Campus drives are campus recruitment sessions that connect organizations with today’s talented students for the purposes of employment. Campus interviews are very popular and much sought after in professional colleges. Many educational institutions flock to a College Placement Officer to make selections for the young Graduates and Post graduates. It is very convenient for the students to select a job and have the satisfaction of taking it up immediately a f t e r completing t h e c o u r se .They can s t a r t their career with lot of confidence.

The Recruitment Process
The campus placement officer usually coordinates the recruitment process. The recruitment season typically extends from mid-October to mid-March. However, because of increased competition, campus recruiting is becoming a year-round activity.Campus Selection One of the first steps in developing a campus recruitment programme is to select the right campus with which to build a relationship. According to the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE), employers should target only campuses that “produce both types of students that best fit into its corporate c u l t u r e and the number of students it needs to achieve its hiring g o a l s . ” Although there is no set formula for determining which campuses to visit, campuses can be rated by several objective factors. In addition to Indian IT firms, global giants like IBM, Accenture and HP, also have plans to hire in large numbers in India. This requirement of IT companies can be fulfilled by two different methods. In the first method, companies can reach out to the vast pool of talent through advertisements in newspapers. This way the 7 The Career Guide January - 2012 Vol - 5 Issue - 7 prospective candidates approach the companies. This method may be particularly useful, if the number of job vacancies is less. When the number of vacancies is high, this method is time consuming. The other more proactive approach by the organization is to directly visit the campuses and recruit the candidates from those campuses. This method is referred to as Campus Recruitment. This way both the organizations and the prospective candidates come on a common platform. This common platform provides excellent opportunities to the companies to interact with the talented students who are enthusiastic and extremely motivated and who are willing to go that extra mile to prove themselves. For a student, this system provides a smooth path to enter the job market straight from the campuses.
Why Campus Recruitment?
Today, many top corporate houses are giving a lot of importance to Campus recruitment. Corporates want to hire and retain the best possible talent in order to gain competitive edge over their rivals. During recruitment process, a company employs various selection tools to ensure that it hires right person for the right job. This quest to attain the right fit between a person and a job has magnified the importance of Campus Recruitment and not only engineering colleges but also degree colleges have started to adopt this process. In this context, it is worthwhile to mention that the job-market, today, is promising, not just, for engineering graduates but also for non engineering graduates. Top notch IT companies are also hiring non-engineering graduates like B.Com, B.Sc, BCA graduates, diploma holders. For example, in the year 2010-2011, Infosys made offers to 1000 non-engineering graduates. The compensation package offered to them was Rs2.18 lakh per annum. Similarly, TCS is recruiting commerce graduates for software development. The coding has been redesigned so that these graduates can do that part of the work, which does not involve engineering knowledge. This, surely, is an encouraging sign for all those who are from none engineering backgrounds and who wish to take up jobs with companies like TCS,Infosys, Wipro etc. Not just IT industry, but other industries too are buzzing with recruitment activities. For example, the Mahindra Group, which has a wide range of businesses, plans to hire around 25,000 professionals by the end of this year. Eligibility criteria for entry level position: Each company has its own eligibility criteria in terms of age, qualification, year of 8 Vol - 5 Issue - 7 January - 2012 The Career Guide graduation, % marks scored in class Xth, XIIth, UG/PG. The basic eligibility criteria for entry level position in different IT companies may vary slightly from company to company, but broadly they do not differ much.
For example, for an entry level position in TCS, a prospective candidate should have an aggregate of 60 percent in Std X, XII, & Graduation/ Post Graduation (all semesters including optional subjects). He also should have less than two years of gap in his academic
career. Similarly, for an entry level position in Cognizant, a prospective candidate should have secured over 60 percent in X, XII, UG/PG (if applicable). There should be no outstanding
arrears.

Stages in Selection Process:
Various stages of the selection process remain, broadly, the same for these companies, with some slight variations. These variations could be in the form of an additional or less number of stages for some companies. The following are the stages that students normally go through as a part of Campus
Recruitment:
(i) Aptitude Test (ii) GD (iii) Interviews
(i) Aptitude Test:
Aptitude test is one of the integral components in the entire scheme of the selection process.The areas normally covered in the aptitude tests
of most companies are Quantitative ability,Reasoning, Verbal Ability and basic computer skills. These tests are well structured. The kind
of questions that are asked or the topics that are tested depends entirely on the company conducting the test. Each company has its own
pattern. For analytical test you need to be through in the following areas: Numbers: HCF # LCM of Numbers, Decimal Average, Problems on Numbers, Problems on
Ages, Surds, Percentage, Profit and Loss, Ratio and Proportion, Partnership, Chain Rule, Time and Work, Pipes and Cisterns, Time and Distance,
Problems on Trains, Boats and Streams,Allegation or Mixture, Simple Interest,Compound Interest, Logarithms, Area, Volume
& Surface Areas, Races, Calendar, Clocks, Stocks and Permutations & combinations…
Puzzles: HCF # LCM of Numbers, Decimal