In view of the upcoming placement activities - we had a communication assessment - basically a recorded 8 minute one-on-one interview which was later analyzed for various language skills. It basically acts as a self-examination of the way we formally communicate. This assessment was carried out by a company called ValueInc.
Frankly I had started out with the title - 'The Two Dreaded Interview Questions'; but after getting the feedback for the above assessment, I had to change my mind. Besides, I had been planning to write this post from the day the test happened(which was relatively ages ago..) - but the results came in first.
But I have to succinctly mention about the two famous questions which I feel are never answerable to the best possible extent: "Tell me about yourself..?" and "What are the other activities you pursue in your free-time?".
The former has a very less margin of error - its a make or break question to create your impression. And for the latter - "I tend to be on my laptop, online or otherwise" never seems to be a very convincing answer!!
Anyway - I drifted away from the topic - low scores in Coherency (one of the evaluation criteria) for that....
I was initially very skeptical about the effectiveness of an 8 minute dummy interview - more so because of the kind of questions like - Which was the recent movie you had been to? What was your favorite character in that? Tell me about your project, What do you not like about IIT etc. Turns out each question had its own purpose - even if it was asked randomly.
To my surprise however - the report-out is pretty accurate. It voices out many concerns that I have personally felt or others have indicated, like that of bad intonation, use of too simple language, creeping native sounds and more such subtle points. So it was not a waste of time or money going through the process - although the results might have been different for different circumstances and mindsets.
Delving into specifics - the test quantifies our communication based on 6 areas - Comprehension, Language Structure, Phraseology, Enunciation, Fluidity and Coherency. Google up those terms to know more - I already feel like I am exceeding the readability word limit and going into the boring length. Accompanying the results was a spider graph depicting the acceptable levels, the excellent levels, and where we stand.
So I got an overall proficiency level of "B"; which must mean around average. There were some low scores in the Enunciation and Fluidity sectors - with suggestions such as Watch English News and Online Lectures, Record yourself and evaluate, Think and Organize before you speak etc as generic remedies.
There was also another assessment based on a questionnaire to decide our type of learning - mine turned out to be predominantly Visual, over Auditory and Kinaesthetic (surely they do use those high-funda words to make the report look good :D). The report also contains those small and large inadequacies that we have while communicating - Jarring, Slang,, Foghorns, incorrect syllable stress, fillers, false starts, dead pan intonation and many more.(Apparently, I have 26 of those!!)
And finally, here are the verbatim words of the assessment:
"Sumanth is able to convey thoughts and ideas albeit with some inaccuracies and inappropriacies. Sumanth prefers usage of simple structures and has difficulty framing complex ones. Sumanth may have difficulty understanding native pronunciation and sometimes not follow a well-paced conversation."
Sounds just about right.....
To end this really long narrative, here is the link to a funny video played during the report-out - one that depicts the disorder called "Knack" of an Engineer and its effects (from Dilbert Comics):
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