Summer placement process

You have secured admission to a good B School, now what. Well, the first challenge for the students of a B School in India is the summer placement. A lot is written in the media and magazines about the final placements but the summer placement process remains untouched. So I thought why not put some of my insights on this issue, since my brother have experienced the process now.
Summer Internship is a part of your MBA program and is mandatory for getting a degree. Companies hire recruits for two reasons. One is that they get to see candidates for a two month time to identify the potential candidates for recruitment. And the second is that it is a part of their Corporate Social Responsibility. For the candidates, it is a hand on experience to see how an organization works and apply the theoretical concepts studied in class to the real life. Students are given challenging and sometime live projects to work upon. Sometimes it is actually implemented by the companies also. At the end of the summer training you might end up with a PPO which is pre placement offer to join the company, or a PPI which is a pre placement interview.
The process followed by the companies for recruiting candidates for summers is quite similar to the final placements. The typical rounds in the process are aptitude test, group discussions, case study, group task and personal interview. The process begins generally by the short listing of resumes. Remember, the companies have very less time to go through them. So make sure that your highlight your USPs carefully. e.g Marketing Coordinator in tech-fest GENESIS should be replaced by Marketing Coordinator in tech-fest Genesis. This is because the term Marketing Coordinator is more important than the tech-fest name which might not be known to company HR. Another point is that find out what the company expects from you. Highlight those aspects of your CV which make you look fit for the job. e.g do not tell the a company which has come for Marketing Profile that you are interested in Finance. He will never hire you. The group discussion skills are the same as followed in the B School entrance process, with a slight difference. After you have joined the B School you are a team with your batch mates so show unity.
The personal interview is based generally on your CV. The company knows that you are new to the B School and just expects you to be clear on the basics taught to you in the first few days. For engineers, the respite is that technical concepts are generally not asked lest you are sitting for a very specific profile. So that’s in short the summer placement process. I will be writing more about this in the coming posts.comments pls!