Survive form a bad picture – yours - Part -2

Have you ever seen a girl who does not hire a beautician or a parlor for her make-up on her marriage day ?? Then why they think they can do it all by themselves when making a resume which runs for many years and the trade itself is an art, no less than a art-full beautician’s job, which is to show you in the best possible looks or the job of a professional photographer which is to show you in the best possible light, angles and poses ? Professional CV-making is an art that takes a lot of experience and clear understanding of the psyche of the people who will screen the CV or of the people who will be taking the interviews based on the CVs. This is a problem with many professional agencies also where inexperienced greenhorns make the CVs in an assembly line system, without any personalized or customized analysis or viewpoint on the strength / weak areas, tilts and slants, and most importantly the overriding objectives of the candidate. While there is no perfect CV is alright, the “one size fits all” is a devastating rundown to the candidates. In the last 2 months, we have created (or rather recreated from scratch) at least 3 CVs which were previously made by “Naukri”, who charge a higher rate but use mostly junior fellas, who have never seen the industry themselves, on the job.

But CV have their limitations too, just like a photograph. It may be a brand image projection, but you should also relate to that photograph. Otherwise every girl would have sent a picture of Angelina Jolie for their marriage negotiation. A top-class photographer (with a team including a hot-shot make-up man) can show any girl to be beautiful, but cannot make you look like Jolie that all the companies will make a queue at your door next morning for a, well, autograph. CV-making is no magic and do not expect a Harry Potter job. Life is not Hogwarts, it is the hogwash that one needs on her face and anything more than that and the overdose of paints will make her look like a cheap hooker (and a liar, of course). You only market yourself thro’ the CV, not overdo it and lose your credibility. A CV, of a pretty successful pro who were dissatisfied with the service of another agency, came to us for re-creation. There was quite a list of qualities given in that CV, almost anything under the Sun. Our Associate who provides the service, a top-notch HR pro with decades of high quality experience, smiled and said “all these qualities should have made him the President of USA by this time !!”.

A CV has to have a clean formal professional look that must show you methodical, neat and well-organized. It also indicates the written communication skills, your self-assessment (often people make so much wild claims about their qualities that the CV itself can become a laughingstock) and the realistic position. Each word must be chosen and all fats cut out so that it can be easily scanned and the words you want to highlight (often many things must be told in a subtle indirect way) should come up very easily. Traps must be created in a way to lead and lure the interviewer in your strong areas where you can play most of the time of the interview and the interviewer will be automatically timed out about probing you deeper about your weak areas and angles. A CV should reflect your best angles, but also reflect how you can fulfill the employers needs in the position you are aiming for, and that is the exact place where your CV needs a personalized strategy. Copying the best-looking CV available among your friends will never best serve your purpose. But still do it, Kamalakanta advises, if you are smart - it will probably save you a day’s salary for the position you’re looking at.

For a few days, I went over some of the CVs to make a list of the major and common problems, which are:
1. Not easy for scanning or reading
2. Too much colour or shading and lines in the format
3. Overall strategy is missing
4. Will not provide direction for the interview
5. Too much information is given
6. Not CV, it should be a profile, of max. 2 pages
7. Cliché and vague statements given as objective
8. Personal statement vague and high-sounding
9. Silly email addresses or filename (ex. supersexy2010.doc or rockstar.doc.)
10. Real objective and targeted area of work unclear
11. Direction of career not apparent. Qualification and projects on one direction, experience on another
12. High focus on knowledge rather than skills
13. High claims on skills and attitude, without any proof or even auto-suggestion by the education or experience backing. E.g. one writes “excellent communication skills” which is plain laughable
14. Side margins very less
15. Photo should not be there
16. CTC / salary info. Must not be there
17. Declaration at the last need not be there
18. Cohesiveness is not there, overall idea is disjointed
19. Poor choice of word
20. Spelling mistakes
21. Grammatical mistakes
22. Written in past tense or in third person
23. Too much of shading / embossing / colour / lines
24. Important points not highlighted
25. Strengths are not apparent and not highlighted
26. Weaknesses not covered
27. Extra-curricular /interests is over-mentioned or not proper for the role / job targeted or negative

So, be happy and start making your own CV, even if it closes the doors that were half-open, till now.

Survive from a bad picture - yours - Part 1

It surprises the hell out of me that a resume, or curriculum Vitae (CV) as is commonly called, is neglected so much in the whole process of job search. While helping my wife’s HR consulting business temporarily, I get to see hundreds of CVs, of mostly MBAs, and never cease to be amazed. People send all kind of CVs, bogus – childish – stories – evidently untruthful – big claims – unreadable - unprofessional or simply downright ghastly. Some are so plain Jane, that no HR professional will give a second look at them to find out more. It is said that they scan one in 30-70 seconds and reject it or reads it the second time.

