3rd Case study

Kunjan appeared for an interview at Airbell Pvt Ltd, a telecom company for the post of Retention Executive.The first round of the interview was a GD.The topic that had been given was women are better at management roles.Kunjan felt confident when the topic was revealed, she felt that being a woman herself she would be able to put across good points and use her own situations to provide real time examples.Kunjan, a good orator herself, was quite comfortable at speaking on public forums. She has a loud voice and she was sure she would be able to speak over the other participants.When the GD begun, Ajay another

participant initiated and talked about how the statement women are better at management

roles, was prejudiced and put men in a bad light.Vinay and two other participants also

agreed with Ajays point of view.Whenever she got an opportunity, Kunjan spoke animatedly, pointing her finger while giving examples of how women are indeed better at management roles, being innate multitaskers and serving traditional roles at home and taking up professional roles in the corporate arena with ease.She disagreed with Ajay and also told him that his views were patriarchal in nature, Every time Ajay tried to explain his stance, Kunjan countered the same by dejectedly shaking her head, folding her arms across her chest and rolling her eyes.Another participant, Srikant, had a different perspective. He said that roles whether in corporate or within the household should not be gender based. According to him the premise that women are better at management roles was a dated notion that should

be done away with. He stressed that candidates should be offered roles on account of their ability, skills, educational background. Kunjan countered this by saying that such notions were good for stories, in reality women were the best! At the end she took the opportunity to summarise and close the GD by saying women were the best in all arenas and it was time everyone accepted it. Kunjan left feeling quite confident that she would surely be selected. But she did not hear from the company again, so she called to check on the status . She was told that role had been filled , on enquiring who was selected she was told that the role went to Srikant. Kunjan is not sure where she went wrong.

Q1. Do you agree that Kunjan performed well in the Group discussion? Give reasons.

Q2. What advice would you give her that would help her perform better in a Group discussion in the future?

Q3. Do you agree that Srikant was the right hire for the role ? Why?