oops... you did it again?
At Geometric, there was a campus recruit from one of the
IITs, who joined their Pune office in 2007. He was doing well in the
projects and scored well in his internal assessments.
Picture this...you arrive almost an hour late for your job
interview, have
sauce spilled on your shirt, accidentally carry a resume that isn’t
updated
and worse, forget the name of the interviewer who could be your
prospective boss! You may wonder that this would never happen to you,
right? However, there are several other unnoticed and less blatant
mistakes you could commit and that too, without knowing it. Here’s a
lowdown on a few job hunting blunders that you can very conveniently
keep at bay
Shetty suggests a few tips that aspirants can adopt in order to avoid job hunting mistakes:
- Firstly, avoid impatience.
- A good and honest self critique is critical. Very often, our own
self analysis has many blind spots and having someone that you trust who
can give you such feedback helps greatly to establish a grounded view.
- Look whether the new job will be able to give the required exposure -
a medium-term outlook on career direction is essential (generalist vs.
specialist, technical ladder vs. managerial ladder, etc).
- Look beyond the current job offered and see if the company has the
opportunity to offer diversity of roles which can sustain you over the
next two job rotations atleast.
At Geometric, there was a campus recruit from one of the IITs, who
joined their Pune office in 2007. He was doing well in the projects and
scored well in his internal assessments. One of his batchmates, who had
joined along with him, had to leave his job and shift to Delhi due to
certain family reasons. His friend had two years of work experience and
this shift helped him get a 30 per cent hike in the salary. He too
decided to replicate his friend’s move and started looking for a job
that could give him a more than 30 per cent hike. Though he was doing
very well in the company, he left the job and joined a product
development company in Bangalore. In his desperation, he did not assess
properly the stability and long-term objectives of that company. That
company could not sustain the recession and had to shut down their India
office over night; so despite having excellent credentials and
experience, he is out of a job today! Deepak Shetty, director, HR,
Philips Innovation Campus (PIC) too knows of someone who was strong as a
generalist but accepted a specialist’s role nine months ago in a
company with a completely different culture (MNC vs. Indian) at a level
below his competency level - and is now already looking for a new job.
These aforementioned case studies belong to a breed of job seekers in
the Indian market that commit such and many more job hunting blunders
and lose a lot in the bargain, besides just their jobs.
Therefore, whether you are a first-time aspirant or a veteran in your
field, it is crucial that you take the right steps towards landing your
ideal job. So which are the most common blunders? Jumping at whichever
opportunity comes your way without assessing the short-term and
long-term implications of such a move? Yes! This may lead to a situation
wherein the person may compromise on aspects such as the brand, role or
even the salary, in order to get the job. Muralidhar Rao, president and
COO, NIS Sparta who points the above adds, “Limiting one’s job options
by just putting a CV on a job portal is also a mistake. Depending on the
profile of the candidate, companies explore various options to identify
a potential employee including referrals, mining database generated
through job sections on company websites, taking services of
consultants, outsourced vendors, etc besides only job portals.” Rao too
encountered a situation with a middle level employee who left the
organisation because of a salary hike opportunity given by another
company. The catch however lay in the fact that the employee was given a
different role to perform. The same employee struggled to achieve his
goals, leading to a point wherein he again contacted Nis Sparta showing
his willingness to join back at the same salary levels at which he had
parted ways with them. Nishith K Mohanty, head - HR, Manipal Education
points out that though this may seem like an aspect that is taken for
granted, there still are many resumes which are filled with
typographical errors. The information that people put down in their
resumes create the first impression in the minds of the prospective
employers. Sometimes, it leads to over sizing one’s own profile which
may prove counterproductive. The most common mistake, according to
Ravikumar Dondapati, director - global staffing and resourcing,
Geometric is the dependence on a ‘tailor made resume’. This is more seen
in fresher or trainee recruitment. So if you see the resume of students
of the same college, they will seem almost identical! Nipa Modi, CEOHR
services, CRP Ltd adds that the other mistake a jobseeker might do is to
approach a wrong consultancy and submit his/her resume and follow up
with the consultancy from thereon. There might be situation where the
jobseeker is only following up with one or few consultancy who do not
deal in that profile. Dondapati says that the main reason why people
make such mistakes are due to the urge to make quick money by shifting
jobs quite often and demand more salary, family and peer pressure to
settle in a good job, unclear personal and professional aspirations and
desperation to go for overseas opportunities.
And in times like these, possibilities of job seekers resorting to such
measures are high. There's more to a successful job hunt than wearing
the right attire and carrying an updated resume. In today's cut throat
scenario, you need to have an edge and there is simply no room for petty
errors.
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