Top 10 career resolutions for 2014!

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The year will pass in a few hours from now, and many people might be glad that it has passed. It has been a tough year for many. And most will wake up tomorrow, full of hope and renewed vigour to begin the year on a high note.

Some of us make our own resolutions for the New Year! So what are your resolutions for your career and your job search for 2014?

Here's a list of 10 resolutions that you could refer to, to help you through your job-search in 2014 :

1. Set daily goals

• Make 2 new contacts directly or through existing contacts
• Make a list of target companies and find one contact in any of your target companies
• Do something related to the new trends in your industry - read an article (not just the news); speak to someone in the industry about some recent trends/ developments; have a point of view

2. Do a self-assessment

• do an honest self-assessment of your achievements, setbacks, gaps, etc.
• write down your personal assessment and fine-tune it over time
• ask about 4-5 people you've worked with in the past to share their assessment about you
• use some of the online assessment tools to help find your stresngths and gaps

3. Do you resist new ideas? Try something new this year; move out of your comfort zone

• lots of tips and advice available; read, adopt and adapt
• connect with new people
• learn something new
• revamp your resume; make one if you haven't made one in years
• ask a senior colleague to interview you

4. Spruce up your online presence

• critique your online presence
• make a professional LinkedIn profile

5. Brush up your sales skills; a job search is a sales activity

• follow-up
• be prompt
• convey a sense of eagerness, energy and urgency
• but know when to 'back off'

6. Stay connected

• maintain a mailing list; keep adding names
• send relevant updates (monthly or quarterly) about yourself
• sharing relevant, useful information with your mailing list
• refer people and connect people

7. Prepare hard; it shows

• customise your resume
• make a list of potential questions and write down your answers
• read up about the company, the position and the people you are meeting

8. Don't stop even after you've got a job

• thank people who you had reached out to
• update them with your new contact details
• find some way of helping these people

9. A 'No' is not necessarily the end.

• don't burn bridges
• let them know that you are keen on related opportunities
• reach out to others in the same organisation
• stay in touch; be persistent, but not painful

10. Refuse to give up!

• find ways to stay positive
• focus on learnings
• firmly believe that 'whatever happens, happens for the best'
• don't keep doing the same thing and expect miracles; try something different!

Here's wishing all of you a Wonderful New Year where you reach greater heights and find more joy in your career than the year that has just gone by! (But let it be less than what you can achieve in 2015!)

Second time lucky!

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I'm sure you have been in this situation before : you reach out to someone for a meeting. And it could be for a variety of reasons : to explore career opportunities, to discuss a business proposal, or just to get formally acquainted.

And you most likely have been introduced by a common friend/ acquaintance and you have sent a mail or an SMS to the person you want to meet. But you don't get any response.

What do you do?

Well, let me tell you what happens from my perspective.

I get a lot of mails with people reaching out to me directly or through references. Most people are reaching out because they are looking for jobs, and some reach out for career advice.

But there are days when I clearly am not able to respond to all the mails that hit my inbox. And I have noticed, that if I haven't managed to respond to the mail on the day I received it, then its very likely that the mail slips between the cracks and disappears into my mail archives without any action. Now its not that I don't want to respond to them (though there are some mails which I clearly would love to ignore!).

Now, here's the interesting thing. If any of these individuals send me another mail after a few days to check with me if I had received their last mail, there is a very good chance that I will immediately respond!

But most people don't follow up. Which means that they have assumed that they have reached a dead-end with me. But that's not true!

Some people tell me that they don't feel comfortable writing because they don't want to come across as 'desperate' or too eager. Which is a fair point. But most of us know when we are being reasonable in expecting a response, and when we cross that line and start 'hounding' instead.

And some people feel offended when they don't get a response and feel that they shouldn't follow up at all because of this. But by taking this stand, they eventually lose out on a possible relevant, fruitful conversation.

Whenever you write a mail, you have a purpose in mind. And if that purpose is not fulfiled, the effort has gone waste. Sometimes, it takes that extra effort of writing a follow-up mail for the effort to bear fruit.

Start writing those follow-up mails, and you will be pleasantly surprised at the number of responses you get! :)

How long will it take me to find a new job?

Most of the people who reach out to me are people who are looking for a job. They have either already quit their previous jobs, or they are considering moving to a new job while still in their current jobs.



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And there's one question that every single one of them asks me without fail - 'how long will it take me to find a new job?'

This question becomes more pertinent if you have already quit your previous job. You are then hoping to find a job as quickly as possible.

There are two important points here which you need to keep in mind, if you also have this question :

• When you have already quit your previous job, it takes longer to find your next job!
  (At least, that's how it will seem to you!)
• Finding a job is a full-time job!
  (This sounds cliched, but a job search is a full-time activity which requires time and effort.)

There are some common factors which determine the time taken : state of the economy, the state of hiring in your industry, the demand for your skill sets, etc.

