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How do I prepare?

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• Build your network with several recruiters of the companies that work on your domain during your college years itself.

• Ask them questions on how they recruit and other relevant details.

• If you're out of college, you can still approach many recruiters and ask them to share information about vacant job roles in their company.

• LinkedIn is one such platform for any professional to easily connect with industry experts within our hands reach.

• Having these pre connections to the recruiter before you give an interview will not only help you prepare for the interview well but it also comes with the added benefits of the recruiter already looking forward to a known candidate. It also shows that you are serious about the role and want to do your best.

2. Building the right resume

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• No matter what interview you attend, almost 90% of the time your resume is your first impression.
• Create a one page resume with a decent enough easy to read template.
• Try to cover important details without overloading irrelevant information  and leave some points to be discussed with the interviewer.
• Point out all your merits relative to the job on the top section. If you are a fresher, you can keep your education and skills on the top and if you are an experienced professional, you may want to highlight your experience along with your skills.
• Have the resume in pdf format. Keeping your resume in docx format might lose your chance of making that first impression incase you didn't allow the permission to view the document.
• Along with mailing a soft copy of your resume to the recruiter, it is also recommended to carry atleast 3 hard copies of your resume. There can be some uncertainties where the interviewer cannot access your resume's softcopy. You can handover the hard copy to your interviewer and also have one for you to refer along the process.

• When it comes to research there are many things you need to know about.

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• Research about job description
• Throughout your interview, the interviewer will mostly try to see whether your skills and experiences matches the job description.
• Carefully examine the description and try to highlight your skills during the interview considering the description.
• Job description can give you a big hint on what the interviewers might ask you. So create questions and preframe those answers.

• Research about the company and the role

• This is one of the fundamental things to do when you apply for a job role. Make sure you know the company's origins and values.
• Note down the key achievements and breakthroughs in the company's history and mention these points while you share your views on them.
• Research thoroughly about the role you seek and understand the responsibilities and opportunities that come along with it. These aspects will make you rethink about your choices and help you know what you truly want.

• Research about company's products /  services

• Know about the products /services offered by the company.
• Find out about the different softwares and technologies that they use and their policy on several objective matters.

• Research about company culture 
• It's important to know whether the company culture suits your personality and after knowing this, you can think about what you can do to have a healthy work life.
• You can mention a  few things about the company's culture that you find very interesting.

4. Be ready with common questions

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• Although we cannot predict most of the questions for the technical or field related ones, there are some basic common questions asked by most interviewers that we can be prepared for.

• Some of the most common questions are:

• Tell me about yourself

• You can answer this question by words that describe you, unique qualities and skills, past experiences, your passions, what drives you and professional aims for the next five years and also include hobbies that are acceptable (like reading, singing, writing blogs, etc).

• Why do you want to work here?
• You can highlight about certain positive aspects about the company regarding company culture, the way they work, the technologies they use and align your personal goals to them.

• What are your greatest strengths and weaknesses?
• One thing to note down is to never speak about yourself in a negative light.
• Even when asked about your weaknesses, speak about a weakness that can be positive and also mention how you deal with it.
• For example, you can say that you are extremely detail oriented or have it hard giving up on a project. Also, you have been dealing with it by focusing and addressing the key points and work in a result driven manner.
• As for strengths, showcase the skills that are essential for the position you are interviewing for. Highlight the values and experience that makes you the perfect candidate for the role.

5. Practice mock interviews and focus on body language

• Your body language and voice plays a crucial role in determining the type of personality you have.
• Interviews can make anybody anxious. Sometimes, despite preparing for everything, there are chances that we might fail to make an impression on the recruiters because of some wrong gesture, tone or posture.
• So instead of messing it up live, practice your tone and body language. This will give you the confidence while you actually give an interview.
• Work on that posture, practice your walk and the way you sit, keep your hands and how you maintain eye contact.
• Read out your answers loud and try to use a formal tone and practice it infront of a mirror or ask a friend or family to help you with a mock interview.

