The PhD interviews were distributed over four days. Mine (in HRM) was on second day “Saturday”.  I reached IBS campus pretty well in time. Entered the campus and was baffled as to where to go. Asked and went. I was asked to wait in Lecture Theater.  Hah! To my surprise, there were already around 30 candidates waiting for their turn. My heart started beating harder and louder. Had a quick glance to all the others and found most of the candidates much experienced than me. Stopped comparing with others  immediately. Finally, started talk to taste their profiles. Yummy! Yup their profiles were really ready to gulp like!

Good morning! Listened a voice… He was a faculty member of IBS. He told about the features of the program and procedure of our interviews. All the interviewees were divided into four parts HRM, FM, IT-operations and of course, Marketing. We were asked to reach to respective Lecture Theater for interviews. I could see the queue was least in IT operations, then finance, then marketing and then HRM (my bad luck)! But was confident of outclass others on the basis of reputed awards and little industrial and teaching experience in my portfolio.

Suddenly listened a voice… Manish…. Thankfully I was the first to be interviewed in the HRM lot. The rest of the story inside the LT goes like this:

Three interviewers (one lady and two gentlemen) were sitting there. I entered confidently with my too much loaded folder (full of my achievements). The lady started with a question. Manish tell me what is “epistemology” (I was surprised as what an ice breaking question it was). Pardon ma’am! EPISTEMOLOGY what it is? Sorry ma’am I couldn’t get it. One of the gentlemen wrote it on a piece of paper. I kept on staring it and said “heard this term first time”. How come? You have mentioned that you have teaching experience then how can you be ignorant of it and moreover you are going to do PhD. So, it is expected out of you – said the lady. “Sorry, I don’t know” – I replied kindly. K tell us what you want to do in PhD (your area of interest). I was happy as I had SoP with me. So, showed the same to them. The lady enthusiastically took my SOP in one hand and pencil in another hand and started circling right from topic to references. She criticized my SOP like anything and in the end stopped by saying “You should not have given it to us. Anyways what is…”. All the three then started putting in-depth questions on the keywords of my SOP. I could answer the broad ones but couldn’t reach the depth they pushed me to. Finally they said goodbye. The interview lasted for more than 30 minutes. All my certificates were in vain and my soul in deep pain. I was highly embarrassed while seeing my SOP full of circles and ellipses.

The story does not end here. After that long interview, I was asked to immediately report to another room “the director’s room”. Knocked the door and entered. Saw Associate dean- research and director sitting there. They did not ask any domain related questions. All their questions were about my future plans and importance of PhD in my life. Thankfully got a chance to tell them about my UGC-JRF qualification. It lasted for 20 minutes or so. Finally came out of the room with weird facial expressions and hopeless gestures.

Couldn’t think even in the wildest of my dreams of getting selected! All is well that ends well!