Test Archives - GUJRAT INDIA

The Business Ethics Test: What Would Your Employees Do?

As a police commissioner once said when he turned down the twentieth bribe offer he had received that day, “Ethics ain’t easy!” All of us are faced by those moments when doing what’s right is very different from doing what’s easy or what would be the most profitable. That’s one of the reasons for a company to have a mission statement and/or a code of conduct: so that employees understand what’s expected of them when they’re faced with the choice between right versus easy, ethical versus profitable.

The problem is that so many choices fall into the gray area in between! What do you do when making the ethical choice will almost certainly hurt someone? What if doing something a little bit wrong will help create a very large “right”? Take a few moments to read the examples below and answer the questions they pose, and you’ll see what I mean.

• Your co-worker asks you to cover for him so he can sneak out of work early to go to his son’s softball game. Do you agree? If he went anyway, would you keep silent?

• You’re about ready to sign a big new client to a contract worth over $50,000. Your boss is under a lot of pressure to increase sales. He calls you into his office and tells you his job is on the line, and he asks you to include the revenue for your contract in the sales figures for the quarter that ends tomorrow. You know the contract is a sure thing but the client is out of town and cannot possibly sign by tomorrow. What do you do?

• The manufacturing cost of the widgets your company makes has dropped by 50%. One of your customers, Sam, tells you he knows this because he is best friends with your company’s VP of production, and asks you for a discount on his order. Your boss okays the discount. Your other customer, Sue (who is one of your best friends and knows nothing about the drop in manufacturing costs) places the exact same order for widgets as Sam. Do you offer her a similar discount? Do you tell her about the drop in manufacturing costs?

• Company policy forbids co-workers to become romantically involved. You go to the same church as someone from another department, and you find yourself becoming attracted to this person. Do you pursue the relationship?

• Your best friend is the VP of one of the companies with which your firm does business. You take her out for lunch just to catch up on personal stuff, and you pick up the check. Do you declare this a “business lunch” and submit the receipt for reimbursement?

• While in the restroom, you overhear your boss telling a colleague that Bob is going to be laid off at the end of the quarter, in about two weeks’ time. Bob is a good friend of yours. Do you tell him?

• One of the newest salespeople in your division is a real goof-off, never showing up for work on time, distracting other people with his antics, and so on. You complain about him to your boss, who tells you the kid is the son of the company president. Your boss instructs you not only to leave the new guy alone but also to make his sales numbers look good by throwing him some no-brainer accounts. What do you do?

Now, just in case you’re feeling very virtuous because you know you’d always make the ethical choice in those cases, ask yourself:

Have you ever

… lied to your mother? your boss? the IRS?

… lied so you wouldn’t hurt someone’s feelings?

… lied to get out of a business or social engagement?

… taken a questionable deduction on your income tax?

… fudged figures on a report to make the results look better?

… taken a sick day when you weren’t sick?

… lied to a customer (“we sent your order yesterday”) or creditor (“the check’s in the mail”)?

… cut corners on quality control?

… blamed someone else for something you knew you were partly responsible for?

… used any of these phrases: “Everybody does it,” “It’s the lesser of two evils,” “It’s only a little white lie,” “It doesn’t hurt anyone,” “Who will know?”

… put inappropriate pressure on others?

In the real world, “ethics ain’t easy.” Somehow we need to come up with a way of looking at even the most complicated situations and evaluating them with an eye to what’s right-not what will cause the least trouble. We need a basis upon which to build the kind of success that feels good because we know what we’re doing represents us at our best.

CAT – MBA Admission Test – Overview

CAT is the gateway to the cream of management institutes in India, the IIMs. CAT, or the Common Admission Test, is an aptitude test; it is the most popular test among prospective management students because it is accepted by the best institutes. The CAT is one of the world’s ost demanding entrance examinations for any graduate institute.

CAT MBA entrance exam is used as a criteria to shortlist applicants for admissions to the six IIMs-IIM Ahmedabad, IIM Bangalore, IIM Calcutta, IIM Lucknow, IIM Indore, and IIM Kozhikode. Common Admission Test is one of the largest MBA entrance exams conducted in India, anually. The CAT score is also accepted by more than 75 non-IIM institutes across India, some of which are as reputed as the IIMs.

Eligibility for the postgraduate programmes in management at all IIMs and to appear for IIM-CAT is at least a three-year bachelor’s degree in any discipline from a recognised university with 50% Marks in graduation. Indian Institute of Management (IIMs), the premier business-schools of the country (and counted among the best in the world) conduct this test for selecting potential students for the next round of admission process (comprising of a personal interview and a group discussion) for their MBA and Fellow-ship programmes.

Those appearing in the final year examination of graduation are also eligible to appear in Common Admission Test. Some People feel that Common Admission Test (CAT) is more of a rejection procedure than a selection process.It rejects those who can’t make their minds work at break neck speed for two and a half hours non-stop.

CAT Exam covers questions in five broad areas such as verbal ability and reasoning, reading comprehension, quantitative skills, data interpretation and logical reasoning.

The number of questions asked in Common Admission Test vary every year and a typical CAT question paper can have anywhere between 75 and 150 questions. Common Admission Test evaluates the candidate’s presence of mind and his ability to perform under pressure. Announcement of the procedure for appearing in the Common Admission Test is made in leading newspapers in August every year for admission to the programme beginning in the second half of June of the following year. The test will be conducted during November. CAT 2007 Notification for admission to 2008 session has been announced.

Usually, CAT tests three of your abilities:- Problem Solving- Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning- Verbal Ability and Reading Comprehension. The CAT examination demands competency across all sections of the paper. So, the number of sections in the test don’t really matter; what matters is whether you are competitive and have answered questions in all the sections.

