Hansraj College Students: Human Resources Internship Guide to Recruitment and Screening Tasks

Most HR internships give interns recruitment work in three areas: drafting or tidying job descriptions, screening resumes against a fixed rubric, and coordinating interview schedules. Hansraj College students can prepare for all three before day one by practising on dummy data. This guide provides a sample job description, a scoring rubric and a tracker you can copy.

What recruitment tasks an HR intern is usually given

Recruitment is the most common entry point into HR because it is easy to split into small, supervised tasks. A manager rarely hands an intern a hiring decision. The intern gets the preparation and administration around it. Typical tasks include:

• Job description support: converting a manager’s rough notes into a structured, readable posting.
• Sourcing: searching job boards, college networks and professional platforms for people who match a brief.
• Resume screening: sorting applications into “shortlist”, “hold” and “reject” using criteria agreed in advance.
• Outreach: sending screening-call invitations and follow-up emails from approved templates.
• Interview coordination: matching candidate and interviewer availability, sending calendar invites, tracking feedback.
• Reporting: a weekly summary of applications received, shortlisted, interviewed and closed.

Each task rewards a different habit. Job descriptions reward precision. Screening rewards consistency. Scheduling rewards follow-through. The sections below train each habit in turn.

Why practise with dummy data first

Every example in this article is invented. The company, role, candidates and numbers are illustrative and do not describe any real person or employer. Use the same approach when you practise: write fictional candidates, or ask a friend to create fictional resumes for you.

In a real internship, candidate data is personal information. Treat it as confidential. Use it only for the assigned task, never copy it to personal devices or chats, and ask your supervisor which tool is approved for storing it. Nothing in this guide gives you access to real applicant data.

Part 1: Sample job description (dummy data)

A job description answers four questions for the reader: what will I do, what do I need, what will I get, and how do I apply. The sample below is for a fictional company, “Northwind Learning Pvt. Ltd.”, and a fictional role. Notice that requirements are split into essentials and extras, because that split later becomes the backbone of your screening rubric.

Sample posting

ILLUSTRATIVE EXAMPLE - fictional company and role

Role: Customer Success Associate
Company: Northwind Learning Pvt. Ltd. (fictional)
Location: Hybrid, Delhi NCR
Reports to: Customer Success Manager
Openings: 2

About the role
You will be the first point of contact for learners who
need help with course access, payments and progress
questions. You will resolve queries, log recurring issues
and share patterns with the product team.

What you will do
- Respond to learner emails and chat within 4 working hours
- Log every query in the support tracker with a category
- Prepare a weekly summary of the top five issues
- Escalate unresolved cases to the right team with notes

Essential requirements
- Graduate in any discipline
- Clear written English; working Hindi
- Comfort with spreadsheets (sorting, filters, basic formulas)
- Ability to work 10 AM - 6 PM, five days a week

Good to have
- Prior experience in customer support or a student society
- Familiarity with ticketing tools

How to apply
Send your resume and a 100-word note on a time you
solved someone's problem to careers@northwind.example
(fictional address). Shortlisted candidates will get a
screening call within seven days.

What makes this posting usable

• Measurable duties. “Respond within 4 working hours” can be checked. “Handle queries efficiently” cannot.
• Short essentials list. Four items are easy to screen against. Fifteen are not.
• A small application task. The 100-word note shows writing ability before any interview time is spent.
• A stated timeline. Candidates know when to expect a response, which reduces follow-up emails.

Common job description mistakes to flag

• Listing “freshers with five years of experience” or other contradictory requirements.
• Using vague phrases such as “rockstar” or “self-starter” with no definition.
• Gendered or age-based wording that could discourage valid applicants.
• Omitting location, working hours or whether the role is paid, which wastes candidates’ time.

Part 2: Resume screening rubric

A rubric turns “this resume feels strong” into numbers that two different reviewers would score roughly the same way. Agree the rubric with your supervisor before you open a single resume. Changing criteria halfway through is how bias creeps in.

The rubric (100 points)

Decision bands

• 75 and above: shortlist for a screening call.
• 55 to 74: hold. Revisit if the shortlist is thin.
• Below 55: close with a polite, templated response.

