Campus Placements : Ensure You Don't Remain Unplaced

Showcasing the Right Skills in a Group Discussion 119

Underperforming or Ill-Performing:

What is at Stake?

Let us first understand the term ‘underperforming’. When a candidate

deliberately does not perform well with an objective to get rejected,

it is called underperforming. You must be wondering why anyone

would do that! It is observed that some students appear for GD only

because they have been asked by the placement committee but they

are not interested in the job profile or company, or they have some

other career goal in mind. In such cases, these students deliberately

underperform so that they don’t get selected without realizing that it

not only aects their performance but also mars the institute’s reputa-

tion. Let us understand this with the help of an example.

Real-life Case Situation

Himesh Verma, a promising entrepreneur, started his venture a

year ago and was looking for some interns for eective online

promotion and website development. Himesh mentioned his

requirement to one of his friends, Raj, who was a faculty at one

of the leading B-schools. Raj connected Himesh to the place-

ment committee of his institute. As a result, Himesh was invited

for the summer internship placements. As part of the placement

process, an initial round of GD followed by an interview was

scheduled. There were 20 students for the GD. Himesh decided

to conduct two rounds of GDs with ten students each. In the

first round of GD, Himesh was shocked to see that the students

were hardly speaking. He thought that the participants might be

nervous, so he encouraged and probed them to contribute and

speak. Despite continuous encouragement and giving enough

time and opportunity to express their views, Himesh was dis-

appointed to see students’ lack of interest and enthusiasm for

the activity. After the GD had got over, he did not shortlist any

candidate and canceled the other GD thinking that it would only

be a waste of time. He left the place with the impression that stu-

dents of the institute have extremely poor communication skill

(Continued)

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120 CAMPUS PLACEMENTS: Ensure You Don’t Remain Unplaced

In the situation discussed in the case study, the impression car-

ried by the observer or evaluator was that all the students of Raj’s

institute have poor communication skills and have not been trained

on participating in a GD. Apart from rejecting all the members of

the group, the company canceled the GD scheduled for the remain-

ing groups and also blacklisted this institute for future campus

placements. Thus, it is important to understand that participat-

ing to underperform is a waste of time for all the people, directly

and indirectly, involved in the activity and may leave an extremely

poor impression of all the students, the concerned institute, and the

and should be trained well for handling the placement process.

He conveyed this feedback to the placement committee as well

as to his friend, Raj, and also mentioned that he would not like to

recruit from this institute in future.

Raj felt embarrassed with the feedback as he was involved in

training students for placements. After interacting with the stu-

dents, he got to know that the students were not interested in join-

ing the company because it was a start-up and was a very small

company. As per the placement rules, they had to sign up and, if

got selected, had to take up the internship. Therefore, they decided

to deliberately perform badly in the interview to get rejected.

INDUSTRY BYTE

Company ocials prefer to go back to the

same campus where candidates have per-

formed decently in the GD earlier. Chances

of selecting more candidates from such a

group increases vis-à-vis the group where a

lot of screaming and shouting takes place.

–Rajan Vij,

Senior Investment

Banking Professional

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