All the questions are of multiple-choice nature with four/five alternate answer choices and the candidate has to choose the best answer for each of the questions and mark it on a special Optical Reader answer sheet. Differential marks are allotted to the questions. The test comprises 150 to 200 objective type questions and is usually divided into three to four sections. The number of questions in the test has been coming down steadily, from nearly 200 in the 1990s to 90 in 2005 and just 75 in 2006.

Very little strategy could be applied in selecting the easiest questions. Cut that down and don’t waste time on questions which are lengthy. One misconception is that you need to slove the whole Question Paper – not at all. If you can solve 38 to 40 per cent of the questions, CORRECTLY, you are through.

Not an Engineer – No Problems You don’t need to be an Engineer to get into an IIM . Infact being a non-engineer may help in the Interview part. IIMs encourage diversity. And being a non-engineer you may be compared with other non-engineers. Rather than with engineers who may be compared with IITians.

Personal or Postal Coachings is helpful for CAT Preparation. The Coaching Institutes will teach you shortcuts and you will get chance to appear in Mock Tests conducted for CAT. There are many good Coaching Institutes – Bulls Eye, Ascent, TIME, IMS, Roots Education and Career Launcher. It is tough to say which one institute is the best MBA Entrance coaching Institute. It completely depends on faculty. Before joining any coaching classes, first consult to students who have already joined that particular institute. You can also try MBA Entrance Preparation Question Bank CDs being offered on the net. These MBA Test Preparation CDs help you practice the tests.

– Anurag Chopra Entrance Exams India Portal

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Gauge Your Entrepreneurial Readiness – With an Entrepreneur Test

What does an entrepreneur test look like? How do you measure whether you’re ready to start your own business? With the number of idled or displaced workers in the broad economy today, many are wondering if it’s time to invest in their own business start-up.

Those are just two of the questions that online business opportunity seekers are asking themselves as they research the home based business and alternative or part-time career categories for answers.

If your present career or work situation has been impacted by the job slowdown, you may be seriously considering a leap into an entrepreneurial enterprise of your own. For many, especially if you require something with low start-up costs, the most popular and accessible business models are:

Affiliate marketing

Network marketing

Freelancing/independent contracting

The Internet offers the online entrepreneur a vast array of profitable niches to concentrate on. Most successful home business marketers that I’ve personally observed often combine different revenue streams in a blended approach to diversify their income sources. That often means overlapping any or all of the 3 home business models listed above.

Those who have relied on steady employment working for some other person or company often have to consider if they are really prepared to start their own business. That’s where a career assessment test or entrepreneur test can help. An alternative or parallel career option enjoys unprecedented popularity today because the Internet has reduced or eliminated the traditional barriers of entry to an entrepreneur’s career.

I recently took a free, online entrepreneur test to see what it entails. I can tell you this. Research reveals that there are 16 dimensions or characteristics that are important for starting a business. These entrepreneurial traits fall into three general categories: Personality, Skills and Motivation. As an example, you are asked to self-assess your…

Personality:

• Action-oriented: Your go-getting ability. Your tendency to “do” rather than sit around and think.

• Persistence: Your determination to meet your goals.

• Risk Tolerance: Your willingness to expose yourself to possible loss. Your attraction to, or comfort level with, risk.

Skills:

• Leadership: Your ability to guide and inspire others to work toward a common goal.

• Networking: How well you build and maintain relationships.

• Persuasion: Your ability to influence others.

Motivation:

• Ambition: Your desire to achieve success.

• Autonomy: Your desire to make your own decisions and control your own destiny.

• Financial Motivation: How important money and financial freedom are to you.

After having completed the questionnaire of this particular free, online entrepreneur test I took, I was confronted with the ratings system they use for determining my entrepreneurial acumen -based on my answers. I happened to be rated a pretty average “silver”. That means I fell below the gold and platinum levels. That translates to being in the 25th to 50th percentile of strongly possessing (or not), the proven character traits that successful entrepreneurs exhibit.

Well, considering I’m already putting the entrepreneur/online marketer lifestyle to test, it remains to be seen how much I will have to continue brushing-up on those 3 major business owner aptitudes.

What’s fun and actually kind of revealing is that based on your individual test results, it will identify your 5 greatest strengths and 5 most obvious weaknesses. The program states it is useful to consider your strengths–the tools and talents you already have in place–which will serve you in the pursuit of starting your own business.

Test scores come with helpful tips to get the most out of your individual personality traits so you can leverage those strengths to your best advantage.

Likewise, it goes on to suggest ways you can improve those areas that you tested low or sub-par in with recommended tips. Of course as can be expected of anything offered “free” on the internet, there always comes: “And now a word from our sponsors”. So there’s ample opportunity to opt-in to the advertised and featured educational resources that appear multiple times as you continue moving through the test program.

The advertising on the entrepreneur test I took is “opt-in” only and at no time exceeded the limits or bounds of correct internet etiquette we would expect. You just have to take careful notice where to click to proceed with the test uninterrupted, if that’s your choice.

So was it worth the time to take this entrepreneur test? Yes. For me, it actually identified areas that I already suspected needed improvement. I think it’s helpful to be able to recognize and perhaps be reminded of character traits that still could use some further development which you may now focus on.

If you dream of being your own boss and wonder if the entrepreneur lifestyle is right for you, gauging your strengths/challenges in the areas of personality, motivation and skills can be a helpful start. When you see that an online business career “leap” is really something that can be organized into a series of small, incremental steps, it might just be enough to push you over the edge.