Acing the Placement Season in University
TL;DR : Here's what I learnt the hard way about finding a job.
It's that time of the year again; probably the most difficult of your years at university. One by one, companies come and companies go - and from the looks of it you seem to stay there forever. The typical format of these interviews is, each company sends a panel of ~10 people to your campus to hire about 1 - 15 people out of 80 - 300 candidates in under 8 hours. From the perspective of the panel, you can imagine how difficult that'd be! Some companies have a specialized panel whose only job is to hire from a large mass. But for most other companies that cannot afford a hiring panel, employees are requested to conduct these. It's a long day where they are forced to actively listen to similar stories over and over again.
You can't change the format of the game, but you can play the rules to your advantage. Here's what you should do.
1. [Target your companies] Sit for only those you really want to get into. From seniors, or past placement records you know the companies visit your campus. Choose 3 companies and know everything there is to know about them. Google their interviews; text your seniors about what's new in the company. Don't sit for each compay that comes by. Losing is hard, especially when like a line of dominoes, day after day each one tumbles as each company selects their talent and leaves you out.
2. [Stay away from the noise] Placements are unfair - it's as simple as that. There'll be this chap that never did anything but got into Morgan Stanley because he was the first to get interviewed, or this other very talented batchmate didn't get selected because his interviewer was pedantic and an absolute sadist. People will talk, that's all they can do. There'll be this buzz throughout the semester of 'oh, do you know what happened to this guy?', or, 'ah, I feel so bad for her, she's been sitting for days on end and she goes till the final round, and doesn't get in'. Steer away from this noise as much as you can - just know from the beginning that it is incomprehensible to understand why someone got selected over the other; most of the time it's the panel to blame; the room that you get sent to.
3. [YOU guide your interview] You're the one who wants the job. Its in the first couple of minutes that the panel decides if they like you; but that's a psychological human trait anyway - we all do that on first interactions. You have to sell yourself and steer the conversation in what you're strong at. Not all candidates have the same technical abilities, and no one interviewer can know the plethora of technologies out there. So the interviewer generalizes and asks you questions from a set the company prepared and sent to their inboxes earlier in the day. Steer the interviewer away from that paper; interest him in your strengths. This doesn't always work; some interviewers are robots, that are rigidly tied to the rules.
4. [Look at it from the interviewer's POV] There's a reason to why campus placements are so unpredictable. Imagine yourself in the shoes of the head interviewer team of company X. You've been handed the task of selecting 8 people from a batch of 270 students, in under 8 hours. Your team isn't one of robots - they're all lazy, unfit humans that are accustomed to the luxury of centralized air conditioning and their buttocks resting on cosy office chairs. So, you as the panel head, how do you go about it? Even if you have a team of 6 by your side, each interviewer cannot conduct more than 10 full stretch interviews in a day - and by the time they reach the last interviee, they're exhausted and will not listen to what you have to say - they'll be blunt, expressionless and just sadists, for their job is done. Try not to be the last interviee.
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In larger organizations, there's typically a gap between the recruiting team and the technology team, and they never know the exact requirements/portfolios of candidates. So how do you filter out people that would be perfect matches, when you don't know the requirements in the first place? Better yet; the recruiting team is never held accountable - so even if they hire poor talent they're never going to work with them anyway!
It's that time of the year again; probably the most difficult of your years at university. One by one, companies come and companies go - and from the looks of it you seem to stay there forever. The typical format of these interviews is, each company sends a panel of ~10 people to your campus to hire about 1 - 15 people out of 80 - 300 candidates in under 8 hours. From the perspective of the panel, you can imagine how difficult that'd be! Some companies have a specialized panel whose only job is to hire from a large mass. But for most other companies that cannot afford a hiring panel, employees are requested to conduct these. It's a long day where they are forced to actively listen to similar stories over and over again.
You can't change the format of the game, but you can play the rules to your advantage. Here's what you should do.
1. [Target your companies] Sit for only those you really want to get into. From seniors, or past placement records you know the companies visit your campus. Choose 3 companies and know everything there is to know about them. Google their interviews; text your seniors about what's new in the company. Don't sit for each compay that comes by. Losing is hard, especially when like a line of dominoes, day after day each one tumbles as each company selects their talent and leaves you out.
2. [Stay away from the noise] Placements are unfair - it's as simple as that. There'll be this chap that never did anything but got into Morgan Stanley because he was the first to get interviewed, or this other very talented batchmate didn't get selected because his interviewer was pedantic and an absolute sadist. People will talk, that's all they can do. There'll be this buzz throughout the semester of 'oh, do you know what happened to this guy?', or, 'ah, I feel so bad for her, she's been sitting for days on end and she goes till the final round, and doesn't get in'. Steer away from this noise as much as you can - just know from the beginning that it is incomprehensible to understand why someone got selected over the other; most of the time it's the panel to blame; the room that you get sent to.
3. [YOU guide your interview] You're the one who wants the job. Its in the first couple of minutes that the panel decides if they like you; but that's a psychological human trait anyway - we all do that on first interactions. You have to sell yourself and steer the conversation in what you're strong at. Not all candidates have the same technical abilities, and no one interviewer can know the plethora of technologies out there. So the interviewer generalizes and asks you questions from a set the company prepared and sent to their inboxes earlier in the day. Steer the interviewer away from that paper; interest him in your strengths. This doesn't always work; some interviewers are robots, that are rigidly tied to the rules.
4. [Look at it from the interviewer's POV] There's a reason to why campus placements are so unpredictable. Imagine yourself in the shoes of the head interviewer team of company X. You've been handed the task of selecting 8 people from a batch of 270 students, in under 8 hours. Your team isn't one of robots - they're all lazy, unfit humans that are accustomed to the luxury of centralized air conditioning and their buttocks resting on cosy office chairs. So, you as the panel head, how do you go about it? Even if you have a team of 6 by your side, each interviewer cannot conduct more than 10 full stretch interviews in a day - and by the time they reach the last interviee, they're exhausted and will not listen to what you have to say - they'll be blunt, expressionless and just sadists, for their job is done. Try not to be the last interviee.
-
In larger organizations, there's typically a gap between the recruiting team and the technology team, and they never know the exact requirements/portfolios of candidates. So how do you filter out people that would be perfect matches, when you don't know the requirements in the first place? Better yet; the recruiting team is never held accountable - so even if they hire poor talent they're never going to work with them anyway!
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