Its been a year since I graduated out of Business School.
Have I become wiser for the better? Yes, most definitely. Wise would be a
massive understatement. Shrewd would be so befitting. Passing out of UG, we
were all once so naïve, so in awe of the corporate world that we let it sweep
us away. At least, it happened to me. Luckily and definitely by The High
Command’s grace after my UGs I have had to give only 2 interviews – both of
which were successful – thus giving me the choice to pick the best. I saw a lot
of my friends struggling to get through basic questions. I wanted to help but
couldn’t. It was all about charm and persuasion!
By the time I was out of business school, I was equipped
with all the necessary astras – 2
years of Sales & Marketing experience with a Fortune 500, an international
degree, more than my fair share of exposure to the outside world, a wide
open-mind and the realisation that our so called “curriculum” can be deemed
excellent only if we apply it. And so I did. Needless to say, I attended the
most gruelling interview I have had and nailed it. Which is when I started
telling my friends to do the same. And my juniors. Long story short, I did a
small non-lecture but a presentation thingy about the Dos and Donts of attending
interviews and campus placements. So this post is to all you MBA students,
graduates and anybody else who wants to reminisce the time they sat for
interviews – hope it helps! J
I came up with an analogy. What do we do in an interview
ultimately? We market and sell ourselves. Just like it is with products and
services. Organisations come up with strategies, tools, matrices and what not
to make sure that the product/service is desirable even for an alien from Mars.
We, Job seekers, also need these tools, strategies and several other
thingumajigs.
First up, it’s extremely important to differentiate between
selling and marketing. Believe me, I have met many a senior personnel who
believe they are one and the same. Agreed, one complements the other not
necessarily that it means they are one and the same. One of my favourite marketing
profs from B-school used to tell us – “Even if you’ve learnt nothing from my
class, learn this ‘Selling is not Marketing’”. Marketing is all about ensuring
that the product goes off the shelf or that the candidate gets selected for the
job. On the other hand, selling is about ensuring that the product reaches the
shelf or that the candidate gets the interview call. Capice? Let’s move on.
According to an article in the Harvard Business Review
(August 2012), traditional marketing – i.e. advertising, public relations,
branding and corporate communications – has failed. Traditional marketing
(which has become little more than an expensive, very often valueless mass
communications methodology) has failed. As far as mass communications is
concerned not only has it failed, the internet and social media have surpassed
anything the conventional marketing professionals have to offer. Marketing has
been at death’s door for well over a decade. It’s just that marketing
professionals don’t want to recognise the reality!
Marketing
Mix for “YOU”
Traditional
ways of job seaching has gone obsolete for a while now. Now Job Search is all
about Networking, being cheeky, pro-active and all that jazz. Just like
products have a Marketing Mix of 4Ps so do we as Job Seekers.
Product:
You are a brand. If you haven’t made a brand out of yourselves yet, it’s high
time you did. It’s a simple process, identify your USP and the industry you
aspire to be in. Imagine how you would position yourselves to your best
advantage and voila you have Brand “You”.
Promotion:
This includes all the “Tools of the Trade” you would use to promote yourselves
to all those wonderful recruiters fishing for the right candidates. You should always
be equipped with updated resumes and cover letters that you can whip out at a
moment’s notice.
Place:
How are you going to distribute the tools that you have gathered? What are
professional social media platforms like LinkedIn and Glassdoor (amongst many
others) for? Network. Network. Network!!! Find out about the company that you
are applying to, how the organisation is structured, salaries (Yowsa, I know)
and so much more. All of these for free.
Price:
Evaluate yourself. Find out how much you are worth out in the market. If you
are worth a gazillion bucks and you are a 100% confident of delivering
gazillions bucks worth to the company that you wanna be in – go on ahead. Ask
for a gazillion bucks as CTC. If you prove your worth, you would be scooped up
like *snap*
Well
that’s it. Simple, hanh? But requires a lot of practice. I have been there. To
conclude, I would like to add a list of Dos and Donts while facing a recruiter.
Dos
and Donts (In random order)
- Get your BASICS right. If you have the foundation right, you can build the Leaning Tower of Pisa on it. These basics, can be anything from technical to non-technical. You need to learn to learn to be pragmatic in the concepts that you learn. That will be your KO card in your interview.
- Don’t shrug off fine details. You might end up not cracking the interview because your resume had a word mis-spelled. So burn some midnight oil and be a perfectionist!
- DO NOT misuse the word Strategy – absolute NO NO. An MBA graduate is bombarded with this holy word billion times over the course of his college tenure. Often, we misunderstand what it means. I recently had a lengthy “argument” with one of my seniors about the right meaning and to prove my point I had to haul my Strategic Management bible (by Dess, Lumpkin, Eisner and McNamara). He left the service of his company a few days later – a happy man. J
- It’s amazing how mundane our Introduction statements have become. “I am blah blah blah…” Why not spruce it up a bit? Or make it a crisp one? Remember, first impressions are the best impressions and should never be the “last” impression.
- Accept your “ignorance”. As an aspiring professional, you are expected to remain updated but hey, we are homo sapiens and might miss out a thing or two. And if you are caught, accept your mistake and assure that you would review and get back to them with it. And ask questions, legit questions, to recruiters.
- Re-work your resume, make it professional, be elaborate when possible. Word in your USP and highlight how that will add value to the employer if you are chosen. Do not plagiarize. I haven’t really understood the concept of plagiarizing when its comes to resumes. Each resume is mapped to the person it belongs to so there cant be plagiarism. All the same, plagiarism – NO. Recruiters would have seen many tens of resumes to be fooled by the content.
- LinkedIn Profiles, in this day, would be your best face forward. Keep this updated to the dot. It’s a great networking tool and will help you get connected to like minded people. So network, network, NETWORK.
- And last but definitely not the least, please go through your JD – Head through Tail. This will save you from a lot of trouble and give you a pencil sketch of the landscape. I knew someone who joined a firm thinking he was going to be in Recruitment when he was actually going to be a part of HR backend operations. He was a highly demotivated personnel and ended up quitting real soon.
So,
there you go my friends. Awfully sorry, for the long post. I tried to do
justice to what I wanted to convey in as few words as possible. Feel free to
reach out and connect with me if you need any advice or even a pep talk J I am game!
Cheers
and all the best in cracking the interview. Like a friend once said, “It’s an
opportunity to walk in with all-guns blazing like John Rambo.” In the process,
have fun and bag the job.
