Introduction To Campus Interview Questions
What if you do the same things all the students in your batch do? Will you get hired? Will you stand out? Will you make your mark? The answer is a clear no. Why?
Because only 2-5% of students who appear for the interviews on campus get selected in the best companies and fetch the best salaries.
What sets them apart? Skills, communication, knowledge? Maybe! But more than these what ensures success is how you approach your campus interview questions altogether.
Time has changed. Thus, emphasizing on the same traditional inputs will not help you make an impression in the minds of the interviewers. Yes, spending time on the resume to make it look attractive, preparing for campus interview questions, dressing formally will definitely help. But they will not be able to fetch you the job you deserve to get.
Why?
Firstly, these traditional inputs would be sharpened by everybody (read crowd!)
Secondly, the interviewers are not looking for these things; if they think about resume, style of answering good interview questions and power-dressing at all, they give them secondary importance. What they want to know, rather, whether selecting you will improve their return on investment (ROI) or not. If not, even after having great communication, amazing resume and magnificent presence, you will fail to make a dent in the world of campus interviews.
What will tick than in this ever dynamic mechanism of the business world?
Following interviews tips and tricks will help you ensure your position among the top 1% even with average grade and mediocre knowledge.
These tips are new and time-sensitive. Thus, don’t just read them, act on them before it’s too late. If you defer, chances are, maybe you would finish off among the last 99% of the crowd.
Do you want it?
I bet you don’t.
Let’s jump in and begin With The Questions That You Can Crack In Campus Interview Questions For Freshers:
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Think like a businessman/woman.
You have definitely heard the expression – “putting in others’ shoes” or “empathetically speaking”. The interviewers who would be sitting in front of you are expecting you to act like that. They want you to think and perceive their businesses well. If you can do that, you can understand the problems they want you to understand and can offer solutions. If not, sorry, you better get going for the next opportunity.
The question is how to understand their business well?
Simply by studying their business!
If you are planning to sit for an HR position in a manufacturing sector, then the role of HR is much dynamic than an HR of an IT sector. Why? Because the key variables of each industry are different than the other!
In the case of the manufacturing sector, the work of an HR is to manage the less-skilled and less-educated workforce most of the time to ensure higher productivity. Whereas in the IT sector, the majority of the workforce is already educated and skilled enough, thus the responsibility of an HR is limited to operations and to ensure a proper flow of activities.
If you aim to crack the job interviews of an HR in the manufacturing sector, your understanding of manufacturing sector should be so much that you can give solutions to the problems like lock-out, strike, and collision between workforce and management.
If you would like to go in IT, your approach should be to understand how information flows, communication channelizes and how to make the employees work under pressure.
Simply the interviewers are protectors of the companies’ interest and the faces who represent the company. Their job is to help the company find better candidates who can join in and give them an edge over others. If not, they will look for better alternatives.
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Make a list of propaganda
What most candidates forget is that campus interview questions are their stage to advertise their talents, skills, and works they have previously done. Being meek in the campus interview questions for freshers is a not a sign of humility. Because interviewing is not a win-lose agreement. It’s a win-win situation where a candidate has to prove his/her worth to be a winner.
Thus, start making a propaganda list if you have not done yet.
First of all, it’s not the resume. Go beyond that. Arrange all the projects that you have done in a similar industry. Projects include all your presentations, analysis, written work, articles you have written (even unpublished) and the official comments made by your professors.
The interviewers love to think practically. When one thinks on practical aspects of a thing, it’s always wise to give them evidence. Either you can give them evidence that you are capable and worthy of the job by showing them your propaganda list or you can back off and turn off your laurels.
Even if you are the worst student of your batch (according to you, though you’re not, it’s just an assumption), you can still attempt to present evidence in print forms.
It’s the first principle of selling. Buyers, who buy, love to buy when they touch the product. To sell yourself before the interviewers, you need to help them touch the printouts of your propaganda list. Their jaws will definitely drop by looking at and touching your accomplishments.
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Be well researched and a scholar interviewee.
It’s easy to be a scholar in this age of the internet. It’s a two-step formula you need to follow.
First, know about your subject and the area of the industry you would like to go in.
Go to Google. Do some research! Take out each subject of your specialization and spend a day or two summarizing a 2-5 pages summary of the subject. If you are still unclear about any portion of the subject, go directly to your professor and also confirm which questions to ask at campus interview questions. It’s never too late to know better. But if you realize it after the campus famous interviews, then it’s late enough. Better you get started at least 2-3 months prior to the interview/s.
You can add some flavor to the research of your targeted industry. Go to Google. Find out some local companies in the same industry. Call the HR and ask whether you can visit them as a student for some of your project work. If they say no, go directly and talk in the reception. They may allow you to get in and have some information. Often a letter from your college will help you get in and capture valuable data from the company. Once you have the data, sort it out in a presentation. Add a pie-chart or a histogram. Talk about the company. Then to add some of your own inputs. Make it a .pdf and take a print out. Now, you can also show your research to the interviewers who are sitting there for evidence.
