Are you set for the upcoming placement season ? December, clearly is the most important month for most of the graduating students – because of two reasons – Exams and Placement. As a standard, most of the companies across the country, start their recruitment process December and start visiting college campuses.

Here is your chance to speak with top notch experts and get your preparation for IT Interviews on track. Here are the details of conference call –

Scheduled Date : 3 PM, 13th December
Expert Profile : Kshitij Sharma has been a trainer for the last 12 years. He started his career with GE Capital International Services back in 1998 and has worked with organizations like Convergys, Tally Solutions Pvt Ltd and Achieve Global India. He has more than 5000 hours training experience. During this time, he has trained close to 2300 people on various areas of softskills. Kshitij has trained over 2000 Engineering and Management students with necessary corporate skills.

Here are some of the questions that we would be answering in the conference call –

1. To start off with, what are the various entry points in the IT Sector ?
2. What is the skill set that one must possess for an entry level IT Job ?
3. How can high school students prepare themselves for entry level jobs in the IT sector ?
4. How should they go about training themselves ?
5. What are various positions that one can apply at a undergraduate level – BE or BSc in IT
6. What are the various companies that one can apply to for such positions ?
7. What is the selection procedure for such posts ?
8. What the key things to keep in mind regarding the interview ?
9. What are starting salaries and what is the typical career path ?

Should you have any question, add them in the comment section and we will be happy to take them on the call.

About AquSkills : Aquskills as a company is focused on improving employability quotient of graduate students. For the same, the company has developed Aquskills Graduate Development Program that is designed to facilitate the development of essential competitive skills within graduate students.

The Voicetap knowledge series is back and back for good. We have been hosting Knowledge Conferences for over a month now.

Here is the second call from the Entrepreneurship Series on – How to start a business. We would be joined by Mukesh Bansal -CEO and Founder of Myntra.com

About Mukesh and Myntra.com -
Mukesh Bansal is Founder at Myntra Designs Pvt. Ltd. Myntra.com is ranked among the top 10 e-commerce companies in India and is scaling rapidly. Myntra has brought in a new level of professionalism and technology enablement to the ecommerce space in India. For consumers this translates to superior experience, broader product selection and unmatched efficiency thus adding to a better purchasing decision.

This conference call is being hosted by Nuture Talent Academy.

Click here to register for the conference call

As a heads up, we would be taking questions from the audience during the conference call. Should have any questions – feel free to drop them in the comments section

Cheers
V

It’s been a long time since we did our last podcast.. With the Voicetap conference call platform ready to go live, we are back once again with the Voicetap Calls.  Here is one the first calls in the Online Marketing 101 Series where we try to understand different aspects of Online Marketing. Adtiya Rao (CoFounder of SuperChooha) and Ankesh Kothari (Founder of SuccessNexus) joined us for this podcast and shared their experiences.

Click here to listen to the podcast

Read more about affiliate marketing from Wikipedia . Do check out the discussion on Quora on topics related to affiliate marketing.  Also check out this post for everything you want to know about Social Media.

For any questions feel free to drop a tweet to any of us- @vivekk , @ankeshk and @adityarao310 .  Up next in this series is How to master Search Engine Marketing ?

VoiceTAP held a call on Resume Writing Tips for Management Resumes. The expert on call was Anish Kalani, who has seven years of experience working with recruitment processes of companies such as Convergys, Mindspace, EXL, etc for management-related positions. This was more of a quesion-and-answer session with participants with Anish clearing doubts on how to go about writing an impressive resume. You can listen to a podcast of the call below.

Click here to listen to VoiceTAP Resume Writing Tips for Management Jobs call

VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) conducted a call on “How to write resumes for technical and consultancy jobs”. The expert on call was Pooja Garde, who has worked as recruiter for technical job related companies for a few years. Listen to recording of this discussion by clicking on the podcast link below.

Click here to listen to VoiceTAP Resume Writing for Technical Jobs call

A resume makes the first impression of a candidate with a recruiter, so it is important to get it right. A badly-written resume could mean you never make it past the first stage to an interview. You obviously need to mention all your basic education details, but that’s not what sets you apart. A well-written resume should tell a recruiter at-a-glance what technologies you have worked on or know about depending on whether you are a fresher or an experienced worker. Here are the specifics on how to write a good resume for technical jobs:

For freshers

Limit your resume to a maximum of 2-3 pages. Give an introduction / description of your career objectives in the beginning, followed by education details, technologies you know, and end with major achievements in school or college. Include your college CGPA / GPA because a few companies look towards hiring candidates with strong academic backgrounds. Write about what technologies you know, but make sure that you really do know them. Companies want candidates who know how to do a given job well rather than looking for a long list of programming languages that you might know about. The same precaution must be maintained when mentioning extra-curricular activities. Be prepared to be grilled about whatever you write in those sections; if you are not prepared to be grilled then it’s best to drop whatever you don’t know that well. At a fresher level, recruiters don’t have much to quiz a candidate on experience, so they look for what the attitude of the candidate is instead.

