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Campus recruitments no longer follow a predictable pattern:
Company representatives sit across the table with students, engage them in
set-format interviews or group discussions and seal the deal, as it were. In
times of heavy competition, recruitments are being given a new spin. 'There is
an anxiety to get a candidate with the right fit,' says Prince Augustin,
executive vice president, group human capital and leadership development,
Mahindra & Mahindra. From taking shortlisted candidates out to dinner or
administering psychometric tests to assess their leadership styles,
organisations are lining up unique strategies to hire the best candidate in the
shortest possible time. Sources*
Simulations, dinners
The Boston Consulting Group has been training its campus
recruitment team for a while through simulations on how to select candidates in
a shorter span of time. It has had to re-visit its campus recruitment strategy
after it realised that it was getting only 30 minutes to interview a candidate,
as against the earlier 45 minutes, on account of the large number of students
applying.
The team has been asked to present ambiguous business case
studies so they can judge the student's problem solving method faster. 'The
teams are trained on how to lead a student to the problem and make quick
observations and decisions,' says Suresh Subudhi, partner and director at BCG.
Consulting companies are also known to take shortlisted candidates out for
dinner before the final interview, to check if they fit into the firm's
culture. The uncertain economic environment has watered this down a bit,
though: Till a few years ago, consulting majors would take students out to
plush hotels, but now the dinners are at college campuses.
Early screening and
grilling
Last year, Citibank began identifying candidates in their
first year at top management colleges through projects and campus connect
programmes where students were presented with case studies to solve. 'This
helps students understand the bank and its values better,' says Anuranjita
Kumar, country human resources officer, Citi India.
The bank does not conduct aptitude tests and believes in
three rounds of 'conversations', where a student's body language, style,
ability to bring about change, work in a partnership and take ownership is
observed. Open-ended questions like, 'What values drive you professionally and
personally? How do you plan to go about your career growth?' are asked, at
times by different panelists.
Leadership tests
Mahindra & Mahindra has devised a behavior and
personality metric assessment that tests a candidate's persuasiveness and
participative leadership style. During the hour-long final interview, questions
include: 'What has been the happiest day of your life?' and, 'Who has been the
most difficult person you worked with?' The student's thought flow is observed,
says Augustin. Recruiters are trained to notice even a flicker of emotion,
which tell them that he or she was not just parroting a response
Case studies
Deloitte at times sends an army of 20 recruiters to each
campus who divide themselves into panels and observe how students solve case
studies in groups and individually. The panelists are changed and similar
problems are given to the same student to check for inconsistencies.
RPG Enterprises provides case lets or shorter case studies
to students. It did away with group discussions since last year. Students are
also tested on ambiguity and self-assessment through questions like: 'What
would you do if you join your dream company but realise this was not what you
expected?'
Quick innovations
Arun Bharadwaj, first-year student at IIM Lucknow, says similar
changes have been noticed during summer internship selection as well. A
start-up divided the batch into groups and made sure they did not know each
other too well, to observe how they work with unknown people. 'We were made to
do advertising campaigns. That was a first on campus,' he says.
Some tests, of course, are devised on the spur of the
moment. At one of the IIMs last year, Amit Das, senior vice president, group HR
at RPG Enterprises and his team had to interview a student who claimed he had
won accolades in dancing. Asked to prove his skills, he whistled a tune and
danced in front of the entire team. Needless to say, he clinched the offer