6. Plan for travel

• Sometimes you need to travel to a different place or city for interviews. And when that happens, you want to make sure that you don't reach late.
• Make proper travel arrangements so that you can reach early before the interview.
• It's better to have the contact information of the interview coordinator. If due to some unavoidable situations you are reaching late, inform them and atleast let them know your reasons. Most companies expect these kinds of situations.
• Search the location of the building where you'll be interviewing beforehand and find out about the parking details so you can avoid all the problems of arriving late.

7. Be polite

• You are going to be noted from the point where you meet the receptionist  to the interviewer.
• The way you behave with all these people coordinating with the interview process will show your true personality.
• Answer politely and be respectful to all of them.
• While waiting outside for the interview, have a good conversation with the fellow interviewees as it shows how you are with your fellow colleagues.
• Try not to use your phone while waiting. Practice your answers or read your resume in the meantime.
• During the interview, if you didn't understand a particular question, ask them politely to repeat the question.

• Sometimes a tricky question that you haven't prepared for might challenge you, take some time to think about it and then answer. 

• Sometimes, the interviewers can ask you the reasons for your resignation from your previous job, in such situations make sure you don't blame and complain about your previous boss, colleagues or the company. It shows how loyal you are.

8. Present appropriately

• Interviews are a formal occasion where you present your personality to suit a role in a company.
• Wear something comfortable and formal which makes you feel confident .
• Avoid shiny accessories and engaging designs that might distract the interviewer.
• You might want to consider the company culture before you choose your interview outfit. A financial firm would require you to dress formally than a tech startup.

9. Sell yourself

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• What it means is to convince the interviewer that you are the best fit for the role.
• Use statistics and numbers to speak about your past experiences in different companies.
• Focus on your professional achievements and the impact that you want to bring to the company.
• Highlight some of your failures and mention what you have learnt and done different from that.

10. Keep questions ready for the interviewer

• There might come a part during the interview when the interviewer asks if you have any questions.
• You want to show that you are inquisitive and want to learn. Hence you need to keep some questions up your sleeve to be dispatched at this moment.
• Some questions you can ask are:

• What qualities do the most successful employees  in your company have?
• What does a typical day look like for this position in your company?
• Can I know the next process in case I get selected after this interview?

11. Follow up information

• Once the interview is done, the interviewer will ask you to write a follow up letter.
• Make sure you give correct contact information.
• Thank  the interviewers for their time and write key points of what you learnt during the interview process and appreciate them for their patience.

12. Dont lose hope : Never give up

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- Vince Lombardi

" All our dreams can come true---

If we have the courage to pursue them"

- Walt Disney

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It's been a really confusing time since the pandemic began. The overall routine of work and education has been seriously affected. The lockdown has made us uncertain of what the future upholds for the coming generations. Situations like lockdown hinders students from gaining the knowledge and skills that are necessary in their work life. But worry not! There's plenty of ways you can make the best out of this time to enhance your skills.

We might ask, Isn't it the responsibility of educational institutions? 

In a logical sense, yes but in reality, no because ultimately colleges can only teach you about your field, but not how to apply it in your life. They are the passerby who will show you the path to a destination but however you, the traveler have to walk on that road to reach your destination.

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It's very normal to be clueless about what you can do to build the skills and knowledge apart from your institutional syllabus. That's when online learning comes into picture. There are many contradicting opinions about online learning. But believe it, amidst all the not-so-understandable ones, there are enough quality courses that will enable you to learn practically about anything you wish to learn. There is no dearth of resources available for students in this century. It's time we try to make the best out of these resources to build our expertise.

"The best way to predict the future is to create it"  

                                                                                         - Abraham Lincoln 

The Super Mario Effect

The reason sometimes students don't learn consistently might be the lack of the 'Super Mario effect' as mentioned by Mark Rober.The Super Mario Effect is a concept based on the game 'Super Mario' where Mario, the plumber keeps dodging obstacles to finally save the Princess from the evil Bowser. The concept talks about how we treat failure. It's very common to lose in a video game and even after losing in a level, we never stop playing and keep giving it another try. For example, in the Super Mario game, we might fall onto a pit in the first attempt. But when we try the second time, we now know that there's a pit on the path and jump avoiding it. This means that everytime we make a mistake, we become better at solving it. That's how we keep on improving our skills. So when we meet with failure, we need to put on our ' Super Mario Effect ' cap and keep learning to dodge all the obstacles on our path and turn it into a lesson learned.

