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FINDING JOBS
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Printed in India
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FINDING JOBS Searching For The Perfect Career
Bonnie Baabu
EDUCREATION PUBLISHING (Since 2011)
www.educreation.in
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Author bio
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Bonnie is an HR professional as well as an author-
blogger. His key areas of professional interests include
developing & implementing Talent Development
programmes and assisting in leadership-hiring
campaigns. He is also a certified behavioural coach.
Bonnie’s books – Finding jobs and Interview
FAQs– were solely designed as a guide to assist
graduates and experienced job seekers during their job-
search period.
He is the founder & consulting partner of an HR
firm named HIRE42 and also the founder of
www.goboochi.com, a global recruitment through data
solution company.
He is passionate about technology disruptions
within the HR sector.
*****
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Dedication page
W
To mom & dad for their continued love and support
To Alex acha – my mentor, my family
To Unni-Krishnan Nair uncle for encouraging me, to
always start my own business
To Oliver Libutzki, Brian Frost & Chris Cheah for being
great friends in this journey called life
To all job seekers, who are constantly striving and
praying to God that one day job searches would become
as easy as eating a peanut butter sandwich.
*****
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Bonnie Baabu
1
The Opening Note
W
oday professional competition has climbed
up to another notch.
There are plenty of jobs available, and plenty
more job seekers have been added to this
search community daily. Hence, being competent alone
will not cut the ground for you.
You need to be prepared, trained and practiced – all
for that one moment called opportunity.
Remember:
You need that job!
You need to be ready!
CANDIDATE CLASSIFICATION
Before you embark on finding that dream job, it is best
to identify your classification within the candidate
1
T
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FINDING JOBS - Searching For The Perfect Career
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segment. Recruiters usually classify candidates into two
key segments:
Active
Passive
ACTIVE CANDIDATES
Active candidates refer to those candidates who are
actively searching for jobs. This means that you would
be attending multiple interviews, continuously exploring
new opportunities during your job-search period. Most
of the fresh graduates will directly fall under this
categorical segment. There is no harm for a candidate to
be slotted as an active candidate, as 95% of the
candidates sourced and submitted to clients by recruiters
do consist of active candidate profiles.
From entry to mid-manager to few senior manager
vacancies are filled by active candidates.
Recruitment agencies are active within this
segment, and candidates can connect with agencies to
assist them in finding them potential job opportunities.
PASSIVE CANDIDATES
Passive candidates are those who are not actively
looking for jobs. They are content with their current
roles and in most cases, are not open towards discussing
a potential career move at this stage. Recruiters who are
trained to identify and attract passive candidates are
known as head-hunters. Head-hunters are specially
trained recruiters to manage a passive candidate
situation. They, first, identify candidates via cold calling
and other methods because passive candidates are not
actively advertising their contact details nor sharing their
resumes online. Later, they connect with these
candidates and explore the opportunities potentially,
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Bonnie Baabu
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wherein they can represent this candidate to a specific
vacancy or a client, who is genuinely interested in
buying this candidate’s skill sets.
To a greater degree, we can state that the position of
senior manager or C-segment (example: CEO, CFO,
CMO, CTO etc.) are filled by passive candidates.
There is a selective crowd of recruitment firms who
practices headhunting activities, and in most cases, they
would be contacting the candidate for a potential
vacancy and not vice versa.
Hint:
Are you an active or a passive candidate?
Identify which candidate category you belong to before
embarking on your job search journey!
BEGINNING YOUR JOB-SEARCH
JOURNEY – UNDERSTAND, APPLY AND
ATTEND INTERVIEWS
Job boards attract hundreds or even thousands of
candidates for their advertised open vacancies. You may
come across a vacancy that you find very interesting,
remember this same vacancy is viewed by thousands of
other potential candidates, and all of you end up
applying for this one posted vacancy, leading to
hundreds of applicants chasing one open vacancy at any
given time.
With internet coverage spreading across borders,
the competition has just increased or should we say
quadrupled within the job-seekers market. Earlier, you
had hundreds of candidates applying for advertised
vacancies, but today we are counting their numbers in
few thousands and more.
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FINDING JOBS - Searching For The Perfect Career
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This, indeed, puts a lot of pressure on recruiters, as
they tend to be under tremendous pressure essentially
because of the high volume of resumes they receive for
each open-job vacancy.
UNDERSTAND
Integration of an “Applicant tracking system (ATS)” –
Recruiters across the board have begun to segregate
resumes based on skill words and key competencies
which are tagged with the original job description.
Firms world over seem to be working with various
applicant tracking solutions enabling them to sort
through huge volumes of incoming candidate resumes.
These systems are programmed to sort out matching
candidate by means of identifying keywords within a
candidate resume from that of the posted job description.
Those resumes that meet all requirements/set
parameters are segregated from the rest of the candidate
profiles and shared automatically with the original job
poster or the concerned recruiter in charge for managing
this open vacancy.
