A shift from college life to professional life demands the development of essential soft skills to land lucrative internship or job opportunities. While recruiting graduates, interviewers emphasise more on assessing candidates’ soft skills as hard skills could be eventually developed through on-the-job training. Freshers or inexperienced candidates are selected based on their communication skills, interpersonal skills, strengths and weaknesses, understanding of the company and job role, and interest and willingness to work, learn, and grow with the company. Freshers are bound to feel anxious during their first interview, however, through proper pre-placement preparation, guidance, and training, they can ace their interview. 

Let’s talk about a few major things that one could learn through online placement training. 

• Resume writing –

A resume is a document that contains important personal and professional details of the candidate. A strong resume lists the candidates’ strengths, qualifications, skills, and unique qualities increasing their chances of getting selected over other applicants. Through a credible online placement training, one can learn to write a professional resume that can keep the recruiters engaged and can highlight the skills that make the candidate, a right fit for the role. One can learn about the importance and sequence of different segments such as personal details, educational qualifications, internship experience, projects, technical and soft skills, training and certifications, and extracurricular activities in the resume.

The training also helps the learners understand the important dos and don’ts such as mentioning the most recent educational qualification, work experience, or projects first, adding the name of the organisation, profile, time period, and brief description of the job done in work experiences, and not adding irrelevant details such as age and gender in the personal details section. One can also begin to make a resume through the help of a step-by-step guide and can take reference from multiple resume templates available for download in the training. 

• Cover letter/email writing – 

A cover letter is the email body copy that accompanies the attached resume while applying for internships or jobs through an email. This write-up carries details about you, why are you willing to apply for the internship/job, and what skills make you suitable for the profile. The purpose of a cover letter is to motivate the recruiters to download, open, and read your resume, thus, it must be brief but strong enough to convince the recruiter that your qualities suit their requirements. 

Through online placement preparation training, one could learn about important practices such as creating a professional email ID, (for example – [email protected]) and avoiding grammatical mistakes and SMS language. Writing a brief and relevant subject line (for example – Application for XYZ internship – First name – College name) shows one’s sincere interest in the profile and attracts the recruiters to click, open, and read the email. Sending a blank email without a subject line, copy-pasting the cover letter, improper greeting and signature, and sharing the cover letter as an attachment, are a few mistakes that one could learn to avoid. The step-by-step guide in the placement training helps the students in writing different segments of the cover letter through a detailed example. 

• Interview process – 

An interview is a formal direct communication between two individuals or a panel and the candidate held, over telephonic calls, in-person, or through video calls. The different stages, questions, and tasks in interviews differ based on the organization’s requirements and the job profile. In an interview, the candidate is assessed based on multiple factors that cannot be evaluated through a resume such as their ability to communicate, confidence, interest and excitement about working in that role, and willingness to learn and grow. 

An online placement training could help an individual prepare for different stages of an interview like the pre-interview, telephonic or video interview, group discussion round, HR questions, puzzles, and guesstimates. One can also learn essential interview etiquette such as dressing professionally, proper grooming, reaching the venue at least 15-30 minutes before the interview, carrying all the important documents like a resume, college ID Card, transcripts, certificates, and practicing speaking in front of the mirror every day to gain confidence. As interviewers usually end the discussion by asking “Do you have any questions for me?”, learners can also find the right set of questions to ask the employers through placement preparation training. Asking relevant questions could highlight a candidate’s interest and sincerity in the job or internship.

Courtesy: Internshala Trainings (training.internshala.com) – e-learning platform to learn new-age skills from Internshala.