Interview Experiences in Lovely Professional University

The basic focus while preparing students for placements at LPU is to hone their command of the language (English).

Lovely Professional University is known for its best placements of students from any discipline, be it an Engineer, a Management student, students from traditional streams like BA, BSc or BCom and others. But how does Lovely Professional University or students here manage to fetch great placement offers with handsome packages say INR 62 LPA?

Preparation for Placements

It’s not a game of one or two days, the university starts preparing its students from day one for the placements. Students are trained for interviews not only through special classes like personality enhancement classes but also in regular classes and tutorials. The basic focus while preparing these students for placement is to hone their command of the language (English). Apart from this, students are prepared for basic concepts of their respective streams. Students from rural backgrounds or state board education, that too from North India are usually weak in language. It creates a challenge for these students to clear the interview process conducted by companies visiting for campus placement.

University takes utmost care to sort out this weakness amongst students and conducts special classes for such students to improve their command of language. Students are encouraged to take part in classroom discussions and group discussions. This type of practice helps them gain confidence and improve communication skills, which eventually helps them in the interview process. University helps the students by preparing them through mock interviews. These interviews are usually taken by the industry experts hired by the university and the regular teachers of the university. They usually prepare the students through the following types of interviews.

Individual Interview: In this interview, only one expert interviews the student in the university itself. The expert is usually the teacher of the same stream or the industry expert from the same area. This interview can be in the form of an in-depth interview, a stress interview, or a general interview. Here the students get the chance to discuss their performance on the spot with the expert. Experts not only tell the performance but also suggest corrective actions against the mistakes and weaknesses.

Panel Interview: In this interview teachers from various areas sit together and interview the students. Say, for example, a student has to be prepared for the marketing field, but when he/she sits for a real interview, he/she can be asked questions related to Operations/ HR/ Finance or Labour Law also. So these teachers from different areas assess the student for different subjects so that he/she can perform well in the actual interview process.

Current Affairs Interview: University conducts mock interviews based on current affairs. Students usually ignore the current affairs part and very few students have the habit of reading newspapers daily. Through this mock interview, students prepare for Current affairs and try to perform well in this session. This helps them to answer well in the actual interview when they are being asked about current affairs.

Sometimes students get nervous during the interview, this happens usually in the case of stressful interviews. Interviewers give different situations to students and intentionally do not appreciate the answers given by the students. So, students get nervous or lose hope to clear the interview. This is done to check the stress-coping ability of students.

To prepare the students well for interviews, they are suggested to read the newspapers regularly and teachers as per their convenience discuss the news in their regular classes. Activities like role plays and brainstorming sessions also play a vital role in helping the students to clear the interviews. Such practices have proved to be a boon for the students who at times were not able to speak in front of others and are now confident enough to speak to any company delegate or the interviewer.

About The Author

Amit Kumar Sharma is an Assistant Professor at Lovely Professional University. With ten years of experience in teaching organisational behaviour and HRM, he has also conducted 13 faculty development programs at the school level and two management development programs at the industry level.

Note: The views expressed in this article are solely the author’s own and do not reflect/represent those of Shiksha.