Get Hired- How not to get lost in the resume crowd and to get the job

Are you a dynamic sales professional who has worked in the finance industry for the past 14 years and worked your way up from trainee to Regional Manager? Are you an IT professional who would love to get into a start up kind of environment to use your 15 years experience to build a company as an intrepreneur? Are you looking for a job change, and felt that monster.com would be the right place to start?

Well, guess what. A million other people had the same bright idea.

Have you ever been to the monster/ naukri/ jobsahead-s of the world? As consultants we have. And if I am looking a for a dynamic sales manager for a leading bank to handle regional level sales- chances are that I might find you but the chances are much higher that I never will. All those "highlighted" or "premier" profiles included.

If you have something unique to offer, if you value your experience, then, in a pile of resumes is the last place where yours should be. By all means, post your profile (At senior levels, its a different story altogether, we will tackle that in a later post) but there are ways to get a much better result for your job search efforts.

Head hunt the Head hunter: If you are at mid management level waiting for your next big break, then search out those who will be able to give you the break. There are the placement agencies who usually have all levels of jobs at most companies. There are some specialised agencies who deal with particular segments, like there are some firms who deal only with insurance companies. There are executive search firms who deal with senior level assignments. The last usually have fewer options, but usually they have the best options and would deal with your resume in the most professional manner.

Where will you find them? Usually a google search will suffice. Otherwise, look out for editorial articles in business papers and job supplements. They have quotes from consultants and search company managers and heads. Find them out on the net, call into their offices and ask to talk to a consultant in their office. Sometimes a company will have consultants who are experts in a particular industry. But often any consultant will help you out at this step, either by pointing you to the right person or asking about your details.

Choose how many places you would like to send your profile: If you are desperate to move, I would suggest choose the top 10 consulting firms from every metro city, especially if location is not a constraint. If you are keen on any city, target the top 10 firms from that city. If you are taking it slow, 2-3 consulting firms, the best available in the cities, should be targeted. It is wise not to limit yourself to one or two consulting firms overall. No firm would have their finger on the pulse of every good company in any industry out there.

Be clear in your communication: It is important for the consultant to immediately know the following: your industry, number of years of experience, designation, company, city, age, more often than not your ctc, and what you are looking for. So if you are a Regional Head of Sales in ABCD Bank, XYZ division, in Chennai, with 12 years experience at 16 lakhs ctc per annum, and you are looking for a bank or any financial institution at a national role which will give you required growth in career and ctc, and you can move to any metro city: all this needs to be mentioned.

You should be asked to send in your profile. Please mention that it needs to be confidential and any further action on your profile needs to be taken with your go ahead only. Give all details on your profile as to your requirements (location, role, CTC) in the very beginning in a short note addressed to the consultant. For eg: if you dont want to go to Delhi, please mention in on the profile itself. That makes it much easier to remember you and chances of your being contacted for a Delhi job are minimised. If you dont have any such hassle, dont mention anything. If you have a limited period choice, mention the time period. Eg: "Cant move out of Chennai till 2013. After that, location not an issue." Always mention date in your profile.

Follow up, Follow up, Follow up: You need the job. You need to be seen, to be remembered. The buzz word here is "top of mind recall". Whenever I have a finance opening, I should think of you. The trick is to keep yourself in the mind of the consultant without becoming irritating. I would suggest calling weekly at the beginning and then sending weekly mails and calling up occasionally. Hopefully, you wont have to wait for that long, but the average time to get interviews after one starts searching aggressively is 3-4 months. So stay in the "top of mind" till then.

Be honest with your consultant: The three people you should hide nothing from: Your doctor, your lawyer and your consultant. Complete honesty is not just advisable for your benefit, it is also necessary for the consultant to fight on your behalf. Believe me, your consultant would love it if you got the job. She gets the bonus on your joining. Make friends with her and she will fight your case for your dream job, even if you took a two year break in between to go see the world!!

Ensure that your profile is treated with due respect: Make sure that you will be asked and consulted with before your profile is sent to any company. Ensure that full confidentiality will be maintained. You dont want your boss finding out about your job search. If you are not sent the Job Description and company details in a mail after the consultant calls, drop the consulting firm from your list. It is your career on the line, and any good consultant would respect that more than anything else.

So dont just wait for some random person to catch you on the internet. Get out there and start making your own opportunities.

What is the age for entrepreneurship- 25 or 45?

Mark Zuckerberg started Facebook at age 19, Larry Page and Sergey Brin started Google when they were both 23. But the image of the young entrepreneur is just that... an image, as new research suggests. Turns out, the average founder of a high tech start up is not a brash brilliant young-un, but a mature 40- something.

Vivek Wadhwa is a Duke University scholar who studied 549 technology ventures. It turns out that a 40 year old engineer or businessman with family is just at the right age to get tired of working for another company and starting off on their own. And they have better success rates too. They are the ones who have the industry and domain knowledge in the fields they are starting off in. They also have a wide network which they can put to good use, including financial support and capital.

This is from Time magazine which reported some time back that in US, the highest rate of entrepreneurship has shifted to the 55- 64 age group, with people above 55 almost twice as likely to found successful companies than people in the age group of 20- 34.

In India, a study by National Knowledge Commission, done among 155 entrepreneurs had one fourth under the age of 35. The median age at which they became entrepreneurs was 27. Usually in US as in India, older entrepreneurs deal with complicated technological companies in IT hardware, biotechnology, heavy engineering or energy. Whereas younger entrepreneurs will have tech start ups with hugely popular software or hot apps or other easy to understand products. In the Indian study ‘Idea-driven’ motivators were found to be more significant for entrepreneurs above the age of 35 and exert a minimal influence on those below 35. Further, ‘market opportunity’ was a far significant motivating factor for the below-35 age-group compared to those above that age.

There is a huge advantage due to this for our rapidly ageing demographic. Whereas across the world the population is ageing, India's population is still relatively young. (50% of its population below the age of 25 and more than 65% hovers below the age of 35. It is expected that, in 2020, the average age of an Indian will be 29 years, compared to 37 for China, 39 in USA, 45 in European Union and 48 for Japan) And that means, as this generation ages, innovation will increase and hopefully, there is likely to be a boom in entrepreneurship and business in this country in the next 10-30 years.