Placement season comes with its own vocabulary. Seniors say bond, notices say service agreement, and the offer says CTC while your bank account says something smaller. This glossary defines 35 campus placement terms in plain English, so you walk into every drive, pre-placement talk, and offer discussion knowing exactly what each word means. Every definition is written for Indian freshers preparing for campus drives, and each term page adds context, common questions, and related terms.
Selection Rounds
Aptitude Test: An aptitude test measures quantitative, logical, and verbal reasoning under time pressure. In campus placements it is usually the first section of the online assessment and decides who reaches the interview rounds.
Group Discussion (GD): A Group Discussion, or GD, is a placement round where 8 to 12 candidates discuss a topic for 10 to 20 minutes while evaluators score each speaker on content, initiation, clarity, and listening. It filters candidates between the written test and the personal interviews.
HR Interview: The HR interview is the final round at most campus recruiters. It tests communication, motivation, culture fit, and logistics such as relocation and shift flexibility, using behavioural questions rather than technical ones.
Managerial Round: The managerial round is an interview with a delivery manager or senior lead, common in service company drives. It blends light technical checks with behavioural and situational questions to judge how you would function inside a real project team.
Online Assessment (OA): OA in placement stands for Online Assessment. It is a timed, usually proctored online test that most companies use as the first elimination round in a campus drive in India. It typically combines aptitude, reasoning, verbal ability and coding, and only candidates who clear the cutoff are called for interviews.
Technical Interview: The technical interview is the placement round where an engineer questions you on programming, computer science fundamentals, and your projects. It usually follows the online assessment and decides whether you reach the HR round.
Types of Drives
Off-Campus Drive: An off-campus drive is a hiring process you join on your own, without your college placement cell. You apply through a company careers page, a job portal, a referral or a public hiring event, and you compete with candidates from many colleges. It is also called off-campus placement.
On-Campus Drive: An on-campus drive is a recruitment process that a company runs through your college placement cell, only for students of that college. The placement cell handles registration, eligibility checks and scheduling, and the rounds usually finish faster than in off-campus hiring.
Pool Campus Drive: A pool campus drive, also called a pool drive or pooled campus placement, is a hiring event where one company recruits students from several colleges at one venue or on one online platform. Colleges that attract fewer recruiters join together so the company can screen a large group in a single visit.
Walk-in Drive: A walk-in drive is a hiring event where candidates show up at a announced venue and date without a prior individual shortlist, carrying resumes and documents, and go through screening and interviews on the spot. Companies use walk-ins for high volume roles that need quick closure.
Company Types
GenC (Cognizant): GenC, short for Generation Cognizant, is Cognizant's fresher hiring program. It screens candidates through online assessments and interviews into role tracks with different skill bars and packages, such as GenC and elevated tracks for stronger coders.
Mass Recruiter: A mass recruiter is a company that hires freshers in very large numbers each placement season, typically an IT services firm such as TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Cognizant, Accenture, Capgemini, or HCL. Their processes are standardized, high volume, and pattern predictable.
Product-Based Company: A product-based company, often shortened to PBC, builds and sells its own software or hardware product to customers, instead of building software for other businesses. Hiring usually tests problem solving and data structures more heavily than hiring at service companies does.
Service-Based Company: A service-based company, often shortened to SBC, builds, runs and supports software or technology for other businesses, its clients. Many large IT services companies hire freshers in big batches through campus drives, with tests that focus on aptitude, reasoning, verbal ability and basic coding.
TCS NQT: The TCS NQT, or National Qualifier Test, is the standardized entry test Tata Consultancy Services uses to screen fresher candidates. Clearing it is the gateway to TCS interview rounds, and performance can route candidates toward different role and pay tiers such as Ninja, Digital, and Prime.
Salary and Money
CTC (Cost to Company): CTC stands for Cost to Company. It is the total yearly amount a company spends on you, including basic pay, allowances, employer provident fund, gratuity, insurance and any bonuses or variable pay. The money that reaches your bank account each month is lower than your CTC.
In-hand Salary: In-hand salary is the amount actually credited to your bank account each month after deductions such as employee provident fund, professional tax, and income tax are removed from your gross pay. For freshers it is usually noticeably lower than the monthly figure implied by the CTC.