"Anyone who has never made a mistake has never tried anything new"

                                                                                                                 -  Albert Einstein

Let's start

"Start by doing what is necessary, then what is possible, and suddenly you are doing the impossible."

               - Francis of Assisi

So let's move on to how we can practically implement this in our student life and get ready for a great career ahead of us.

1. Know thyself

   
   

• Knowing yourself implies realising your personal and professional goals, identifying your strengths (what you think you're good at) and weaknesses (things that you need to work on). Easiest way to decide this could be by closing your eyes for a minute and picturing yourself in the future.
• Put all these points in a journal or a note and reflect on the path that you'll need to work on to achieve these goals.

2. Research your route

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• The moment you realise what you want to achieve professionally, you'll need to find out about the skills you need to master in order to reach that  target.
• Make sure whether these skill requirements are going to be relevant for the next 5-10 years.Understand the industry standards and roles .
• Note down these skills and make a plan to acquire them within a fixed time.

3. Get yourself Hooked to LinkedIn

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• No matter what profession/field you are into, make a LinkedIn profile. 
• In today's world, creating a LinkedIn account means to be open for the job market.
• Make yourself visible to companies and several recruiters looking for people in the same field as you.
• Follow all those biggies who you think have achieved the same dream that you have decided to aim for.
• Connect and ask relevant questions to build a professional network with them.
• There are tons of students who don't know where to find opportunities. LinkedIn is one such place where you can connect with some of the brightest people in your industry. So there's no shortage of opportunities.
• It's just that you need to look for them. 
• Contradicting one of the most popular quotes, opportunities do not come and knock at your door. You need to go door-to-door and figure out opportunities. So get out of that door!

4. Start your learning journey

• There are learning platforms like Coursera, Udemy, Udacity, LinkedIn learning and many more that offer hundreds of courses on different fields and subjects.
• Investing our time in learning these skills will build our knowledge as we learn from experienced professors from across the globe through these online platforms.

5. Implement your learning

• When you have learnt enough about a particular skill, it is a waste if you don't apply it on something.
• You can't say you have acquired a skill unless you have practically used that knowledge somewhere.
• How can you implement?

1. Build projects
2. Volunteer in any group and solve a real world problem.
3. Solve your own day to day problems.

• You don't need to look far and wide to search for problems. Pick some of your daily struggles and make it easier with your newly learnt skill.
• When you try this process, you gain confidence over your skill and improve your resume.
• As you acquire new skills and implement it, it is advantageous to simultaneously share them on LinkedIn.
• You need to keep updating your profile and resume and be active for a job role.

6. Internships:First-hand experience

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• The skills we acquired are put to test when you actually enter the industry.
• Instead of facing the pressure in your work life in the future, it's better to get a first hand experience of the industry before you start your career.
• Internships will give you a realistic idea on how to utilise your skills to solve real life problems.
•  It also serves like an icing to your Resume cake as employers usually prefer a candidate with prior experience more efficient for the job.
• Internships can be paid or unpaid. If you can manage to find a paid internship, it's well and good. But no matter what internships come your way, just try it. Ultimately what's going to count is what you have learnt from it whether you received a stipend or not.

• Set your goal to learn from the experience.

"If you're offered a seat on a rocket ship, don't ask what seat! Just get on."

                   -  Sheryl Sandberg

• How to find internships?

1. LinkedIn posts several job requirements for Interns.
2. Internshaala is also one of the top sites to apply for internship in various fields.
3. If you are looking for anything particular,visit respective company websites to check for internships.

7. Stay up-to-date

• Keep yourself updated with all the trends in your field.
• Be aware of the job requirements that may change from time to time.
• Never stop learning.

It's never too late

You might be in your final year or first year wondering about where to start. If you haven't started with any of these steps yet, It is okay to be confused at this stage of life.

 It's never too late to get the kind of job that you love.

"The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven't found it yet, keep looking! Don't settle."

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