Campus Placements/ Campus Recruitment drives are conducted in various educational institutes for providing job opportunities to the students who are pursuing their particular academic courses. Campus Placements offer a student a wonderful opportunity to get placed during the course of his academic pursuits, and provide him the comforts of a safe and secure future. Keeping in mind the importance of the campus placement programs, it is vital for a student to prepare adequately for these programs and make sure that they put their best foot forward.
There are two types of Campus Placement programs:
- On-Campus Placement Drives:
In On-Campus placement drives, companies visit colleges to select final year students and selection depends upon a student's ability to work-hard, his technical capabilities and his focus.
- Off-Campus / Pool Campus Placement Drives:
In Off Campus placement drives, recruitment is conducted at a common place that may be a particular college or a public place where students from different colleges assemble and take part in the various stages of the campus placement drive. A number of these drives are advertised as 'Job Fairs'.
The main objective of the placement process is to identify the talented individuals. The criteria adopted for selection by most companies are variable in nature and selection process is as follows:
- Pre – Placement Talk
- Educational Qualification
- Written Test
- Group Discussion (Optional)
- Technical Interview
- HR Interview
- Post – Placement Talk
Pre-Placement Talk:
There is a pre-placement talk with the students provided by the specific company. It is mainly in the form of presentation. The presentation includes the company profile, selection procedure, organizational achievements, company’s vision and mission. It also includes the growth of the candidate within the company and other benefits, if selected. At the end of the presentation, a candidate can ask question about any doubt.
Educational Qualification:
A number of companies place importance on the academic performance of the candidate, and place requirements for minimum marks. Basically, companies go for professional courses such as B.Tech /MCA/MBA/M.Tech for recruiting candidates. Qualification criteria may include grade range, and certified courses.
Written Test:
Most of the companies conduct a written test based on the minimum academic performance criterion. This is generally an aptitude test which has questions on Mathematics, English & Reasoning. Some companies also have technical questions in the test. Many companies also started taking coding and written ability test. After written test, the companies conduct interview round for those candidates who qualify the written test. Interview round may have combined or separate HR & technical interviews. Few companies in addition to this also conduct personality or psychometric test.
Group Discussion:
Some companies also conduct GD as an elimination round or in addition to interview. In this section, a general topic is placed for a formal discussion. The main objective of this round is to check the communication skills, listening ability, etiquette of a candidate, leadership qualities, convincing power, and knowledge of a candidate. The discussion can be like on Case studies, Abstract topic, and topic from the latest news.
Technical Interview:
After the elimination round of written test / group discussion, technical interview will be conducted by the company. This round will check the technical skills of the selected candidate.
It can be either an individual round or a combined with the HR interview.
HR Interview/ Formal Interview:
Formal interview is considered as the final round of the selection procedure. The interview reflects the overall personality of the candidate. The more updated knowledge of the candidate more will be the chances of selection. It includes the internship, work experience, industrial visit to the brands in a specific sector which increase the chances of selection. Basically, it evaluates the stability and confidence level of the candidate.
Post –Placement Talk:
After the selection of the candidate, the offer letter will be given. The company executive tells about the guidelines related to joining process and about the company’s policies.
Generally, the typical Campus Recruitment process can be identified in the following image:
The number of students is finally selected by the company depends on two major parameters:
- The number of students that are able to match the minimum basic requirements of the company set for each of the above stages.
- The organizational requirements in terms of the people required for the coming fiscal year.
