A common complaint of every DU student is that the placement cell does not work hard enough to get multiple companies on campus. In my two years in placement cell, first as a member and then as a sub coordinator, I have not spent a day (college time or vacation) without checking my mailbox ten times a day to catch up with the list of companies contacting us at a point of time.
The year starts busily enough with prepping new members to help us enable a smooth process. For the best part of the year, your alarm clock is the early morning call of a company official wanting to discuss the placement process. From the formulation of report, inviting companies to campus, frantically find some free date to assign for a company process, orienting the student body on the college policy, organising workshops, preparing venues, garnering enough attendance to ensure the company doesn’t get offended, arranging the company’s requirements to the T- we do it all. Keep everyone happy – the company, college authorities and the student body – and become a machine following every instruction with no acknowledgement.
It’s fair enough to say that we signed up for the job role so we shouldn’t complain. However the surprising element in the work comes when you observe students treating the process crassly. A random chat with a company reveals that maximum students across the university don’t bother to read the job profile before appearing for the interview. Students routinely skip pre-placement talks and even drop out of subsequent rounds without prior information – the most unacknowledged part of our work is convincing a company to come back and visit our campus after students disappoint them.
Aside the frustrating moments, working for the placement cell opens your eyes to the extreme unpredictability of landing up with a job, warms you up to the company and definitely makes you a little less afraid as you walk up to the interview rooms. In this extremely competitive environment, placement cell folks have helped calm nerves of those in the waiting rooms, and also weathered themselves through the highs and lows of everyone’s experience to become better informed and more confident candidates!
Nitya Nangalia
(The author has been associated with the Placement Cell of Lady Sri Ram College (LSR) for two years. The views & opinion set out in this article is solely of the author)
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