General Knowledge for Entrance Exam

When we talk about General Knowledge for Entrance Examinations, we feel it is quite simple. But in reality it is a grueling task. A study for GK can be considered as the study of concepts along with being the simple test of the individual's memory.

Common Management Admission Test (CMAT) for admission to MBA will have a section comprising of 25 questions based on General Awareness. And what is more important is that 1 mark is deducted for every wrong answer. Therefore it becomes necessary that we mark the correct alternative. So the nest question coming to our mind is how to prepare for this section? In the age of Twitter and Facebook the younger generation is moving away from reading newspapers and watching news. So how do we go about gathering the vast information and on what subjects?

Let us begin by first discussing what topics are to be covered under General Knowledge.

1.      GEOGRAPHY (Physical Map of India, States and their Capitals, National Parks & Sanctuaries-Animals associated with them, Crops and Soils,  Rivers and dams, etc.)

2.      HISTORY( Indian Kings and their kingdoms, Timeline of their reign, From the age of Harappa and Mohenjodaro, Maurayan Empire, to Mughals, Marathas, British taking over India and India’s Struggle for Independence, famous personalities associated with Independence struggle)

3.      POLITICS, CONSTITUTION, (Centre and State structure, Preamble, Rights and Duties, Ministers of State and Centre)

4.      INTERNATIONAL NEWS (Olympics, Nobel Prizes, new presidents, wars, etc)

5.      SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY (Any new inventions, discoveries, etc)

6.      BUSINESS (Business products, CEO’s, Taglines, Brand Ambassadors, etc)

7.      SPORTS (Sports Persons and their records, sport specific details, etc)

8.      AWARDS, BOOKS AND AUTHORS

9.      ENVIRONMENT (Global warming, pollution, etc)

10.  ABBREVIATIONS (For corporations, products, organizations, etc)

Tips for better performance

Geography – We have not touched this subject since we left school. For Arts students who have opted for geography as a subject in their graduation it will be a bit easy task. For others you will have to study maps of World and India so that you can visualize and remember the states and cities with their capitals. Along with this you need to remember rivers, dams, sanctuaries, types of soils, volcanoes, forests, etc. even though it seems to be difficult it will become easier once to start enjoying the process and keep on revising it. For this purpose you can paste the maps in your study room or on the table.

History- Don’t yawn when you open a history book. For many students history is akin to sleep or boredom. Could be true to some extent but to make it interesting you can watch documentaries, films, serials (like Chandragupta Maurya) to get a feel of that era. Remembering the dates and instances is essential. Charts and timelines will be of great help.

Politics- To have knowledge of politics one must read newspapers or at least watch news to know about current issues and people concerned with them. Such as making funny stories and discussing it with your friends.

Sports- Cricket or football is not the only sport played. There are many sports such as Badminton, Tennis, Hockey, Golf, racing, Swimming, Soccer, Marathon, Racing, Chess, Billiards, Snooker, Weight Lifting, Archery and Indian games. You have to make a list of games along with the game specifications such as number of players, area of game, time required to play, etc. once you have done this make list of famous people associated with the game. This list can be then updated from time to time.

Consciously watching advertisements will help you a lot. In this way you will be able to remember brand ambassadors, tag lines, product and company’s name, competitors, etc. It will be a fun exercise when you have a group of friends to enact it with you.

At the last remember “Rome was not built in a day”.

Preparing for GK too is not a one day exercise. It requires whole lot of practice and concentration. Reading on a regular basis will always help. Writing down things will be an added advantage as it actually gives an impression of how much one can remember. It also helps to refer the notes in case something is forgotten.

The various study cases should be monitored and followed very closely with the goal of understanding various sub issues involved, followed by the thought process that leads to new developments and lot more. Facebook, twitter will also help in staying connected with real time trending events.

Finally you have to put what you have read to test.  The best way is to practice mock tests. Online tests are available on various websites such as

www.jagranjosh.com,

www.indiabix.com/online-test/general-knowledge-test/,

www.tcyonline.com/, and many more.

