Have you been searching for a job for a long while without any resultsIJ Dr Rushen Chahal points some key factors that recruiters are looking for which job-seekers must keep in mind to ensure that they get to the right job
You have all it takes to get into the right job but somehow the call you have been waiting for does not come. We shall try and help you assess whyIJ
Profile
The recruiter will like to see excellent command over English language and some jobs require fluency in regional languages. You should come from a decent family with no red flags on integrity or behaviour. The fact that you have a bad credit record (yes the banks and all other institutions can see through all the cheques you have bounced) or bad employment record and the unwarranted extra-curricular activities you might have engaged in over the years will certain work against your profile. Additionally, people from families with unwarranted fame are usually ignored.
Proper grooming, strong body language, bright eyes focused, clean glasses go miles to help you succeed.
Domain
You need to be able to prove what you are qualified to do the job — simply writing graduation scores be it a BA or a BTech will not help. What did you really doIJ How did you spend your four years at collegeIJ All international universities have moved from a marks statement to a portfolio. Do you even know what it is and what efforts have you made towards building oneIJ If not let me tell you that Class VI onwards, students in good CBSE schools are already working on theirs. Seventy-five per cent of the so called engineers who qualify from electronics engineering are not able to explain the working of a MOSFET or Peltier module. Sixty-five per cent mechanical engineers are not able to explain Class XII concepts. Ninety-nine per cent of engineers graduating from our colleges have not used/seen SPOT, TIG and MIG welding — an industry standard today.
Eight-five per cent of computer engineers have not built a computer at home. Ninety-five per cent of the software/networking engineers have never opened a router and looked inside. The employers today understand all this much better than you.
Competence
The difference from domain here being that you may be a cook - but competence needs proof: How good a cook you are and what drives your thought processIJ If you had done some college projects —how did you differentiate in your approach, which company did you specifically derive your initiatives from and where is your line of though headed. You may be absolutely wrong in your approach but if you did follow a method or process right- you have scored a big brownie point. The fact that you could envision and conceptualise is all that matters.
Availability
You might be the best engineer from IIT Mumbai in computer science and a great person but if the industry is going through a bad phase or if you are in Estonia where IIT Mumbai might just not be known as a brand — with a very small IT industry — what do you think your prospects would beIJ Right place and right time is the answer. To make this happen, study the market before you take a course.
For example, liFi technologies is coming in the next three years. Your phones and laptops will have a very high speed lED receiver along with a wi-fi card and then in 10 years they will disappear. So think through and follow the chart — learn to stay ahead of the curve.
Remember the initial shortlisting is done by an entry level recruiter and he shall have their fallacies — essentially because they have to do the tedious role of reading hundreds of profiles every day. So to make your CV stand out. Use the right font, industry specific terms, do not copy from some else’s CV and never use long sentences.
Read the job description and highlight the key points that the recruiter might be looking for. Write only what you are sure of and never try and add more data that is factually irrelevant. Remember, quality sells over quantity, your CV should project a progressive thought process.
(The writer is executive VP, Digital Initiatives, Blackwater Research)