MBA Campus Recruitments — The book will be Judged by its cover
Why you must dress to kill in MBA Placement Interviews and also, otherwise
Dr. Chia-Jung Tsay, Asst. Proff. At University College, London School of Management has a PhD in Org Behavior and Psychology and the order in Music from Harvard.
She got over a 1000 people to participate in an interesting study well documented in a wonderful book, How come no one told me that? By Prakash Iyer, CEO & Founder of Leadership Works (Highly recommend this book to sort out life in many ways).
The participants ranged from novice musicians to professional music adjudicators. Participants were asked to rate various performances and guess who the winner was. The participants were divided into 3 groups — one was given only audio clips, the second one, only video clips with audio on mute and the third one got both audio and video. Based on what they could hear and see, the participants had to judge who won the contest.
Incredibly, the group which couldn’t hear the music but saw only video was able to guess the winner better than the group that could only hear the music. Even crazier is that the participants who could both see and hear the music videos, did a lot worse than those who only see the performance.
Message — We all depend on visual cues when making judgements and interviews are the boxing day shopping festival of judgements.
Of course, final placement interviews are about intellect, attitude, and experience, but we all get swayed by the presentation of the candidates.
Its good to be proficient musician, but it is even better to look like one.
Reminds me of my days while selling for a luxury lifestyle brand in India. Every TSM wanted to be an ASM, there were very few who dressed up for reviews and meetings like one, wearing a jacket and tie. Naturally, their peers made fun of them, but in very less time, those TSMs who presented themselves better, became managers of the ones who used to giggle at them earlier.
In any campus placement interview, how you dress, how you speak, your mannerisms, the gravitas you display, all these matters more than the credit they are given for.
Remember this,
Preparation & Skill/Intellect/Ability development:
All that you have done in your life and B-school was preparation, you cannot change that when campus placements are just around the corner.
Rehearsals:
· When you speak your answers in front of a mirror,
· When you make videos of your answers and relook at them like high performance sports-persons do
· The mock interviews that you do with industry experts (do check out Mentobox for that)
Live Concert:
The campus placement interview is the live concert and you gotcha look & play like the prima-donna.
There is limited that you can do for MBA placement preparations when the campus recruitments are just around the corner. Its is better focus on rehearsals and the live concert.
In conclusion, when you are judging try to avoid the bias of visual cues in your judgement, but remember while being judged, that’s the way of the world. So, this season, dress to kill in your B-School Campus Interviews.
Here is this useful article on Upgrad on what to wear for your MBA Placement Interviews.