There are various books and magazines you can refer. Following is a list of a few Websites for Future references:

·    http://www.mapsofindia.com/

·    http://www.history-timelines.org.uk/places-timelines/22-history-india-timeline.htm

·   http://theonlinegk.wordpress.com/2010/08/30/important-abbreviation-india/

·    http://www.gktoday.in/gk/economy-concepts/

BUILDING UP YOUR VOCABULARY!

The season is of MBA entrance exams and one of the most important aspects of it is Vocabulary tests. Standardized tests usually include three main groupings of vocabulary questions: Definitions, synonym and antonym recognition, and word analogies.

How to prepare for Verbal section?
 Each and every one of us has a different way of learning new things and so there can’t be any one way for all of us to prepare.

(a) It’s all about the roots: Blindly stuffing the meaning of words into your brain by going through some list is the worst way to prepare for this section. You will have to remember unmanageably large chunks of information. The trick is to remember words together as groups and then the storage efficiency will be much higher. The easiest way to remember groups of words is to via their etymology, or the way that the word originated. If you remember the roots, you will be able to infer the meaning of even a completely new word that you encounter for the first time. Let’s look at an example. Consider the word euthanasia. If you learn the roots of this word, you will learn that:

• eu- is a Greek root, meaning “good”
• -thanasia is derived from the Greek “Thanatos” who was the god of death.
Therefore, the complete word means “good death”, which is what we know. Now, say you come across the word thanatophobic. Chances are that you have not seen this word before. No need to panic !
Roots will always help you out:
• We know that thanato- refers to “death”.
• Everyone knows (or should know) that -phobic means “someone afraid of something”.
Therefore, this adjective refers to someone afraid of dying. Voila !

(b) Flash Cards: Another very popular and effective method is using flash cards for writing down words and their meanings.

(c) Read, Read and Read: Most people begin preparations with a short window of time. I do not insist on reading very thing that comes your way, but it may be newspapers or periodicals, sports or automotive magazines, fiction novels, even classic literature or anything else with a relatively richer vocabulary that you enjoy reading. But this is not the final step. After this you have to use these newly found words in your essays or articles.

(d) Practice Makes Perfect: For certain questions like Reading Comprehension
exercises, all of the above will certainly help you but you must keep practicing. You know what else helps with RCs? General Reading!! If you are able to read, say, today’s editorial and understand the premise behind and also the arguments the author makes to support or disprove that premise, you will have no problems with these kind of questions.

Tips for Answering Synonym/Antonym Recognition Items

1. Use the “divide and conquer” principle as you search for the answer. Look for      prefixes, roots, and suffixes that give clues to meanings.

2. Read every word carefully. Don’t be fooled by answer choices that look or sound like      a word that could be the answer. For example, if you are asked to find a synonym for     anecdote and one of your answer choices is cure, don’t be hasty. You might confuse     anecdote with antidote, a word that sounds somewhat similar.

3. With very few exceptions, the correct answer will be the same part of speech as the     word given. If the given word is a verb, its synonym or antonym will also be a verb.

4. Eliminate all obviously wrong choices. Then, if the particular test you are taking does     not penalize you for guessing and you have eliminated all but two possible choices,     make an educated guess. (This approach should be your last resort. Guessing should     never be your primary test-taking strategy.)

5. Remember that, as with definition test items, you are being asked to find the best     answer rather than the “absolutely right” answer. Very few words have synonyms that are completely identical in meaning or antonyms that are completely opposite in meaning.

Word Analogies

In a word analogy test item, you have to match two pairs of terms that demonstrate the same relationship. Usually, one pair of terms is provided. First, you must identify the relationship between those two words. Then, from among the answer choices, you need to find another pair of words that have the same relationship.

In the item below, choose the pair of words whose relationship is most similar to that of the first pair.

