sample copy. not for distribution. · to unni-krishnan nair uncle for encouraging me, to always...

Sample Copy. Not For Distribution.

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FINDING JOBS


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Publishing-in-support-of,

EDUCREATION PUBLISHING

RZ 94, Sector - 6, Dwarka, New Delhi - 110075 Shubham Vihar, Mangla, Bilaspur, Chhattisgarh - 495001

Website: www.educreation.in __________________________________________________

© Copyright, Author

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form by any means, electronic, mechanical, magnetic, optical, chemical, manual, photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior written consent of its writer.

ISBN: 978-1-61813-510-0

Price: ` 260.00

The opinions/ contents expressed in this book are solely of the author and do not represent the opinions/ standings/ thoughts of Educreation.

Printed in India


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FINDING JOBS Searching For The Perfect Career

Bonnie Baabu

EDUCREATION PUBLISHING (Since 2011)

www.educreation.in


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Author bio

W

Bonnie is an HR professional as well as an author-

blogger. His key areas of professional interests include

developing & implementing Talent Development

programmes and assisting in leadership-hiring

campaigns. He is also a certified behavioural coach.

Bonnie’s books – Finding jobs and Interview

FAQs– were solely designed as a guide to assist

graduates and experienced job seekers during their job-

search period.

He is the founder & consulting partner of an HR

firm named HIRE42 and also the founder of

www.goboochi.com, a global recruitment through data

solution company.

He is passionate about technology disruptions

within the HR sector.

*****


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Dedication page

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To mom & dad for their continued love and support

To Alex acha – my mentor, my family

To Unni-Krishnan Nair uncle for encouraging me, to

always start my own business

To Oliver Libutzki, Brian Frost & Chris Cheah for being

great friends in this journey called life

To all job seekers, who are constantly striving and

praying to God that one day job searches would become

as easy as eating a peanut butter sandwich.

*****


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Bonnie Baabu

1

The Opening Note

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oday professional competition has climbed

up to another notch.

There are plenty of jobs available, and plenty

more job seekers have been added to this

search community daily. Hence, being competent alone

will not cut the ground for you.

You need to be prepared, trained and practiced – all

for that one moment called opportunity.

Remember:

You need that job!

You need to be ready!

CANDIDATE CLASSIFICATION

Before you embark on finding that dream job, it is best

to identify your classification within the candidate

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FINDING JOBS - Searching For The Perfect Career

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segment. Recruiters usually classify candidates into two

key segments:

Active

Passive

ACTIVE CANDIDATES

Active candidates refer to those candidates who are

actively searching for jobs. This means that you would

be attending multiple interviews, continuously exploring

new opportunities during your job-search period. Most

of the fresh graduates will directly fall under this

categorical segment. There is no harm for a candidate to

be slotted as an active candidate, as 95% of the

candidates sourced and submitted to clients by recruiters

do consist of active candidate profiles.

From entry to mid-manager to few senior manager

vacancies are filled by active candidates.

Recruitment agencies are active within this

segment, and candidates can connect with agencies to

assist them in finding them potential job opportunities.

PASSIVE CANDIDATES

Passive candidates are those who are not actively

looking for jobs. They are content with their current

roles and in most cases, are not open towards discussing

a potential career move at this stage. Recruiters who are

trained to identify and attract passive candidates are

known as head-hunters. Head-hunters are specially

trained recruiters to manage a passive candidate

situation. They, first, identify candidates via cold calling

and other methods because passive candidates are not

actively advertising their contact details nor sharing their

resumes online. Later, they connect with these

candidates and explore the opportunities potentially,


Bonnie Baabu

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wherein they can represent this candidate to a specific

vacancy or a client, who is genuinely interested in

buying this candidate’s skill sets.

To a greater degree, we can state that the position of

senior manager or C-segment (example: CEO, CFO,

CMO, CTO etc.) are filled by passive candidates.

There is a selective crowd of recruitment firms who

practices headhunting activities, and in most cases, they

would be contacting the candidate for a potential

vacancy and not vice versa.

Hint:

Are you an active or a passive candidate?

Identify which candidate category you belong to before

embarking on your job search journey!

BEGINNING YOUR JOB-SEARCH

JOURNEY – UNDERSTAND, APPLY AND

ATTEND INTERVIEWS

Job boards attract hundreds or even thousands of

candidates for their advertised open vacancies. You may

come across a vacancy that you find very interesting,

remember this same vacancy is viewed by thousands of

other potential candidates, and all of you end up

applying for this one posted vacancy, leading to

hundreds of applicants chasing one open vacancy at any

given time.

With internet coverage spreading across borders,

the competition has just increased or should we say

quadrupled within the job-seekers market. Earlier, you

had hundreds of candidates applying for advertised

vacancies, but today we are counting their numbers in

few thousands and more.



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This, indeed, puts a lot of pressure on recruiters, as

they tend to be under tremendous pressure essentially

because of the high volume of resumes they receive for

each open-job vacancy.

UNDERSTAND

Integration of an “Applicant tracking system (ATS)” –

Recruiters across the board have begun to segregate

resumes based on skill words and key competencies

which are tagged with the original job description.

Firms world over seem to be working with various

applicant tracking solutions enabling them to sort

through huge volumes of incoming candidate resumes.

