financial inclusion drive on, I am sure banking sector provides a wider scope to serve the society. Hence I have decided to join the banking sector
P1: Who is a leader?
Me: Leader is one who can get things done. Hence he/she should be able to motivate the people towards achieving the organisational goals. Also at same time , he/ she should make efforts to bring the employees goals in sync with organisational goals. That way they will be able to serve the cause of organisation in a better way.
Lady: What is your short term and long term goal?
Me: My goal is to be successful in what ever endeavour I take up. I would like to see myself in long term at a position where I feel satisfied about the work I have done and at same time people feel good about my work
Lady: what is success?
Me: It is all about achieving the goals that one has set for themselves and also at same time ensuring that in due course it brings happiness to the people around.
Lady: how do you think your educational qualification is going to help in your job ?
Me: Engineering provides problem solving skills. It helps in developing an analytical bent of mind. This will surely help in my job as a bank officer
P2: The bank is recruiting 400 probationary officers. What do you think is the reason?
Me: With the government insisting on financial inclusion, I am sure there will be a need to expand the bank network. Especially considering that bank of maharashtra is a leader in rural banking considering that 38% of the bank’s branches in rural areas, I am sure there will be a huge need for manpower. This can help bank put more people at cutting edge level and get more out of their network.
P3: will it improve efficiency/ productivity of bank?
Me: it depends on how the organisation handles it. If the new recruits are imparted the required skills and put in right place at right time, I am sure there will be a boost in productivity
P4: What are the expectations of employee towards the employer?
Me; as I said before, it is important that people are put in right place at right time. I think that is a key factor
P4: 2nd factor?
Me: errrr…..It is also important to provide a person exposure in different fields. Regular rotation of job should be there to ensure that job doesn’t become monotonous and employees remain motivated
P3: You are 21 year old. Under you people of 40-50 year old will be working. DO you think you can handle the situation?
Me: I have faced such situations during my internship at Bosch(bluff) . So I don’t think that will be a problem(I should have said that authority flows from position and not the person and hence if what you are doing is right, I think there will be no problems)
P1: ok thank you. You may go
Me: thanks for giving me this opportunity

I was disappointed that no economics questions were asked. Neither did they ask about their bank nor current affairs. Lets wait and see how the result is gonna be.

There ends my interview. Hope to see a positive result. They had called 1500 people for 400 vacancies. Hope I end up among the 400

*******The italicized lines are not my true opinions. it was made up just to satisfy the egos of interviewers.


Result:

On 25th april, i got a mail from bank intimating me about my selection as a bank PO. I was supposed to join on 9th of may at Latur in maharashtra with an initial pay pack of 14000 per month.

The flying dragon and the oversized elephant

It has been a busy year for India when it comes to international relations. India has already hosted leaders of 4 of the P5 countries and the 5th will be coming soon. The most awaited visit was that of Wen Jiabao in the context of growing tensions between the two.

Despite the panchsheel and myriad other agreements China finds means and ways to irritate India. The latest being the stapled visa issue. India’s response has often been weak to the challenges thrown up by China. Post crisis China ‘s stakes in the global economy has raised to high and it now wields great power. But with great power comes great responsibility which is clearly lacking in the chinese way of politicking. It has constantly been at loggerheads with its neighbours be it japan, India or South Korea.

The growing presence of India in international fora has clearly irked China which seeks to be the dominant power down south. India’s policy towards China is flawed and lacks direction. At a time when China is putting its foot forward aggressively India is taking a step backward and pacifying the dragon. When China began throwing tantrums on Arunachal issue, India declared that it supported one China policy. At a time when trade deficit has reached unsustained levels, we have doubled our trade targets. While china puts up trade barriers for frontline indian industries, we are opening up our sensitive sectors like banking and finance to China .

On the stapled visa issue, India has been repeatedly imploring China to review its policy despite China giving a crass reply that it is an administrative issue!!How can a state belonging to India be an administrative issue for a foreign nation?? India needs to take a tit for tat stance on Tibet. In this regard India seems to have made some progress by not mentioning that it supports the one China policy in the joint statement. Also India’s decision to attend nobel prize ceremony should have sent a clear message to China .

Post 1962 war China captured a large chunk of J&K area known as aksai chin. Till date India has never demanded China to return back the land and even China has never bothered to tender apology to India for violating the panchsheel doctrine.

The widespread public view is that with the growing trade ties, China would be less aggressive and more obliging to India’s concerns. That doesn’t seem to be true. During the visit none of the core concerns of India seem to be addressed by China . The joint statement says that the ties have now be elevated form bilateral to global level. But what use are ties when they have divergent views? Even on a issue like terrorism, China refrained form taking a hard position.
India and China have agreed to cooperate on nuclear disarmament declares the joint statement. This seems to be more of a platitude than a commitment. This is clearly reflected in the fact that China has been actively empowering Pakistan , a state that is on the brink of failure, with nuclear technology.

