Don’t let your job search collapse

In any sphere of activity, if the working methodology is contravened, everything goes to wrack and ruin - like dominoes if one amongst a chain of them is pulled out. Can you afford to flout any stage of your job search?

Any job search ought to be having the following five phases with each one of them being equally important and contingent on the others:

Preparation to sell oneself

  The success of your job search is contingent on the groundwork you do. To that extent, preparation is presumably the most significant constituent of any job hunt effort. It should include the following elements:

·   Capabilities & vulnerabilities: You need to be well aware of what you are, what you are cut out for and what you are weak at. What are your penchants? Knowing them is an extremely important facet and the earlier one gets to identify them, the better it will be for evident reasons.

·   Career roadmap:   You need to be clear about how you intend to move forward in your career. This entails also what you want to attain and at what stage in your life.

·   Probable employers:  After having done the above, you ought to be short-listing organizations that you would be willing to join. Evidently, your choice would be prompted by a host of factors, notable ones being repute, stability and prospects. Since different companies have varying workplace imperatives, you have to decide what you want in life and the degree of compromise you are willing to make.

·   Posturing for employment:  This implies putting yourself for sale. The process entails image projection so that the attention of recruiters is focused on you. On your own, you may not be able achieve much; your networking efforts will stand you in good stead.  

Persuasive cover letter

If you are confident that all your preparations are in place, the next step is to start drafting your cover letters. The secret to a good cover letter lies in ensuring the following:

·   Address:   The letter should be addressed to a person by name rather than appointment.

·   Contents:  The letter should be so drafted that the first paragraph stands out and catches the notice of the addressee. In addition, the contents should manifest buoyancy. While following the principle of brevity, all your major accomplishments as distinct from duties performed should be highlighted. In other words, make the letter acceptable at first sight itself.  

Perfect resume

A resume seeks to explain what you have done so far and how. It tells the other person about your familiarity with and understanding of various issues. It also illustrates your expertise. You should not think of yourself as more than merchandise that a willing employer would be ready to pay for; to that extent, a resume’s important attributes are:

·   Sync:  It should unambiguously be in harmony with your overall personality, aptitude and qualifications.

·   Contact details:  The resume should clearly mention your contact information; this would facilitate a prospective employer to get in touch with you at the first opportunity.

·   Expertise:   Inter alia, a resume should make your proficiency, competence, aptitude and strong-points stand out.

·   Spotlight:  Your resume should not be dwelling on your charter of duties and assigned responsibilities. On the contrary, it should be highlighting your academic and professional successes.

·   Conciseness:   If you are a fresher, a one-page resume should suffice. In respect of anybody else, not more than two pages are recommended. Remember that if it is long, chances are that the person reading it may miss out on your key attributes.

Facing the interview

You can be the most reclusive person by temperament; nevertheless the skill of faring well in an interview can come to you without difficulty. What it involves is gaining knowledge of some fundamental tenets and living out with them. A few rudimentary truths about an interview are:

·   Initial impact:  The first impression is always the last impression. The interviewer would have made a mental pronouncement about you in the initial three minutes itself; what follows subsequently is just a procedure. Inter alia, your interpersonal skills and dressing sense will always have an influence, the better they are, the better you will gel.

·   Having hold:  You ought to be trying to be in command of the pace and course of the interview. This implies that you should be making moves and not simply reacting. You should have prepared your questions well for any clarifications that you may like to seek.  

·   Objective: You should not lose sight of your aim – that you are merchandise being offered for sale. Reticence and diffidence may not pay.

Monitoring & quest

Having a timely system of follow-up is as significant and crucial as the other dominoes. Following-up and following-through comprises:

·   Responses:   You should be taking the initiative to establish contact with employers and seeking meetings or interviews. If you happen to receive messages, responding to them via post, e mail or telephone should invariably be done. Likewise, you should never falter in intimating your decision to accept or decline offers.

·   Gratitude:  Expressing thanks to any or everybody who has been of assistance is always in good taste. You never know that the same person can be of immense value subsequently.

A dedicated approach, sincerity of purpose and high degree of determination is essential to be maintained during all the five phases of a job search. Their importance as dwelt upon above notwithstanding, the fact needs to be understood that mental and physical feebleness at any stage will be a harbinger of fiasco and disappointment.  

