Going to a career fair

Job fairs can be really superb chances to get to know about prevailing job markets and interacting with people from establishments out to recruit men and women. But before you decide to attend one, you should do your homework well to create that excellent impression. After all, the first impression does matter.

Here are some guidelines that will help you gather vital information, establish contacts and send upbeat signals to recruiters at job fairs:

·   Research data:  Prior to attending a job fair, you should try and gather as much information about those sponsoring or coordinating the event; internet is perhaps the best tool for the same. You will get to know the participating companies and by visiting their web sites, you will be better informed and better armed. Scan those that appeal to you in detail and learn about their plans and lineups as also people working in them who you possibly are acquainted with. If you make notes, you will be able to raise judicious queries with the staff manning the booths.

·   Prioritize companies:   Having got to know details of participating companies, you could well identify those amongst them that interest you. Make it a point to visit their stalls; this will help you to not wile away your precious time and remain on the ball. It will manifest your self-assurance and cool, besides indicating that you know what you seek. In case you simply saunter around the venue, you will be discerned as one sans any comprehension. A point to note is that you should not carry your resumes in bulk with you but only a few intended for some preferred companies to whom you intend applying. The resumes should be apt and pertinent to the posts that you aspire for, else they will gather dust.

·   Avoid bragging:  If you portray an ‘I know everything’ attitude and display an undue confidence about your expertise, your reliability rating will take a beating. Companies invariably want to recruit knowledgeable and proficient people who will fit well in their team and make useful contributions. You should be positive in your outlook and display true enthusiasm to create a good impact. Whatever you are briefed about should be listened attentively and genuine doubts clarified. Simple attendance with no participation also sends wrong signals. The crux of the point is that you need to be positive, enthusiastic and interested during your presence at any booth.

·   Be truthful:  At a stall, a company agent could well seek to know your career inclinations. Your response should be deliberate and given with due contemplation. It is likely that you may not have decided on your career objectives, but definitely your interests can be spelt out. You should be weighing up your principles and impelling factors and based on them, express your views in a matter-of-fact and polite manner. Remember that rarely will one be recruited at a fair; the aim of organizers always is publicity and dissemination of information. Of course, hiring is also an agenda, for which, a truthful approach will pay dividends.

·   Manage time:  You may not be only person around at the career fair or at a particular stall. There will be others like you who will have to be attended to. Therefore, hanging around at a particular stall is not recommended. Company representatives have several issues to deal and perhaps will not be in a position to devote more than some time to each candidate. It is the usefulness derived from those few minutes that matters, so your stay should be brief and your conversation concise.

·   Attend listings:   There could be audio-visual presentations, panel discussions and special briefings on general subjects like tips on drafting resumes, interview processes or presentation skill. These would be dovetailed into the daily schedule and listed in brochures. Attending these programmes on the sidelines of the career fair will help you in your job hunt and also strengthen your networking through a focused approach.

·   Remember people:   At a booth, company agents may or may not wear name tabs. Some perhaps may introduce themselves, however, there is nothing wrong in requesting for the same. You can even request for a business card, but it is important to make a brief note on it to facilitate that the name does not slip out of your mind subsequently. Before leaving a booth, make certain that you thank the company representative by his name. Subsequently, but not later than one day, a thank you email should be sent; should you have any elucidations to seek, the same could be sought in the email. Remember that by doing do, you are initiating a contact link which will in some way or the other serve to canvass your case.

·   Interact with equals:   It is not that company agents are the only well-informed people at a career fair. There are many others like you and hailing from diverse denominations with plethora of experience to their credit. You must interact them and make friends with them because in the long run some amongst them could prove to be of immense help in your hunt. An important point to note is that all conversations have to be courteous; butting in will imply shrinking from propriety.

It should be remembered that establishment of ties and networking are important factors for consideration for any job hunter. If recruiters leave the venue remembering your name, there is every possibility that you too will spare no effort to maintain contacts with them.

Mere attendance at a career fair is not enough. You need to be well-informed about companies and organizations so that you can talk sensibly and not grope in the dark. And when you talk about yourself, make certain that you maintain your self-confidence and do not deviate from established norms of modesty. If you follow the above tips, your presence will be notable; what will follow will be in your favour.

Help your child on to an apt career path

“The greatest gifts you can give your children are the roots of responsibility and the wings of independence.”

------ Denis Waitley

This piece is for parents of budding school students.

The process of career planning has several components – making a career choice is one of them. A career plan made early in life to facilitate going on the best career path is a significant facet of one’s life and parents can make useful contributions by way of guidance. Be it helping your child to select subjects in college or deciding on a college to get admitted to, parents can help their child to achieve whatever he actually seeks. It is indeed a privilege to be able to facilitate your child to excel in whichever sphere of activity he yearns to join.

