Wednesday, November 3, 2010

What not to do...Job Seekers

and offcourse some to do...

Well I have seen a large number of Resumes and also taken interivew of lots of candidates. I wanted to give some thoughts about to do / not to do about the resume, telephonic conversation, interviews. Others are welcome to add / discuss any points.

Resume

1) Keep your point wise

a. Don’t keep paragraphs of information regarding your skills or background.

b. Always keep information point wise.

2) Highlight the key skills for the job for which you are applying. If you looking jobs in multiple fields (Ex. Developer / Tester / Etc.) keep different resume ready for each field. Each field would have some different skills which you need to highlight.

3) Don’t put too much of information in resume. Also what ever tool / skill / project you have put in to your resume you should be able to answers any question regarding to that.

4) In my experience half of the interview questions would come from what you have written in the resume.

Telephonic Conversations

1) Be professional always ask the basic information like job profile , job location in the first place.

2) If the job profile and job location meets your need then only take forward the talks. Other wise you would be wasting your and other party’s time as well.

3) Always make a note of Name of the person with whom you had conversation for future reference

4) When you give time to any person for telephonic conversation, keep you mobile reachable, well charged. Its not good to give these reasons for not attending the call.

Face to Face Interview

1. Do dress decently in official dress.

i. Even if the office is using casual dresses

ii. Interview is not the place to show off with casuals

2. Carry a copy of resume with you and 2 photographs even if not asked by the company. You don’t know when they would come in handy

3. Do ask permission before going in to the interview room

4. Do not seat down before you are asked to do so

5. If interviewer offer shake-hand give a firm shake-hand.

6. Listen carefully to the question asked , if you don’t able to listen to a question politely ask to repeat the question

7. But don’t ask every time to repeat the question , some time its ok not every time.

8. Do answer with truth, if you don’t know any thing admit it that you don’t know it. No one is perfect.

9. Study the basics well before going for interview.

i. Ex. If you going for Developer interview you should know the basics of the programming language.

ii. If you going for Networking / Security profile your networking knowledge should be sound. (Ex TCPIP / ISO Layers etc). For a fresher at-least there is no excuse to Not have knowledge of TCPIP