The interview process consists of four rounds:
1. Behavioral Round: Questions in this round focus on your professional behavior and how you have reacted to certain situations in your career. For example, you may be asked why you want to pursue research as a career.
2. Writing Assessment: You will be given an article and required to answer a question based on it within 48 hours. It is crucial to avoid grammatical errors and address the exact prompt.
3. Case Study Round: This is the deciding round. During the interview, you will be presented with a case study and asked to analyze it. The focus is not on directly answering the questions but rather on analyzing the case from a revenue and loss perspective and structuring your response. Note that these are not standard Profit and Loss case studies.
4. Final Round: This is a mix of case study and behavioral questions.
I reached the Case Study round, and my first two rounds went very well. In my experience, the expectations for this position seems to be of candidates with a management background, which may not align with the skill sets of freshers from the social sector or research industry.
Perhaps this is intentional, as the role might demand such a background. However, if that is the case, potential candidates should not be sourced from the social sector.
Freshers from the social sector and the management field possess very different skill sets and ways of thinking. A tough task for the recruiters, to find a candidate with strong qualitative research skills (a key strength of social sector candidates) who also has the mindset of an MBA grad.