HARD: NAILS::

a steep : mountain

b loud : bell

c light : feather

d soggy : ground

Answer: a b c d

The correct answer is c: The relationship between the words is one of characteristic-to object: hard is a descriptive quality of nails. Option c is the only answer choice that also states this relationship. Just as nails are hard, feathers are light. (Think of the clichés “hard as nails” and “light as a feather.”) But steepness is not necessarily a quality of mountains, nor loudness a quality of bells, nor sogginess a quality of ground.

Word analogies are based on many possible relationships. Here are several that are most

commonly used in analogy test items:

synonym-antonym                  synonym-synonym

person-to-characteristic          worker-to-tool

greater degree-to-lesser          degree part-to-whole

cause-effect                            group-to-member

worker-to-created object        person-to-task

class-to-species                      tool-to-purpose

action-to-object                      worker-to-workplace

object-to-characteristic          time-to-place

Other relationships include associational, hierarchical, mathematical, symbolic, gender, and even grammatical. In fact, just about any way that two things can be related is likely to show up on an analogy test.

Tips for Attacking Word Analogies

1. First, phrase the given analogy in a complete sentence: “Egg is to chicken as _____ is

to _____.”

2. Specify the relationship between the first pair of words, and revise your sentence

Accordingly: “An egg is a product of a chicken as a _____ is a product of a _____.”

3. Examine the answer choices for the closest possible match to the relationship you have identified in the first pair of words. As you consider each possible answer, you will often gain some insight that prompts you to revise your statement of the original pair’s relationship. The most obvious relationship may not be the one that the analogy is presenting. You may have to make your statement of the relationship more general, more specific, or completely different from what you originally thought it was. For example: “A chicken comes from an egg as a _____ comes from a _____.”

4. Look for parallel structure. If the given pair in the analogy is in part-to-whole order, the correct answer should also be in part-to-whole order, rather than whole-to-part.

5. The best answer always fulfills all aspects of the relationship exhibited by the first pair. Don’t be misled by partially correct answer choices that do not fully express the relationship that exists between the given pair of words.

HINT There is no way to prepare for specific analogy test items, but if you practice answering analogies in test-preparation books and become familiar with the most common analogy relationships, you will have a better chance of succeeding on analogy tests.

At the end just remember one thing the “ROME WAS NOT BUILT IN A DAY”.

All the Best !

HR Projects

Making HR Projects/Dissertation

While doing MBA one of the most important things is completion of your Summer and Winter Internships. These internships are designed to acquaint you to the ways of working in actual world. Also you become aware of your strenghts and weakness while working in organizations with strangers! Because when it comes to actual practice, bookish knowledge is sometimes outdated. And you start to think what happens to all those things learned in classrooms (or you may also get angry on yourself for not paying attention to the finer details told by your faculty in classroom). Anyways the point is Internships are really important and therefore you need to take them seriously; not as “mere one month excuse to not attend college”!

So how to go about it? First and foremost is choosing a company which will permit you to do a certain project on a selected topic of yours (we will come to “how to choose a topic” later) or will give you a “Live project” or on hand job. Sometimes they will pay for the work and sometimes they won’t. But remember money at this stage does not matter. Learning the work, the culture, the discipline is more important. Your college must surely have some MOU with leading companies which will help you in your projects. Placement Cell of any college will have list of companies offering internships to students.

And if you do not want to join the companies suggested by your college you are on your own. So be prepared, start early to find the right organization for you. So how do you find one? You can use your PR machinery-i.e. use your networking skills-ask your friends, relatives, seniors and hopefully within a month you may land in an organization of your choice. They will take your interview (hope your Resume is ready!) and will surely ask you about your topic of interest. They may also ask for Synopsis of your study. SO think before you go in for that interview. (How to make a Synopsis will be coming up later!)

Now that we have talked about the importance of internships and how to choose one let us now come to the “How to choose a topic?” question. As I have said earlier organization may suggest some topics to you on their interest level or may ask you to suggest one. Here I would like to draw your attention to one thing: Organization will surely not waste their time; they will therefore expect some logical, and fruitful work from your end. So a topic which will help them in some way of another will be something they will be interested in doing. Secondly such a topic will have less resistance while data collection from their employees. Data collection will from a very important part of your project and your books on RESEARCH Methodology will help you in that. We will surely discuss data collection in brief.