On the whole Mr Wen’s trip was a mere PR operation. In the last 5 years there have been 4 high level delegation visits by India to China while from China this is the only visit. This sums up how the relationship is playing out. We need to make amends on our policy towards China .

THE telangana turmoil

On Dec 31st whole world would be gearing up to party while in AP the situation is gonna be tense. This is coz Sri Krishna committee will be submitting its report on dec 31st. Sri krishna committee was setup to determine the legitimacy of demand for a separate telangana state, an area in north AP.
Over the last few years, the stir for a separate state has been intensified. During the rule of YS rajasekhar reddy(YSR), he managed to keep them subdued with his leadershipa nd coercive skills. With his untimely demise in a helicopter crash ins ept 09, the state has been left without a strong leader.
K Rosaiah , aveteran politician with over 4 decades of experience took on the burden of carrying on governanc e of a state where revenue was dwindling and separatist forces were gaining popularity.
Yesterday all of a sudden, K Rosaiah stepped down citing health concerns. The new CM announced is Kiran Kumar reddy. A comparatively younger and inexperienced congressman. This will be his 1st post in the government. This might seem a heroic move and a sign of encouragement for young politicians. But deep beneath lies a different reason.
With the state heading towards tough times in december, a lot of pressure would be there on CM . At this hour AP needs a strong leader. Rosaiah with his vast experience could have steered the ship through but seems like he has hsied away form taking on the challenge. Instead an inexperienced Kiran has been put onto the high pedestal. This is for sure a makeshift arrangement coz no big leader wants to take on the helm at this time and take the risk of losing their image and credibility post dec 31st.
With such a selfish mentality, it is hard for congress to survive long in AP . Only time will tell how AP repsonds to the situations and how the inexperienced CM handles it.

Charity: losing its sheen?

Charity has been part of many a religious texts. According to dharma shastra of hinduism, charity should be anonymous and selfless. It was based on principle of left hand not knowing what right hand was doing and vice versa. Donations were anonymous and were genuine. Over the years , the selflessness and anonymity is being replaced by selfishness and publicity.
With the end of soviet era and the fall of communism, the states turned more capitalist. The global south or the 3rd world soon adopted to the western models of export led intensive growth and hoped for a trickle down of benefits to pull people out of poverty.
But the heady cocktail of corruption, redtapism and nepotism was too large an absorbent to let anything trickle down to the lower strata of society.Democracies turned into plutocracies. The result was a growing and diversifying divide. From a primitive rich poor divide, today we have the caste divide, the digital divide and so on. Humanity has been dissected and trisected according to the whims and fancies of the opportunist politicians.
All these have lead to a growingly selfish and sinful society. Surprisingly a major change is occuring in this world of narcists. One mister Gates suddenly got enlightened and opened up the gates of his bank account to let the wealth flood into the global south and help in bridging the very divides that companies like his created. Even in war torn countries like Iraq and afghanistan, the capitalists are leaving no stone unturned to publicise their brands.
Lord Blalaji of tirupathi today receives gifts amounting to crores of rupees from affluent people amidst full media glare. Donation which was once a low profile anonymous event has not become a PR event. Such has been the commercialisation/westernisation in our society.
India had assumed to itself a socialist pattern of society in 1970s , but this seems to be fast changing into a opportunist society where every activity is performed based on a cost benefit analysis.

