Whiners pretty much end up losers!

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The worst thing you can do for yourself when looking for a job is 'whine'! Nothing turns off a hiring manager or a search consultant than a whiner.

Sometimes you might have a very valid reason to gripe about your current role/ manager/ company. But I have seen different people handle the same situation very differently.

You have the whiner who grates on your nerves after some time. The whiner sees the world as a hammer and himself as a nail! For a whiner, the fault always lies with the other person and situation and never with himself.


And then you have the other person, in a similar situation, who is able to present the facts in a far more mature and balanced manner. Who will explain the situation in terms of the challenges, the issues at hand, the efforts being put in to address the problem, and maybe even the futility of all the efforts, etc.

If you think you are a whiner (does anyone ever describe himself as one?), or if you are being confronted by one, here's a quick checklist of questions to ask oneself and take stock :

• If you think the situation is really so bad, why are you still hanging around? Isn't it better to move out and find a better place where these problems don't exist?
• If you are hanging around because there is no other option out there, then it should be amply clear to you that the market doesn't value you as much as your current organisation does.
• And if you are choosing to hang around, then it is obvious that you are deriving some value from the current role in the company, else you would have moved on.

And what most whiners don't realise is that they are making it even more difficult for themselves when they are out looking for their next job. Astute hiring managers clearly figure out the problem and the whiner usually comes across as a loser.

And guess what? The whiner now has one more reason to whine about!

I didn't want this post to sound preachy, but I realise it does sound a bit like that. But it does help us to pause once in a while and check to see if we are slowly turning into a 'whiner'.

Don't go down that path. Not only is it counter-productive in your job search process, but, more importantly, it makes you into someone that most people want to avoid interacting with. And that's the worst thing you can do to yourself!

Always ace your interview!



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One of the best things about my job is that it gives me an opportunity to meet and interact with some amazing professionals. And most of the people I meet are usually speaking to me about their jobs or want advice on their career moves. I also meet with many candidates on a formal basis when I am doing a search for my clients.

There are some basic things that stand out in most of interactions. And it is the level of 'unpreparedness' of most of the candidates.

Whether you are actively looking for a change or not, I personally believe you should be prepared for the meeting. Whether it is with a search consultant or with an executive of the hiring company.

Here is a quick check-list to prepare you for your next meeting :

1. I am surprised by the number of people who do not even read the 'job description' properly before coming in for the meeting. Hiring managers/ consultants mentally cross you out because they feel you are not serious about or not interested in the opportunity.
2. I am always impressed by people who have not only read the JD, but have also done additional research on the company, the industry, the key people in the organisation, the interviewer, etc.
   If the company you are meeting is a listed entity, then you will usually find substantial material online in the form of financial statements, annual reports, analysts' reports, etc.
   This level of preparation always shows in the quality of the discussion and always impresses the interviewer.
3. To quote an oft-repeated cliche, first impressions matter. The way you are turned out, and the manner in which you greet and acknowledge people. This almost always sets the tone for the conversation ahead. (More about this in a future post.)
4. If you think about it, you can actually pre-empt about 70-80% of the interview and prepare accordingly. Based on the stage of evolution of the organisation and the specific role they are hiring for, you can expect a list of questions that would come your way; and you can go in well-prepared with specific answers.
   You can also expect questions on any gaps in your profile, your experience, your relevance, etc. And if you have thought through these before the meeting, you come across as a genuinely interested, meticulous, 'thinking/ analytical' kind of person.
5. And always use opportunities to ask questions. But don't come across as being arrogant or confrontational, when posing the qusetions.
   Your questions can say a lot about you. It communicates your interest, your business acumen, your ability to see the big picture, and your skill in unearthing the essentials.

These are a few basic pointers to help you make a great impression in your next hiring conversation or interview.

And as always, I look forward to you sharing your pointers with me as well.

Want a job? Don't reach out to the folks at HR!

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Now that doesn't sound like good advice, does it? (And it also sounds like I'm being rude to the HR fraternity!)

Wouldn't the folks at HR know if the company is hiring? And wouldn't the HR Department be the best place to start?

Well, you're right, but only partially!

Most organistions manage their recruitment through the HR department or through a Talent Acquisition/ Hiring team, usually within HR.

But what most people do not realise is that the hiring requirements are not defined by the HR department. While the HR department usually gets involved in the hiring plan across all levels of the organsiation, the actual hiring requirement and rationale is driven by the business or specific support functions (which also in turn are driven by business).

Leadership hiring requirements are mostly necessitated by strategic decisions made by the boards or business leaders. Very often, some of these hiring decisions do not get articulated to the rest of the organisation, including the HR department.

And if you happen to contact the HR department expressing interest in a job in that company, you will most likely be told that they are not hiring at this point in time, even while some of the business leaders are contemplating hiring at that level.

So what do you do in such a situation? Do you ignore HR completely? Do you send your resume to the CEO/MD of the organisation directly?

Here are a couple of thoughts :

• If this is a company you are keen on, it is always useful to connect with the relevant folks in HR. It could be one of those organisations where the leadership hiring requirement is being managed by HR. And there are some progressive HR/ hiring teams which welcome interactions with interesting leadership talent in the market for potential future needs.
• But what you most definitely need to do, is to research the company, understand what they are doing in your area of interest, and who are the relevant leaders and business heads.
• Find out the people you might be connected with in this company (friends, relatives, batch-mates, ex-colleagues, etc.) and speak/ meet with them to understand the company better.
• Find out ways of getting introduced to the relevant business leader and push for a meeting or at least a call with this person.

But do not send out your resume to this person from the cold, because it is most likely going to get ignored or, worse still, get sent to the HR department who will send you a boiler-plate response that they are currently not hiring. And that's what we were trying to avoid in the first place!
 

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.