There is no denying the fact that it is a long way to go from teenage the career choice phase. However, teenage is perhaps the most appropriate stage to commence formulation of a career plan. In this context, self-evaluation and comprehension of who an individual is, are fundamentally very important, because it is here that personality traits are discerned. The facilities for such tests are available at various career counseling centres; they can even be taken online. .

Having determined personality traits, the next step is to match them with objectives and aspirations. This will help determine various career paths obtainable. Once career paths are identified, they need to be critically examined for future prospects – remuneration factors, promotion avenues, job content and risks involved to name a few. In addition, the place of work and stipulations on personal and community life are also important and warrant active contemplation.

Your child will exercise his choice for a career perhaps a couple of years later in life, but having advance information on alternatives existing will definitely help in opting for superior preferences. It is therefore, pertinent that parents arm themselves with maximum knowledge so that their child can look much ahead of conventional and mundane careers or professions. Quite a number of young men and women land up in jobs that are not their cup of tea – all because that they were ignorant of alternative available to the.

So, whenever you broach the subject to your child, it is imperative that you stick to some “Dos & Don’ts”. Inter alia, these are:

·   Make the most of your network to help your child be face to face with specialists in spheres that he considers stimulating. Even if it amounts to spending an odd day at a workplace, the effort is worth it because the child having seen things will exercise a more clued-up option subsequently.

·   You should be well-aware of the person with whom your child is in contact with; a wrong person will not be able to put things in the correct perspective. In the process, your child will end up making a wrong career choice.

·   Desisting from imposing your own schemes and designs on the child.

·   Refrain from indulging in discouraging or downbeat remarks that may impede a child’s preference.

As a parent, you need to adopt a three-pronged approach and help your child in the following:

·   Conduct self-assessment:   You can assist your child do this by a horde of actions, some vital ones being:

ü  Having a heart to heart talk about what he wants to do in life and his aspirations.

ü  Helping him identifying aspects that interest him and he loves to pursue in his leisure or those he despises.

ü  Assisting him in categorizing aspects that he is proficient in and derives pleasure from indulging in them.

ü  Helping him undergo a couple of self-assessment tests, be they online or in career counseling centres.  

ü  Helping your child record and reduce to writing various things that others opine that he excels in.

ü  Interacting with his teachers for an independent evaluation of his inclinations and propensities.

ü  Having a frank discussion with him on his priorities. Eg, remuneration, status, work timings, work environment and type of schedule, etc. these will help identify what he rates high and seeks to accomplish in his life.

·   Survey alternatives:  With the objective of rendering access to various career alternatives, this will help your child understand them without much trouble. His expansive field of curiosity can be catalogued based on his attributes, inclinations and desires. From this catalogued information, you can help your child narrow down to select few options. Needless to say, this will entail extensive liaison and use of internet; for each option so narrowed down, the following will also have to be categorized:

ü  Basic qualitative requirements and distinctive expertise.

ü  Charter of duties, work schedule, touring requirements, places of posting and promotional or diversification avenues.

ü  Expenses involved, if any.

ü  Inherent risk and job security considerations to include rivalries and struggle involved.

ü  Considered opinions of others.

ü  Principles and standards required to be adhered to including participation by family.

ü  Characteristic personality traits identified.

·   Hands-on experience: It is essential that your child acquires information pertaining to at least six appropriate career spheres. He should be fairly conversant with what they entail, particularly the demands that they impose. You can be of immense help to him if you are able to afford him opportunities to gain personal, realistic and actual familiarity about them. This can be made possible if you are able to do the following:

ü  Motivate your child to pursue hobbies and pursuits outside his academic schedule.

ü  Take him on a trip to a concerned facility like a factory or any other establishment.

ü  Make available photographs and video clippings about relevant career fields.

ü  Arrange for job silhouetting for your child by letting him go through the routine of a person in a particular career arena.

ü  Help him take up a vacation job, even if it entails no remuneration.

It is possible thus for your child to get a good and practical exposure to the nuances of various career options, even while he is at school. Should he come to a conclusion to discard any of them based on the familiarity gained by him, remember that this is also a career option exercised and that you need to go along with it. The intended objective of your efforts is to afford to your child to all possible career options so that he determines what is apt and what is not for him.

As a parent, it is essential that you edify your child on the importance of networking and drafting his curriculum vitae. You must emphasize the need to maintain a diary of people your child meets along with his impressions about them. You also need to guide him to prepare his resume; an outline can be provided to him, which, he can complete and progressively refine. These will help him find a good placement in his later years.