For experienced candidates

A resume for an experienced candidate should go beyond just a mention of technologies you know; list project details you have worked on including a short project description, who the clients were, and most important of all – your role in the project. This gives a recruiter a good idea on whether you fit the job profile they’re looking for or not. Also mention any achievements that you’ve had, such as professional certifications (Microsoft Certified, Sun Certified, etc) or internal company awards (Star of the Month / Quarter, etc). Structure for your resume is similar to that of a fresher – career objective, basic education details, project details, achievements. Your resume should not be longer than 10-11 pages.

In technical jobs, some candidates want to stick to technical jobs while others want to move on to managerial positions – be specific in mentioning this in your career objectives. A recruiter could be looking for a candidate for a managerial or technical role and giving them this information makes it easier for them to choose. If you have job-hopped, make sure to mention why you shifted jobs. In case you give valid reasons then you’re good, but if you job-hopped simply to get a better salary multiple times in the past then companies might be apprehensive about hiring you because of ‘stability’ issues. Some of you might have taken time off to work as an entrepreneur and then things didn’t work out as planned; mention briefly that you worked in a business from so-and-so period, and then give an explain about it in the interview.

Miscellaneous tips

Freshers need to be as concise as possible when writing their resume; experienced ones should mention projects they’ve worked on and they role they worked in. Mention specific technologies you have worked on – for instance, you know Java then mention specifics on whether you know / worked on J2EE, J2ME, Struts, etc. Also, recruiters tend to avoid resumes which list library / banking / hospitality management systems as projects worked upon since these are way too common, and often with copy-pasted stock descriptions. Avoid long paragraphs, because no recruiter wants to spend too long reading a resume; stick to bullet points and / or short sentences.

For further resume writing tips, you might also want listen in to our previous call on this topic.

First post in VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) line-up college vs college comparison of Delhi University colleges begins today – Hansraj College vs Sri Venkateswara College. On the discussion were Diplav Srivastava (third year BSc student at Hansraj, University topper), Hitesh (Eco student at Hansraj), Varun Gupta (third year BSc student at Sri Venkateswara) and Arita Sarkar (third year English student at Sri Venkateswara). The way the following post is going to be structured is that an aspect of college life would be taken up, with info on each of the two colleges listed under that.

Listen to VoiceTAP Hans Raj vs Venky call by clicking here

Basic Information

Hans Raj College offers the the highest number of courses in Delhi University, but it is best known for arts and commerce-related courses. (For full-list of courses offered at Hansraj along with fees click here.) A total of 850 seats are available across all courses. Demographic break-up is almost 50-50 between Delhi and outstation category students. Official college site is hansrajcollege.edu.in. Contact phone numbers are 011-27667747, 27667458. Directions to Hans Raj College can be found here.

Sri Venkateshwara College is best known for its science courses but of late it has is becoming popular for arts-related courses too. A total of 675 seats are available across all courses. Download Sri Venkateswara College prospectus by clicking here. Official college site is svcollege.net. Contact phone numbers are 011-24112196, 24118590. Directions to Sri Venkateswara College can be found here.

Entry Requirements

Hansraj College: First cut-offs for more popular subjects for the year 2009 range from 80-95%. Note that these are first cutoffs only.

Sri Venkateshwara College: First cut-offs for more popular subjects for the year 2009 range from 85-95%. See year 2008 minimum cutoffs for Venky.

For specific information, download Delhi University 2009 first cut-off for college admission. Expect the cut-off to lower by a few percentages in subsequent lists, but this should give you an idea. A major drop in percentage between lists is rare.

Cultural Activities / Societies

Both colleges have individual societies for each department in the college, and further extracurricular activities societies. Hans Raj College‘s fest is called Confluence (doesn’t have a major online presence or even reportage), but is supposedly quite big because of the fact that so many North Campus colleges are close-by, the ‘Hans Raj brand’, et al.

At Venky’s Nexus

Sri Venkateswara College‘s fest is called Nexus. Inter-college competitions are held on days 1 and 2 of this three-day event, with the third day reserved for rock concerts – which in the past have seen performances by Euphoria, Indian Ocean, Advaita and others. A review of Nexus is available here.

College Politics

Hans Raj College has hardcore college politics, with lots of campaigning especially during the DUSU elections. College politics is comparatively tamer at Sri Venkateswara College.

