How do I apply for off-campus placements?

Most students, particularly in India, rely heavily on campus placements. They don’t know that they can reach out to companies off-campus as well. In fact, you’d be amazed to know that companies sometimes offer a lower package when they hire through campus placements, simply because they have more applicants.

Here are the 4 steps to apply for off-campus placements:

• Make a list of companies you want to reach out to. You should ideally aim for a profile (like Software Engineer), and then reach out to the companies that are known to be the best in that profile. For instance, Google, Facebook, Microsoft, etc., are well-known companies for Software Engineers.
• Find the profile of their respective recruiters via LinkedIn. This is easy. LinkedIn allows you to do a search by profession and company. Use that. You can alternatively do a Google search.
• Find the careers email address of these companies. This is available on their website.
• Drop your resume to both, the recruiter as well as the careers email. Write a polite and a simple message, expressing your intent.

Depending on the recruiter you reach out to, your message and most importantly, your resume quality, you may or may not hear a reply. If you don’t get a reply, this means that you’ve screwed up with one of the above 3 parameters. Try and optimize it. For instance, your resume could be great, but if you don’t write a proper message/email, you may never get a reply.