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Cracking Campus Interviews: Tips and Tricks that Boost Your Confidence
Campus interviews play an important role in acquiring a good job after studying hard throughout the course duration. It so happens that some students get multiple placements while others struggle to even get through one placement successfully. Though the main aspect that companies look into is the graduation scores, there are many criteria that the interviewers notice in a candidate.
Here is a guide of tips and tricks that will help any student to attend and crack the campus interview with confidence.
Research about the company
When appearing for the interview in a company, it is expected that you know the basic details about the company – what is their business, what is their success story, where are they located, what are their products, who are the important persons in their team, etc.
The company’s “About Us” or “Meet the Team” pages provide all the details that will be useful for you to answer when the interviewer asks what you know of their company.
Talking and sharing your ideas about the company and the business shows how enthusiastic you are about the company and gives a nice impression on you. This knowledge also helps you to understand best about how you can upskill yourself to meet their requirements.
Your resume says a lot
For a fresher, the resume is a mirror of their skills and talents. It can be a group activity where you played a major role or a sports competition which won a district-level prize to your college – they all say a lot about your sportiveness, leadership skills, and competitive spirit.
Make sure that you prepare your resume professionally, incorporating all your skills and interests. List your academic achievements starting from a recent degree. Add good hobbies and interests that show your creativity.
If you have done projects or mini-projects, throw a good light on their technical details. Paper presentations, social service experience, memberships of literary clubs or other institutes, etc. can all be incorporated in your resume. Remember that you should be able to support and explain all that you put in your resume.
Sharpen your aptitude skills
General aptitude and reasoning are a must for any candidate to crack a campus interview. Companies often filter out candidates in the first rounds using the scores in aptitude sections. Hence you should practice more previous interview question papers, which will give you an idea about the type and format of the aptitude questions asked in campus interviews.
Learn, rinse and repeat your coding skills
Coding skills are very important for most roles in the campus interviews. Irrespective of your branch in degree, you are expected to have basic knowledge in coding. In your interview, you shall be asked to develop code on various basic coding problems.
To handle such situations with confidence, you should thoroughly be strong in coding in various programming languages. You may not learn all the programming languages; you can pick one of your convenience and ace that.
Previous years’ question papers help here in a great deal to give you an idea about the type of coding problems that you can expect here.
Prepare for group discussions
Group discussions are a part of many campus interviews where interviewers check how good a candidate is in expressing the ideas. Though it is no wrong in expressing your ideas in your mother tongue, understand that in this globalized world, speaking skills in English are important.
So, practice speaking in English by standing in front of the mirror, talking to your friends and family and learning from online resources. So that by the time you appear for your campus interviews, you are all geared up.
Be clear of what you want
Companies that come to campuses are from diverse domains – core manufacturing, business, IT, infrastructure, etc. You should be clear of what your career aspirations are – whether you want to be associated with a core company that is into manufacturing and operations, or want to be a part of IT and Software stream, or wish to see yourself as a marketing expert after few years. Also, be clear if your first choice is the company or the package or the location.
Appearance makes an impression
Be well-groomed and look formal. Do not experiment with funky hairstyles and chic looking attire. Dress up elegantly. Take your seniors' advice if possible. Avoid gaudy jewelry, bright colored makeup and nail polish. Wear formal footwear and look decent.
Tips to remember for campus interviews
Looking confident is good, but never give an over confident look. Remember that you are a fresher and the ones who are interviewing are representing an established business.
Never say anything that is not true. Interviewers have huge experience in screening thousands of candidates and can find out easily if you are talking truth or not.
If you do not know a concept or topic under discussion, agree that you have no idea about it. Say “I am sorry. I have not much idea on this”, but never try to cover up and blabber something that is not making sense at all.
Some companies opt for stress interviews where they check a candidate’s behavior under stressful conditions. Prepare to face such interviews and never lose your cool or flare up your temper.
Carry multiple copies of the resume and your passport size photographs. Some companies take the resumes of the candidates and file them while some don’t. Thus you will be on the safe side if you have multiple copies.
Some interviewers give you a chance to pose any questions that you have for them. For such a question, never ask how much your salary will be or anything related to money. Instead, you should ask them what domains are open with them currently and how new technologies they are planning to add on for your batch of selected candidates. This will give you a hint on what skills you can learn to match their requirements.
If you are appearing for various designations of jobs across various domains, you should prepare different resumes matching corresponding profiles and check the Career Objective column and Skill Set column all the time if they are in line with the role you are applying for.
Interviews are best cracked on campuses, as you will have a lesser competition to face. So prepare hard and work smart and crack your campus interviews. All the best!
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