Knockout criteria

Knockouts are yes/no conditions that override the score. Keep them few and job-related. In the sample role, a knockout would be “cannot work the stated hours”. Do not add knockouts based on college name, gender, surname, city of origin or marks alone, unless your supervisor has a documented, job-related reason.

Rules for fair screening

1. Score every resume against the same criteria, in the same order.
2. Write one line of evidence for each score. “Mentions 40 queries a week” is evidence. “Seems good” is not.
3. Screen in batches of ten and take a break. Scores drift when you are tired.
4. Re-score two resumes from the first batch at the end. If your scores differ by more than 10 points, recalibrate.
5. Flag borderline cases for your supervisor instead of deciding alone.

Worked illustrative example: screening three dummy candidates

The three candidates below are fictional. They are scored against the rubric above for the Customer Success Associate role. The scores are hand-assigned for teaching purposes, not output from any software.

How the reasoning goes

• Asha describes running a college helpdesk for a fest and answering about 60 queries a day. That is an outcome with a number, so she scores high on results. Her note is short and specific.
• Bilal lists every essential skill but only as bullet points with no context. He scores full marks on skills but low on evidence and writing. A hold is fair, and a screening call would test whether the skills are real.
• Charu has relevant volunteering but can only work part of the stated hours. Her logistics score drops. Check with your supervisor whether the hours are flexible before rejecting her.

The lesson is that the total score is a starting point for a conversation. The evidence lines you write beside each score are what your supervisor will actually read.

Part 3: Interview schedule tracker

Once candidates are shortlisted, the work shifts to coordination. A tracker prevents the two most common failures: double-booking an interviewer and losing track of who has not replied. Build it in a spreadsheet, with one row per candidate. The dummy rows below show how it looks in use.

Tracker habits that save time

• Use candidate IDs in shared documents instead of full names, wherever your organisation allows it.
• Offer two or three slots in the first message, not an open-ended “when are you free?”.
• Set a follow-up rule, for example one reminder after 48 hours, then flag to your supervisor.
• Add a feedback-due column. Interviewers forget. A visible deadline makes chasing them easier.
• Check time zones and holidays before sending invites, including regional festivals.
• Send a confirmation message with the link or address, duration, interviewer name and a contact for last-minute problems.

A short scheduling email (illustrative template)

Subject: Screening call - Customer Success Associate (Northwind Learning)

Hello Asha,

Thank you for applying. We would like to schedule a
20-minute screening call. Please reply with the slot
that suits you:

1. Monday, 10:00 AM
2. Tuesday, 3:00 PM

If neither works, share two other times this week.

Regards,
[Your name], HR Intern
Northwind Learning (fictional)

Screening-call question bank

If you are asked to run or sit in on a first call, a fixed set of questions keeps every candidate on equal footing. These questions are generic starters. Adapt them to the role.

1. Walk me through your resume in two minutes.
2. Why this role, and why now?
3. Describe a time you helped someone solve a problem. What did you do, and what happened?
4. How do you prioritise when five tasks arrive at once?
5. Which spreadsheet functions have you used, and for what?
6. Are you able to work the stated hours and location?
7. What questions do you have for us?

Avoid questions about marital status, religion, caste, age, family plans or similar personal matters. They are irrelevant to the job and can create legal and ethical problems for the employer.

Skills to build before you apply

Hansraj College and HR recruitment practice: where to start

For a Human Resources internship built around job descriptions, resume screening and interview scheduling, the most relevant campus body is the Placement Cell. The college’s Placement Cell page describes Hansraj as one of the largest constituent colleges of the University of Delhi, with over 5,000 students. The same page says the cell is a student-run body headed by teacher conveners appointed by the college administration, and names Dr. Shailu Singh and Ms. Alka Kacker as faculty convenors. Staffing changes over time, so confirm who currently holds these roles before writing to anyone.

