Special Tips for the Freshers
Even if you have a professional degree from a prestigious institution and are looking for a position at entry level, you need to market yourself effectively to get a good offer. If you are not from a coveted institution your task becomes much harder because a number of top recruiters may not even visit your campus.
Your basic task is of communicating the fact that your skills, school and college education work experience, achievements, projects and extracurricular activities - all add up to make you the right person for the job.You must be able to convince the recruiters that the you are the best for the job.
You need to highlight your achievements whatever they are and project you skills ans strengths in your CV. If you include details of positions and responsibilities you have undertaken in your college life , it will convey a message that you are able & talented.
Don't underestimate the value of your part-time jobs, and your extra curricular activities. These are opportunities to use skills related to the job. They are often more job related than the academic qualification itself.
The skills that you can demonstrate through any project or extracurricular activity include leadership skills, an ability to negotiate, plan and organise. In the absence of any direct organisational experience these add real expose to your CV.
In other words, they helps you to tell them that 'whats sets you aprt from others'and are often the most interesting part in your CV. Be sure to include all projects that you were in either alone or as a team and anything 'extra' you did.
Let usn ow take a look at some of these in detail.
Part time jobs: Normally any interview will include questions on Part time jobs to test whether you understand the industry, the organisation and area of relevance. You are expected to be an expert in the area directly related to your work.
Extracurricular activities: These usually demonstrate interpersonal, communication , coordination and leadership skills. Were you elected to various offices? Did you organise any college festival? Were you instrumental in organising a seminar or a technical event ? Did you contribute to the college magazine and how ? Quite often any projects or extracurricular activities, are the most interesting part of you. If these are presented and defined well these activities can be a useful marketing device to crash land you with the right job, at right time.
Many companies have standardised application forms on the basis of which they shortlist candidates. Typically, the application form may be required to be filled in two or three methods before the interview and would include a statement of purpose. Many a candidate has slipped up in the interview even when all was going well in the interview. It is simply because what he said during the interview was inconsistent with the application form.
Therefore, we would recommend that you keep photocopies of all your completed application forms carefully, especially of the statement of purpose, till the interview.
SEE ALSO : How to prepare an attaractive Curriculum Vitae (CV) ?
