GD & PI workshop

December 4th, 2019.Placement Hall. The Bhawanipur Education Society College (BESC) is known as a ready source for industry ready recruits and has earned itself a name among the employers and the HR fraternity looking for the peerless training provided to those who seek placements. However, while this sounds music to the ears, the hard work that goes on – around the year, and the sheer amount of effort put in by the management, members of the faculty and the students of the BESC to ensure that this cutting edge is maintained, has to be seen to be believed.

 

 

As Minakshi Chaturvedi, who looks after all issues relating to placement-oriented skilling of the students put it, “we ensure that the system of ensuring that out students are interview ready is built into everything we do. As part of this initiative, we organise a number of seminars and workshops where actual practitioners from the industry are invited to groom the students and show them, hands on, how to face interview boards, the questions that they are likely to face, the essentials of corporate etiquette – generally everything that the need to know in order to triumph”.

The GD& PI workshop was another one in this series. The workshop was spread across two sessions with each being dedicated to a particular area of interest – the first session being addressed by Shahida Hussan, corporate trainer and HR practitioner, while the second being conducted by Kaushik Kapoor, owner of Erudite.

The first session was dedicated to helping the students take up contentious issues like Resume drafting, general topics that are discussed in GD’s; types of interviews and the key points that interviewers look for; the do’s and don’ts in interviews and the points that should always be remembered in order to crack them; and finally interview etiquette with special emphasis on grooming for interviews.

The speaker spoke at length about how even the best of candidates suffer from stage freight which make them lose out at the n-th moment, while others steal the march over them. The basic point that was underscored by the speaker who has herself conducted innumerable interviews was aimed at de-mystifying the whole process and prepare the students to face the interview board confidently.

The speaker then went on to discuss another important area where students are generally found wanting – that of preparing a winner of a CV. The explained in great detail the difference between a resume and a CV, clearly drawing the lines demarcating the use of each after which she moved on to the act of actually showing the ways of crafting effective CV’s. She spoke about the need to includerelevant information in the CVs and talked about the citations that are required to be appended to one in order to make them effective and credible.

Shahida Hussan has been a regular in the BESC and the students relate to her no-nonsensical, direct and hands-on approach. Once the initial points were hammered in, she opened the session for interactions which witnessed a number of students voicing a variety of concerns. As a practitioner and an expert of the craft, she addressed each one of the issues raised, making it a point to explain the basics involved in the case and illustrating with real-life experiences wherever they were relevant.

Needless to say, the session was one that was found to be thoroughly enlightening by the students. “It is such a pleasure to be here in the campus” she said, “and one feels privileged to be able to contribute the little that I hope I have to these budding career paths. I can never thank Prof Dilip Shah, the Dean of student affairs of the college and Prof Minakshi Chaturvedi for having reposed their faith in me”.

The second part of the programme was conducted by Kaushik Kapoor the owner of Erudite and a seasoned interviewer who has not only groomed successive batches of students to crack the jinx, but have also acted as an advisor to many corporate entities seeking to fill their ranks with the right candidates.

The speaker approached the subject of interviews from a completely different perspective and made it clear to the students that there is more to an interview than being nattily dressed, reaching on time and handing out an error free CV. He talked about an area that students seldom visit before appearing of an interview – the whereabouts of the company to which they are applying. “In these days of universal availability of information, it is a cardinal sin not to research about the company and its background before appearing for the interview” he stressed, adding that the best and most obvious place to look for such information is the Company’s website.

He then went on to elucidate that only knowing about the company is not enough and candidates should prepare their responses, aligning them to the company’s core values, to its needs. Such an approach will not only provide the candidate with an immediate advantage, but may even be the tilting factor in his / her favour. Besides, researching about a company would also allow the candidate to make a rational choice as they too can form an opinion as to the employee friendly quotient of the company which would help the first-time employment seekers from avoiding the pitfalls that normally waylay newcomers.

Once the domain was established and the basics explained coherently, the speaker went into the specifics explaining how it is important to be smart enough to rise above the content of the CV and be willing to talk, given the chance, beyond the written word.  Knowledge of theory, the speaker went on to add, is important but not sacrosanct as most interviewers try to identify candidates who are able to convert such theoretical knowledge into practice, as in the end, the selected candidates will be expected to add value to the employer’s business.

The speaker then went on to address issues relating to another contentious area of the process of interviews – group discussions. He took some of the most floated topics in interviews, deconstructed them to the minutest details and explained to the students as to how best they should address them. The red flags, the openings that should be used to effectively and firmly make their voices heard, the pitfalls of rushing in where angels fear to tread, the do’s and don’ts to attract the attention were all discussed, in great detail.

As a matter of fact, this part of the workshop elicited the maximum number of queries from the students who were not only inquisitive but also excited to be a part of such a mock session. The speaker presented a number of case studies before the students which were used to refurbish the points being made by the speaker even as he sought to provide the students with a thorough grinding about the subject.

The speaker then took questions from the audience to address any grey area in the understanding of the students that needed to be resolved. The students who had warmed up to the topic, thanks to the excellent manner in which the discourse was conducted, had many questions, most of them pertinent and to the point. The speaker put in a great amount of effort to address the concerns individually and ensured that all the queries were resolved to the full satisfaction of the students raising them.

“It was such a stimulating exercise” said the speaker at the end of the session. “I meet up and discuss such issues with students on a regular basis as a part of my profession and am still compelled to admit that the quality of issues raised and the levels to which I had to go to address the inquisitive minds here in the BESC, was in one word, phenomenal. It was a pleasure to be here and I look forward to the college giving me more such opportunities in the future”.

 

(This report has been filed by Dhanraj Khaitan along with camera person SnehalMullik of the Expressions collective of the BESC. Dhanraj Khaitan was the student coordinator for the event.)