Top 10 Tips To Handle Interview

This was originally published here: Top Tips to Ace the Interview for a Beginner

These few tips are mostly for those, who are entering the corporate world for the first time. You would have applied for various jobs and would be expecting an interview call. These are some tips, over and above what you would already know about “How to ace the interview”

1. Carry a couple of hard copies of your resume and a few photographs. Proactively offer one copy, with your photo pasted to the interviewer. Many times, the interviewers meet many candidates and therefore miss out remembering all the faces at the end of the day, when they compile their remarks. A photo would help them remember you distinctly over others.
2. Organize the contents of your resume well.  Do not try to hide facts. Avoid some of the high sounding words in the summary section. Mention all personal details in the end, including your place of stay, some amount of family details, references etc.  Take time and put in effort to update your CV regularly.  Avoid using the standard templates as some of them are not suited for our environment. At no cost should there be spelling mistakes. Please understand the spell checkers do not distinguish between words “Career” and “Carrier”. Please understand that the former is the correct word and not the latter. Most resumes have the latter!
3. Carry copies of all your certificates and any reference letters. It is advisable to carry all these in a zipped folder, and organized in flaps or dockets. Many times, candidates fumble and drop papers on the interview table.
4. Find out the directions to the venue a day in advance and never be late for the interview. Reaching about 5-10 minutes earlier is perfect. Reaching too early is not also good.
5. Do some research about the prospective employer (go through their web site) and do a Google search to see if they have been in the news recently. Try to know what the company mainly does. If the company has a website, check out their career openings. This will give you an idea of the type of hiring’s the company does. Check out who are in the top Management etc.
6. If you are asked questions on your career plans, or where you see yourself after, say 10 years, don’t say standard things like – you would like to be a Manager etc.  Be creative and say- that you would like to master and do well in your first 2 years and then realistically evaluate your strengths vis a vis the organizational need. This reply will impress upon the interviewer, about how mature you are and that you do not day dream.
7. If you have a subject question, for which you do not have any clue of the answer, admit frankly your ignorance. Do not bluff or beat around the bush and expose your ignorance in other areas as well! Ask the interviewer guidance on where you can learn more about the topic, thus showing your curiosity.
8. After the interview, if you are given a chance to ask questions, ask intelligent questions, like your role and learning opportunity. Show inquisitiveness, and enthusiasm. Do not ask stupid questions like compensation, travel allowances, leave etc.
9. After the interview, send a simple “Thank you” note to the interviewer, if you can manage to get their email id.
10. Do Not pester to know the outcome of the interview, but ask, if they want to share any feedback with you. If you do not receive any reply within a couple of days, you can conclude that the result is not positive. If the employer is considering you even in the shortlist, they will keep you engaged.

Author

The author, B Mohan Kumar, is a serial entrepreneur and founder of Trusted Technology Solutions and can also be reached at bmk@ttspl.com.

Autobiography of a Red Blood Cell

(Readers are advised to read the complete article, as the key message  conveyed in the end can be appreciated only after going through the initial paragraphs)

I was born from the realms of the bone marrow. I keep moving and every few minutes, I reach the lungs, where all the carbon dioxide that I carry, goes away from my body and fresh oxygen molecules cling to me. From here I start my journey but I do not decide where to go. The pressure on me increases, after I reach the heart. Like faithful soldiers, we are sent off to different parts of the body to deliver oxygen to the cells. Sometimes I have to go long distances and sometimes not too far. When we are going with the flow, our surrounding temperature is regulated by the liver, which also gives sugars and other chemicals, which are our comrades, till we reach our destination. As soon as we reach a starving cell, the sugar which traveled with us is taken by the cell and oxygen from us. When we give away Oxygen, the cells give us carbon dioxide to us to take back to the lungs. We complete our mission in less than a minute. Sometimes we have seen that our friends go away from the body. This happens, if there is a cut and then some of us are knocked out.

I tirelessly carry oxygen from the lungs to different parts of the body and return to the lungs with carbon dioxide. In each leg of the journey, I travel through the heart twice. After doing this for about 120 days, I breakdown and part of my remains get converted as bile and stored in the gall bladder. My friends and I do not fight over on who is doing a better job. We do not ask the destination, where we want to carry oxygen or say that one of us like to travel to the brain or do not want to go the the skin on the foot, where it is very cold.

During my life span, I encounter many environments. I never decide, what i should do, but what ever i am made to do, i do it. Let me also tell you that all of us do not end as bile in the gall bladder. Some of us come out of the body, if there is a cut we die when we dry up. Some of us are taken out and stored and then used in other bodies. They call that blood bank.

I am very small compared  to the whole you, but you are not too different, compared to the cosmos.Just as I am , but a small component of your living body, so are you a very small part of the cosmos. Our similarities are many, but there is a lot of difference in the way we think.

You think, you are master of your destiny and you can plan, control many things. I live my life and go with the flow. I do what I am supposed to do. Both of us do not decide, when we are born, nor do we know, when, how and where our end will be.

So learn a simple lesson from us- Go with the flow and your creator will take care of you

Apply Apply -- No Reply

The original was published here: http://www.thecareermuse.co.in/2013/01/22/apply-apply-reply/

This was it:

How many of you are frustrated, that you do not hear anything after you have applied for a job?

Some of you might have received a response and then the employer or the consultant would have reverted back to you with a set of questions and more details about the job. After you promptly reply, there is a silence and no communication what so ever.

Initially you hope that your reply would have landed in the Junk mail folder or got lost in the innumerable email replies the recipient would have got. You send another follow-up mail, but there is no reply to that as well. What could have gone wrong?

This is a typical scenario and millions of people would vouch for this. After responding to this job alert, the scene described above plays out. How is that over 95 % of the applications get rejected? Here is the trade secret.

Many recruiters have become smart. They embed a lot of subtle queries in the original body of the email. If the position is for a Quality or Testing Engineer, they would expect you to be detail oriented. What I mean is that you must have patience to read a long email and be able to follow simple instructions. Your temperament gets assessed, when you reply to these mails. As an example, they might ask you to elaborate on your specific experience of using a certain tool or domain on a cover note. This request might be embedded within the body of a long email. Many respondents, who just scan through the emails, might miss this aspect, and would just revert back with a standard reply template. It is very easy to conclude, if the applicant has read the email thoroughly or not. The other glaring example is when the recruiter asks for the current postal address, and the respondent many just mention the current location ( just the city). This goes to prove that the applicant does not know the difference between postal address and location.

Many times the applicants use canned replies to queries or even furnish details that are not even asked for. At other times, they avoid furnishing some parts of the details sought for. Examples of these are: Current compensation, expectation, reason for seeking change etc.

The general job seeker approach is – throw as many stones as possible and definitely some mangoes will fall – real wishful thinking !

The advice is: Apply selectively and take time to formulate an appropriate cover note. You might be able to apply for only 2-3 positions a week and definitely, you would get a reply to at least one. Your efficiency is higher than 40 %, whereas if you apply in bulk, by responding to all and sundry opportunity, you may not get even a single reply in a month, which means your conversion efficiency is less than 1 %. All this goes with a rider that you have substance in your CV and relevant experience to back you up for the position applied.

Good Luck !