Submitting resume? Read this ahead

Posted on December 14, 2011 by Sudan Gautam

Today I am going to share with you something that always bugs people’s mind when they are applying for a job. Many of you might have already secured a job but you too might have faced this problem earlier. There is no written rule which says that you need to follow this pattern. This suggestion below is totally from an HR point of view or the person who reads your job application.This has been discussed earlier by Alison Green in her post. I thought it would be interesting to share with you all, with my own perspective on the subject. Alright!Here we go.

1.What format should my resume be in?
Both of them (PDF and Word) are equally acceptable but my preference is PDF. When you send your resume as a PDF, you can be sure that your layout and all the tweaks you have made to it will be preserved. While on MS word, it might be a problem, if the person looking at your resume is using a different version than yours. It means that each of them will see your resume differently if it is in word format.

2.Should I attach both formats and allow the employer to choose on their own?
No! You shouldn’t do this. If you are sending both the documents, your employer might check both hoping there might be some differences. If it is not, you are just wasting their time.

3.Do I need to send a cover letter or only the resume?
It’s not about correct or incorrect. It’s about effective and ineffective. So please make sure you write a cover letter along with your resume. As HR people, I feel we look at your resume and find out what your weaknesses are but in the cover letter we find out what your strengths are and how passionate you are about this job. Writing a cover letter effectively helps to brand you. If you want to build a rapport with the employer and give a sense of which you are beyond the academic and work experience, I recommend you to write a cover letter for the job you are applying for. Please don’t make a mistake of sending the same cover letter everywhere you apply.

4.What should I write in the email when I have already attached the cover letter?
You shouldn’t write a lengthy descriptive sentence in your email. If you haven’t attached a separate cover letter with the mail, you can write it in the email itself. But don’t repeat the same thing again and again. For an illustration, you can write something like this:
“I’d like to apply for____ position. Please find the attached documents.”
Please make sure that you have your signature in the email. As many of you are not using email signature, I would like to give a small format, which might be helpful for you.

For student:
Full Name:
Email address: (yes you need to put it. Sometimes your documents are forwarded by other people)
University /Major and Year of Graduation:
Cell phone number or Phone number:
Website or Blog:

For Employees:
Full Name:
Email address: (Personal not the official one):
Company Name:
Position at your company:
Department:
Company website:

5.What to write as the subject of the email?
It shouldn’t be an issue. But few people make the mistake of sending an email without a subject title. Please write a subject title like “Resume and cover letter of____.” In addition, Please don’t forget to check the name of your attached file before you decide to send it. I got a few resumes with titles like “Sunilko resume 2008.” This shows that you haven’t updated it.

It might sound minor but many of you have ignored these points while applying for the job. Yes! Like I said above, it is not correct or incorrect it is about personal branding while doing those things professionally. If you have a personal opinion about this, please drop your views in the comment section below.

Posted in Human Resource Management | 4 Comments

Recruitment strategy in today’s world

Posted on December 8, 2011 by Sudan Gautam

In today’s job market where unemployment is so high, employers are having a problem in attracting quality candidates who could take their organization’s value to a greater height. Theories that you studied earlier aren’t going to help you attract today’s people. A recent research finding says that, to have greater interaction and engagement, organizations need to focus on current trends and how people are looking at you. Here are the three questions you need to ask yourself to know what sort of experience you are providing your candidates.

1. Are you cell phone friendly? The numbers of people who use a cell phone to search on internet are increasing by the day and it’s no doubt that this will be an upward trend. What are you doing to tap that market? Don’t you think people will look for information about your company through their phone? Is your website cell phone friendly? Do people have easy access to the information they are looking for? Are the pages easy to view and read? If you have no idea about this start surfing your website through a cell phone. You will have a clear understanding about what I mean to say. Why should you lose those big markets just because of glitches in the website?

2.Do you have Videos? It’s no doubt that people are on the internet mostly for two reasons. 1. Visit social networking sites. 2. To check videos. Wouldn’t it be effective if you showed videos of your people at their workplace? You can even add more videos where your employees can share what it feels like being the part of your company. This would tell more about your organization and its work culture. People would feel glad to know about your organization even if they are not part of it.(like I adore Zappos) They might recommend it to others, who might be potential candidates for you. Besides that, you don’t have to waste your time on explaining to people about your work culture.

3. Are you social? Somebody rightly said, “Google is the next resume”. If you are using Google to know about the candidate, don’t you think they will try to know about your organization in the same way? Have you ever ‘Googled” your organization? How does it seem? Is it impressive? Have you used social media to attract people towards your organization? If you haven’t what are you waiting for? If you need permission, here is my say, Go! Right now! And start maximizing the use of those tools.

Never ever think that just posting or advertising your requirements is going to help you. Times have changed. People are looking for bigger things than before. What you offer them indirectly is what really matters? Start giving it to them before they even join your organization and I am sure you will meet your purpose.

Posted in Human Resource Management | Tagged , | 1 Comment

How cultural focus are you?

Posted on November 26, 2011 by Sudan Gautam

Recently Tony Hsieh (CEO, Zappos) spoke at SHRM (Society for Human resource management) Annual conference. If you haven’t heard of Zappos, it’s a company who primarily focuses on Internet shoe business. You might be wondering, what is so big about this company that I am writing to have your attention. FYI, It‘s a company that was listed in fortune 25 for the year 2009.Though it falls in the list, very few of us have heard about it. Those who have heard it’s either through word of mouth or through direct experience. It’s because they do very little advertising and focuses on satisfied and WOWed customer to spread their brand.

At the conference, Tony shared that Zappos hires for culture. Applicants go through two interview processes, one for “the normal things,” like skills and abilities and experience, and one for “cultural fit.” If applicants don’t pass the cultural fit interview, they won’t be hired, no matter how good their skills or how great their ability to contribute technically.

