Students’ Speak: Certification courses, live projects and internships add value to resume

Abhishek Desai shares preparation tips for pre-placement offers. He emphasizes creating a compact resume with credible certification courses, live-projects and internships to help create a strong impression on recruiters.

Once the MBA/PGDM course commences in the June-July period, there is a window of about three months for one to make a compact resume before the forthcoming placement processes and summer internships (which generally begin in September). It becomes imperative for one to make the most of this phase to get placed with a reputed company.

For freshers, I would advise them to pursue some credible certification courses as well as take up a live project and/or a part-time internship which would be in sync with their specialization. The same applies to those with previous work experience as well but is more important for freshers since their CV won’t really have much value when compared to seasoned candidates. These activities will surely add a lot of weight to their resumes. Participating in various corporate competitions would also help one in applying the classroom/academic learnings in real-life business scenarios.

When it comes to tips for making the most of this pre-placement phase, I would advise the students to get in touch with their seniors (across the same and/or multiple batches) since they can give a fair idea regarding which sector and company to seek. The students should also take the help of professors to improve their resumes and give it a more professional look.

Role of Career Management Cell:

In Welingkar Institute of Management (Mumbai Campus), there is a placement cell called the ‘Career Management Cell (CMC)’ which ensures the students are placed in good organizations across various sectors. Moreover, it provides several facilities such as providing a proper format for the resume (which has to be abided by all students), conducting pre-placement talks with many companies which gives students more clarity about the job profiles, notifying students about the upcoming opportunities, etc.

CMC also ensures to invite only those companies that have some credibility in the market. In case if a student isn’t initially shortlisted by a company, it pushes their CV if that student is not only genuinely interested but also deserves a shot at being interviewed. CMC also shares important documents, links, etc. about thoroughly preparing for the interviews by contacting the alumni. CMC works tirelessly to ensure the students are placed in good companies as soon as possible.

If there are opportunities for a well-deserving candidate to get a pre-placement offer (PPO), it communicates and tries to convince the particular company to offer one. There are several staff members in the CMC, each one responsible to invite companies of a fixed sector such as Banking, IT, Manufacturing, FMCG, Consulting, to name a few.

About the Author: 

Abhishek Desai is currently pursuing Post Graduate Diploma in Management (PGDM) in e-Business from Welingkar Institute of Management. He has done his Summer Internship in the field of Market Research with 'TimesofMoney'. He's also served as 'Secretary of the Green Committee' at Welingkar.