In the present scenario of recruitment process,Group Discussion (GD) is playing a vital role.Nowadays, no organisation wants to recruit employees on hit and trial basis, because of cut throat competition. Gone are the days, where people used to get job on the basis of written test and final interview. Nowadays without Group Discussion, no private organisation is ready to provide a job. Through GD a candidate’s effective communication skills, articulation,behaviour, team work, analytical thinking,clarity of thought, inter-personal skills and leadership qualities can be observed. Students aspiring for professional courses or going for first job, have to face the test of Group Discussion. In GD you will not get much time to prepare about the topic, in case if you do not have sound knowledge about the topic.
The key solution is to collect a lot of GD topics and think in a general way and acquire knowledge.

Types of GD
* Topic-Based GD - Topic based GD’s can be classified into three categories:
1. Factual topics: These are socio-economic topics.Here candidates are expected to have sound knowledge in the given topic. Ex: Global warming,Impact of Indian movies on youth etc.

2. Controversial Topics:These kinds of topics are argumentative in nature and meant to generate a lot of heat. The main idea behind asking candidates to discuss a controversial topic is to see if they can display cool logic and equable temper and remain unruffled even when provoked. Ex:Which is the land of opportunities - India or Abroad? Women will be a better leader than men.

3. Abstract:The abstract topics are given for discussion,mainly to evaluate the creativity and  maginative capacity. Ex: White or black - Money is everything.* Case Studies:The candidates will be given a situation or issue.They should understand it properly and they need to present their perception or solution for the given case. Ex: Yellaya and Pullaya are the employees working under your leadership.They are rivals and cannot run the work smoothly. How do you solve the case? Based on the performance of candidates, they may be called as an Initiator, Co-coordinator, Leader, Innovator, Conflict Manager, Talking terror and Silent member. A candidate may not be playing all the above roles, but he/she should have the maximum qualities of the above roles.

The Structure of a GD
The structure of GD is three parts.
1. An effective Initiation:Initiating a GD effectively is like breaking the silence of ice. To start the initiation a candidate may take a good quotation, definition or saying.Anyone may make the initiation, but be careful it has advantages and disadvantages. Initiate a GD only if you are well versed with the topic.As an initiator if you fail to contribute properly,it gives a negative impression as we know “First impression is the best impression”.

2. Continuation of the topic:Till the end of the prescribed time candidates need to continue the topic in a meaningful and logical way. While continuing the topic, the candidate should be careful about certain things like, if you do not agree with the other people thoughts instead of saying “I don’t agree”, you can say “I beg to differ with you, I don’t think so, I understand what you mean, but…” If the topic is deviated you can say, “I am sorry to say, this is not really relevant here. Let’s not deviate please”. If nobody is speaking, you can throw a point and ask opinion of others. In this way, you can show you are a team player. By acknowledging other points, participating through out the discussion is very much
important.

3. Conclusion:Summarisation of the topic can be taken before one minute of prescribed time by any one of the participants. Summary should be brief and concise and it should contain all the major points that were discussed.Keeping a pen and paper with you will surely help. Before beginning the discussion,
you can jot down some important points. In the middle of a discussion, we tend to forget certain things that we had planned. At that time referring to this note would be helpful. Take care of your body language. Does your body language suit your speech? Keeping a positive attitude will give you an upper hand over other participants. Patience, convincing power, selfconfidence,knowledge, behaviour, ability to articulate one’s thought is the hall mark of the winner in GD.