Hostel Facilities

Hostel facilities are available in Hansraj College for male students. Preference is given to outstation students. Seats are limited, so girls and those who don’t get college accommodation can go for PG accommodation available in North Campus.

Sri Venkateswara College did not have hostel facilities until very recently but now it does. There are 75 spots for boys and girls each in its newly constructed hostel (total of 150 places). South Indian students have quotas for college hostel accommodation. Those who don’t get college hostel can settle for PG accommodation nearby the college.

Sports

Hans Raj College is best known for basketball. Other sports like cricket, badminton and table tennis are also encouraged.

Sri Venkateswara College has clay tennis courts, basketball courts, football ground et al.

Sports / ECA Quota

Trials are held for admission through sports / extra-curricular activities quota. Sri Venkateswara College gives students admitted through this quota 17% relaxation in admission cutoff percentage.

Attendance Requirements

Hans Raj College: Minimum 65% attendance is required. Failing this, a letter is sent to student’s parents / guardian(s) who then need to speak to senior management about it.

Sri Venkateswara College: Venky is quite serious about discipline. Minimum 60% attendance is required, failing which parents have to sign a bond assuring that their child won’t miss attendance targets for following years. Percentage attendance required for subsequent years is reduced for all students, whether on bond or not. ECA / sports quota students have 17% attendance added over and above the time they get excused from by the college for attending events / practising.

Famous Alumni

Hans Raj College has many famous alumni to boast about. To name a few: Shahrukh Khan, Palash Sen (lead singer of Euphoria), Naveen Jindal (Member of Parliament), Vinod Dua (journalist), Anurag Kashyap (director – read an interview with him about Hansraj college life).

Unfortunately, Sri Venkateswara College doesn’t have any famous alumni to speak about as such. Partly that’s because South Campus was set up much later. Venky is still a happening place; of late it has been producing many university toppers, there’s Satya Niketan near-by (a great place to hang out), South Delhi areas are much more easily accessible, et al.

Further Reading

• Advaita: A band whose main members studied at Venky.
• Illuminati: Hansraj College’s quizzing society.

VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) experts for the call on Shri Ram College of Commerce were Arpana Chaturvedi (currently a first year MBA student) and Lohit Agarwal (currently an intern at Ernst & Young). Both of them studied B. Com. at SRCC and have now graduated from there. Listen to what they have to say about their alma mater.

Listen to VoiceTAP Shri Ram College of Commerce info call by clicking here

Map of the area near SRCC. Directions to SRCC are available here.

Basic Information

Shri Ram College of Commerce, more commonly referred to as SRCC, is considered to be the premier institute in India for B. Com. (Hons) and BA Eco (Hons) courses. Those are the only courses that the college has at the undergraduate level, but it’s well-known for that itself. There are post graduate courses in a few subjects, but we won’t go into that now.

SRCC is a North Campus college situated in Guru Tegh Bahadur Marg, North Delhi. Their official website is www.srcc.edu and they can be reached on phone at 011-27667905, 27666519. A history of the college is available here. Approximately 384 seats are available for B. Com. (Hons), and 94 seats for BA Eco (Hons). Out of these a majority of the seats are bagged by outstation candidates.

KK performing at SRCC

Entry Requirements

Admission cutoffs at SRCC are often termed as ‘ridiculously’ high. Last year for instance the cutoff was around 94.75%. Best of four subjects from a candidate’s class 12th Board marks are considered – out of which English and Maths are subjects have to be included when you’re mentioning your four subjects. Students from science and arts stream are in tough luck, because for them the cutoff is 1% higher than what it is for commerce stream candidates.

Reserved Category candidates (SC / ST / OBC etc): Candidates from the reserved category need a separate form to apply, not the common DU admission form. Information regarding this would be available at the college itself. There is a relaxation of cutoff percentage for reserved category candidates; for instance, OBC candidates get a 10% relaxation on the cutoff percentage. This step was taken because many seats in OBC category were going empty.

Sports Quota: 20 seats are reserved in SRCC for admission through sports quota. Trials are held and candidates are admitted on the basis of their performance. Certificates / achievements in sports for the past few years are also considered. Again, a separate form needs to be taken from the college itself for admission in the category.

Transfers: Transfer of a student to second year / any other semester is not allowed at SRCC.