Get out of that muddle you created at work

There will be many occasions when you land up in a burrow at work. While some keep going ahead in the dark, there are some who jiggle and joggle and manage to get out. In their perception, perhaps doing so is a good option. Needless to say, getting out of the burrow is always accompanied by a boom or a thud.

Though not a management argot, there is something that could be termed as the ‘burrow premise’. It is an extremely apt description of getting out of a mess that you may have landed in; and it is, “Stop burrowing if you don’t want to go deeper and get trapped”.

          Whenever you get an impression that you are in a burrow at work, there is always a tendency to smoothen out everything. You have a propensity to get agitated and disturb each and every thing. You create an immense splatter with a momentous feat that perhaps is considered an excellent initiative. Regrettably though, it is rather not unusual for most people to land up in circumstances or state of affairs that perhaps they never ever thought they would be in. Why? They burrowed and got entrapped in the burrow. Something that was the beginning of a fine initiative gradually transformed into a frightening issue; the fright made things worse for them.

            Have you ever noticed a dog trying to dig a hole in sand? The bigger the hole he is able to dig, the more he attempts to dig. Similarly, when people land up in fissure-like situations, they develop an increased tendency to create bigger messes for themselves. Why is it so? Is it because of that murky, self-satisfying, unintentional and subliminal foresight that shows us the way to our cravings for annihilation of oneself? Something like committing harakiri? There are occasions when we do flourish at the instance of burrows.

It is unfathomably cavernous to inter your career. A large majority of people dig themselves in burrows and land up in embarrassing situations due to various reasons, mostly a mishmash of some and notable ones being:

·  Undue assertiveness:  You become extremely obsessive, to an extent even fanatical. You become too difficult or try to do more than what you are able to. You take on responsibilities that you are not competent to handle. It is no point taking on situations that you cannot master. Rather than going to the extremes, it is always better to keep your nose to the ground stone.

·  Excessive hope: A strong mind always hopes and always has cause to hope. But then, excessive hopes are dreadful things because you make commitments that you will never be able to fulfill. Moreover, you also get to indulge in self-petting lies.

·   Unwarranted self-interest:  Egotism is the anesthetic that dulls the pain of stupidity. It is an art of seeing in your own self what others cannot see. If you are self-centred or arrogant, you are more likely to indulge in trivial and diplomatic untruths to make impressions or uphold them. In fact, you would be thus protecting your ego.  

·   Excess independence:  This implies having the power to choose, respond and change. But it has to be within the framework of existing rules and regulations. Insisting on going one’s own way, especially at var1ance with set norms eventually proves detrimental.

·   Terrible wariness:   The secret of a successful career is to find that secret. But you cannot be secretive about it. Being terribly cagey, whether for good or bad, is unlikely to pay any dividends for understandable reasons. You can well get caught for doing something that you never made it known to anybody; your hidden aims could get exposed.

·   Poor communication skills:   The essence of a successful lies in your ability to articulate what you are doing, to be clear about it, and to stick to it is, To be able to do that, you have to be lucidly communicative and eloquently expressive. If you lack this, there is every possibility that you will be misunderstood and misinterpreted. 

            The above reasons land you in a mess alright, but when you attempt to throw a veil of secrecy over your mistakes, difficulties multiply. Or if you try to hastily resolve a slip-up or attempt to bypass others to get into lead positions, you will find that the mess that you will land up in will be more brutal and rigorous. Three qualities, if you have them in you, will definitely lead you into a deep burrow; these are:

·   Dishonesty:  They say that anything is better than lies and deceit. You could be generally seen as a person of integrity, however, one single act of deceit can destroy your whole reputation. You should remember what the Bible teaches – the bread of deceit is sweet to a man, but subsequently his mouth gets filled with gravel. 

·   Unexpressiveness:  You could be deliberately not wanting to divulge something or even if it is not so, you are unable to put across your point of view. Any problem, whether big or small at any place always seems to start with bad communications; they invariably leave you with less room to grow.

·   Zeal:   You could be fine as an individual and have the inspiration to work. But you have a self-image, a sense of self and an opinion of yourself. You want to guard your self-worth and self-esteem and while doing so, you have a tendency to rush. The results could be contrary because great haste invariably makes great waste.

So what should you be doing?

You should be transparent in your approach; this will prevent worries related to minor slipups or deviations. The tendency to go out of one’s way to impress others should be curbed. And last but not the least, never ever let your ego accompany you at work; it will be the very cause of your downfall. What you should be subscribing to is a commitment to be honest and frank in all your dealings. Remember that honest people do not hide their actions; they do not become liabilities for themselves or the company they work in.

Author your own career success story

           

“The person who gets the farthest is generally the one who is willing to do and dare. The sure-thing boat never gets far from shore.”