Clutching career success

Is your career success deluding you? Have you been holding your horses for long hoping that you will no more be a dark horse in your career? Are you hopeful of your career vision proving true?

As far as career success is concerned, you invariably stand to gain if you continue endeavouring hard trying to attain it. Sitting idle and passing time hoping that will success will strike you some day or the other will serve no purpose.

How do people attain success? What are those qualities that facilitate success? Nearly all successful men and women possess extraordinary ambition and motivation. They are unusually assertive and in no doubt about themselves. And of course, they invariably have the ability to make lots and lots of money.

Rather than trying to be like successful people, we have a tendency to presuppose that they have influence exerted by people who matter. We sometimes also imagine that Lady Luck simply smiles on them by chance. The important point missed out by us is that they grappled with odds to reach wherever they reached. It is only their success that is noticed by us and we aspire to be where they are and that too immediately.

Career success kisses the feet of all those who seek it sincerely and put themselves out to achieve it. The procedure is simple and not plagued with any obscurity. What you need to do is to go along some simple actions; if you digress from them, rest assured that your wait will be longer. You can clutch career success by sticking to the following tenets:

·   Be assured that you will taste success:

Self-assurance is an extremely vital factor, though it is disregarded frequently. You need to deem that the likelihood of success coming your way is indeed very high. It is a known fact that a high degree of steadfastness with regard to objectives is the prime causative factor for career success. So the critical question is how can you boost these dispositions? The best way to do so is by an honestly reducing to writing your conception and impression of a perfect, rather ultimate career and life. You should be able to generate a portrait that can be glared at without any difficulty.

What is the image that you have created? Does it stir you up? Does it motivate you? Remember that trust and credence are attributes that are not externally impelled but are intrinsic to all individuals; and hence you will be required to excavate and bring them to light quite frequently.  

·   Get to the bottom of the truth:

The moment you gain self-assuredness, you need to support it with actuality and reality. You will need to discern definite actions that you are required to undertake to make certain that the portrait you created is infused with authenticity.

An illustration will make the matter easy to understand. Suppose you like to shift your focus to another realm altogether. Under such circumstances, what are your information requirements? Do you need to undergo an orientation programme? Will such an orientation schedule be cost-effective and more importantly, does your budget allow such an expenditure? If you mobilize your resources and invest them in your new efforts, what are the chances that your money will multiply? Or, is it that you do not bother about material assets but desire to lead a better life by all standards? Answers to all such questions will need to be pragmatically found and it will be only then that you will be fully geared up to do something.

·   Devote yourself to success:

Successful people always believe in their ambitions and aspirations. They are steadfast as far as their objectives are concerned. Assertions made by them are bold and unambiguous. Their devotion manifests their resoluteness. You need to be equally tenacious.

It is a fact that no man likes to pledge or enter into something that is binding. Therefore, it is essential that you shun all apprehensions and be responsive to all opportunities that come your way; there is no way that something superior will drift away from you. The only thing that will drift away from you will be bewilderment and uncertainty. And that will serve to impel you to work with greater enthusiasm.

·   Plan a line of action:

Your devotion now established, you need to figure out the modus operandi for attaining success. Since you have already got to the bottom of the truth and gathered lot of information in the process, guidance should come automatically to you. Whatever line of action you formulate, it should be split into smaller plans intended to be put into action in phases.

Besides the above, you also need to accord precedence to various issues and acquiesce to only those aspects that are likely to place you nearer to the success that you seek. It is futile wasting time on frivolous matters. There will be situations when your focus will get blurred, but since you have your line of action in black and white, you can make use of it to get back on rails.  

·   No looking back:

The likelihood of occasional lethargy creeping in or you losing out on the prospects of success cannot be discounted. There is nothing unusual in such feelings surfacing. The road to success cannot be expected to be absolutely smooth; there will be potholes making your ride a bumpy one. But if you stop, success will delude you all the more. You have to be up and going.

You will have reservations and qualms, but what is important is to keep acting all along. Let your actions be small and eventually they will add up to larger ones. After all, it is the small drops of water that make the mighty ocean and the small grains of sand that make the pleasant land.  

