Preparing for the Job Market: Handling the HR department

duration: from 9 am to 1 pm

Tagline: A workshop with leading HR professional to understand the minute details as

how to prepare for the interview and preparing the resume Session conducted by Mr. Dipanjan Biswas. Mr. Biswas is the HR Leader-Cummins Electronics & Fuel Systems. He is an HR Professional with 15+ years of experience in Recruitment, HR Operations, New Plant Start up, Talent Management, Change Management.

Why workshop with HR?

The Human Resources Department of a company is the department to which students will apply, and they may successfully “screen” them as a potential candidate with a preliminary telephone interview. Thereafter, they may intend to set up a face-to-face interview with the student at company headquarters. The company must really be serious about our student as a candidate. However, perhaps, but it’s far more likely that the real purpose of the interview is to eliminate the student from further consideration, and, quite probably, scores of other potential candidates with whom HR may also have scheduled face-to-face interviews around the same times as ours.If there was ever a time for the job seeker to be on “full alert” during the job search process, this is the time when they face the HR!

It’s crucial to keep in mind that the HR interview process is driven by one principal goal: To weed out any potentially “unsafe hires.” That is, they want to eliminate anyone and everyone who might even remotely end up costing the company more money, cause legal issues, not be a good cultural fit, or in any other way cause the company some type of embarrassment and/or inconvenience. Contrary to popular belief, companies do not necessarily always hire the best candidates. It is usually the safest candidates who get hired! Naturally, anything said to HR can actually be counterproductive.

HR also tends to ask potential candidates very direct and pointed questions. If the candidate is not on full alert s/he can easily—and quickly!—fall into the various “traps” they are trying to set for them. This, therefore, increases the probability to get eliminated during the preliminary rounds. Therefore, HR interviews are really important. All these added together only hint towards the fact that we do need to give immense importance to the HR rounds and prepare accordingly. Ultimately, after investing so much resources (time, money, etc.) for getting higher education, our students really deserve to get the best jobs when they finally graduate.

The entire session was conducted (both theory and practical) for the final year M.Sc students so that individual issues can be addressed in an intense way. The sessions were as follows