It is not easy to convince recruiters at a business school to hire you. Selling yourself as a suitable candidate to a prospective recruiter recruiters industry insight, strategy and the right guidance. In this article we provide tips and strategies to overcome the placement battle.
The interview is the place where your buyer and you, the seller, meet. A bad salesperson is one who harps about the features of the product, a mediocre salesperson will talk about the advantages of the product and a good salesperson will talk about the benefits of the product to the customer.
What is the process of coming up with the best sales pitch?
Prepare a list of questions considering yourself as a product and you are the salesman trying to sell the benefits (not features) of this product to the recruiters. These questions will help you create the sales pitch about yourself.
Remember, however, that the pitch changes with each customer, and trying to use the same pitch on all customers is counterproductive. Do not try to sell yourself in the same way to all companies.
To understand better how to sell yourself, let us take a look at what recruiters at any leading MBA college look for in a candidate. A recruiter needs three types of skills
This is the main thrust of most MBA programs. The professors are aggregators on knowledge and they cram it into the students. Most B-schools teach the same subjects. Different students retain this knowledge at different levels based on their capability and interest and sometimes the ability of the professors. Given that there are 4500 B-Schools in the country, the quality of the teachers cannot be uniform.
If a new recruit has the right attitude, to work and to learn, he can be moulded. If he thinks that he should determine the type of work he should do, then the company has a problem. Recruiters look for a ‘can-do’ attitude, the ability to remain focused and in balance and ability to learn.
If the new recruit does not blend with the culture of the organization, cannot work in teams and cannot present his ideas, he is more of a liability than an asset.
You should look for an MBA college that teaches you all the above in equal proportions. Any college with a heavy weight on academics but not enough weight on other things cannot create an ideal candidate for recruitment.
Last but not the least you would also need to understand thoroughly the job market and how you fit in, you need to do an analysis of the placement scenario, the trend, and how you can sell your services and thus yourself, as a complete package.
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