Monday, November 6, 2017
Friday, October 27, 2017
7 Things You Should/Shouldn't Do While You're Looking For Work
LinkedIn
feed is surged with mid-level professionals looking for better
opportunities, some of them might have lost their job too. While I don't
have a job to offer, I will try to recall best practices of job hunting
based on my own and peers experience and feedback from recruitment
firms as well.
0. Remember the 50-50 rule: This post is for grads from tier1/2 engineering and MBA grads. If you are just average/above average guy, done well in career but nothing exceptional, then you can safely assume yourself as the median within your peers, 50 %of which doing better than you, rest 50% is behind you. So even if you on the verge of loosing your job or struggling for one for months, you may not the only one who is less fortunate and trying to get into top 50%. At the same time, people already in top 50% is struggling to hold their positions. Take the job hunting as a journey, keep patience and wait for the right opportunity
1.Keep your profile updated: refresh your profile at least once a week on all the sites, LinkedIn etc. Works well if you are not already a paid member, nothing wrong to take a paid membership; it keeps your profile refreshed; other benefits does not add much to your CV visibility
2.Number of calls hardly matters, quality of calls does: Don't get excited by the no. of calls you get from recruitment agencies, most of the calls are based on keyword matching and recruiter has hardly gone thru your CV. Even after the call, if they found you suitable, they will upload the CV to hiring companies portal, which might already have your details, and based on that you are automatically rejected. Seldom these recruiters has direct contact to hiring company's HR. They have daily target of making calls and source CV, sad but true
3. Recruitment agencies activity follow a cycle, generally June-August is the peak and almost nil in March-April. So if you are not getting calls during end/beginning of financial year, just keep your cool
4.Calls from hiring company HR/mails or LinkedIn messages from senior officials of hiring company has much more chance to finally have an interview, so you must handle the first ever conversation cautiously. You must try to convince why you are fit for the position. If you have quit your job and immediately available, telling that upfront will be mostly beneficial. When you are honest, you will sound confident.
5. Think before trying out something completely new to you: just because you are desperate to grab an opportunity, you might have started applying startups, boutique consulting firms or NGOs. I clearly state that I have no disregard to them. My only point is if you are from a regular 10-12 hrs MNC culture, it is very difficult to embrace more agile and uncertain environment of a small firm. Also many of new edge consulting and analytics firm actually does very mundane work; read Glassdoor or Indeed reviews carefully to get an insight. If possible, its better to wait longer for suitable opportunity. This waiting period can be turned as a earning period by providing training to corporate on your valuable skills. Plenty of training firms are in your city, explore please
6. Keep a tab on government hiring: various state governments keeps on hiring for special projects (eg CHIPS - Chattisgarh Govt) in medium term (3years) with very attractive package. Same is true for some central PSUs too. While cracking is tough, definitely worth to give a try.
7. Keep honing existing skills: adding a few random certifications will hardly help if it is not supported by domain expertise. New learning is always welcome, only if it add substantial value to convince hiring manager that you are an expert in the field where you have acquired knowledge recently. It is always better to incremental addition to existing skill set, if it is not completely obsolete.
I shared some thoughts, and will stop here. You are welcome to join the discussion and pour your thoughts as well ☺️Write to me for further elaboration!!
0. Remember the 50-50 rule: This post is for grads from tier1/2 engineering and MBA grads. If you are just average/above average guy, done well in career but nothing exceptional, then you can safely assume yourself as the median within your peers, 50 %of which doing better than you, rest 50% is behind you. So even if you on the verge of loosing your job or struggling for one for months, you may not the only one who is less fortunate and trying to get into top 50%. At the same time, people already in top 50% is struggling to hold their positions. Take the job hunting as a journey, keep patience and wait for the right opportunity
1.Keep your profile updated: refresh your profile at least once a week on all the sites, LinkedIn etc. Works well if you are not already a paid member, nothing wrong to take a paid membership; it keeps your profile refreshed; other benefits does not add much to your CV visibility
2.Number of calls hardly matters, quality of calls does: Don't get excited by the no. of calls you get from recruitment agencies, most of the calls are based on keyword matching and recruiter has hardly gone thru your CV. Even after the call, if they found you suitable, they will upload the CV to hiring companies portal, which might already have your details, and based on that you are automatically rejected. Seldom these recruiters has direct contact to hiring company's HR. They have daily target of making calls and source CV, sad but true
3. Recruitment agencies activity follow a cycle, generally June-August is the peak and almost nil in March-April. So if you are not getting calls during end/beginning of financial year, just keep your cool
4.Calls from hiring company HR/mails or LinkedIn messages from senior officials of hiring company has much more chance to finally have an interview, so you must handle the first ever conversation cautiously. You must try to convince why you are fit for the position. If you have quit your job and immediately available, telling that upfront will be mostly beneficial. When you are honest, you will sound confident.
5. Think before trying out something completely new to you: just because you are desperate to grab an opportunity, you might have started applying startups, boutique consulting firms or NGOs. I clearly state that I have no disregard to them. My only point is if you are from a regular 10-12 hrs MNC culture, it is very difficult to embrace more agile and uncertain environment of a small firm. Also many of new edge consulting and analytics firm actually does very mundane work; read Glassdoor or Indeed reviews carefully to get an insight. If possible, its better to wait longer for suitable opportunity. This waiting period can be turned as a earning period by providing training to corporate on your valuable skills. Plenty of training firms are in your city, explore please
6. Keep a tab on government hiring: various state governments keeps on hiring for special projects (eg CHIPS - Chattisgarh Govt) in medium term (3years) with very attractive package. Same is true for some central PSUs too. While cracking is tough, definitely worth to give a try.
7. Keep honing existing skills: adding a few random certifications will hardly help if it is not supported by domain expertise. New learning is always welcome, only if it add substantial value to convince hiring manager that you are an expert in the field where you have acquired knowledge recently. It is always better to incremental addition to existing skill set, if it is not completely obsolete.
I shared some thoughts, and will stop here. You are welcome to join the discussion and pour your thoughts as well ☺️Write to me for further elaboration!!
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