Tax reforms

Tax Reforms
Why tax reforms?
India after independence decided to tread the socialist path and govt took upon itself the onerous task of wiping the tears of the poor. However in its effort towards delivering services to all and ensuring equitable growth, its expenditure on social sector shot up. It established numerous public sector industries to manufacture goods right from bread to ambassdor cars. All these resulted in heavy spending. However governments revenues remained weak. One of the main source of government revenues are tax revenues. Tax revenue was alarmingly low because of the regressive tax structure we had. This called for a tax policy reform. Finally the fiscal crisis of 1990 forced us to unlash a series of reforms in our economy popularly known as LPG(Liberalisation, privatisation, globalisation) reforms.
The tax policy pre 1991 suffered from following drawbacks
• It was retrogressive ie it taxed both the poor and rich equally. Majority of government revenue was from indirect taxes. Indirect taxes like excise duty , custom duty don’t differentiate between rich and poor
• It was irrational with tax rates going up as high as 97.6%(i.e. for every 100 rs earned 97.6 rs goes to govt)!!!
• Irrational policies discouraged people from paying taxes and lead to tax evasion
• The more the rules, the more the loop holes. With so many rules in the income tax act people with help of their chartered accountants could easily exploit the loop holes and thus managed to legally avoid tax
• All this lead to a huge fiscal deficit for government which mad eit imperative on govt to undertake tax policy reforms
What were the tax policy reforms?
The need for tax policy reforms was
• To improve tax to GDP ratio
• To progressively tax people ie tax the rich more and the poor less
• To increase revenue from direct taxes
• To improve the fiscal balance of govt
• To lower tax rates and widen tax base
Keeping these objectives in view MMS formulated a meticulous fiscal policy which worked wonders for our country.
He undertook following steps
• Earlier cotton cloth was subjected to 50 different tax rates depending upon quality of cotton. Such multiplicity of rates resulted in administrative complexity. This was borugh down to a uniform single rate called CENVAT
• Earlier our tax dept spend rs 1.2 per rupee to collect Tax!!! By leveraging technology and optimising the administrative structure today the cost of collection is 6 paise per rupee
• The tax slabs were reduces encouraging more people to pay taxes. As a result the direct taxes have increased and are today almost equal to indirect tax revenues
• The cascading effect of taxes on industry was corrected by implementing the advalorem taxation system through VAT
So what next?
The next step is to simplify our tax laws. The IT act of 1961 has become voluminous and is not in sync with current demands of economy.
Hence the government is undertaking GST and DTC to put in place a simplified, transparent tax system.
A transparent tax system will lead to a situation where people would start voluntarily filing tax leading to surplus revenue with govt which could be beneficially invested in social sector schemes. This would help in achieving our goal of financial inclusion. It would encourage people to save more leading to higher savings rate and hence promoting investments. This would lead to a great thrust to our economy and will jettision us into the league of developed nations.
So the need of the hour is a swift and smooth passing of DTC and GST bill

India: Bullying a billion

“Whenever the Indian Prime Minister speaks, the whole world listens to him”-Barrack Obama
The statement was a shot in the arm for the visionary leaders who envisage a vision of India as a superpower by 2020. But they fail to realize that before we can claim a role of superpower, we need to empower our people. Today more than 50% of population lives on less than Rs 20 a day (official figures still show it 26%). The concept of holistic growth and inclusiveness is a far cry from the present Indian system of governance. The hasty legislations have become mere paper tigers. In the absence of proper machinery and infrastructure, many policies like the right to education and setting up of green tribunals are yet to be implemented.
The pompous inauguration of T3 terminal of New Delhi, built in record time of 37 months, lays out a red carpet welcome to all our international guests. At a time when our Human development index is nose diving, child malnutrition is on a rise, we are more worried about getting Indira Gandhi international airport into the top ten airports of the world rather than addressing the problems of the poor.
The constitutional ideals of sovereignty, secularity and democracy are in danger. In the north J&K curfews and stone pelting have become a regular occurrence. The short lived calmness in valley has ended with the mindless shooting and Killings by the paramilitairy forces. Down at Haryana, Khap panchayats are running a parallel judiciary system openly defying the laws of the land. The principles have natural justice have been thrown out of the window in the name of honour of a group of people.
Delhi is busy with arrangements for CW2010. Common wealth games in India was to project india to the world. In this regard a string of welfare and poverty allievation programs should have been taken up. Atleast an effort to alleviate poverty in NCR should have been taken up. Instead they turned a blind eye to it and went on a spending spree to pep up the city for the International event. The RTE act which has the potential to change the future of India has not been implemented owing to lack of funds. I wonder how they were able to pump in crores of rupees in City planning and beautification.
The Bhopal gas tragedy was back in news after 26 years thanks to the inconsequential judgement in Keshub Mahindra case. The government in a bid to console the people of Bhopal gifted them a toothless Green tribunal to resolve any future accidents of such sort.
AP seems to be on a downward spiral under the reign of Rosaiah. Ever since he took over after the shocking demise of YSR, the funds have dried up and its reached near bankruptcy with many welfare schemes being stalled or restricted to certain regions. In a bid to garner the necessary funds for welfare programs, govt came up with idea of selling licenses for liquor shops. What a gem of an idea! Getting funds for welfare programs at the cost of health of its subjects.
The roads of India are one of the dangerous in world. Lack of
i) lane discipline
ii) Safety infrastructure
iii) Stringent rules
have led to accidents which take away lives of 350 people a day. That is equivalent to an plane crash every day. Instead of improving the safety standards of existing roads, the road ministry is busy making up plans of laying another 43000 km of roads and thus laying more deathtraps.
For sure our economy is robust and is leading the world out of recession with its vast experience in monetary and fiscal policy making of a nation of a billion. But it is also a selfish and witty one at bullying the poor and making way for the rich to prosper.