Bollywood Reloaded
Ideally you should demonstrate your passion towards your industry/vocation couple of times. Earlier the better. You should grab the opportunity when it presents itself.
Tell me about yourself:
This is a great time to sell yourself hard! Hardly any fresher will think to do this. They will just blabber the same “ghisa”, “pita” monologue they have been using in all their previous interviews! And they have been wondering why there aren’t shortlisted or offered any jobs. You on the other hand are prepared now. You can use the below script and customize it to suit your personality. Please don’t blindly memorize it and spit out the same lines. Be different and be creative. You are not a student anymore. You have to learn to be creative and become a problem solver rather than a solution copier. Those days are over mate!
If the interviewer asks you to talk about yourself, you can say something along these lines.
I did my Mechanical Engineering in SIT, I was always fascinated by machinery and love the idea of designing machines especially in the manufacturing industry. TV shows like Modern Marvels, Extreme Engineering and Food Tech (started only in 2010) attracted me to pursue a degree in this field. Being a CAD drafter/Design Engineer helps me follow my passion. And I would like to point out I didn’t pick Mechanical Engineering because it is evergreen or it was a popular choice/suggestion. I picked it because I am curious about machines and find it an exciting field. I have even started modeling parts/machines in my free time with Catia. You can see the details in the resume. And I am excited to be here.
I did my MBA at IIM-Z. I specialized in marketing because I found it an interesting field. Many people don’t realize the importance and power of marketing and advertisement. New business owners, Entrepreneurs don’t see the importance of this. I realized the significance during my younger days when my father/uncle was struggling with his business, that is when it dawned on me how marketing is an essential strategy of any business plan. You can have the best product in the world but if you don’t market it, nobody will know about it and you won’t be able to sell it well. However with the right marketing you can sell ice to Eskimos!
Marketing has so many facets to it and so many angles to promote a product. Me being a curious and experimental guy decided to pursue a career in marketing. With Indian industries on the rise and the economy rising, I wanted to be part of the growth story and was another reason in doing my MBA. I have even started reading the popular marketing books [name couple of them and make sure you have read them!].
I also pay attention to late night infomercials to see how they pitch the product and try to convince people to buy it. Even when the product is ludicrous. The number of junk products being sold on late night TV is on the rise!
I did my BCom at Acme College. I have always enjoyed working with numbers during my school and PUC. I was the chosen guy in my family to sum up the total on long monthly grocery bills and I was really good at it. As I grew older I started balancing the family bank account books. I would also keep track of house budget.
That is the reason I decided to do BCom. Now I have taken it to the next level. I read financial statements of publicly traded companies and try to study their financial health. With the Indian economy on the rise and stock market getting bigger by the day, I think I am in the right field and I am excited about it.
Electronic, Electrical, Computer engineers can talk about the rapid pace of technological development happening in everyday life. Smart phones getting smarter and faster.
Note:
What I have written above is just a template. Please customize it to suit your situation. The above text is to give you an idea or a starting point. Don’t blatantly regurgitate these exact passages in the interview. It may look bad if it is out of context for the job position or comes off as you have memorized it.
Personal Projects:
You do the same when you talk about your pet projects or even the final year project. But this time you not only highlight your passion but you also show that you have the technical skills needed for the job. If these skills don’t directly relate to the job position you are interviewing for, show them
that you take your career seriously, don’t mind working on your own, have the initiative and are a quick learner.
Almost all interviews start off with “Tell me about yourself”. This is when you should have demonstrated passion and then brought up your personal projects and quickly talk about them.
Even if the interviewer doesn’t bring up your personal projects you may get a chance to talk about it. Say, when the interviewer asks if you have any questions when the interview is winding down.
You can say you want to talk about the personal projects you have been working on and would like to quickly talk about it before you start asking questions you had in mind. Depending on what the interviewer says continue with the personal project discussion or switch to the questions immediately in case he says he doesn’t have time to discuss the projects. If that happens at the end of the interview, just mention it would be great if he took a look at the projects you worked on and thank him for giving the opportunity to interview with him/her/them.
You can talk about why you picked the particular project, problem and technology and spend few minutes talking about them. You could talk about things like, these kind of projects/problems/challenges interest you, or the technology you used is your favorite or the popular one in the industry and that is the reason you picked. You can also talk about facing challenges in solving the problem, or having multiple ways of solving the problem and not sure which is better. You can ask opinions if it makes sense, this might make the interviewer happy. But please don’t ask for opinions on really basic stuff that any graduate of your field would know.
