Reaching out to HR Professionals to practice Equip and Real
We worked as a unit as maintaining the team spirit during the whole assignment. Questions are prepared by the members that are not available for the interview. The questions are provided by these members: (Laiqa, Ishaq, and Khalid)and the remaining members interviewed the HR professional and share the insights. ( Hamna and Rizwan)
We have conducted the interview with 2 HRs.

We interviewed Mr. Junaid Naseer AM, Placement at Career Counselling office in the University of Central Punjab. Mr. Junaid has worked experience spreading over 10 years and he has been at key HR positions in the past. Rizwan is the student of the University of Central Punjab, he approached Mr. Junaid and told him about the Amal Fellowship and that we have few questions to ask him. Mr. Junaid was very polite and kind and told Rizwan to attend the preparation session that is being held the next day (Friday). Rizwan after attending the session politely asked him the questions regarding the assignment.

We also interviewed Mr. Najam Shah, Placement at Administration department in the Allied school. Mr. Najam Shah has worked experience spreading over 20 years on the post of HR. Hamna approached Mr. Najam Shah and requested to ask some questions related to interviewing. Mr. Najam gave permission to attend a session that is being held after 2 days (Wednesday).
Questions that we asked Mr. Junaid and Mr. Najam Shah:
· Experience, how important do you think it is to be yourself in an interview?
· How do you identify if a candidate is being real or not during the interview
· What suggestions you may have on how to be fully prepared/equipped for an interview?
· Do's recruiter prefer passion over experience?
· Do you think the universities are enabling the students with skills that required by the employers?
The preparation session was helpful but it was not that thoughtful and organized like what we learned in Amal. The most important thing was that the instructors were boring and talked like zombies, they did not have the one percent of passion and enthusiasm of our Superhero PM and PA. After taking sessions with Amal, the normal classroom and normal session felt boring and mundane.
During the session, Mr. Junaid and Mr. Najam Shah told us that being yourself is very important for the recruiter and most of the time recruiter know when the candidate is faking. They told us that they always hired the candidate who presented his real and true self. Both of them told us that it is not difficult to know as a human when your fellow species lies in front of you. When someone is faking he has this negative energy that can be sensed easily, plus with the experience they can tell in seconds that if someone is lying or being themselves. They told us that you can attend sessions that happen time to time in the different educational institutions to equip yourself for the interview plus they talked about the mental preparation that we learned in the Passenger series. Most of the things that they said, we have already covered in Passenger series. Mr. Junaid Naseer really liked the passion over experience question and told that it depends on the nature of the job. If the job requires technical skills that can only be acquired by practicing over time. He said, recruiters will hire the person with most experience, most of the financial and engineering jobs fall under that criteria. Marketing and management jobs are more of passion driven and they prefer the right mindset, skills can be developed over time but the right mindset is necessary. In the answer to our last question, both of them replied that it is unfortunate that there is so much distance between academics and the corporate world. They said we need more corporate persons in academics and need to work on research to resolve such issues.
We all have learned a lot from this activity. We all will try to focus on those points during the interview, that is clearly elaborated by Mr. Najam Shah and Mr. Junaid Naseer. We had very little idea how to do a search for the company — or especially, how to network to discover new job opportunities. But HR recruiters explain to us very well. The information and advice that recruiters gave us made all the difference in helping us to focus our job search and career.
After conducting session we all send thank you mail to both of HR professionals.
