Students’ Speak: Importance of Pre-placement Interviews

By: Abdullah Salman

Pre-placements are very crucial as it requires fewer efforts comparing to off-campus placements where we have to fetch a job on our own and it’s a tedious process compared to pre-placements.

As in pre-placement, companies step into college campus for direct recruitment and it's comparatively easier to crack and also it gives us an upper hand as the placements happen in our college campus.

Important questions to be prepared for before sitting for campus placements:

1. Tell me about yourself: Make sure you describe your career journey in the chronological order - achievements, strengths & weaknesses, short term goals and long term goals. Make it simple and up to 90seconds. Don't give detailed information.
2. Summer Internship: Be prepared on the Summer Internship project you did, mostly in the format of what you achieved by what % and how you achieved it. Eg: I have achieved my sales target by 12% using BTL campaigns and promotions which helped my Summer Internship Company XYZ and my contribution brought fruitful result for the company and also I was appreciated among the other 11 interns.
3. Some failures and challenges you faced: When you were a leader in any event/club/project, describe your leadership qualities here in a form of storytelling and how you overcame that failure. Do not boast here as the interviewer is asking this question to know as to how you handle failures in life.

Some important tips to crack pre-placements as follows-

1. Make sure you prepare a very crisp 1 page resume( if you are a fresher) and include more details about current MBA projects, summer internships and various live projects and case studies. Also, you could mention your college club activities participation and also any management fest winning or participation in bullet points.

2. Prepare for Aptitude in advance and also make sure you are clear with GD as well. For aptitude, you could refer Indiabix , Freshersworld, etc. or even R.S. Agarwal book.
3. For GD, you can go through all the recent major topics happening in and around business, technology, government policies, etc..

My college arranged mock aptitude tests and various mock GDs before pre-placements to get before the real GDPI of any pre-placement company steps into campus.

Few of the qualities that will help you crack GDPI:

1.Communication Skills

2.Presentation Skills

3.Self Grooming

4.Being True (Not being someone else)

5.Confidence

6.Leadership

7.Patience

8.Mobility

9.Multilinguistic

10.Being simple, lucid and giving up to the point statements

Note: Before attending an interview make sure you have done a thorough analysis of the company which is coming for pre-placement especially from their website, like what are the verticals of business they are into and what's the latest news about them in the media and latest share price of the company if it is a listed company, and their products and services. Also, information like what countries they are operating into, Company's CEO and key managerial people.

Confidence is the key to success, just go and give your best.

About the Author:

Abdullah Salman M is a student of Master in Business Administration (MBA) in General Management from Thiagarajar School of Management (TSM), Madurai. He has worked for over a year with as a Network Engineer and has studied his graduation in Bachelor of Engineering with a specialisation in Electrical and Communication Engineering from Anna University, Chennai.