Resume to HR interview prep

(IT career)With Preparation CD

RESUME

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

XOXOXOXOXOXOXO

XOXOXO

Resume

Test GroupDiscussion

Short Listing

Interview

HOW TO ENHANCE YOUR EMPLOYABILITY?

How To Enhance Your Employability?6

2E Series Resume To HR Interview Prep (IT career)

Graduation / Final Year

Create Resume

Apply

Short-listing

Aptitude Test

Dream Job

Group Discussion

HR Interview

Technical

Interview

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

Yes

No

No

No

No

No

[on - campus / off - campus] Internships /

Incubation

Training

Certification

Practice

Identify Gaps

Build Resume

with differentiators

Add new differentiators

(Typical selection process for jobs in Information Technology)

This book has evolved through the experience of training thousands of students every

year and preparing them to perform in their job effectively.

To get the first job in information technology (IT) industry, the first step starts with

creating an impressive resume and ends with a successful HR interview. This book will

act as a guide and companion for the preparation throughout this journey.

“You get tensed about something, when you are not sure what will happen...?”

Unfortunately thinking about “what should not happen” brings you repeatedly to what

you do not want and as a result you start losing your confidence.

On the contrary, you are at ease when you are familiar with the situation and the

people. You may have sound technical knowledge. However, you may lack the

knowledge of “how to package yourself in an attractive way and present your

strengths”. This book will help you to lead the situation and influence the outcome in

your favor.

This book is like the “last mile connectivity” to the job. It has been observed that many

candidates who are intelligent, hardworking and with technical knowledge sometimes

fail to express themselves that well. With the help of this book you will be able to

express your hidden potential in a much better and articulate way.

You will be able to play all googlies bowled at you by the interviewer and come out with

a good score without depending upon luck or chance. Only reading this book is no

substitute for hard work in terms of attending classes, doing lab work or in-depth

reading of books on the subject matter. With all this smart work, if you follow this book,

you will meet yourself in a totally new avatar, which you have not discovered so far. That

will be real success!

WHAT THIS BOOK CAN DO FOR YOU?

For any queries or suggestions about this book please write to stip@seedinfotech.com

What This Book Can Do For You? 7

2E Series Resume To HR Interview Prep (IT career)

BUILDING AN INVENTORY ABOUT YOURSELF

Resume is your sales brochure. To highlight your skills and success stories, you first

need to build your own inventory. This inventory goes on building up as you progress in

your career and will be very useful to you throughout your career. It is not only for

creating your resume and getting the first job, but also is useful in different types of

interviews you will face for a job switch, performance appraisals, client projects etc.

“How you see yourself” is vital in this whole process. When you will complete the tasks

of information gathering as suggested in the following sections, you will rediscover

yourself. It will reinstate your confidence and boost it further. You will start believing in

yourself more than ever now, since you have data to support that. And you will be

provided with the key on how best to present what you are.

You may have multiple capabilities and you may have had a chance to demonstrate

some of them and some are just waiting for right opportunity to get unleashed and

even to surprise you. When you are taking stock of your skills and competencies, you

need to focus on both your potential (that is what you can do) and experience (what

you have done/demonstrated) so far.

Why this exercise is important? Just for creating a good resume/CV? No. Many people

do not believe in themselves and have very low self-esteem. This exercise of building

your own inventory would help you build a great image for yourself. The stronger the

image, better are the chances of realizing your dreams. Let us start.

Experience Potential

Building An Inventory About Yourself 15

2E Series Resume To HR Interview Prep (IT career)

Why inventory?

?To know more about yourself.

?To boost your confidence.

?To make ready base information to create resume.

?To collate data which is useful for interviews, performance appraisals, visa applications and so on.

There is only one purpose for the resume: to attract an opportunity for interview. The

information you present in the resume is vital. We are going to focus on how to create a

resume which will ultimately lead to a job. As you have the complete inventory at hand,

creating a resume will as easy as pie.

If you are applying for several and different positions, you should re-frame your resume

to match the requirements of each one. There is nothing wrong with having several

different resumes, each with a different objective, each specifically crafted for a

different type of position. You may even want to change some parts of your resume for

each job you apply. Have an objective that perfectly matches the job you are applying.

Remember, you are writing advertising copy, not your life story.

Avoid grammatical and spelling mistakes while writing your resume. You must

remember what you have written in it. Do not simply copy and paste. Be honest.

Following is a typical structure you can follow to create a winning resume. You need the

inventory at your hand from which you can select appropriate sections or contents and

use them here.

Objective

Objective is like a punch line from an advertisement. If crisp and to the point, it can

create a huge impact. Typical format would be an <X> position in <an organization

seeking ABC and PQR>. Here X is the position you are applying for and ABC and PQR are

most important qualities or experience which will act as a differentiator for you and

make you stand out from the crowd. You can actually find some keywords from the

advertisement and use them appropriately to create the objective.

Samples

Seeking position as a software engineer Java technology knowledge and

experience of working with overseas clients.

Seeking challenging opportunity as a software test engineer with strong academic

background, excellent communication and software quality assurance

knowledge.

BSc graduate with knowledge of system administration having MCSE certification

seeking role in a fast growing organization

How To Create A Resume32

2E Series Resume To HR Interview Prep (IT career)

HOW TO CREATE A RESUME

HOW TO STRENGTHEN THE RESUME

We discussed about how to write the resume so far. Now we will discuss how you can

create or strengthen your resume no matter whether you are experienced or fresher.

