Category

Career

Career, Interviews

Control your Interview

March 3, 2012

While your resume will surely get you your much anticipated interview call, how you conduct yourself in front of your interviewer is the key to getting yourself selected as an employee. A standard interview panel will generally be a single person from the very team you are going to work for; at times there may be two. The interview can be approached in two ways – aggressively or defensively. A defensive approach would be to sit and wait for each question and reply to what is asked. If you are well versed with your subjects and you think you know the answers to…

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Career, SOP

Writing a good Statement of Purpose

February 20, 2012

The question you should ask yourself before you begin writing your SOP or Essay is, “What is your college looking for”? More specifically, how is the admission committee going to select some and reject other candidates on the basis of this essay! From the hundreds of applications received, only a few will make through to the actual course. These few will comprise an elite mix of students who come from varied backgrounds and bring some form of talent to the class. Then, the main purpose of your essay becomes to portray yourself as a unique individual with some kind of…

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Career, Interviews

Questions for your Interviewer

December 11, 2011

How serious you are for a job can be best gauged by your level of curiosity for it. This is understandable as when one seriously pursues something, be it a car or a girl, the first step is taken in the direction of knowing everything about it, i.e. the curiosity. For a job it is no different. Almost always, you will come across the question by the employer asking you “Do you have any questions for me?” Answering in the negative will in all probability be taken undesirably and may result in no further communication from the employer.  So you better…

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Career, Job Hunting

18 Tips for Career Planning

November 5, 2011

“Career planning is a lifelong process…” What do you want to do in life? Where do you want to be? What kind of a job do you want to do? These are the kind of questions which trouble us the most, especially at the outset of our professional careers. But if we keep in mind a few simple points, career planning becomes a not so difficult task. Below are some tips that can help you in your career planning process: 1. Do what you enjoy First, sketch out a list of your abilities and acquired knowledge. Then categorize them into…

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Career, Trends

India Employment Trends – 2011

September 15, 2011

55 Million Jobs by 2015 For those who are not aware, only 39 people out of every 100 in India is employed. If we take the rate at which population is rising, we would need at least 55 million more jobs to maintain only that ratio by 2015! These are the findings of CRISIL, a known house in the field of research. The study is based on a recently released National Sample Survey Organisation (NSSO) data on employment in India. Total employment includes jobs as well as self-employment. Key Points of the survey Employment intensity – the number of employed…

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Career, LinkedIn

Make your LinkedIn Profile work for you

September 1, 2011

As its population increases, LinkedIn will, not far from now, become the best place to source talent from.  You surely cannot afford to miss the LinkedIn bus and even when you catch it, you need to make sure you stand out. The question now is how to make this technology work for you. And the first step towards that is to have good looking and easily searchable (or SE Optimized) LinkedIn profile. Read on… Apart from some of the most basic things, which you have to do with your profile, like making it 100% complete, writing a keyword rich work experience and having some…

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Career, Trends

Employment Outlook 2011

August 2, 2011

The employment market shows signs of stability in Q2 of 2011-2012, according to a recent survey by a known HR Services Company in India. The report says that the July-September 2011 business quarter will see moderation or settling down as compared to rapid growth during the earlier quarters. Some Highlights Junior Level segment showed the highest and fastest bent to get hired in the past quarters while middle segment showed a single-digit negative growth Organisations surveyed expected an average 12.7 % salary hike for all employees across industries in 2011. 94% respondents said the coming quarters will see aggressive recruiting…

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Career, Interviews

Qualification vs. Experience

July 18, 2011

Open any newspaper and count the type of advertisements you find inside the most? Or just notice what industry do supplements circulated the maximum number of times along with newspapers, cater to? It’s higher education. As more and more students are ‘being pushed’ for higher education (in India or abroad), it is essential to understand the role of higher education vis-à-vis experience in creating a successful career growth path. Here’s a quickie Qualification Updates you with new knowledge about your choice of industry Offers you an opportunity to work for the organization of your choice Higher education specializes you in your field You gain…

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Career, Interviews, Resume Writing, Trends

Cool Resumes vs. LinkedIn Profiles vs. Resumes that Sell

July 7, 2011

Getting that job is undoubtedly the single most important thing in the mind of any professional looking for a change. How (s)he gets it, is the least important. Candidates today are much bolder in their approach towards employers and employment offers and at times do not flinch when posting their creative applications for jobs. As I browse the internet, I see many articles being written on the use of creative resumes and linked in applications. Let’s try to understand how each of these approaches present your case for candidature to any employer. Cool Resumes Business Insider writes an article on how…

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Career, Trends

Great Places to Work – India 2011

June 29, 2011

For continuing success, companies need the best talent and to retain this talent they need a workplace culture that empowers, entertains and engages. To capture this spirit, The Economic Times and Great Place to Work Institute recently joined hands to find out and honour the best workplaces; companies that realized that employees are their most valuable assets and went that extra mile to care for its employees. Prasenjit Bhattacharya, CEO, The Great Place to Work Institute, India, said that the key learnings that emerged from the survey were that great places to work institutionalise some very basic aspects of work…

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