                                                                                    ----- Dale Carnegie

Everybody ponders over success stories of others with some element of jealousy. Everybody covets that propitious moment when dreams transform into actualities. Life, with all its ups and downs has an element of luck in it; that is precisely why everybody who runs after it cannot seize it. And those who do so are seen as successful. 

            If you have to be successful, you ought to make a resolution to be so and make sincere efforts for it. Men and women who genuinely want to taste success resort to individual preferences that are in consonance with their fervour, objectives and ability to work in hostile environments. They smash restrictive ideas and acknowledge that they have options.

You have to grant yourself approval and readiness to take necessary steps to attain your objectives. Subsequently, when you generate favourable circumstances for yourself, you will be able to make the most of them.

            Fortune favours the brave, so they say. But it also goes with those who gear up to embrace it. And that is best done by emulating successful people; you will thus write your own fate. All successful people have four common attributes that draws success towards them. At first sight, these qualities smack of passive acquiescence, but that is what it is.

Boldness

You have to be confident, you have to be venturesome. You have to be intrepid, you have to be bold. And all these qualities entail taking risks. It is something like jumping off a cliff and building your wings on the way down. What happens if the wings do not flap? Therefore, the need is also to have at hand crisis management plans to address the consequences that follow.

Most people prefer to operate in a zero error environment and take cautious decisions. On the other hand, the venturesome lot takes risks and cogitates on the outcome of their decisions, which is favorable most of the times. What do you do?

·  Do not presuppose:  Postulations invariably result in poor decisions. No successful person will ever give in to risk unless there are truth-centred prompting factors. You should always steer clear of conjectures and suppositions.

·  Appreciate probabilities:  A forwarding-looking person endeavours to prognosticate the prospects of positive and negative results and ruminates over actions that boost the former and trim down the latter. You can take risks only when things are perceived as favourable.  

·  Identify impelling measures: A decision can be risky alright, but prompt actions to reduce the risk factor should be taken. You need a big information base, but how do you get it? How much can be done right away to get going? The answers to these questions will throw light on upbeat measures that boost results optimistically.   

·  Evaluate risk:  It is human tendency to let others lead or refrain from participation when there is any risk involved. Like all successful people, you should evaluate first and then take a decision. If some sense prompts you to refrain from going ahead, it should invariably be an instantaneous decision to the contrary. Your foremost consideration should be whether taking a dicey decision is at all an option.

Sanguinity

Every successful individual advises on the need to have a positive disposition as it offers potency to excel. An outlook that is positive is brought about by positive settings, both within and outside. You must keep company with positive people, tell yourself again and again of your abilities and excel in your inner self-talk. A single negative contemplation can prove highly detrimental because it will tend to get entrenched in your subconscious mind and weaken your efforts. If you are positive, people will automatically get attracted to you. 

How do you generate a positive atmosphere? You may indulge in any noble pursuit that makes you feel good so that you are able to sway and inspire things around you. Compassion and helpfulness are powerful tools to craft positive surroundings. But, you cannot allow others to have the better of you; in fact your positive outlook will serve to overwhelm those who harbour envy against you.

Minimalism

Like politicians, people who complicate things do it for vested interests. Naturally, such people do not move up in their careers. The fact is that simplifying things is not really simple, but complicating them is. Making things less complicated facilitates your good luck. How can you make simplicity in your dealings count?

·  Be rational:  You should never inflict impracticable hopes on anybody. Deadlines, if assigned should be realizable. All tasks being given to others, even if they are trials of test should be viable and principled; they should be seen as manifesting your character. You should seek an answer from yourself if you can survive with the severest consequences of your demands.

·  Know others:  You should try to comprehend what the other person means; disregarding your own to-do list will help you gauge what he feels about you. A successful person invariably sees everything around him with not peripheral but an external dimension. You should   assess each action from the point of view of a third person; hanging your sense of self on the peg will be a big facilitator.

·  Act & not yearn:  Cheerfulness and buoyancy is brought about by optimism, but not by themselves alone. You have to do something and be active rather than simply hoping that something will take place. Your decisions cannot be based on pipedreams, but should be arrived at only on the basis of tangible proof, previous patterns or what you have in hand. 

In any activity or group, there are two constituents – the few vital and the many inconsequential. It is the former that makes things happen, however the contributions of the latter cannot be discounted. The most prolific facets of any issue ought to be your hub and the others could be delegated; entrustment will lead to you focusing on crucial issues. Your originality and ingenuity will of course matter!

The final word

If you are not willing to risk the usual, you will have to settle for the ordinary. Trust because you are willing to accept the risk, not because it’s safe or certain. And succeed, you will!