In practice, the cell is a useful place to see recruitment from the employer side. The page, which refers to Placement Season 2021-22, mentions 180 recruiters and over 215 offers in the previous year, and lists firms such as McKinsey, Bain, BCG, Deloitte, EY, KPMG and PwC. These are older figures, so treat them as background rather than a current picture. They do show that the cell handles employer coordination, which is similar to the shortlisting, scheduling and communication tasks in this guide. The page also links society reports for 2023-24 and 2024-25, and reading them can show what student volunteers actually do in a placement season.

A sensible approach is to ask a faculty convenor or the cell’s student team how volunteers help with tasks like collecting resumes, preparing candidate lists or coordinating interview slots. Any such experience can be described honestly on your resume as a society role, separate from an outside online internship.

Internship rules are a different matter. The college pages reviewed here do not state rules on external internships, credit, duration, documents or online internships, so do not assume any. Rules may come from your department or from University of Delhi scheme provisions for your programme.

Checks before you start the HR practice internship

• Open the Placement Cell page and note whether the season and report links are current, then email the faculty convenors to ask whether students may volunteer in recruitment coordination.
• Ask your department office, in writing, whether an external online internship is permitted in your current semester and under which scheme.
• Ask whether a completion certificate from an outside organisation can count toward any requirement, and keep the reply by email.
• Check the academic calendar or notice board for term dates, so the two weeks do not clash with classes or internal assessments.
• If a permission or no-objection letter is needed, ask who signs it and how many working days it takes.

Using a short online internship as practice

If you want structured practice on the tasks above, CareerSwami runs a free two-week online internship with 26 tracks. It is a 14-day programme, the offer letter is free, and a free completion certificate is issued after successful completion. It is an independent programme, and this guide is an independent resource for Hansraj students rather than something the college has endorsed. It does not come with a stipend, academic credit or any promise of a job.

Whichever programme you pick, ask your supervisor for a task list in the first two days. Build your deliverables from it: a screened sample, a refined job description and a working tracker.

A 14-day practice roadmap

Keep your outputs free of any real candidate details. If you want to show them in a portfolio or interview, use only dummy versions.

How to describe this work on your resume

Describe what you did and avoid claiming outcomes you did not produce. Compare these two lines:

• Weak: “Worked on recruitment.”
• Stronger: “Built a 100-point screening rubric and interview tracker using dummy data; drafted a four-part job description for a fictional support role.”

The second line is honest about the practice context and shows concrete skills. Interviewers tend to trust specific, modest claims more than big ones.

Frequently Asked Questions

Do I need an HR degree to get an HR internship?

Not necessarily. Many HR internships accept students from any discipline, and the posting will say what it requires. Show relevant habits instead: organised spreadsheets, clear writing, discretion and reliability.

Will an HR intern make hiring decisions?

Usually not. Interns assist with preparation, screening against agreed criteria and scheduling. The final decision stays with the hiring manager and HR staff.

How many resumes can I realistically screen in an hour?

That depends on the rubric and the resume length. With a clear rubric, many people manage roughly 8 to 12 resumes in an hour at first. Accuracy matters more than speed, so do not rush at the cost of consistency.

Is it acceptable to reject a candidate because of their college name?

Only if your supervisor has a documented, job-related reason. Using the college name as a shortcut can screen out capable people. Score what the resume demonstrates.

Can I use real resumes I find online for practice?

It is safer not to. Write fictional resumes or use templates with invented details. Real resumes contain personal information that people shared for a specific purpose.

What should I do if I notice an error in a job description after it is published?

Tell your supervisor right away with the exact line and a suggested correction. Do not edit a live posting yourself unless that is part of your assigned task.

What if a candidate asks me why they were rejected?

Do not give out scores or comments on your own. Pass the request to your supervisor, who will know the organisation’s policy on feedback.

Can my college count this internship toward my course?

That is a decision for your department or the university rules that apply to your course. Use the verification list above and get the answer in writing before relying on it.

Related Human Resources guides

• Loyola College, Chennai: Choosing a Human Resources Internship Project in Training and Development
• Madras Christian College Students: Human Resources Internship Report Structure and Evidence
• St. Joseph's College of Commerce, Bengaluru: Human Resources Internship Samples, Job Descriptions and Screening Sheets
• All Human Resources internship guides