Cracking Campus Interviews

How to crack the Campus Interview?

Many youngsters like us often tend to become frustrated and stressed out during our preparation for placement tests and job search during final year times and after passing out. Fear and stress are understandably our primary enemies in securing a good job with a good company. Below I have given some tips that can help us to overcome fear and stress during preparation for placement tests and during job search after passing out.

• Lack of Technical Knowledge.
• Lack of Guidance and Preparation.
• Lack of information about the recruiters.
• Lack of idea about the industry standards.
• Lack of Interest.

This is an attempt to bridge the gap for students in these participating colleges.

Basic Requirements before the Interview :

• Resume : The resume is representative of the individual. As they say, the first impression is the last impression. It is therefore in the best interests of the individual that enough "due diligence" is done on preparing the resume.
• Information about the Recruiter : Any candidate who is going to eligible for campus interviews should first gather information about the recruiter and know more about them. Read about the organization, ask people about what they do, what their hiring policies are like, keep track of the company’s visit to other college campuses across India. A wonderful source would be to visit their official website. Another source could be business magazines like Business India or Business Standard.
• Information about the recruitment process : It is highly expected that any candidate, who is appearing in the campus interview test, must collect information about the whole recruitment process of that particular recruiter. Serious efforts need to go into this activity - they should do some homework before giving the actual interview.

Written test :

• Aptitude Section : Most of the companies nowadays mainly give importance to this section. Infact if it is related to IT or some management then surely there will be section for aptitude. Students need to prepare well before they sit for the written. The main thing in any aptitude test is the management of time. For this, students require to practice a lot before the test.
  Sources :
  • 1. The Internet : In today’s world best source is Internet. Anyone can find a company’s question paper in the net. Along with this student can join some yahoo groups like chetna, efreshers. In this yahoo groups students from all over India exchanges question papers /queries /interview experience and all.
  • 2. Aptitude Books : The second source for aptitude is books.
• Technical Section :
  • C Books :
    • Let us C /Pointers in C/Test your C skills /Let Us C solutions - By yashwant kanetkar
    • The c programming language by - Kernighan and Ritchie
  • Data structure – Tannen Baum
  • C++ - Balaguru swamy and Schaum Series
  • Unix – UNIX shell programming by yashwant kanetkar
  • Java - A Programmer's Guide to Java™ Certification — by Khalid A. Mughal
  • Operating system –OS by Galvin
  • Microprocessors
  • Networking - Tannen Baum
  • Software engineering - Roger Pressman
  • 1. Note : Here the technical section will be different for different organizations. It may happen that questions will be asked only in 1 or 2 sections.
  • 2. Point to be noted : For core Engineering companies questions may come from the areas on which generally most of the organization are offering services. It will always depend on the organization. Students need to gather information well before the actual test.
    The main point here is that not everyone is good in each and every field. Each one of us has our fortes and weaknesses too. What companies look for are people who know their area of specialization and are an expert in it.
    Students need to at least choose two subjects from the entire engineering course preferably, on which most the companies offer their services and prepare well for the interview. Since in campus interviews generally the duration are not that much long for, students should take this advantage and should show his skills with in this time period.
• English Section : This is one of the key focus areas of every organization looking to recruit competent resources. Employees with good written and verbal communication skills are highly sought after. The pattern of this section will vary for company to company. But the basic things will be always there in the written test. Student can refer to the question papers and should do some homework.
  Sources Books
  • Mainly any Vocabulary Book.
  • GRE guide.
  • Study material for the management course.

Group Discussion :

Generally companies conduct group discussion after the written test so as to check on your interactive skills and how good the students are at communicating with other people. The GD is to check how the candidate behave, participate and contribute in a group, how much importance do one give to the group objective as well as with his own, how well do one listen to viewpoints of others and how open-minded are one in accepting views contrary to your own. The aspects that make up a GD are verbal communication, non-verbal behavior, and conformation to norms, decision-making ability and cooperation.

• For preparation of GD : Students in every institute can organize mock GD among themselves. Can gather tips for GD from different sources like the Internet, books. They can go through the courses for GD basically provided for the institute which is meant for management exams. Students need to be aware of current affairs.
• Technical Interview : Technical Interview will vary from companies to companies. It is obvious that those questions which are generally asked for IT sector will not be asked for the other sector. So again everything will depend on the recruiters. Students need to gather sufficient information about the company for which they are going to give the interview.

H.R Interview :

Candidate generally faces this round after having cleared the above said stages (with the exception of certain companies where you face it before the technical round). The candidate must be fully prepared for this stage. The general questions asked in this round are -

• Tell us about yourself.
• What do you know about our company?
• Why do you want to join our company?
• What are your strengths and weaknesses?
• Where do you see yourself in the next five years?
• Why should we hire you?

Last but not the least :

The most important thing for the student is to be confident, have a positive frame of mind and be flexible about your work and location.

Courtesy: NE Professional Institute Forum