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Health & Fitness

Simple Tips for Job Hunting, Resumes and Interviews

Searching for a job can be simpler with these tips.

Job hunting can be a very tiring and demoralizing experience. It requires lot of time, effort and mental toughness. For some reason, I have been very successful at job hunting, resumes and interviews. This blog is to dedicated to all those folks out there who might need some tips and tricks for job hunting, resume building and interview. I have interviewed with some of the top companies in the world and have been very successful at their selection process. I have divided the blog into three sections: Job hunting, resume building and interview.

Job Hunting:

Before you land at your dream job, you have to first look for companies that are willing to offer the job that you wish to have. And the best place to look for job vacancies is the Internet. Most of the companies prefer advertising for positions on their website, popular job search websites and local newspapers.

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I would keep this section limited to job searches through job search websites and company websites. Popular job search websites like Indeed.com have hundreds of job advertisements and it’s very easy to browse through them and look for job positions that match your skill sets. I would never advise looking for jobs that have no relation to your skill sets.

Tricks for using internet as job search:

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Almost all job search websites provide an option, where you could list the type of jobs that you are looking for and city in which you would prefer to have the job. Once you have identified these two areas, these job search websites will email you the list of jobs based upon your requirement once every day. It’s like getting a summary of all the available positions in industry where you could apply. It’s very important that you create this email alert on every job search website. So, everyday you would have at least 20-30 listings of positions that match your skill sets. This process reduces a lot of time in the job hunting process.

Prepare a spreadsheet (preferably on Google docs) and record the information about the job applications that you have been doing every day. Information that can be entered in the spreadsheet would be company name, date, login ID, password and the contact number of HR or the company's front desk.

But the question is, where do we find the contact info of HR? Well, through LinkedIn. LinkedIn is the largest professional network and about 200 million people are on LinkedIn.

In order to create your personal brand it’s very important to have a very good online presence on a professional network like LinkedIn. Spend at least 30 minutes every day in increasing your professional network on LinkedIn, maintaining your profile and participating in online discussions on LinkedIn. These activities increase the value of your online presence and thereby increase your personal brand.

Resume:

I have seen people spending hours and hours of time on building that awesome resume with very complicated words and language and filled with lots of promises and the work they have done. Personally, I would always make a resume that describes my academic and professional achievements in a very simple manner. Your resume should be able to describe your skill sets, experience, academic qualification and achievements. And yes, it’s always a good idea to have a one page resume with only relevant information. These days the way companies filter out the resume is through an automated process and a one page resume can be very helpful in that process.

Make sure all your skill sets are nicely organized in your resume. Make use of words like created, developed, researched, helped…. That displays your leadership, innovative and good team player skills.

Never lie on your resume. Interviewers hate it, they take it very personally and your interview will end in a very short time. There are different types of resume formats available on the Internet and the best format would be the one that would fits your academic, professional skills, professional experience and volunteering activities in one page. From my personal experience, the value of your resume increases with the right skill sets. So make sure your skill sets are described throughout the resume in a very organized manner.

Adding good keywords is also a very important part of resume building. What exactly are good keywords? Well, take a look at the job position description and think about the skill sets that would be needed to be successful at this job and add those skill sets to your resume and they become your keywords and your resume will always show up in search results when recruiting companies are doing their filtering processes. Every industry and job position requires skill sets that are necessary to be successful. Just search online profiles of people working in that position and look at the keywords they have used to build their online profiles. Just make use of them on your resume. (Provided you have those skill sets; if not, then think of some other skills.)

Once you have submitted your resume to a company website never hesitate to contact the HR representative of that company and enquire about the position. HR folks always respond back if you are nice and polite with them. Get in touch with them through email first, and if you don’t get a response give them call. Please don’t stalk them with emails and calls….

Interview:

The final stage of the process is the interview. Once you receive that interview call. Sit on a chair, relax and drink lots of water to calm your nerves. And then stand up and start planning your interview process. I always consider interviews to be like a “Hostage Rescue” situation. I have a complete plan ready before I walk in to the interview room and face the interviewer. You need to know everything about the interviewer, the company and the job position.

You should be packed with all the relevant information that can be used in the interview room and most of all you should be in control of the entire situation without making the interviewer realize that you are running the show. But, the most important question is: How do we achieve this?

Well, when the HR representative sends out the interview date, location and timing she will also mention the name of interviewer. Make use of LinkedIn to find out more about the interviewer's professional background. This will help you in understanding the type of questions that can be asked and you can also make use of this information to ask questions to interviewer at the end of interview. For example: One of my interviewers had a professional sports background. So, when we went for lunch during interview day, I used this information to start a conversation with the interviewer regarding his sports background and it also created a lighter moment during the entire exhausting interview process. It’s always good to make a personal connection with the interviewer during the interview. It shows that you have very good communications skills.

Interviewers mostly ask questions from your resume. So make sure you know your resume very well and can describe everything from your resume in a very organized and detailed manner.

Tricks to control the interview process:

Interviewers will mostly ask questions based on your answers. Be very careful about topics that you are discussing with interviewer. Always talk about the topics that you know very well. For example: I was discussing with an interviewer about the software verification tools, and I purposely mentioned the names of a few tools that are very new in the market and are not being used by many companies. The interviewer immediately started asking for more information about the new software verification tools and since I had already gathered all the information about the tools it became easy to explain to him in detail.

How to handle rejection?

Life is full of rejections. Always take rejections in a very positive manner and never let rejections bring you down. If your interview has not gone well, then come home and relax and listen to your favorite music or watch a comedy movie. The next morning wake up and start the process again.

If you need any help with job hunting or have questions/concerns, please write them in the comments below. I’ll be happy to help you. Good luck.

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