Can you tell us a little about your professional profile?

Hi, I’m Siddharth Mukherjee. I’m an Aerospace engineer and I have a bachelor’s degree in Civil engineering from NIT Trichy. Right after my bachelors, I did my Masters in Aerospace Engineering from the University of Florida and after this, I got a job in Bell Helicopter Textron and I have been there for 6 years now. And during this time I have seen every stage of a helicopter being developed and somewhere during this journey.

How did you decide that it was time to do your MBA?

As a person I always love to continuously grow and learn and since I’ve been in the engineering sector for a while now I knew what it was all about and if I wanted to go forward in my professional journey, I had to be in the scene and in India I wasn’t really getting a chance to do that. And because of the restrictions that my industry created, I realized I had to get an MBA and utilize my skills in a parallel industry.

What was your GMAT experience like?

The initial thought came in 2016 but I procrastinated on it for almost a year. And then I realized I had to do it. And so the motivation grew. I wrote the GMAT soon after and it was so bad. I got very demotivated and I stopped preparing for 2 months. But somehow I convinced myself that I had to do this! So I referred to many tutorial videos and prepared on my own. This time to keep myself motivated, I booked the GMAT well in advance, but by the time I realized what I needed to do to perform well in the GMAT, it was too late. I did improve my score, but it was wasn’t exceptional.

And then the application cycle neared and I quickly booked another GMAT exam and scored a 680 in that. I felt that I could make up for the score by working hard on my essays because I write well. But I needed help with my interviews.

Which  B-Schools did you apply to?

My target schools were a few in Europe and India but the application deadlines for most of the European schools had passed, so I decided to start with the Indian schools and with my experience, the schools that came to my mind were ISB, IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, and IIM Calcutta. I applied to HEC Paris in between but it was very haphazard and therefore I didn’t get in but I got interview calls from all the Indian schools.

What did you focus on while working on your applications?

I was very natural. I told them about why I wanted to do my MBA and what I expected from it in the long run and that I wanted to realistically achieve my long term goals.

I told them that I was in a purely engineering space and that since I will probably not be in that space in the future, I was willing to work hard to learn new skills outside the domain. I knew that education is only one-third of the process, the rest comes only through the first-hand experience and that only the degree would not make me an expert. I convinced them that I was using this as a stepping stone for better things in my career.

Why did you feel that you needed help with your interviews?

So my first interview was with IIM Ahmedabad and I got waitlisted. This built self-doubt in me and I had three more interviews coming up. The Ahmedabad interview was very thorough. They tried to probe every way possible. And while I was answering, I was wondering if it was the right way to answer and I felt like I needed someone to hear out my answers, like an expert in the field and get some constructive feedback.

How did you hear about Crackverbal?  

I came across Crackverbal through some advertisements online and when I was browsing the website, I saw several of my peers from NIT on the site. So I spoke to them and they told me about the kind of service they got at Crackverbal and I didn’t think twice and visited Crackverbal.

How did the interview preparation process go with Crackverbal?

I wanted to know how my answers sounded, and in that way CV heard me well and probed into all possible questions that could be asked in the official b-school interviews. This also allowed me to rehearse my answers very well and listen to whether my answers made sense. Moreover, when you practice your answers with someone else, you’re able to see if it makes sense to another person as well as to you. So that I could get good feedback and cover all possible ends.

This also improved my confidence each time I practiced the answers. Crackverbal patiently heard my story and supported me throughout the journey.