New Delhi, August 02: What do you do for candidates who come to interviews armed with eveything except confidence, communications skills and business etiquette? Set up grooming schools.
Mansi Gupta, former regional manager of HDFC Bank, set up such a school in June after she saw about 95 percent of the candidates getting rejected during interviews at the bank year after year due to problems with their overall personality.
‘It was heartbreaking to see the sad faces of the candidates who used to walk away after getting rejected just because they could not impress the interviewers with their communication skills. It was then I realised that what students need is a training institute where they will be taught how to face an interview panel,’ Gupta told IANS.
Word’s Worth Institute, as her school is called, trains people not only how to conduct themselves in front of recruiters but also how to carry themselves in their day-to-day lives, she added.
Gupta is not alone in her endeavour.
The Pria Warrick Finishing Academy is yet another corporate grooming institute, and its founder Pria Warrick states similar reasons for setting it up in 1990.
‘Most people assume that anyone with a degree in MBA, IT or law can sail through life. But statistics reveal that you require 15 percent technical skills and 85 percent of a mix of social etiquette, business etiquette and dining etiquette to advance in your career or personal life,’ Warrick said.
From Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) and managing directors to top management executives and front line executives, Warrick’s academy finds professionals from different walks of life among its students.
‘What is the difference between one advocate and the other or one architect and the next? Both have technical skills, but it is the art of carrying yourself that makes you stand out,’ Warrick said.
So what do these grooming institutes teach a student?
According to Nishant Saxena, one of the founders of Elements Akademia, there are several reasons why an interviewee can be rejected.
‘The first can be their inability to listen properly because instead of concentrating on the question till the end, they start thinking of the answer and end up giving an incomplete or inappropriate response,’ Saxena said.
‘Then, a problem in their attitude, inability to handle the interview without getting confused or sounding under-confident and not having corporate awareness are the other major hindrances which we teach our students to overcome,’ he added.
Teaching conversational English is another area most of these centres focus on.
CEO of WLC College Malobika Sengupta went on to say that besides the regular grooming sessions, they also ensure that their students get hands-on experience in the corporate world so that they can actually put their theory lessons to practice.
‘We have regular classes from eight to 11 in the morning and then give the students the advantage of working from 12 to six in the evening in any corporate industry, so that they get a corporate exposure even before they finally enter any company,’ Sengupta said.
Deepti Khare, a BPO employee who had taken a grooming course, said: ‘The six-month course on grooming completely changed my personality. For one, it instilled in me the confidence to face the interview panel without getting the jitters.’
Talking about the students whose communication skills have been honed in these training schools, Arun Arora, director of Gopal and Sons Private Limited, said: ‘The students coming from these corporate grooming schools possess specific and identifiable personality traits.’
‘They have a creative imagination, individuality, a determination to succeed and a strong desire to make money for themselves and their employers. They also have a capacity to work hard and generate new ideas that are profitable for the organisation,’ Arora told IANS.
–IANS–