Financial support / scholarships: Tuition fees (excluding hostel) are less than Rs 10000 per annum. However for students facing financial hardship and / or meritorious students, there are various scholarships on offer at SRCC.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure at SRCC is top-notch. All classrooms / lecture halls are air-conditioned and outfitted with LCD projectors, screens etc. A 300-seater library provides books and journals to students, along with being one of the first libraries in Delhi University to provide Wi-Fi access. SRCC’s auditorium has a capacity of seating 750 persons, and a modern seminar room is also available. On-campus bank, stationery store, health centre et al are also present. (A significant amount of the funding for all this was provided by SRCC alumni.)

Starting from 2009, all teaching in classrooms will be done with the aid of computers. Students will be expected to have their own laptops – if they don’t have one then it will be provided at subsidised cost and / or with financing options. SRCC aims to make it is whole campus completely Wi-Fi enabled. This is in addition to the computer centres to provide access to the Internet that it already has.

SRCC’s placement cell has a track record of providing guidance and getting students placed at major Indian and multinational companies.

Sports: SRCC is the only North Campus college to have a swimming pool (open during summers only). Facilities are available for badminton, cricket, tennis, table tennis, gym, etc. Further, sports facilities are being upgraded because SRCC is a venue for some events (such as rugby and wrestling) to be held in the 2010 Commonwealth Games Delhi.

Hostel: The colleges provides on-campus hostel facility for both boys and girls (but with a greater number of seats available for boys). Catering, laundry etc are also provided. In case a student doesn’t get a place in the college hostel then s/he can look for paying guest accommodation which is available in the North Campus area.

Western dance at Crossroads

Cultural / Extra-Curricular Activities

Crossroads, the SRCC annual fes

Contrary to what you’d expect after putting in a bunch of ~400 95%+ students in the same place, SRCC students do manage to have fun. There are different societies for dramatics, elocution, Koshish (a social service body), choreography, commerce, economics, maths, computers, debating etc. SRCC also organizes a national lectures series which has eminent personalities attending the event.

Crossroads is SRCC’s annual fest. Spread over four days, various cultural events are held, including music concerts where Indian rock bands such as Parikrama performed.

DCE rock band Arcane Deception playing at SRCC

Politics: National parties such as NSUI and ABVP are not allowed to field external candidates for college student union elections; only SRCC’s own student can participate in elections for SRCC student union. Canvassing for DU student union elections do take place though.

Famous Alumni

Arun Jaitley (BJP spokesperson), Vijay Goel (BJP politician), Gulshan Grover (actor), Rajat Sharma (founder of India TV), Rakeysh Mehra (director of films such as Rang De Basanti and Delhi-6)…to name a few.

Further Reading

• Yamuna: Yamuna is the SRCC student magazine. This link here leads to the blog of the SRCC magazine. Read it up for a feel of cultural events at the college.
• MyDU: Portal on Delhi University started by an alumnus of SRCC. Provides information on cutoffs, accommodation, etc.
• Channel V In Your Fest SRCC videos: Meet SRCC students featured on Channel V’s In Your Fest.

VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) has been doing quite a few posts on Delhi University college admissions. The admission process is almost over and we hope that all of you got into a college of your choice with the course of your choice. A few posts were done on college comparisons – North Campus vs South Campus, Sri Ram College of Commerce, Hansraj College vs Sri Venkateshwara. We hope that you found these posts informative.

A few calls got left out for which complete posts couldn’t be written. So these are being uploaded here now. While the college admission process is over, those of you who are heading to these colleges might still be interested to know how college life is in these colleges. And who better to give you this information than current and ex-students from these colleges. VoiceTAP held conference calls over the past few weeks on careers and colleges – and this info available to you now as a podcast you can listen to or download from here.

These DU college admission podcasts give you information on the following topics per college: best known courses, entry requirements, cultural activities / societies (including information on college fests), student activities, college politics, lodging / hostel facilities, extent of ragging, demographic breakup, most popular / best sports teams in college, financial support / requirements, sports quota / ECA quota, extra-curricular activities, transfers between colleges (in second year), attendance requirements, famous alumni, etc. All this from people who know it best – students who have been associated with the college.

Listen to VoiceTAP Lady Sri Ram College vs Miranda House call by clicking here
Reva Sharma from LSR and Natasha Bhan of Miranda House speak about their college experience

Listen to VoiceTAP Jesus & Mary College vs Gargi College call by clicking here
Monisha Batra and Kritika Singh from JMC, and Aleena from Gargi (currently working at TCS) speak about their college experience

PS – More college podcasts might be uploaded soon.

Are you a college student looking for an internship? Or a fresher hunting for a job or already in some field and looking to switch companies? The first step that you need to look into is creating a resume which stands out from the crowd. VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) founder Mrigank Tripathi has some tips on resume writing. Before starting VoiceTAP he worked as a management consultant and holds an MBA from INSEAD, so these tips are based on his experience as a recruiter during his consultancy days. It’s a short podcast – around eight minutes long – and has some noteworthy tips.

