Birla Institute of Technology (BIT), Patna, will organise personality development classes for final-year students to help them lap up lucrative jobs in the placement session starting two weeks from now.

The classes would be held next week — from July 15 to 20 — for the final-year bachelor of engineering (BE) students. These sessions would aim to help the students, about to sit for placement interviews, enhance their personality traits and communication skills.

The institute director, S.L. Gupta, said: “During the personality development classes, the students will be groomed on techniques in facing interviews and group discussions among other qualities.”

BIT-Patna has invited motivational speakers Sunil Keshwani, Poonam Jain and Navneet Suneja from New Delhi to conduct the personality development sessions. With experience in grooming several students for interviews, these motivational speakers would interact with the institute’s students and provide them requisite guidance on how to crack the interviews.

Three hundred students across the seven branches of BE at the Patna institute will appear for the placement interviews this month. The placement session will start from July 22.

BIT-Patna sources said many students, in spite of being good in academics, do not have good communication skills required to face interviews. They said some of the students are not proficient English speakers and also lack proper body language for the interviews.

The motivational speakers would advise the students on how to appear in an interview, the body language they should adopt during interviews, the clothes they should wear and also help them improve communication skills.

The techies are elated.

Diwakar, a final-year electronics and communication engineering student, said: “This new concept (of organising personality development classes) would definitely help us during the placement interviews. We had personality development as an topic in the first and fourth semesters, but with time, several students forget about the skills taught. Moreover, the topic is not extensive in the first and fourth semesters too.”

A faculty member said: “Last year, there were many students who despite clearing the written test, failed to impress the recruiters during interviews. As a result of that, they did not get placements with the companies concerned.”