But there are still some factors in your control which can help you shorten the time taken to find that ideal job :

• Research
• Think through and make a list of the kind of roles, the industries and the specific set of companies you would like to focus on. A lot of useful information can be gleaned from the web to help you in this exercise.
• Spend time with your resume so that it clearly positions you for the roles you would like to target. Take professional help, if required, to fine-tune your resume. (This post might help - Resumes still matter!)
• Network
• Make a list of all your friends, ex-colleagues, batch-mates, etc. and start reaching out to the them.
• Be very clear and precise about the help you need from them. People are willing to help but don't know how to, if you just tell them 'I am looking for a change, please let me know if you come across anything relevant for me'. Instead try 'Can you introduce me to person X in company Y/ head-hunter/ your connection in company Z'.
• Remember that most companies hire through internal referrals, and through their own hiring teams. While it is useful to network with head-hunting firms, they account for only a fraction of the actual hiring that actually happens. It is therefore important to network and connect with the relevant business heads in the companies that you have short-listed.
• Conversations
• Your focus should be to try meet with and have conversations with all the relevant people (head-hunters and business heads in companies and people in your direct network).
• In your conversations, do not restrict the discussion to job openings. Instead, talk about industry trends, the company's plans and talent challenges.
• Ask people for advice and inputs on career options, and you'll notice that people then get involved in your job search and try to help as best as they can.
• Invest
• As I mentioned earlier, a job search should be treated like a serious project. You will need to invest time and effort.
• Set time aside every day, and especially over weekends, to network, connect, reach out and follow up with people.
• Make it a point to maintain a calendar/ diary to keep track of all the conversations and the follow-up activities so that none of them slip between the cracks.

A typical job search, where you treat it like a serious project, can take between 4-6 months. The first 2-3 months will need to be spent in just networking and having conversations, at the end of which, relevant conversations will start emerging. These will then lead to serious options which you can then pursue to their logical conclusion.

And if you are lucky, you will land a job much sooner. But you will notice that that too happened because of your network and the conversations.

Do you have any other suggestions on shortening the time taken to land your next job, based on your own experience? Do share it herckguruprasad@gmail.com.
e as a comment, or mail me at

Energisers vs. Drains!

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In my line of work I meet a fairly large number of people. And many of them are people I am meeting for the first time. And I love that about my job!

Recently I realised that I unconsciously tend to classify people into two broad categories : 'energisers' and 'drains'.

'Energisers', as the name suggests, are people who energise you when you interact with them either in a formal meeting or just a casual conversation. During the course of the conversation, you feel engaged, you enjoy the exchange, you connect with the person well. And at the end of the meeting, you feel it was time well spent and you feel good about having met the individual. It doesn't matter that you might not have closed the deal, won the business or convinced the person to take up the assignment, or whatever.
Often, after an interaction with an 'energiser' you feel you have learned something new or gained some additional insight into some aspect of life, personal or professional.

And then there are the 'drains'.They just have this unique ability of sucking out all the enthusiasm and energy and hope and everything positive out of you.

Ok, maybe I am exaggerating here. But you would know what I mean.

An interaction with 'drains' leaves you feeling sapped of energy, annoyed, and frustrated. You feel that the conversation has been a waste of time and you haven't made any progress whatsoever with the individual. You feel like shaking them up and asking them to wake up and move on! (Or sometimes you just want them to get to the point!)

But what I usually do is politely try to cut short the conversation and let the individual know that I will reach out to him or her. These are people you tend to avoid over time.

It is not surprising that 'energisers' tend to get shortlisted and hired by companies more often than the 'drains'!

So here are a couple of questions for you : why are some people 'energisers' and the others 'drains', and is it possible for a 'drain' to change into an 'energiser' over time?

Please post your comments of write to me at ckguruprasad@gmail.com and I will publish your responses in my next post.

I was fired! But how can I tell you that?

One of the toughest situations people face in their career is being out of a job and having to explain the reason for that while they are looking for their next break.

The most common lines I hear from most people in such a situation is that they consciously decided to take a break to :

• write a book
• spend some quality time with family
• work with an NGO/ give back to society
• try something on their own

But very often, if they are not actually true, a good head-hunter or a recruiter can figure out that these are just euphemisms for being fired or being laid off from your last job! And the problem is that, if this is actually the case, these excuses sound more like lies or like you are trying to cover up something unpleasant. And that need not be the case!



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So how do you handle such a situation? Do you share the fact upfront that you were fired or laid off? Do you try hide it or brush it under the carpet, and pray that it never gets discovered?

I personally believe that you need not shout this from the roof-tops when you are applying for a job. But it is very important to share the facts at the appropriate time and not make it seem as if you were withholding sensitive information.

It is much easier to explain the fact that you were laid off than being fired, because people find it easier to understand and accept the fact that some companies tend to downsize businesses and let go of people. But when it comes to explaining the fact that you were fired, it is trickier.

Here are some tips to keep in mind on how you could handle such a situation :

• Answer honestly. That always works best. The worst thing that can happen is, the interviewer checking with a friend in your previous company and getting the real story. They then feel that you lied to them, and that's a sure way of getting knocked out of the process.
• Have an answer ready and rehearse it well before the meeting. Don't spend too much time on it, but don't try to avoid or brushing it aside either. Answer it precisely and try move the conversation to the next topic with a related question, if possible.
• Focus on what you learned from the experience and how you have moved on.
• Offer to provide some credible, senior references from the previous company which will give the hiring manager some comfort that you are not trying to hide anything, or that there is something that could come back to bite them later.
• As a rule, don't bad-mouth the previous employer or the supervisor. Hiring managers tend to view that negatively, and wonder if you are trying to blame others for your shortcomings.

Being in a situation where you have fired or laid off is an emotionally stressful experience. But the key is to remember that this situation is just a blip and that there is clear value that you bring to the table, then the hiring manager can clearly sense that. Smart hiring managers also know that if they give you a break, you would go the extra mile to make it up to them. And before you know it, you would have bounced back and come back stronger.

P.S. Do you have any questions on your job search? Write to me at ckguruprasad@gmail.com and I will either write back to you or cover it in one my my posts. Keep reading!