Jobseekers, make your search journey more meaningful!

I keep getting a lot of mails and requests from aspiring candidates. LinkedIn is one of the media where I get maximum requests for jobs. Few known people call randomly and ask me to check the jobs for their kids, relatives, friends etc. One of the myths people have is that HR decides who to hire. Few people think that being HR professionals can influence organizations to hire any candidates. HR professionals and senior leaders can connect candidates to a concerned network. They can coach and guide them to get the job, however candidates also need to be proactive and fast in their job search journey. Candidates are shortlisted for their fitment as per the role and selected for their employability skills.  

Few of my observations and suggestions to make your job search journey more meaningful are as under:

Professionalism: I keep getting messages in my LinkedIn inbox. Few candidates are very professional. They have everything, a nice covering letter, updated resume. They request in a sober language. Other hand, the majority of the candidates just message randomly without understanding what their value proposition is. I get messages from a few candidates who are too rude. “Hey, do you have a job for me? Hey, I want to work with your company, or hey, can you check my resume for so and so profile.” I understand their desperation, but this is not the language while asking for the job. Connect, engage, market and then sell is the basic principle on social media. 

Your education and college is just an entry pass: Candidates need to understand that your job fitment is important. Most of the organizations hire candidates from top engineering and business schools at entry level. Once you gain the experience your school doesn't have much value. That may be one of the additional factors, but it is your experience and skills that matter most. Few candidates push their candidature just because they are from top school. They assume that they are qualified for the job because of their school affiliation. 

Not trying enough: It is your journey. It is your struggle. Connecting with networks and relying only on them will not help. You have to try all measures to get the jobs. The organizations to whom you are connected may not have the right job for you, however you can keep trying, but don’t show desperation by messaging them every day or week. Instead speak about your strong points, your value proposition, skills you can bring to the organisation. Try different platforms and be active in the job market. 

Not working on the resume: Candidates have the same profile for every job. Sometimes it is unrealistic to write everything. One of the issues I have seen is copying the resume. Be genuine while making your resume. Don’t put things which you have never done. Sometimes, resumes are too lengthy, sometimes too short, sometimes with too many infographics. Just balanced it and customised as per the role. If required, you have to rewrite your resume from time to time. Invest your time on your resume making.

Not working on LinkedIn profile: Your LinkedIn profile is your professional identity in the digital world. Most of the students and candidates don’t give enough attention to their profile. Keep updating your profile. Use the platform effectively and wisely. Network with the right people and share relevant information. You can create a positive personal brand using this platform.  

Ineffective Networking: Do you know where your seniors and (school, institute or earlier companies’) alumni are working? They may be a great help to you. Network with friends, your seniors, and leaders in the industry.              

Mailing Unsolicited Resumes: One of the mistakes candidates do to send mass mails to everybody they know. Don’t spam the inbox of human resource and hiring managers. Don’t send mass mails and resume to all. Customise your mail in an appealing manner and then send it to relevant people. Nowadays, companies don’t entertain resumes received through mails. They want you to apply through their career page. It is easy for companies to track and find relevant resumes. But one of the problems with this system is your resume may get ignored if your resume doesn’t have the right keywords. Ensure that your resume contains the right key world and content which is relevant to the job advertisement.

Not focused search: One of the mistakes candidates do to apply for every position without reading job descriptions and details of the job. First decide what you want. Make your search focused. Make a list of companies and roles which are suitable and then try. Your resumes can be shortlisted if it matches at least 70% to the job descriptions.

The major issue in the job market is getting the right talent which has the employability skills. Unfortunately, very few candidates demonstrate those skills during interviews. You need to read, keep yourself updated, and focus on continuous learning. Work on improving your employability skills and create your ‘personal candidature brand’ using different platforms and being active on those platforms & job portals to get visibility in the talent market. Wish you best luck!

(Opinions are purely personal & does not represent my organizations, current or past) 

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Make your hiring logical.

Sometimes, job postings surprise me. A small organization having its office in downtown city asks applications from candidates who are supermen from nice institute, having mind-blowing experience of handling everything. Of course, their salary package is not that mind-blowing. Sometimes their expectations are just unrealistic. I have seen the job post which asks 8 years of experience in certain technology and that technology is only 5 years old. Every company wants their candidate from reputed institute, working in reputed company either in MNC or Indian MNC. When I see these job postings and if I would have been the candidate, I am sure that there are little chances of my résumé shortlisted. There are few candidates who also don’t bother what’s written in the job advertisement; they apply for every position cluttering the inbox of recruiter. Recruiter gets confused whom to shortlist because s/he doesn’t get anybody who is qualified. 

As commonly cited statistic is that women only apply for jobs when they feel 100% qualified, while men are willing to apply when meeting just 60% of the qualifications—evidence of a confidence gap between the genders. But both men and women fall into the trap of taking job requirements too seriously. 

I frequently listen to talent acquisition specialists aka recruiters speaking about selling the job to the candidate. This is because their mailbox in cluttered with irrelevant resumes because of strange job posts and they get very few relevant candidates. It doesn’t mean that there is a dearth of relevant candidates.   

Most of the time such job posts are created by most junior recruiter in a team. Hiring manager will write everything, he dreams of having. They want readymade candidate who will start delivering from first day in the organization. Don’t know when those hiring managers started delivering when they joined the organization. 

Then there is a category of job postings (common in India) which only seek applications from certain institutes (like tier 1), specific gender (to improve the diversity targets given by their bosses) and certain companies like European or American companies. People in American companies think that working in American companies is very tough and employees working in Indian or other MNCs will not survive in “their” companies. And later think the same way. 

In short, they want the best, fast & cheap. This is the rule of three in the business world: whether you’re talking about a product, a service, or a person, you simply cannot have it all. But then what we do in such cases. As a professional we need to calibrate our expectations and you can do it by working on following tips.

Challenge the assumptions: Healthy and challenging discussion is always good. HR professional, talent acquisition specialist and hiring manager should come together. In-take meetings are crucial. TA specialist should ask lot of questions and challenge if manager has some different expectations. For example, most of the time, managers expect candidates from competition. By only hiring from competition, we are creating artificial dearth of candidates, secondly, we are discouraging the diversity and third creating the monopoly for the talent. Same is for candidates from specific college, specific region and genders. 

Recognize & overcome biases:  We have biases as explained above about companies, colleges, gender, community, cast and regions. We need to recognize that, yes, we are bias and then work on to overcome those biases. HR plays an important role here to help the manager by challenging his biases and supporting him to take the right decision. 

Hire for potential: Candidates should not be shortlisted based on their tenure, short or long, in the company. Selection should be based on what experience they gained, how they developed themselves, and what they contributed to the business. You should find out the reason of short or long duration. They may contribute in a short span in one company or multiple contribution in another company. See their growth and pattern of development instead of just experience.  

I know this is not rocket science, but you take a balanced view, you may get a result.