One of the most interesting things about Zappos is that they have their own style from hiring to training their prospective candidates. Tony said that, they meet interviewees at the airport and take them to Zappos’ headquarters for interviews. After the interviews, and after the applicant has been taken back to the airport, the shuttle driver gets his or her say on whether the person should be hired. That means, if you treat the driver or receptionist poorly you won’t get the job.

If you haven’t read ‘Delivering Happiness” written by their CEO, I highly recommend it. Let me share you another interesting thing about how cultural focus this company is. Tony writes that once new employees are finished with training, they are offered a $3,000 bonus to quit. When asked why they were doing so, he replies with simple sentence, ‘We only want people who really want to work here.” Yes! Around 2-3% of trainees take the bonus and leave while the employees who remain are more committed to the company’s mission.

I am sure every organization can’t take this approach and they shouldn’t either. But they need to focus on the message that he had given in the conference.
-Focus on your vision
-Keep your culture as strong as possible.

If you want to feel WOW! check their website and this video. They really worth your attention.

Posted in Human Resource Management | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

How I select books to read?

Posted on November 7, 2011 by Sudan Gautam

When it comes to learning, usually it’s the combination of the following resources. Those resources are:
1. TED videos
2. Podcast from the field experts
3. Blogs/ websites
4. Books
5. Webinars
6. Talk with people from different fields

Of all these resources, personally I consider books to be the best one when it comes to serious study. As they are better researched and more specific to the topic. But recently I have realized that selecting “books with gems” in one particular category has become more challenging than before. As the market has grown bigger, each category is being flooded with tons of books every year. So I would recommend you to do your own personal research before you pick those books. I believe the following tips that I am sharing here, which I use while purchasing books might be helpful for you too.

So let’s begin.

1. My own personal list: Earlier I used to buy books based upon reviews in Newspaper, recommendations by people covered in interviews, talk with friends but these days I don’t follow them. Now I have made my own list, written in my notebook which is very well categorized. It took me more than 2 years to make this list and it is based upon my own research and my own needs. This list isn’t a perfect one, so I keep updating it based upon recommendations made by people whom I can count on. To name a few Josh Kaufman from Personal MBA, Tim Ferriss from Four hour work week, Ramit Sethi from I will teach you to be rich, Seth Godin and Derek Sivers.

Usually my first filter would be reviews from Amazon, NY times and fast company. I read reviews to know few details about those books and their ideas. While reading reviews I even scan controversial reviews.I have no problem with that. Usually, I find professional reviews in blogs and in Amazon quite phenomenal. After reading reviews from reliable sources, I go to bookstores with my list and read table of contents, preface, about the author and check out a part of the book which I find interesting. Finally if I find the contents and methods used by the author very powerful I make a decision to purchase it. In this way I keep on updating my personal list.

2. What’s the purpose of the book? – I never purchase a book without finding out the main purpose of that book. That’s one of the reasons why I read so many reviews about books ahead and try to filter them out. I can’t purchase a book just based upon customers’ review or the reviews from daily Newspapers. Most of the time it’s inside job. While figuring out the purpose of the book I need to read professional reviews, I need to read about the author, his/her area of expertise, the preface of the book, the table of contents and read around 5-10 minutes on my area of interest inside the book. I do this so that I don’t have to regret after making a purchase.

3. What is something that I really need to know now or want to improve? – Books are a key part of my self-education process. I never read books just for fun. But if a book carries a lesson and is a fun read I have no problem with that. I read books to learn something, to challenge my mental modules and apply those concepts. My readings are usually purpose driven. I read books to help myself to improve upon certain areas of my life. This is one of the reasons why I prefer non-fiction books. They give you real life problems, how people had solved them and how it changed their business or life. I don’t read everything because I find it irrelevant. I read books with focused writing and which matches with my current needs. Like at present I am interested in learning about Leadership and that’s one of the reasons why I purchased Tribes and 48 laws of power.

4. Credential authors: As there are large number of books being published in one particular category it would become very difficult to trust as well as a waste of time to read each of them. That’s one of the reasons why I trust few authors based upon earlier reading. I pick books from authors who have intrigued me from their previous ones. Few of the authors I quickly rely upon are Malcolm Gladwell, Seth Godin, Tim Feriss, Keith Ferrazzi, Marcus Buckingham. I love their style, their approach, their research methodology used for writing. It makes it easier for me to understand and retain what they wanted us to know. These writers bring a different level of enthusiasm and they even change my mental modules about any particular subject they have covered.

Sadly besides few writers, most of them fail to bring that level of quality and expectations as they did in earlier ones. So I wouldn’t recommend anyone to rely on any particular author and read their books blindly without doing any personal research on it.

Some Additional Notes to Readers:

• Please don’t rely on books just because they are on NY times or on International bestseller list. Those books might be good but they might not be the best one in their category.
• Similarly there are few authors who are popular in the media. They write very well which fits in the journals or Newspaper post but when it comes to books they simply push those embedded ideas again and again. Personally, I don’t find any point on reading books of those writers who fail to share new ideas through it. I would rather read their published articles than waste my time reading their books to have same piece of information. No doubt! Their ideas could make a good essay but not a good book.

Conclusion: Yes! You are right. It will take some additional time ahead while doing this kind of research on finding about the quality of the book but as soon as it becomes a habit I am sure you will start valuing your time and money more than before. You will start enjoying the process and the decisions related to book purchase. I won’t say this is a “be all, end all approach.” I’m sure there are more I’ll think of after posting this, but in the meantime, I’d love to hear any of yours.

Till next post Read Consciously!

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