While my wife is in horse-trading, the business of reins should not have been our concern at all. But in a business in which sees the clients see the reins first and decide to look at the horses, we simply could not have a Nelson eye, otherwise our business will suffer because an otherwise suitable qualified good candidate may quite be simply screened out just because the CV is a trash. What a waste!! A CV is supposed to be the key to the door, no more and no less. After the door opens, you get a chance to go and give the Amitabh Bachchan like dialogue or Amrish Puri like smile or a Malaika like jhatka, but what if the door is only painted on the wall ?? !!

Remember the movie where the Hero gets a perfumed ladies handkerchief and falls in love with the girl whom it belonged to?? He made all sort of images in his mind how the girl will be and etc. etc. In the same way, a good CV has another very important job, that is to make the interview irrelevant in a way a true blue ocean strategy makes competition itself irrelevant. First impression last forever and one gets only one chance. One Must create a solid first impression – must put the best foot forward – not the lame one. In the business of giving an interview, image management is everything and that killer image (“Mere paas Ma hay”) can only and only be transmitted through a CV ! When a candidate will go thro’ the door, the interviewer should already be half-dead in lust, and should only need a slight push to commit suicide, no persuasion please. He should only need a confirmation of the image he has got and nothing else, he is already hanging on the cliffhanger.

But still, alas, the guys who expect too much too early and much more, never ask the question why they should get all those. The complain – constantly. Why the C-grade Institute (that never really made any bar in entry and never had any quality control on the input students except the paying capacity) is not getting them plush and plum jobs (also the corner office, where they can sit in the strong AC and do facebook all day) when they had paid so much money? They blame everybody – Institute, placement office, HR guys, faculties, job market, International recession etc. etc. and never gives a thought why these companies pay the consultants so much money to find out the right people for them. They never find out if they should be taken by any company at all?? By knowledge – by application – by attitude. I know because I have taught a lot of them and are simply hopeless about 95% of them. It’s not that they have less intelligence, many of them are also talented in different ways – it is usually always the attitude that spoils them to this degree. There I blame a lot of people – parents, Institutes, University, education system, faculties. Everybody is out on a race to get the most at the minimum of effort and determination.

These 95% – the main trouble is they don’t want to learn. They want to pass, by hook or crook, no textbooks please and the read-a-subject-for-exam-in-a-night (like Matrix companions) are the norm. They dream about the IIM kind of salaries and have no idea the kind of intense grinding they go through. I went mad when we were in IIM-C for a year in Strategic Management. Every afternoon, totally exhausted, when we used to go back to the hostels, we were used to be told of the next days 5/6 Case studies by the Program Director’s Secretary (we always felt like murdering her by drowning in one of those famous 7 lakes in the campus and if she was not attractive, we probably would have done it someday). Then we were awake with the cases till 3 or 4 in the morning, and came back at 9 sharp. These people, in contrast, makes a revolution if they are given a task, tries to make a team of 10 if given a small project. Most faculties in most private Institutes are evidently sub-standard (in tandem with their sub-level salaries) who never had read a case study themselves. University is full of corrupt people who think exam is a formality and everybody should pass to avoid any hassles and give questions from Matrix only. The height is that nobody cares, because then the rich Institute owners will give the cash awards, under the table. The only thing these 95% care about is why they are not being “given” a plush job.

Coming back to the CVs, a few we get are pretty good (in fact, one we got recently, we asked that guy 5 times where from he made that CV and he insisted he himself wrote it and finally confessed that his elder sister is in HR and is a pro in this field), some are OK which we do not disturb and some which need slight change that we quietly make on our own even without asking them. After that, about 40-50% remain which are of the “Must be changed” status, for which we ask them if they will take the paid service, and most people disagree and say No (we say shit and submit the CV as it is) and some cautiously ask the rates and some readily take the service. We see that even many candidates in the HR side, simply can’t make a proper CV and we wonder what picture they are providing of themselves.

A CV is a snapshot of a person, 2 flat pages focusing on the relevant highlights of 20 / 25 / 30 years of his /her life and throws a composite image. If you really do not look like the photo given here, then why you give that picture through your CV? And then expect that you will be called for an interview?

While people spend a lot on the beauty parlors for facials and other services, they do not get their CVs professionally made. They are smart, and smart people do not waste money, right? So they spend it on beers, restaurants, girlfriends, ipods, other numerous gadgets and endless funs – except their snapshot for the purpose that they constantly cry and supposedly try – a nice job