Hint:
The main objective to deploy an ATS system within an
organization is to segregate the candidate crowd and to
present only the most relevant resumes to the concerned
hiring manager or recruiter of this organization.
APPLY
What candidates need to do? You need to customize
your resume for each job application you send out. You
will also need to match professional keywords/TAG
words from the job description and highlight the same in
your resume profile.
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Bonnie Baabu
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This will keep your resume afloat within the
shortlist category even if your file was to be sorted by an
applicant tracking system (ATS).
Apply more: In the current job market, it is not
enough to share your resume with few top companies.
You need to target as many jobs or open vacancies
possible, but without comprising on the quality of the
job vacancy. (In simple words, do not apply to vacancies
if you don’t have the required skill sets, only apply for
those vacancies that closely describe your professional
ability to perform.)
Quality of job vacancy? By quality of an open job
vacancy, we would be referring to its match-ability ratio
with your own skill/competency levels.
Applying for a job that doesn’t match your skill sets
is a waste of time for you and for the recruiter
shortlisting candidates for this role. Remember the
objective of this exercise is to find the closest matching
job to your current skill levels.
Hence to achieve the same, candidates need to:
1. First identify their key competency skill sets.
You need to know what your strengths are
before you step out into the job market.
2. Research and map out a series of companies
offering jobs with matching skill sets. Identify
companies who are seeking for professionals
such as yourself. Look and you will find.
Once you have completed the above two simple
tasks, it is now time for you to:
Customize your resume for each role that you
are keen to apply for
and later ensure that all your resume
submissions have been successful (you will
eventually get automated messages every time
you have made a successful resume submission
for a job vacancy).
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FINDING JOBS - Searching For The Perfect Career
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ATTEND INTERVIEWS
Being an active job seeker, your primary responsibility
should be focused on lining as many interviews as
possible.
However, you need to ensure that the quality of
vacancies you are applying for is to be considered as the
topmost priority in your agenda. A close match between
the job vacancy and your skill set is what will bring you
closer to your dream role.
Hence as the final step in the process for stepping
closer towards acquiring your dream role, attend as
many potential interviews as possible, give yourself an
opportunity to choose form the best of the jobs and the
best of the employers seeking to hire talented
professionals such as yourself.
*****
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Bonnie Baabu
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Stop Being Invincible
W
You need to be out there in the market.
Select vacancies from the sector/industry which
closely match your skill sets/competency levels.
Apply to these roles specifically.
Don’t segregate between company size or salaries
at this point of time.
Note: Apply based on your skill set. This is the only way
recruiters will be able to identify you as a potential
candidate.
Hint:
Your objective at this point is to break away from the job
seeker tag and to be considered as a potential candidate
for an open vacancy.
2
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THE CONCERN
Being over selective and using excuses, such as – there
are only few companies who are seeking my skill sets,
will not help you in this job search period.
If you could only find three companies who are
currently seeking professional skill sets which you can
relate to, then your best option is to:
Spend more time on research and find more
companies seeking similar skills that match your
abilities.
Reassess your classifications on how you choose
a potential company.
If your choices contained salary, location,
designation as the key factors for shortlisting
potential companies, then tone down your
expectations a tad and redefine your company
classification list. This should automatically
increase your potential company list from three to
a bigger number.
In other words, reassess your priorities for this
job search and see what best fits you for the next
3 to 5 years. Focus on growth opportunities and
not immediate fixes.
Remember:
Apply to as many companies as possible, especially
those that house your area of expertise or skill set.
Attend as many interviews possible, “The more
interviews you attend, the better you keep getting at it”.
GIVE THIS A THOUGHT
You should attend that interview, even if you don’t want
to work for that company. Maybe the salary they are
offering is not that great, their stated designation is not
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Bonnie Baabu
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what you expected or the location is a bit far from where
you are currently staying.
There could be numerous factors that you had
considered before giving this company a miss. I say –
Go for the interview experience, give a stellar
performance and learn from this interview session.
Reassess yourself, give yourself some room for
improvement. Maybe you could come across a factor or
two that could change your mind after this interview.
Note: In case, you are offered a role by this company,
there is no harm in having one more offer option to
select from.
Attend this interview and reassess your performance:
On how you performed in this interview?
If you received an interview feedback at the end
of this interview – was it positive, negative,
neutral?
What did you notice about your interviewers,
were they happy with your performance, was it
visible in their body language?
Did you answer all questions with confidence or
where there few questions that caught you by
surprise?
How would you rate your own body language
during this interview? Where you nervous, very
excited etc.
Rate yourself on your level of confidence? 1
being the least score and 10 being the best.
If you were given one more chance, what could
you have done better during this interview?
Hint:
Deciding to join them or not can be discussed later. But
never miss an opportunity for an interview if one comes
along the way. Just don’t say NO – meet them first,
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listen to feedbacks, assess your performance and only
then decide on your final YES or NO.
*****
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