Being a faculty for Human Resource Management and Health Care Management I have some topics on these subjects which are as follows:

1.      A study on Training Needs Analysis at (name of the organization)

2.      A study on Training and Development practice and its impact on employee performance at (name of the organization)

3.      A study on Evaluation of Training at (name of the organization)

4.      A study on Performance Appraisal System and its effect on employee motivation at (name of the organization)

5.      A study on Employee satisfaction at (name of the organization)

6.      A study on effect of Welfare facilities on Employee satisfaction at (name of the organization)

7.      A study on Transactional Analysis and its relation on Interpersonal skills at (name of the organization)

8.      A study on Stress management and Job profile of employees at (name of the organization)

9.      A study on Organizational culture and its effect on employee relations at (name of the organization)

10.  A study on Grievance handling mechanism at (name of the organization)

11.  A study on Industrial Accidents &  Preventive Measures at (name of the organization)

12.  A study on Attrition and retention practices at (name of the organization)

13.  A study on Emotional Intelligence at (name of the organization)

14.  A study on Knowledge management at (name of the organization)

15.  A study on Competency mapping at (name of the organization)

16.  A study on Management of Medication errors of a Selected Hospital

17.  A study on management of biomedical waste of a Selected Hospital

18.  A study on A Study on Patient Satisfaction on Out Patient Department of a Selected Hospital.

19.  A Study on Material Management in the General Stores in a selected Hospital.

20.  A Study on the Medical Records Department with special Reference to Storage.

21.  A Study on the Effect of Human Resource Development on Job Satisfaction in a Selected Hospital.

22.  Role of Customer Relations in Healthcare Marketing in a Selected Hospital

23.  A Study to Assess the Existing Management Information System

Above mentioned are a few topics which can be worked upon, but there is no limit to your creativity. So think out of the box and work on it. Where there is will there is way!

So once you have selected a topic next important step is how to actually go about it?

Probably the organization you are working for will provide you with a Guide/Supervisor/Mentor who will be helping you in carrying out your project. In case that is not possible your faculties will surely help you. So first and foremost is establishing a good rapport with the HR team because they will be the ones who will be providing you with the basic information.

Secondly do not get anxious if you have nothing to do for first few days. Utilise this time to understand the company policies, read documents provided to you.

Preparing synopsis will help you in moving ahead. Its like a blueprint! So what makes a synopsis? Following things must be there to help you in moving in right direction:

1.      Introduction: This is the first part of your study. This will be having basic concepts in brief, importance of the study, Why do you want to work on this topic, etc.

Example: if your topic is “A study on Employee satisfaction” your introduction chapter will include meaning, concept, importance and factors affecting satisfaction. Also it will contain your reason of undertaking this topic.

2.     Company profile: This chapter will contain the basic information about the company: its mission, vision, Board of directors, its current state of business, its products or services, etc.

3.      Research Methodology: This is the most important part of your study, the soul of your project. Many students overlook this part and regret. So my request to all is that do not overlook this chapter.

·         First is the basic concept of research-definition, meaning, types.

·         Objective of the study: what is the purpose of the study?

        Example: To understand the reasons of employee dissatisfaction.

·         Hypothesis: Its an assumption that you make before beginning of the study and later try to prove it to be true or false, i.e. accepted or rejected.

Example: Higher Employee satisfaction helps in curbing grievances and increased productivity.

·         Data collection is the nest step where in you need data to prove your hypothesis.

·         Primary data is the one that you collect by means of questionnaires, observations, structured interviews, etc. This first hand information is then analysed and interpreted to make conclusions.

·         Secondary data is the one that you collect through books, internet, company policies, etc.

·         Data analysis and interpretation: Here you analyse the data gathered through primary data and make meaning out of it, i.e you can see whether your hypothesis stands or fails.

·         Conclusion: Writing conclusion will provide the reader with important points of the study.