Reading books, articles, blogs

Read books that are related to technology and management visionaries. They would

definitely inspire you. Secondly, couple of references of reading of such books would

tell your “class” to the interviewer. Also, read about the business domains and latest

technology.

The road ahead, business at speed of thought.

By Bill Gates

Made in Japan: Akio Morita and Sony Published by Signet

Narayana Murthy:The Infosys's Founder Published by Pentagon Press

Call Me Ted (Autobiography of founder) Published by BARNES & NOBLE

It Happened in India: The Story of Pantaloons, Big Bazaar, Central and the Great Indian Consumer

Kishore Biyani

Investment and Finance http://www.investopedia.com

Microsoft Technologies http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-in

Java Technologies http://www.oracle.com/technetwork

Creative Writing

Writing blogs on your favorite technologies, answering questions of novice users on

such information websites would be a nice differentiator for your resume. You can also

start moderating and writing reviews about books, technologies, following discussion

threads. Following are the list of websites and forums can act as starting point.

www.blogspot.com, www.wordpress.com etc.

How To Strengthen The Resume42

2E Series Resume To HR Interview Prep (IT career)

Once the resume is ready, that is when one can start reaching more and more number

of recruiting companies.

Using contacts

Many jobs are not advertised. Many of the organizations believe that employee referral

scheme gives them good results as compared to a walk-in type of recruitment strategy.

As the employee knows the type of skills and competencies required and that they are

rewarded, they often refer the most suitable candidates. Once you create your

excellent resume, you can start listing your seniors from college, classes, relatives,

social contacts, who can refer you for a job.

Employment agencies

There are a lot of employment agencies. You can register your name with them. You

may be able to get some opening through them.

Training institutions

There are many training institutions running job-oriented courses. After training, these

institutions provide opportunities for the rightly skilled candidates to appear for

interviews. You can join one such good institution for job assistance. Before joining,

please verify the claims these type of institutions make about their placement

statistics. If possible, talk to the past students of such an institution before joining.

Internet and job sites

With the popularity of internet, the ways in which recruitment happens is changing.

There are many ways in which emailing websites; social networking websites like

facebook, orkut are used. There are three types of web applications which might be

useful to you in your job search endeavor. Emailing sites like hotmail, yahoo, google

have facilities for creation of groups. If you join some of the public groups, you may be

able to receive some communication on it. Same is the case with social networking sites

such as facebook or orkut. If you are an experienced candidate, then a site such as

LinkedIn also can act as a source of opportunities.

JOB HUNTING STRATEGY

Job Hunting Strategy 45

2E Series Resume To HR Interview Prep (IT career)

The Interview Round54

2E Series Resume To HR Interview Prep (IT career)

PERSONAL : STRENGTHS, WEAKNESSES, ASPIRATIONS

1. Tell me something about yourself.

Possible intention

?To know what kind of a person you are.

?As a response to such open ended question, you end up giving information

which you feel is most important about yourself. This gives an opportunity

to judge your priorities in life.

?To check if you believe in yourself and have clarity of thinking.

?To judge power of expression.

Insights

It is one of the typical initial questions to start a conversation.

?Challenge is, what to speak and how much to speak. Remember, in the

interview you are selling yourself through your success stories.

?Expect this question; prepare and rehearse the answer. Answer could be

prepared in multiple parts and the appropriate part may be used for the

occasion.

?This is an opportunity for you to take the interview in the direction of your

strengths.

?Keep the answer relevant and interesting. Success stories are very handy

here.

?Safe answer would contain a bit of education, training background, success

stories elaborating your competencies and passion.

Example answer

Let me start with my educational background. I am B.E./BSc with specialization in

computer science. I am passionate about programming and information

technology. I like to keep track of new technologies like cloud computing, mobile

applications etc. When I realized during my project/internship that I am better at

finding errors in programs quickly, I started studying software quality in more

detail. I completed training in software testing and am ISTQB certified. In one of my

This book is part of Employability Enhancement Series(E2 series). The journey to embark career in Information Technology industry starts with creating an resume and ends with to HR. This book can act as a guide or companion for the preparation. It is based on the experience of training thousands for students every year and preparing them to perform their job effectively.

Employability = Graduation + Soft skills + Hard skills

This book starts covers vital steps starting from creation of an impressive resume to HR interview round for IT industry. It includes various sections giving information on selection process, building your own inventory, resume, preparation for the interview, and most importantly how to handle tricky questions in the HR round.

Why this book is different?

• Backed up by experience of training job aspirants for more than a decade

• Real questions from the interviews

• Holistic coverage from resume to HR interview

• Unique tips on building a resume(it is different from just writing a resume!)

• Insights and anti-patterns to handle tricky questions

Reader Speak“Very lucid , practical step by step, how to guide. This book is a must read for new job seeking aspirants.” - Mr. Shirish Joshi, veteran HR Consultant

“A book well conceived…….. Will definitely boost the confidence and improve performance of the candidate in an interview”. - Capt. Yogesh Bhide (Retd.) Project & Quality Management Consultant

Accompanying preparation CD contains

• Ready to use sample templates for building inventory of your own

• Sample Resumes(Fresher, Experienced): Software Developer, Software Tester, System Admin

• Audio Clips on how to answer questions on current topics

Other Book from the same series

Software Testing Interview Prep

Resume to HR interview preparation

(IT career)