How crucial is academic gaps for mba fresher resume screening and shortlisting during placements?

Hii,It does to a large extent. In many cases, the company will ask candidates to register on a portal that is either maintained by the company or handled by a third party test provider (for purposes of aptitude/psychometric testing). This makes it easy for the company to apply filters and see how many candidates are above a particular level. Depending on the requirement of the organization, if there are enough people above a good level, they will not really look at other candidates (unless of course, your placement team is competent enough and can fight for more shortlists).

The other way is the traditional sift-through-the-CV approach. In this case, it is more subjective and might give you a chance if you have something brilliant on your CV in addition to your academics. The academic block is pretty conspicuous and will almost definitely not be ignored by the company.

These theories hold true for the first few companies on campus though and the rest, in many cases tend to call almost all the applicants for a screening round (group discussion, case study, short interview). In that case, the second shortlist will mostly be a function of your performance in the screening round and your CV won’t matter (unless of course your CV is brilliant).

Having said everything though, placement processes are mostly random and you cannot possibly generalize/predict trends. So, it is best to prepare well, work hard on your CV and hope for the best. If you are sufficiently driven and have good communication skills but an average CV, you will most probably miss out on a few calls. But, you have to be good enough to convert the first call that you get. Funny things have happened during placements and you won’t want to be engulfed in so much negativity that you end up missing good opportunities.

Hope that helps.