·         Recommendations/Suggestions: here you provide some fruitful suggestions based on your interpretation of the data. The organization will incorporate these suggestions if they feel that those suggestions might help them.

·         Bibliography: Here you mark references of your secondary data. There are various formats (Harvard style, American psychological association style, etc).

Example: if you are giving reference of a book then following is the pattern-

Surname, Initials (year), Title of Book, Publisher, Place of publication.
e.g. Harrow, R. (2005), No Place to Hide, Simon & Schuster, New York, NY.

Websites too must be named correctly: Google is a search engine and will give thousands of results to you. You need to name the site from which you have obtained necessary information.

www. Name of the website.com Accessed on date of visiting the site.

·         Annexure: here you need to have your questionnaire or structured interviews questions, or even any psychological tests that you have administered.

Note: Above mentioned points are not necessarily same everywhere. Consult your faculty or college for the same. The order and contents of chapter may change.

Now the most important thing is to construct a questionnaire or prepare a structure interview. Even though you will readily get questionnaires on internet you need to modify them for your project. Every organization has different need and you need to satisfy those.

Following are the general headings found in a questionnaire:

1.      Name of the employee/individual taking a survey (optional): optional at times because sometimes employees/people want to hide names in order to give correct information.

2.      Age: age plays a role in emotional, cultural or even behavioural profile of an individual. Sometimes young people are found to be more energetic, creative, and also impulsive, lacking in experience as compared to old ones.

3.      Experience: this will give us an idea as to how well the employee knows the organization’s rules, policies, etc. Here you can make a scale such as 0-3,4-7 and so  on.

4.      Department: where he/she works

5.      Job profile: what sort of job he/she does

6.      Educational qualification:

7.      If any other requirements are there such as family background, area of upbringing, etc it can be taken.

1.      Then according to your topic you can choose a Likert scale or YES NO questions/statements.

(http://psychology.about.com/od/lindex/g/likert-scale.htm) Likert scale is a type of psychometric scale frequently used in psychology questionnaires. It was developed by and named after organizational psychologist Rensis Likert. On a survey or questionnaire, a typical Likert item usually takes the following format:

2.      Strongly disagree

3.      Disagree

4.      Neither agree nor disagree

5.      Agree

6.      Strongly agree) 

Questions/ statements should be checked and approved from the HR personnel and then finalised. Too many questions may irritate the respondents. Therefore the question or statements should be clear, crisp and short. There can be open ended questions too in your questionnaire. Generally they are asking about opinions, views, etc.

Following is the example of a questionnaire on Employee satisfaction:

Questionnaire

1.      Name of the employee

2.      Age:

3.      Experience (in years):   

4.      Department:

5.      Gender:                    M             F

Make headings such as Company/Organizations, Job, Career and Development, Supervisor/Colleagues, Employee benefits. These will help in forming correct statements as well as in interpreting data.

Note: Following are only a few statements for your understanding. You need to have more such statements.

Tick any one from each sub-title ( -Strongly disagree, 2–  disagree , 3– neutral,

 4– agree, 5–  strongly agree )

Your Company

My company is one of the best companies to work for	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)
My company treats me well.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)

Your JOB

I am satisfied with my job and the kind of work I do.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)
My job is challenging and interesting.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)

Career and Development.

The company makes every effort to fill vacancies from within before recruiting from outside.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)
I am satisfied with the job opportunities in the company.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)

Your Manager

My manager (immediate supervisor) trusts me.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)
My manager helps me to improve myself.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)

Employee Benefit

I am satisfied with the company’s employee welfare programs such as rewards, incentives, food coupons,insurance and health care, etc.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)
I am satisfied with the recreational activities provided by the company, e.g. picnics and annual dinner.	(1)       (2)       (3)       (4)          (5)

Open ended questions should be at last an can be as follows:

(1)   What do you need to improve your performance and productivity?

(2)   Give at least three suggestions to improve the work environment in this company?

Hope these suggestions are helpful to you in making your projects. Kindly give feedback in case you want to propose changes. Also I will be glad to help in any way possible.

All the best!