Second, know about your interviewers and the company.
Most probably you would know which company is coming on your campus beforehand. Go to the website of the company and see the list of authority figures who would decide your fate in the interview. Then find out in Linked-In about them. Few information would be enough – what they care about most, what they despise, what are their birthdates and what they are expert in. Once you know about them, read a little about all of it. Once you know enough about them go to the company and look for their mission, vision, values and what they look to do in near future. This information will help you think like a businessman/businesswoman and give you a better perspective about how to present the evidence of your worthiness before them.
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Start a blog.
No interviewees may have received this advice, but it’s a sound one.
If you are sincere to crack the campus interview questions, start blogging.
You don’t need a domain and to launch a website. Simply go to Blogger or WordPress and create a blog and start to write about the industry/subject/area of your job. They don’t need to be magnificent articles. But they should be presentable. Take help of anyone who is keen to help to edit your articles. Publish at least one article per week and if you start at least 3 months prior to the interview you would be able to write at least 10 articles on the topic.
Share these articles with your friends via all social networking sites.
Go to similar blogs (similar areas) and read and comment on the articles written by experts in the field.
This simple act can popularize you and your articles in the Google Search. When anyone (interviewer/s) from the company will search your name (if you clear the first/second round), then Google will show your blog and articles at the top of the search and your chances of getting selected will be higher.
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Enhance your communication skill.
While talking about communication, most people talk about improving it, but no-one exactly says what to do. Here it is. By enhancing your communication means first you need to improve your accent. If you have native-language influence, the best way to reduce that is to tune your communication into a neutral accent.
If you have a professor in your college, take help from him/her. If not, then you can simply search in YouTube and can get access to various relevant accent training courses which will help you enhance your communication. While training yourself for enhancing your communication, pay special heed to the sound of vowels and how the emphasis on one word can drastically change the entire meaning of a sentence. Dig more. Explore more. You will soon discover the errors of pronunciation in your English speaking and can improve them by mere practicing.
After you are good enough in verbal communication, concentrate on the non-verbal cues. Pick up a book on Body Language. Read and apply. It will help you sharpen your communication skill and will give you an edge over others.
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Learn a course on business etiquette.
At first, it may seem irrelevant. But once you put yourself in the mold of a businessman, it would be easier for you to understand why it’s necessary to learn business etiquette.
Harvard Professor and Body Language expert Amy Cuddy speaks about “Faking it until you becoming it” and it really works.
Once you begin to practice business etiquette it may seem false. You may not get the feeling of integrity. But keep on practicing and watch other business experts do it. After a month of practice, you would see that hand-shaking, smiling, putting your hands on the table, drinking water in front of the interviewers, asking them questions for an interview would become much easier.
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Polish your aptitude.
No matter where you go for an interview, the first round would be a round of aptitude. It is to check your mental capacity. If you have a knack of practicing aptitude one hour a day, you don’t need to prepare separately for the big event.
Just take any area. It may be verbal reasoning, logical reasoning, arithmetic, algebra, geometry or any riddle or puzzle. Practice it for an hour. Sit back and relax. Don’t forget to set a time limit. Improve from there.
After preparing so much for the interview skills, you wouldn’t want to get rejected for failure in aptitude. Be ready. You can use Indiabix.com for starting off right away. If you use the smartphone, there is a great app called SmartThink which you can use for your aptitude practice.
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Update yourself about general campus interview questions and current know-how.
If you are thorough with all the above 7 steps, then current affairs would seem easier.
Why?
It just needs a half an hour devotion to a good newspaper. Read a good newspaper every day and you can jot down the highlights of the day in a notebook. Once you do it for a week, go over to the notebook and review what you have written. If you do this, you wouldn’t need to do a single thing more to be updated about current affairs.
Why it’s important?
In the campus interview questions, interviewers can touch-base upon the hot-topics of politics/sports/business. If you know, you can think through and understand how to answer interview questions. If you don’t know, it may be counted as a weakness in the interview.
You don’t need to panic. Simply do the above steps. You will be able to answer the campus interview questions related to current affairs.
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Go for interviews & group discussion.
Don’t let your campus interview and group discussion the first interview and GD you ever face. Make it the hundredth one. Maybe more! It’s always better to go to any company and sit for a real interview to see where you are. If that’s not possible, talk to your peers and form a group and arrange for mock interview techniques and GD every week.
The mere act of facing mock/local interviews will help you build strength to face the campus interview questions and group discussion.
Conclusion
The preparation may not end here. You can do more. Question is whether you are willing to give that extra effort which is required to stand out in the crowd or not?! If you are, you now know what steps you need to take to begin within the campus interview questions.
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