 

Being happy at Work

Lovely, Monday again! Alas, Monday again! One of these exclamations is invariably made as Sunday gives way to a new week. Going by the clock, we spend over ten hours a day at the workplace. Hence these remarks manifest our happiness or unhappiness during those ten hours.

What is it that makes a person feel happy at work? How can an unhappy employee be set apart from a happy one? Is the matter related to good management policies or is it all about good working relationships? Or is the issue a personal perception?

Workplace happiness implies taking pleasure in and deriving pleasure from every activity indulged in there. And pleasure implies contentment and delight. What is it that makes up happiness at workplace? And how can one be in high spirits there? An attempt has been made to find the answers in the succeeding paragraphs.

Statistics indicate that there is a twenty per cent lot that feels perennially miserable at workplace. Encouragingly, there is the eighty per cent majority that is not unhappy. Astonishingly though, pay packets or work passion have very little contribution towards attaining workplace happiness.

But how does one do all this? Here are some ways:

·  The first step forward

It should be taken out with an optimistic and affirmative frame of mind. Remember that contentment is a mental condition; in fact it manifests a person’s approach to life as a whole and mindset with all possible ramifications. Quite a few employees, including otherwise happy ones do not even appreciate that workplace happiness is entirely contingent on individual levels of inspiration and optimism with regard to one’s job or work. This is an undeniable fact.

The primary means to achieve happiness at work is by discarding issues that usher in unhappiness and discontent. An increased concentration on agreeable and pleasant facets does work wonders. A continual focus on disapproving and downbeat features may apparently be effortless and undemanding. But coming together with cheery issues is the thorniest aspect that generally plagues workplaces and the environment of happiness therein.

The fact is that happiness is a point of view and way of behaving. The effort that goes in to make one happy or unhappy is just the same.

·   Self-confrontation

  There is nothing better than being in control of one’s own progress. To be able to do that, one should contest and face up to oneself instead of placing reliance on external assistance and impetus. When people leave a job to take up another elsewhere, the major factor responsible for such an act is plain ennui. Therefore, isn’t it worthwhile to constantly identify fresh issues to be contested and endeavoured?

It should be noted that in order to be happy, one’s objectives and career roadmap should be in conformity with the overall personality. The feelings of weightiness and excellence that are experienced when one hold the reins are indeed intense; and the intensity increases when a work is accomplished.

No road will be devoid of bumps and should impediments be encountered, falling back on the line manager is recommended. However, to hope that one can succeed with someone else at the steering wheel is an exercise in pointlessness. It is remaining in high spirits all along that matters most.

·   Have good company 

It helps and pays. The assurance of happiness is guaranteed when there is someone to talk to and interact with, more so if they are workplace colleagues.

One should talk to as many people as possible, strike acquaintances and build long-lasting relationships. Interactions will facilitate new perceptions and prospects – both will in turn facilitate maintenance of the desired focus and zeal towards work. 

The fact is that a realization that there is somebody who can be banked upon and its reciprocity make the time spent at a workplace an exciting and exuberating experience. But, one has to guard against tittle-tattle and scandal-mongering. Disgruntled people should be avoided because they tend to breed negativity. 

·   Finish all assignments:

There is nothing that is impossible. So, all assignments should be finished, howsoever difficult they may appear or unpleasant they may seem. It when the going gets tough that the tough get going. At the end of the day, the feeling of triumph will be immense and that on its own will serve to impel one to move forward.

While at assignments, it is important to be on the lookout for newer techniques and modern methods so that the knowledge base is widened. According priority to tasks and then completing them is the mantra of success and happiness.

·   A breather is essential:

Star gazing will not take anybody anywhere. If there is no work, it is no point pretending to be busy. A break, and a short one at that, can turn out to be very stimulating and uplifting. A minor exercise intended to reduce anxiety undertaken periodically can be extremely helpful in staying happy at work. One should also avail leave benefits to rejuvenate and for rest and recoup.

          It is an amiable environment with affable and accommodating contemporaries and seniors alike that are responsible for bringing about the much needed cheerfulness, delight and exhilaration at any workplace. Therefore, it is of utmost importance to remain motivated and promote own work and workplace happiness.