Campus Recruitment

It is ironic that we keep stressing that a B-School stint is one for the long term and yet everyone judges it by the job you got on campus. Campus recruitment is a very stressful affair and one must be prepared to be patient as well as brave.

The process starts with a job being posted by a company calling for Expression of Interest (EoI) along with Resumes. A resume is your need-to-know-only version of your life which has been glamorised to appeal to the company you are applying for.

The EoI serves as the sales pitch where you would explain why the best part of your resume should mean anything to the company as well as why the company must overlook the bad part of your resume. This in some cases is also a make-or-break.

However the process of shortlisting is a very strange one and very opaque. For some reason the company doesnt tell you what they are looking for other than vague pointers like "should be energetic, must have good analytical ability, should be a team player etc". Which person in his right frame of mind would say that he does not have the above qualities? So once the recruiter sees a similar looking pool of resumes they have their own methods to shortlist resume.

Once the shortlist has been announced, probable interview dates are notified sooner or later. An interview would usually happen on campus. Some cases it might happen off-campus as well. It is important to arrive at an interview dressed appropriately and in a manner that doesnt distract or put off the recruiter.

Interviews are usually a series of questions aimed at testing your attitude / aptitude. HR has a good one word that describes this entire process "fit". But not always would interviews drive in a direction that would test out the capabilities necessary for the job. Sometimes it becomes a way for the interviewer to massage his ego by exercising a false sense of power. In such interviews you might find the recruiter getting angry even if you just moved your lips.

Sometimes an interview process will be long and torturous because HR wants to use all fancy tools during the selection process. Some of them call it skill-based interview and would usually involve doing a meaningless task in a fancy manner.

A common meaningless question you can expect in an interview is "Whats your long term and short term goal?". I cant remember the last time people ever had such a plan for themselves. So it is just how good you can lie to the opposite side and convince them.

One more version of this question where would you find yourself in 5 years. And they expect you to know this too. Most often than not you don't even know if the company promotes anybody more then once in those 5 years. So what do you do? Bluff your way out again.

Considering ISB has mostly super-achievers another common question one would get is "You were doing so well in your previous work, why did you decide to quit?". As if that was a secret. Money Honey ! And yet people would talk random stuff about learning, career acceleration etc etc.

By this time the company would have made a tentative decision about you. If you are 'IN' then they'll discuss salary which they'll claim as being 'competitive' which is another way of saying "Welcome to poverty dude". They'll blow up the CTC with all sort of expenses like the rent of the space you'll park your ass on etc.

But if they decided to reject you, they'll tell you indirectly. Never directly. You will see the birth of random excuses for not hiring you.

By the way its not always the HR guys who are the smarties. Some of the junta going in for interviews feel like they are god's gift to humanity. And for them to appear for a interview is a charity event to make the HR feel good.

Overall its a crazy process that tries everyone involved in it. In hindsight though its lot of fun.