FOUR General Rules of GD

1. Personality
2. Knowledge
3. Experience
4. Communication skill

General rules for GD

• Don’t be surprised if the panel throws a basketball at your group and ask them to play a game for 20 minutes and give a report to them.
• Look at the attributes that they are checked out through the Personality Assessment Tools(PAT)

1. Personality

• Confidence, perhaps, is the single most important attribute that contributes to the “personality” of an individual.
• The lack of it is visible in the very first few minutes of interaction with an individual.
• Confidence is the result of various factors. the level of confidence with which individual walk in the interview room depends on the following:

General rules for GD

• Don’t be surprised if the panel throws a basketball at your group and ask them to play a game for 20 minutes and give a report to them.

Look at the attributes that they are checked out through the personality assessment tools.

2. Knowledge :

In the following functional areas-

• Knowledge in your area of specialization (academics, job, details of organization, hobbies)
• Self-awareness (self-including strengths & weakness, career goals, personal aspirations)
• Contextual awareness knowledge to which one belongs-the school, the college, the company, family, country, etc…
• General awareness (Something about political system, economic situation, the human rights movement, etc.)

3. Experience:

• Past experiences have an impact on the level of confidence. Successful experiences, add positively to one’s level of confidence and failures lower the end of confidence.

4. Communication Skills:

One of the most critical factors that contribute to the success at the personality assessment stage is the skills of communication comprising both articulation and listening skills.

• Aspirants possessing sound articulation skills and who are also aware of it always carry greater confidence with them.
• Do not equate communication with articulation.
• Listening skills are under emphasized. Especially, in tasks that involve group activities one has to convey that is an active listener.
• Good and active listeners, generally add greater value to a GD and also convey greater maturity to the panel

GD- The discussion involves an exchange of thoughts and ideas among members of the group. GDs however, are not the only tool used.  Interviews (PI) too are well-established selection techniques. Number of participants in a group varies from 7-15 people. In most of the cases a topic, case or a situation will be given, and the group members will have to discuss it within a given period of time.

Types of GD:

1. Structured GD
2. Unstructured GD

1. Structured GD

• Structured (or default) GD is one is most commonly used.
• The group is given a topic for discussions within 10 to 20 minutes for discussion.
• There is no leader appointed for the group and the brief may not include anything but the topic for discussion.
• Majority of the cases students gets Structured GD

2. Unstructured GD:

• Unstructuredness can be built into discussion by going no clear instructions.
• The panel expect the group to achieve some objective (s) during the course or by the end of the GD
• These might include tasks such as choosing the topic for discussion, appointing a leader chairman etc.