Listen to VoiceTAP Resume Writing tips by clicking here

Over the past few weeks VoiceTAP has held many career advice calls. A good resume can make a good first impression on your recruiter – and a bad one can doom your application to the trash bin. Applicants often tend to go overboard when writing a resume stuffing in details which recruiters might not be interested in. As you can imagine, companies get lots of applications for a post and if you can’t communicate concisely the skill set that you have then they probably won’t be interested in taking an extra effort to dig deeper.

The podcast tells you which types of information recruiters are really looking out for in a resume. Whenever possible try to include performance figures (if available). Try to mention precisely what tasks you’ve accomplished at a previous company. Alternately, if you’re a college student or a fresher then make sure to mention any extra-curricular activities that you’ve been a part of, any positions that you’ve held, events you were associated with in college, etc. These go a long way in showing that apart from academics you’re also a well-rounded person who knows who to work in a team environment. If you know which person in an organization is going to see your resume, then make a conscious effort to tailor it to highlight the bits of information they’ll be more interested in. Whatever you do, be precise and concise with what you’re writing. Don’t drone on and on in paragraphs. Be confident but not cocky.

Remember that a resume is a just a beginning. It’s a good beginning if your resume is good, but ultimately it’s going to be the interview that you have after making this good first impression – and how well you perform in the interview – that’s going to determine whether you get hired or not.

For the VoiceTAP (what’s VoiceTAP?) on Why do BBA / BMS / BMM the experts on call were Moksh Juneja (who currently teaches BBA / BMM / BMS students) and Saurabh Gogna (who teaches students preparing for BBA entrance exams at Alchemy academy).

Listen to VoiceTAP Why BBA / BMS / BMM call by clicking here

In a nutshell

The ‘craze’ for ‘professional’ courses such as BBA / BMS / BMM (henceforth only BBA will be mentioned to make this sound less cumbersome) are a recent phenomenon. Paradoxically, this is because professional courses are in greater demand now!

Students choose to go for BBA because they don’t want to do a plain vanilla B. Com. course. Sticking to the bad ice cream metaphor, you could call BBA (and allied courses such as BMS / BMM) to be a triple sundae. BBA gives you exposure to a wider variety to subjects than a ‘normal’ degree course. This exposure to larger number of topics – apart from making you wiser – also gives you a better idea of what direction you want to take your career towards. And if you are fortunate enough to do your BBA degree from a prestigious institution then you also get a higher salary (on an average) than a ‘normal’ graduate.

You get more individual attention in BBA courses as usually these have small batch sizes. You have to compulsory internships – which is actually a good thing; for you get much needed work experience highly valued by recruiters. While a BBA will not teach you all the tricks that an MBA course does, it will give you a solid grounding in basic corporate affairs including specialized aspects such as public relations, marketing, advertising, etc. Attendance requirements are a bit more rigorous than normal degree colleges but in exchange for that you get a solid academic background which helps you get better jobs after graduation.

To get in to a BBA course you first need to apply to a college on the basis of your Board marks. On the basis of this a shortlist is made for candidates who are eligible to appear for an aptitude test. (Sometimes Board marks are skipped entirely for just the aptitude test or vice versa depending upon the college you’re talking about.) Selected candidates from the aptitude test are called for an interview / group discussion and then the final students who get to join the course are selected. It sounds like a gruelling process but it isn’t as bad as it sounds. It doesn’t matter which stream you took in your +2 in school; even if you’re from a science or arts background as opposed to commerce you still won’t face much problems.

BBA courses in Delhi University are available in College of Business Studies, Deen Dayal Upadhyay, and Keshav Mahavidyalaya. Of these CBS is the most prestigious with many top students opting for this college. Indraprastha University in Delhi also offers BBA courses.  Then of course there are private institutes such as Amity, Symbiosis, Bharati Vidyapeeth. Aspirants in Mumbai have other options such as the prestigious NMIMS.

The normal path that most BBA graduates take is to work in some company for a year or two to get work experience, then go in for an MBA. BBA does teach you a lot but to rise higher in the corporate ladder you need the further knowledge given in an MBA course. Your BBA background helps you in landing better work experience jobs.

Or you can prefer to start working with a BBA degree itself. After 3-4 years of work experience, in many fields you’ll be considered at par with an MBA especially if your track record at a company is good. Usually KPO companies hire BBA graduates.

Bottom Line

A BBA degree strengthens your fundamentals for further study or provides you the knowledge to work in not only the commerce field but also in areas related to other corporate affairs such as PR, HR, marketing.