Campus placements are extremely competitive and can be hard to secure if you head into them unprepared, especially at an IIT campus. Having a clear roadmap helps a lot when you appear for campus placements, and can significantly increase your chances of selection.

Following is a brief walkthrough of the procedure for you to get an idea of what to expect in campus placements:

IIT Guwahati has a body dedicated for internships and placements, known as Centre for Career Development. The Centre for Career Development intimates the students about placements towards the end of July in the final year of engineering and opens up registrations on its placement portal. You upload your CV upon registering on the portal. I was also required to upload my fingerprint, along with payment of a nominal deposit.

The Centre for Career Development then uses the portal to communicate to students about companies that will be visiting the campus and the companies one is eligible for. Each student can only see the companies they are eligible for on the portal.

Next, I had to individually apply for campus placements of companies I wanted to appear for from that list. Generally, there is a set date before which you can withdraw your registration. Once the deadline has crossed, you necessarily have to appear for recruitment processes of the companies you have applied for, else you may be blacklisted.      

Around October, companies start visiting the campus for pre-placement talks (PPTs). Companies take these PPTs seriously and are deemed by IITs as essential. Hence, biometric attendance is made compulsory for these talks. Failing to attend these talks will lead to cancellation of one's application.

Companies then receive the CVs forwarded by the Centre for Career Development. Sometimes there is a huge number of applicants. For instance, some 700 odd students from my college applied for placement at Flipkart. For ease of selection, companies conduct tests for shortlisting candidates. Placement season begins around December. Companies generally try to get the day 1 slot and bag the toppers.

Talking specifically about recruitment by IOCL, they didn't conduct any tests as such. They simply shortlisted 15 candidates for interviews, based on the CVs sent to them by the Centre for Career Development.

The first round of interviews was the technical round where I was asked about topics related to my core branch and its applications which will be required in real life. I prepared for it mostly from my course material.

The second round was the HR round. I had to answer questions about myself and how I would contribute to the company. The Centre for Career Development generally conducts soft-skills development workshops which helped a lot with this round. I also had answers prepared for questions mostly asked in the HR round. Additionally, I had to convince the interviewer that I wasn’t inclined towards higher studies and won't leave the company for that purpose (companies tend to not pick candidates who they think will leave soon). Apart from that, there were some basic questions about general knowledge to assess my understanding of the current political and economic scenario of the country.

After these two rounds, 5 candidates were selected for the job, and I was one of them.

Once we had received our placement letters, we were required to do a full health checkup, and submit the records to the employers. Companies do this to have a general idea about the health of potential employees and how productive they will be in the work environment.