Campus Recruitment by Corporates

The future of 2018-19’ student-batch seems to be walking towards the brighter side of the tunnel. The economy to a large extent depends on political stability. Pundits allayed fears of campus placements taking a backseat, but the corporate world has gone to campuses-big, small and new with a renewed vigour.

The Indian Institute of Technology (IIT) Delhi this year broke its last 10 years` record for number of placements, with its students grabbing over 900 offers from various national and international employers so far. The number crosses 1,000 if one includes the pre-placement offers, meaning those under which a student works as an intern before getting recruited. According to an IIT Delhi statement, number of companies coming for campus placement also saw an increase of 15 per cent over the last year.

Recruitment is a process of scouting for the potential workers and filtering, stimulating and encouraging the job seekers to apply for the jobs in an entity. The main aim of the campus hiring program is to provide job search advantages to the students. With the help of the on-campus job fairs, the pupil graduating can have a good interaction with the potential recruiters and can come to know the need, demand and expectations of the industry. Multiple on-spot campus recruitment helps the students, as well as, the recruiters to save their time, transportation costs and energy.

“Most of the students are just looking for a job, any job, which makes it difficult to gauge their motivations and whether they will stick around for a while. It also leads them to be not very driven about what they do, as they are lost in that regard,” said Kinjal Shah, Business Development and Legal Head, Careerninja.

“Institutions now need to understand the future trends of the economy and the technological disruptions to nurture students to be employable. Focusing on the skills and knowledge relevant to the future is extremely pertinent in the rapidly changing ecosystem. A few institutions have identified programmes to tackle this concern. Additionally, institutions need to find innovative mechanisms to inculcate employability in students by continuously providing quality education,” stated Prof. G.L. Tayal, Dean, Academics, Indian School of Business and Finance, New Delhi.

Challenges Facing Modern Human Resources Managers
The job duties for human resource managers have evolved quickly in the 21st century. Those in the profession now take on larger roles in developing strategy for their organizations, working with executives and other department leaders to reach business goals.

Finding Right Talent
For companies competing to fill critical positions and retaining the most capable employees is a priority. This is especially true for managers in organizations that have entered rapidly emerging markets bringing in huge success for the enterprise. Here, the HRs are fairies with the wand, finding and recruiting the best.

Robust Training along with Reskilling Programs
It’s necessary that HR managers develop a strategy for training new employees and providing reskilling for current employees. In the modern business world, the workforce can expect they have to learn new skills 15 to 20 times during the course of their career. Learning now is a incessant process that lasts throughout a worker’s life.
Including Online Learning

As part of the training and reskilling process, HR managers can take advantage of the flexibility allowed in using online learning with employees. The Society of Human Resource Management reports that this area has tremendous potential, especially with the younger workforce.

Prompt Data
HR is gradually asked to use data, just as other areas of an organization put it to use. It can not only support better decision-making but also give an accurate analysis of the return on investment of decisions made by the department.

Change Management
This includes a wide range of issues, involving HR managers taking larger roles in business strategy as it relates to how companies invest in both new and current employees as they transform in a technology-driven, global market.

Leadership Development
HR managers must identify and support potential leaders in an organization. This also involves developing the tools needed to foster their growth.

Corporate Trends in Hiring
Recruitment trends during a placement season depends on the present and expected economic developments. Our country has observed a slowed economy at 5.7 percent in the June quarter of 2017-18. Furthermore, the World Bank had shrunk India’s Gross Domestic Product (GDP) growth prediction to 7 percent for 2017-2018 from 7.2 percent estimated formerly, while maintaining at the same time that the economy would claw back to grow to 7.4 percent by 2019-2020.

Earlier Placement Timeline
“Lack of relevant skills and practical knowledge are the biggest challenges faced when hiring freshers. Most freshers CV’s look the same and by that, I mean except for their college degree and marks, it’s blank! Or just a few more not very relevant things they may have done. Which makes it difficult to distinguish the great talent from the not so great talent. Thus, it really matters if the person has done some sort of work or internships in the past and taken up some relevant courses whether online or offline as that means he or she will be able to start contributing faster and better at the workplace,” added Shronit Ladhani, Founder, Careerninja

Present Day Timeline

This placement season has observed some changes. For instance, especially in B-Schools, there is an increase in the number of corporations that are visiting campuses for appointment though the requirement in each company has come down significantly. Mass recruitment by IT companies which was viewed in the past few years is not seen this season. There has been a cap on the recruitment drive by a few sectors such as the automobile industry.

Mentoring students
It is important to detect the strengths and career objectives of a student since the time they join an institution, and mentor them to accomplish the preferred career aspirations. This will help institutions categorize companies and job profiles that match the group who are ready to be placed. Getting mentors from the corporate world on board as well can help accelerate placements in the final term.

Learning Agility
To counter the unstable business environment, another noteworthy transformation in hiring inclination is that enterprises are even looking more for candidates who have learning agility. This often tops the one skill they are hunting for —flexibility and adaptability at work space, and an aspiration to sustain with rapidly shifting technological and business developments.

The Future of Indian Workforce
The phenomenal growth of start-ups in India and the escalating of smaller companies, fueled by the potential of India’s growth, the number of off-campus placements is notably escalating as the job growth pace in smaller companies far exceeds that in larger companies, as does the sheer learning curve. Many of these companies have impressive job positions to offer, besides the capacity to pay. The challenge for students yet, is how to access these opportunities, since several companies lack the bandwidth to hire across campuses through a comprehensible strategy.