These systems are programmed to sort out matching

candidate by means of identifying keywords within a

candidate resume from that of the posted job description.

Those resumes that meet all requirements/set

parameters are segregated from the rest of the candidate

profiles and shared automatically with the original job

poster or the concerned recruiter in charge for managing

this open vacancy.

Hint:

The main objective to deploy an ATS system within an

organization is to segregate the candidate crowd and to

present only the most relevant resumes to the concerned

hiring manager or recruiter of this organization.

APPLY

What candidates need to do? You need to customize

your resume for each job application you send out. You

will also need to match professional keywords/TAG

words from the job description and highlight the same in

your resume profile.


Bonnie Baabu

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This will keep your resume afloat within the

shortlist category even if your file was to be sorted by an

applicant tracking system (ATS).

Apply more: In the current job market, it is not

enough to share your resume with few top companies.

You need to target as many jobs or open vacancies

possible, but without comprising on the quality of the

job vacancy. (In simple words, do not apply to vacancies

if you don’t have the required skill sets, only apply for

those vacancies that closely describe your professional

ability to perform.)

Quality of job vacancy? By quality of an open job

vacancy, we would be referring to its match-ability ratio

with your own skill/competency levels.

Applying for a job that doesn’t match your skill sets

is a waste of time for you and for the recruiter

shortlisting candidates for this role. Remember the

objective of this exercise is to find the closest matching

job to your current skill levels.

Hence to achieve the same, candidates need to:

1. First identify their key competency skill sets.

You need to know what your strengths are

before you step out into the job market.

2. Research and map out a series of companies

offering jobs with matching skill sets. Identify

companies who are seeking for professionals

such as yourself. Look and you will find.

Once you have completed the above two simple

tasks, it is now time for you to:

Customize your resume for each role that you

are keen to apply for

and later ensure that all your resume

submissions have been successful (you will

eventually get automated messages every time

you have made a successful resume submission

for a job vacancy).



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ATTEND INTERVIEWS

Being an active job seeker, your primary responsibility

should be focused on lining as many interviews as

possible.

However, you need to ensure that the quality of

vacancies you are applying for is to be considered as the

topmost priority in your agenda. A close match between

the job vacancy and your skill set is what will bring you

closer to your dream role.

Hence as the final step in the process for stepping

closer towards acquiring your dream role, attend as

many potential interviews as possible, give yourself an

opportunity to choose form the best of the jobs and the

best of the employers seeking to hire talented

professionals such as yourself.

*****


Bonnie Baabu

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Stop Being Invincible

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You need to be out there in the market.

Select vacancies from the sector/industry which

closely match your skill sets/competency levels.

Apply to these roles specifically.

Don’t segregate between company size or salaries

at this point of time.

Note: Apply based on your skill set. This is the only way

recruiters will be able to identify you as a potential

candidate.

Hint:

Your objective at this point is to break away from the job

seeker tag and to be considered as a potential candidate

for an open vacancy.

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THE CONCERN

Being over selective and using excuses, such as – there

are only few companies who are seeking my skill sets,

will not help you in this job search period.

If you could only find three companies who are

currently seeking professional skill sets which you can

relate to, then your best option is to:

Spend more time on research and find more

companies seeking similar skills that match your

abilities.

Reassess your classifications on how you choose

a potential company.

If your choices contained salary, location,

designation as the key factors for shortlisting

potential companies, then tone down your

expectations a tad and redefine your company

classification list. This should automatically

increase your potential company list from three to

a bigger number.

In other words, reassess your priorities for this

job search and see what best fits you for the next

3 to 5 years. Focus on growth opportunities and

not immediate fixes.

Remember:

Apply to as many companies as possible, especially

those that house your area of expertise or skill set.

Attend as many interviews possible, “The more

interviews you attend, the better you keep getting at it”.

GIVE THIS A THOUGHT

You should attend that interview, even if you don’t want

to work for that company. Maybe the salary they are

offering is not that great, their stated designation is not


Bonnie Baabu

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what you expected or the location is a bit far from where

you are currently staying.

There could be numerous factors that you had

considered before giving this company a miss. I say –

Go for the interview experience, give a stellar

performance and learn from this interview session.

Reassess yourself, give yourself some room for

improvement. Maybe you could come across a factor or

two that could change your mind after this interview.

Note: In case, you are offered a role by this company,

there is no harm in having one more offer option to

select from.

Attend this interview and reassess your performance:

On how you performed in this interview?

If you received an interview feedback at the end

of this interview – was it positive, negative,

neutral?

What did you notice about your interviewers,

were they happy with your performance, was it

visible in their body language?

Did you answer all questions with confidence or

where there few questions that caught you by

surprise?

How would you rate your own body language

during this interview? Where you nervous, very

excited etc.

Rate yourself on your level of confidence? 1

being the least score and 10 being the best.

If you were given one more chance, what could

you have done better during this interview?

Hint:

Deciding to join them or not can be discussed later. But

never miss an opportunity for an interview if one comes

along the way. Just don’t say NO – meet them first,



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listen to feedbacks, assess your performance and only

then decide on your final YES or NO.

*****


Bonnie Baabu

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www.educreation.in


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