nother placement season is on around the country at premier management institute campuses.

And one thing is clear -- the vanilla Group Discussion/ Personal Interview routine is undergoing a rapid change.

Over the last couple of seasons spearheaded by firms like Britannia [Get Quote], Marico, P&O Net Lloyd, the sessions have evolved into a variety of techniques that recruiters use to assess candidates.

This makes preparing for the recruitment season that much more difficult.

The good thing is, there is a lot of helpful material on the web. Even better, a lot of it is totally free! 

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1. Consider the now widely used personality tests.

Two of the more popular ones used by the Fortune 100 companies, the Myers-Briggs typology test and Cattell's 16 Personality Factors (better known as 16PF) test are available here and here.

Being free, these are scaled down, but similar, versions of the originals. Also, they are subjective with no right/ wrong answers, only personality types. They are better understood by consulting friends and colleagues conversant in HR. 

Besides the above tests, these sites encompass a wider array of tests that deal with other aspects of personality and offer a bit of fun, too.

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2. A large section of most career development portals is dedicated to interviews.

For those who want to leave nothing to chance, there are sites with comprehensive interview question banks, covering all possible areas.

The sites offering these wide selections are The Interview Bank and the Quintessential Careers Question Collection. Both have hundreds of questions and cover nearly every conceivable topic.

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3. Finally, web sites of eternal campus favourites, like McKinsey, offer some great advice in their careers section which are useful even while applying elsewhere, especially in tackling issues like the case interview.

In sum, these web sites offer content that helps candidates understand themselves better.

They also help them cover areas they might have otherwise missed. Thus, while nothing guarantees placement, a good look at them is likely to improve your odds considerably.

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