While Indian organizations are already taking some steps to align with the emerging needs of the employees, the disparate nature of each world may require organizations to identify which world they are heading towards. At the same time, they must factor in the possibility that their organization may need to simultaneously co-exist in multiple worlds direct them towards the need of charting their own paths and find the right balance between profitability, flexibility and social impact.

Commitment and culture: How does an organisation garner commitment from the workforce is the employees would respond to the company. A company ensuring refined future of their workforce will get more commitment from them. In turn, this would develop a sustainable organisation culture.

Human capital analytics: Indian employees are willing to share personal data. However, are organisations equipped to access this and use it to maximise the value of human capital analytics is what corporations need to work upon.

Flexibility: More and more people are comfortable with technology and prefer flexible work.

Diversity: The workplace of the future is more diverse (by skill and age) than ever before. These employee value propositions attract and retain talent.

Social conscience: Organisations change to become more environmentally and socially conscious across their entire value chain hold a more respectable position from employees point of view.

Procedure of Placement
There are two types of Campus Placement programs:

• On-Campus Placement
In On-Campus placement drive, organizations visit institutions to select students and the selection depends upon a student’s capability to work-hard, his/her technical proficiencies and focus.

• Off-Campus or Pool Campus Placement
In Off Campus placement drive, hiring is conducted at a common place that may be a particular institution or a public place where students from different colleges assemble and take part in the various stages of the campus placement drive. A number of these drives are also advertised as job fairs.

The main purpose of the appointment process is to identify the skillful individuals. The eligibility standards adopted for selection by most firms are variable in nature:

• Educational Qualification
• Written/Aptitude Test
• Group Discussion (sometimes optional)
• Technical Interview
• HR Interview
• Post – Placement Talk

Pre-Placement Talk
Pre-placement dialogue with the students is mainly a form of presentation. The presentation includes the company profile, selection procedure, organizational achievements, company’s vision and mission. It also includes the growth of the candidate within the company and other benefits, if selected.

Educational Qualification
A number of companies place importance on the academic performance of the candidate, and place requirements for minimum marks.

Written or Aptitude Test
Most of the companies conduct a written test based on the minimum academic performance criterion. This is generally an aptitude test which has questions on Mathematics, English & Reasoning. Some companies also have technical questions in the test. Few companies in addition to this also conduct personality or psychometric test.

Group Discussion
Some companies also conduct GD as an elimination round or in addition to interview. In this section, a general topic is placed for a formal discussion. The main objective of this round is to check the communication skills, listening ability, etiquette of a candidate, leadership qualities, convincing power, and knowledge of a candidate.

Technical Interview
After the elimination round of written test / group discussion, technical interview will be conducted by the company. This round will check the technical skills of the selected candidate.

HR Interview
Formal interview is considered as the final round of the selection procedure. It includes the internship, work experience, industrial visit to the brands in a specific sector which increase the chances of selection.

Post –Placement Talk
After the selection of the candidate, the offer letter is given. The company executive informs the guidelines related to joining process and company’s policies.

How to Crack Campus Interview?
Campus placement can be one of the most overwhelming episode of student at colleges or universities. Unless one studies at a top ranking institute, opportunities will be fewer as compare to the number of students.

• Knowing your aspiration
  The initial step towards securing the right job is knowing what the individual really aspire for, is it high remuneration or job satisfaction? Do you desire for a job that meets the career objectives, or one that will be a stepping stone for further accomplishments, be it professional or academic?
• Working on interpersonal skills
  Having good communication skills is no less important than having good scores. Experts often advise students to participate in activities like debates, sports etc. in institutions to develop their interpersonal skills. “Many students consider that high results are enough, however, bagging the top rank in class without the right personality frequently do not go as planned with many corporations,” stated advisor, training and placement, at IIT Madras.
• Write a responsible resume
  Sometimes while trying to look exceptional, students overly emphasizes on various points in the resume which they hardly have in depth knowledge about. This might end in trouble during an interview. Try to be specific and accurate in the cv, and mention points that are needed for that particular job role. Outline achievements and experience in as few words as possible.
• Suitable Clothing
  Hiring managers repeatedly face a time crunch during recruitment and under such situations,
  the first impression matters a great deal. Dressing properly not only leaves a good first impression, helps in boosting confidence as well.
• Research about the company
  Research is vital, companies are more likely to employ candidates who have devoted time in learning about the company. Study about the company’s history, culture, values, future goals, and financial standing. Research represents preparedness and intention to join the company. Furthermore, candidate should check if the aims and philosophies of the company are aligned with their own.
• Avoid back-to-back interviews.
  Interviews often run behind, which means the candidate may get out of first interview later than expected and have even less time to get to the next.
• Practice mock tests and interviews
  Sometimes the first level of shortlisting candidates is done through an aptitude test. Students often forget what has been taught in the first year of their degree, hence, revision plays an important role. Additionally, create a pre-interview plan, or schedule an appointment with a career adviser to refine the skills and the resume, along with performance at the mock interview.

Students nowadays mostly lack in communication, they try to deliver more in spite of listening to what exactly has been asked for.