Students’ Speak: Check the concise step by step guide for Campus Placement preparation

By: Swapnaneel Bhuiya

Placement season can test nerves of even the best out there. Swapnaneel Bhuiya shares a step-by-step concise guide to approach Placement preparation which can help you overcome anxiety & pressure and stay confident in the future campus drives.

Placements are really a stressful time for any student. Even the smartest in the class tends to feel the anxiety and pressure of being placed in a company of their choice. Many confident students too, feel pressurised due to their family or financial condition, which leaves them nervous during the D-day. Well, I am going to share some pre-placement tips here, which I hope will help calm your nerves during the placement drive and deliver your best.

When you decide to apply for the placement drive of any company, conduct thorough research about the organization, study the job profile offered by the company, understand the CTC, read reviews, check out probable posting and prepare few other questions frequently asked by the HR.

Candidates should also browse through some basic time and distance, ratio proportion and other basic mathematics problems to revise important formulas. These efforts should suffice to clear the aptitude test because the difficulty level is not that of CAT or any other difficult entrance. Otherwise, you would be required to take serious coaching to clear even company aptitudes tests. Well, jokes apart, some companies conduct an additional coding round after you clear the general aptitude round. You would definitely find it easier if you come from a coding background, whereas the non-coders will have to borrow some help from their friends with coding experience or online tutorials. For some companies such as Google, media.net, Goldman Sachs, Microsoft, the coding round is much tougher than one can imagine. To prepare for the coding test round, you can try solving the HackerRank code problems online.

If you clear the aptitude round, then congratulations and get ready for the Group Discussion round, also popularly known as GD. Many companies however do not take GDs before calling candidates for the Personal Interview (PI). In any case, if there is a GD round, you will get the topic on the spot and will be provided a time of around 1-2 minutes for preparation. The recruiter will assess for fluency and personality, combined with confidence level during the lecture delivery. You must not stammer at any cost or in the worst case, stammer as least as possible. Moreover, during the open round if someone questions you, respond properly and do not cross-question or counter question. Do not argue or get into a heated argument with anyone. That will fetch you negative points.

The next stage after qualifying the aptitude/coding test and GD round is the Personal Interview (PI), which is the final hurdle between you and the offer. There are few key things to keep in mind for the PI round such as study about the company, the profile being offered, some questions related to your resume, prepare to discuss on the projects that you have undertaken, your passion and a brief introduction about yourself. For the technical round, you should study about your own subjects and go through some commonly asked questions that you can easily on the internet. You should be aware of the subjects taught to you with respect to your own department, whether or not you belong to a circuit branch. Prepare these questions well and if luck permits and you get a good HR team in front of you, you can perform well without being pressurised unnecessarily. Please do take some rest and chill out the day before interview, to prevent any panic and anxiety

A hard work of 2-3 days can help you seal a job offer. I have used the same strategy for the three interviews I have appeared for till now and managed to clear all of them. So, I hope after reading this article you get some idea of how to face the placement scenario.

About the Author:

Swapnaneel Bhuiya is a fourth-year student at IIEST Shibpur. He is pursuing Mining Engineering and had appeared for JEE in 2016. He scored 140 marks in the first attempt.