Sunday, July 25, 2010

Interview Tips and Placement Tips For Freshers

The most anticipated dream of every fresh graduate is to get into a job. An excellent first job will make way for a rewarding career. A systematic approach is needed to get you into your dream job. Here are some tips to stand out from the rest during interviews or campus placements.

Pre-preparative phase

Running around at the last moment in order to prepare for an interview is not a wise decision. You need to prepare well in advance. Start by making an impressive resume. Browse the net and go through a few outstanding resumes. Try to grab some knowledge on what makes those resumes outstanding. Make a clean layout of your resume. Keep away from colours and decorative fonts. Don’t use too many unnecessary words. Too much wordiness will spoil your resume quality. Chart out all your achievements, abilities and outstanding qualities. Highlight your curricular and extra curricular abilities in catchy words. For example, ‘Was the topper of my whole graduate class’, could be written as ‘Topped my class in graduate level’. Keep it an important point to add things about you that will make an interviewer to decide about you. When you write about the internships, trainings and projects that you have done, describe your contribution in it. Make it a point to write each and every point in one single sentence. As said earlier, cluttering words will render the quality of your resume bad. Throw light on the extracurricular activities where you have outranked. Initially make a rough draft. You can sharpen it further by making a reliable professional in your field like your lecturer or your Training and Placement Officer (TPO) to read it and make constructive changes in it. You can also make some more well wishers read and make suggestions to incorporate. If you some someone who is working in big corporate, don’t forget to ask their suggestions as well.

Keep in touch with your Training and Placement Officer. Collect information about the companies that are going to visit your college for campus interviews. Try to know more info on the role of these companies and their process of selection. Keep abreast of all the training and placement cell info.

Preparative phase

  1. Prepare for the interview. Start by reading materials over the internet about interviews. You can make a collection of common questions asked at interviews and prepare answers for those.
  2. Try and study about yourself. Recall incidents till now and reflect on them –the things that excited you the most, the happenings you felt good about, the events that made you unhappy, etc. This will give you a study on yourself. You need to know about yourself first, only then can you tell someone else about you.
  3. List your strengths and weaknesses, long term and short term goals, skills, motivations, career interests, etc from interview point of view. This kind of listing will make you answer promptly when you are asked about your abilities, disabilities, etc. If you take time to answer when are questioned, your reliability will be doubted by the interviewer. So will be the case if you blurt out a badly constructed answer. When you give clear and quick answers to such questions, your good decision making ability will be revealed and you will be rewarded suitably.
  4. Seek the help of your well placed senior friends who are your well wishers. Ask them if the answers that you have prepared for the list of questions are acceptable.
  5. Prepare for written tests. The problem with some graduates is that they perform well in all other parts of the interview except the written test. So prepare well. Practice writing on a paper whatever you have read. This will help greatly in verbalising your knowledge and in managing your time. Doing well in the written test will greatly help you getting the job offer.
  6. Get prior information on who is visiting your campus and get acquainted with the info of their company in terms of their business, man power, etc. Knowing the interviewing firm will also help you in determining the kind of questions that you will be asked. In case, you cannot make out on what would be asked, be well prepared on a few of your favourite subjects. Some firms would want to know how good your knowledge on your own favourite field is.
  7. Practice group discussions with bright fellow students. You may collect some tips by browsing on how to perform well in GDs. Learn tactics so that you can insist your ideas firmly but without being aggressive. Also make it a point not to be too meekly while you put up your ideas. Practice makes perfection. So practice well to strike a perfect balance of the above said parameters.
  8. Also, develop good knowledge of facts and know about recent happenings. Watching daily news, reading newspapers and magazines, etc will help you have a sound awareness of current happenings.
  9. Collect more information about the company where you are going to attend the interview. When you have well furnished details of the company, and you say you want to work there, it reveals that you are really interested. Browse the net to know details of the company’s location, history, goals, changes, products or services, major news in the past few months, etc. You will get less number of technical questions if you divert the interviewer by speaking more about the company.
  10. Dress right for the interview. Both for men and women, the best dress code for an interview is being conservative and formal. Avoid decorative and fancy stuff. Brush your hair and wear only a light make up. Look clean, fresh and impressive.
  11. Collect all your educational and extracurricular certificates and neatly arrange them in a file and take them with you for the interview. It would be better if you hold the file in your hands. Present it to the interviewer when you are asked to.
  12. Be confident and look confident. Don’t utter words of disbelief to your friends or colleagues at the interview site. Avoid words like “I don’t think I will make it this time”, “I’m not sure”, etc. If you don’t want to say you did well, then keep quiet. You need not say anything at all.

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