Interviews

Employer conduct during interviews

Almost all articles on career related matters and job interviews focus on prospective employees and their conduct. But while it is important for a candidate to be at his best show during an interview, it is equally important for an interviewer to be impressive as well. The interviewer projects the entire company’s image on the candidate and needs to do justice to it. For if she fails the candidate may lose the interest to join the employer. After all, who wants to join a poorly represented organization! Keeping that in mind and some practical experiences of interviewers behaving weirdly during…

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Career, Interviews, Resume Writing, Video Resume

Video Resumes in India

I was recently approached with the idea of Video Resume implementation in India. Now this concept has gained a lot of ground in the western countries, especially the US and people are beginning to explore this new form of resume. But when it comes to India, I have my doubts. Below I have tried to put down some points which struck me while I was pondering over the thought of venturing into it. Some of them were discussed with HRs in leading organizations. But first of all, what is a video resume? A video resume is your resume recorded on…

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Career, Interviews

Learn to Negotiate a Salary

You’ve appeared for all the stages of your interview and all seems to have gone down well. What remains now is the final call from the HR and that most important question which puts every candidate in an anxious position, “What are you expecting”. Giving the HR a salary figure or negotiating it is perhaps the most vital component of the interview process from the candidate’s perspective. As much as a good interview matters to the employer, a good hike from the previous salary matters to the prospective employee. But the negotiation always starts from the employee’s end. You might…

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Interviews, Letters

Importance of Follow-Up Letters

Anish and Nishant are 2 extremely talented Marketing guys. They both apply to the position of Senior Promotions Manager at a reputed firm in upmarket Mumbai. Both appear for interviews, but there is only one vacancy. Out of the 27 candidates interviewed, Anish gets selected while Nishant never receives a call back. Disheartened, Nishant gets back to work and starts applying elsewhere. But not before writing an email to the HR Manager of the marketing firm. The email only states a few lines thanking the employer for the opportunity and letting them know that it was a good learning experience…

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Career, Trends

India Employment Trends and Outlook – 2012

According to the 2012 Employment Survey by well-known HR Services firm Ma Fio Randstad, the sectors publishing most jobs in the country in 2012 are Healthcare, Hospitality and IT/ITeS. These three sectors will together create more than 7.31 lakh new jobs in the country, out of the total 1.6 million new jobs estimated to be created in the organized sector this year. The exact breakup of the top 3 sectors is as follows: Healthcare (273,571 jobs), Hospitality (230,213 jobs) and IT/ITES (227,328 jobs). Apart from these, the other sectors optimistic about hiring in the year 2012 are Non-machinery Manufacturing (such…

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Resume Writing

Designing the Perfect Resume – A Case

Design: verb (used with object) – to plan and fashion artistically or skilfully. Why we emphasise on the word designing rather than writing is because only a well-crafted resume will open up the gates to your potential employer. Almost 50% candidates are rejected for a job they deserve at the resume processing stage itself, because the resume is unable to highlight the true potential of the candidate. Of the 50% who go through to the interviews, 20% are those who the employer has almost selected in their minds based on the excellence reflected in the resume. The rest 80% (of…

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Career, Interviews

Control your Interview

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

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

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

“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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