Offers and Contracts
Bond: In Indian campus placements a bond is the everyday word for a service agreement: a commitment to work for the company for a minimum period, commonly one to two years for freshers, with a stated payment due if you leave earlier.
Dream Offer: A dream offer is a placement cell classification for offers above a package threshold set by your institute. Placement policies often let students who already hold a regular offer continue sitting in drives only for companies in the dream category or above.
Letter of Intent (LOI): LOI stands for Letter of Intent. In campus hiring it is a letter in which a company says it intends to hire you, usually subject to conditions such as final results, verification or business needs. It is an early commitment and it is not the same as the formal offer letter.
Notice Period: A notice period is the time you must continue working after resigning, as specified in your employment contract, commonly one to three months in Indian IT. During probation the notice period is often shorter.
Offer Letter: An offer letter is the formal document in which a company offers you a job. It states the role, the compensation breakup, the joining date, the location and the conditions of the offer, such as document verification or a service agreement. Accepting it means you agree to those terms.
PPO (Pre-Placement Offer): PPO stands for Pre-Placement Offer. It is a job offer a company gives you before the regular placement season, usually because of how well you performed in an internship with that company. In many colleges, accepting a PPO counts as your placement.
Probation Period: The probation period is the initial evaluation phase of employment, commonly three to six months for freshers, during which the company assesses your performance before confirming you as a permanent employee. Notice periods are often shorter and terms somewhat different during probation.
Service Agreement: A service agreement is a contract clause in many fresher offers, especially at IT service companies, requiring you to work for a minimum period, commonly one to two years, or pay a specified amount if you leave early. It is the formal name for what students usually call a bond.
Super Dream Offer: A super dream offer is the highest package tier in most institute placement policies, above the dream category. It typically comes from product companies and top consulting or finance recruiters, and holding one usually ends your participation in further drives.
Process and Preparation
ATS (Applicant Tracking System): An ATS, or Applicant Tracking System, is the software recruiters use to collect, parse, and search job applications. It extracts your resume into structured fields, and recruiters filter and keyword search within it, which is why resume formatting and keyword relevance decide whether a human ever reads your application.
Backlog: A backlog is a subject you failed or have not cleared in a university exam. An active backlog is still pending. A passive or dead backlog, also called a cleared or historical backlog, is one you failed earlier and passed later. Companies state their backlog limits in their eligibility criteria.
Cutoff: A cutoff is the minimum score or percentile needed to clear a placement test round, set per section or overall. Companies rarely publish exact cutoffs, and they shift with paper difficulty and applicant volume in each cycle.
Eligibility Criteria: Eligibility criteria are the minimum conditions a company sets for who can register for its drive, commonly a minimum CGPA or percentage across tenth, twelfth, and degree, allowed branches, limits on active backlogs, and sometimes limits on education gaps.
Negative Marking: Negative marking is a test scoring rule where wrong answers subtract marks, commonly a quarter or a third of the question value. It changes optimal strategy: blind guessing becomes costly, while eliminating options before guessing can remain worthwhile.
Placement Cell (TPO): The placement cell, headed by the Training and Placement Officer or TPO, is the college office that invites companies, manages student registrations and eligibility, schedules drives, and enforces placement policies such as offer tiers and one offer rules.
Pre-Placement Talk (PPT): A pre-placement talk, or PPT, is a presentation that a company gives to students before its campus selection process begins. It explains the company, the roles, the pay structure, service terms, the selection rounds and the timeline, and attending it is often required to take part in the drive.
Referral: A referral is when a current employee submits your profile into their company hiring system, usually through an internal portal. Referred applications typically get reviewed by recruiters more reliably than cold applications, though you still clear the same interviews.
STAR Method: The STAR method is a four part structure for answering behavioural interview questions: describe the Situation, the Task you owned, the Action you took, and the Result you achieved. It keeps answers specific and evidence based instead of vague and generic.
Put the vocabulary to work
Knowing the terms is step one. The next step is practicing the rounds they describe. Browse verified company interview questions, run an AI mock interview for your target drive, or check whether your resume parses cleanly with the free ATS resume checker before you apply off campus.