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.
|