You can talk about a problem, solution or any topic for that matter in multitude ways. Start expanding your mind and come up with different angles you can talk about the same topic. Condense the talk about your passion, degree and personal projects, print it in your brain and take it with you for every interview. Don’t forget to keep improving and changing until it starts having the desired effect. Try out different ways and see which one does best. This is called split testing (a/b testing, multi-variate testing) in the online marketing world.
I hope I have given you enough info in this regard. Demonstrating passion and skills will help you beat your competition. This is a sure-fire way of getting on their shortlist or impressing them. This really helps if your marks are not that good or switching your career to IT from a non-IT background. So take this seriously and prepare well before you even think about attending the interview.
Answering Questions:
If you didn’t get enough chance to demonstrate your passion and skills. You can do this while answering questions. If a question or the answer is relevant to your personal/final year project you can briefly point out the relation. And if the interviewer looks interested you can engage him and continue talking about it. Make sure it is relevant if you are going to take control of the flow of the interview. Don’t interrupt the flow if there is no relation at all between the question asked by the interviewer and the skills/passion you want to talk about. If you don’t get a chance, make a summary at the end of the questioning. Preferably when they ask if you have any questions.
You can say ‘Before I ask my questions I would quickly like to add….[start talking about the projects etc]’
You follow this simple but effective plan and you will get noticed.
Personal Project To The Rescue!
I was learning a fairly new technology by Microsoft and I was excited about it. It was MVC framework for the curious. At that time I was unemployed and looking for a job. I decided to go for a MVC related job.
I came across an opening I liked and applied for it. The job poster was the largest staffing company in India and the world too, if I remember correctly!
The opening was for their client which was a financial behemoth in America dealing with house insurance and other related services.
I was told by the staffing agent it will be a 3 round interview. On the 2nd round I didn’t answer couple of non-technical questions well and the hiring manager ended the interview and let me know he will get back to me if I was shortlisted.
I knew the opportunity was gone because he didn’t mention anything about the 3rd round interview that was taking place in the next room.
I approached the staffing agent who in turn talked to his manager. I was told not to leave and wait in the lobby.
Flashback:
When I came across this job on Naukri, the last date had already passed to apply. But I wanted to apply anyways and emailed the address given in the posting.
The staffing agent called and asked about my availability to attend the interview. Turns out even though the date had passed they were still desperate to fill the position. Moral of the story, don’t be afraid to try on missed opportunities and always be optimistic and give it a shot no matter the outcome. I liked the job position so it didn’t stop me from applying even though the job posting had expired.
Now back to the interview. The staffing agent got back to me after 10 minutes and asked me to attend the 3rd final round with the HR. And guess what? I nailed the job! Out of around 40 people who attended the interview only 3 were offered the job and I was one of them.
What I haven’t mentioned yet is that I had demonstrated my passion to the staffing agent when he had called me the first time.
I told him I was a perfect fit for the MVC position because I was learning it right now and I had also built a MVC web application which was live online. And I would love to show it to him and the interviewers. I told him to mention this to the interviewers and direct them to take a look at the site, all the details of this MVC project were included in my resume. This conversation alone was enough to convince him and the interview panel to interview me. Within 30 mins of our conversation he got back to me to schedule an interview. I don’t think any of them even bothered to visit my website!
This MVC web application was the selling point the staffing manager used to convince the hiring manager of the client to push me to the third round which was with the HR. I aced that round. I didn’t care that I was almost sent home after 2nd round. No negative feelings or sadness. I grabbed the opportunity and made it my day.
The other moral of the story is always be selling yourself when job hunting. It didn’t stop me to sell myself during my first call with the staffing agent who didn’t have in-depth technical knowledge of the job opening. I told him the right things (all real facts no lies!) that will help him making a decision in my favor!
It helps to demonstrate your passion and interest to the entire spectrum, from recruiters to technical managers.
Another take away from this story is, it doesn’t hurt to have personal projects based on latest technologies or the type of jobs you are looking for, even though you have enough experience to fill up pages of resume!
Adding the right things to the resume and saying the right things can make all the difference regardless of your work experience, marks etc.
Always be selling yourself and don’t feel guilty about it!
Next Lesson : How To Demonstrate Interest
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