How many times have you seen a candidate yelling at the top of his/ her voice during a Group Discussion?
It is a sureshot way to ruin his/ her chances of getting admission to a top B-School. We feature the more common gaffes students make that could ensure a speedy exit and elimination from a GD, as well as the evaluation sheet used by panelists to judge your performance.
List of don'ts for your GD
~ Project a shabby image by wearing wrinkled clothes and unpolished shoes.
~ Start clarifying the meaning of the topic from the examiner as soon as it is announced.
~ As soon as the GD starts, jump into the fray with wrong facts and figures.
~ Sit on the fence throughout the discussion.
It is advisable to take a stand (in favour or against the topic), as this will help you be more aggressive in the GD.
~ Never agree to anyone else's point of view. Disagreement with everyone will guarantee you more enemies.
~ Resort to negative body language; sit with your arms and legs crossed, stare at your GD members, point fingers at others, make a fist at another and sit at the edge of the chair.
~ Maintain a sardonic smile on your face throughout the GD. This will seem, to the examiners, that you feel superior to the other members of the group.
~ Do not let fellow candidates speak and, if someone is making a good point, interrupt him/her mid-way and put forth a completely unrelated point.
~ Use words like yaar, um, etc, at every juncture and use abbreviations and acronyms, without explaining them. This will alienate you from the group.
~ Make wisecracks, in the hope of showing off your wit.
~ Yawn or maintain a blank look on your face.
~ Give subjective opinions which are not supported by facts or figures.
~ Only listen, and never speak.
GD evaluation sheet for panelists
The weightage of evaluating parameters varies from B-School to B-School, but the general framework more or less remains the same.
We have attempted to reproduce the actual criteria used in Group Discussions to top B-Schools, which is circulated to the respective evaluators before the start of a Group Discussion.
You can download this sheet, which comprises three parts:
i. Evaluation table with parameters
ii. Rating key
iii. Instructions for panelists to help eliminate subjectivity
Note: Even though the B-Schools try to be as objective as possible, the devil effect (whereby an evaluator gives a candidate a low score on many traits because the individual is low on one trait which is assumed to be critical) cannot be entirely overruled.
Brijesh Singh is an alumnus of Mumbai's Jamnalal Bajaj Institute of Management Studies. He writes regularly on MBA entrance preparation and MBA scenario in India. He is Project Head, Top Careers and You, which prepares students for competitive examinations.