Interview transcript of one of our readers - PMRDF interview experience

the below interview transcript is contributed by one of our readers. He wishes to remain anonymous it seems but we should thank him nevertheless. It is very valuable for future candidates.


 Place of interview: Bangalore
Number of panel members: 3

1. Tell me something about yourself?
Answered that question but my stupid brain missed telling them what I studied. So next question was:
2. You missed telling us your qualification...
Answered
3. OK, you are already working part time for an NGO, why dont you continue working there?
Answered.
4. What motivates you to move away from that NGO and come to PMRDFS
Answered
5. Is the money the main motivation behind your move?
Answered
6. What kind of job do you exactly do apart from working part time at the NGO.
Answered
7. Arent you a very confused person? You work as an engineer, working part time at an NGO, and now you want to work for rural development. Is it that you are very confused without knowing what you want to do?
Answered
8. Are you appearing for UPSC ?
Answered
Next member started asking
1. What are your plans during this fellowship? What kind of ideas do you intend to follow.
Answered
2. Will you take a leave for two years from your company or will you quit your job to join this?
Answered
3. Do you have any problems or any preference for working at any particular region of the country?
Answered
4. Would you have any language problems?
Answered
5. Have you had any experience working in villages before?
Answered (said during school and college days we worked as NSS volunteers in villages).
6. Where was this village?
Answered
7. What kind of work did you do there.
Answered.
8. What are the kind of problems facing these districts?
Answered.
Passed on to the next member
1. Having lived in cities your whole life, what do you think you will find in these villages?
Answered
2. Is that what you like experiencing? (I had answered about lack of infrastructure and difficulty in terrain, etc for the previous question)
Answered
3. Are you sure you will be able to take it in your stride?
Answered
4. In of your previous answers you had said middlemen play a major role in deciding things for villagers, arent you, as an engineer, work as a middle men too?
Answered, but I was a little taken aback at what he was trying to say/ask, but tried to get back my composure and answered, but very messed up answer
5. No no no, you are not right. If middle men are bad, you are bad too!
I answered by saying that middle men are bad when the opposite party does not have a bargaining capacity to argue against the rates quoted by the middle men, which is not the case in engineering companies as our clients have options and choices and they can move on or bargain for better deals, but these villagers dont have the option and bargaining capacity to do the same.
5. The first person who asked the question said, no no thats not the case, those people dont have any other option, ok now you can leave..

Over all, I think it was a very average performance by me. I dont expect a great score as the interview members did not seem too pleased with most of my answers and the first member even left out to the washroom half-way through and came back almost at the end of the interview. I will post the scores when (or if) I get to know it..

My comment -
Seems like interview went really well. I am 100 percent sure of his selection.