Guest Post: Punit Parikh

Punit is one of Chris' Summer 2010 Professional Speaking students. Here he writes about getting the job you want.

Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday, Sunday. You read it correctly. Life would be fun if every day of the week would be a Sunday. Alas! Only if this could be true. Let’s face it we all have suffered from Monday morning blues at some point of time in our professional lives. OK, we have tried getting to bed early, have our clothes washed and ironed on Sunday night but it clearly does not seem to work every time. When we introspect, we ask ourselves am I really enjoying my work? Do I really belong to this organization? Am I a good fit in this organization? If you answered “NO” to above questions, then continue reading and I promise to untie the knots.

Thanks for continuing to read. Remember acting upon a thought is half the battle won! Now that you have identified it is time to switch not only jobs or organizations but also get a career for yourself that you value and cherish, it is action time. Let us get started by identifying the organizations and job profiles that match your skill-sets. For example, if you have never done any kind of computer programming then you have very slim chances of getting a job at Microsoft or Google Inc in an engineer work profile. Once you listed down organizations and work profiles it is time to get on your internet and do online research about the organizations you wish to work. In this internet era, there is plethora of resources available and there is no excuse for lack of it. You can use Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. to connect with people who work in those organizations in the same profile. Try to learn from their experiences. Try to gauge the culture of the organization from your online research and interactions with people who work there. This will give you a preliminary idea about the organization and work profile so that you can make an inform decision.

Next, let us build our own database that includes our strengths. Building a database, does that sound intimidating? Punit, what are you saying it isn’t difficult? No, it is not. All I am asking you to do is talk about yourself. Don’t you enjoy talking about yourselves? OK, it is not talking about how good looking you are and all good stuff. It is about your professional strengths. Therefore, get your pen and paper, and start listing them down. Do not hesitate to ask your old co-workers, mentors and teammates about your strengths. Voila! Part of your database is complete. The other half will complete when you tie an engaging story to each of your assets to justify it. For example, rather than simply saying I have good analytical skills you should say my analytical skills helped our organization save or increase revenue by X %. Support this claim by a story. Story? Yes let me tell you what I mean by a story.

A good engaging story should follow the STAR technique. Describe a Situation to set the context of your story, describe your Task, describe your Action and finally describe the Results produced by that action. Once the database is ready, we can refer to this and select those assets that are highly valued by different organizations. For example, if you are interviewing with Apple Inc, you definitely want to highlight your creativity strength in addition to strong technical and analytical skills. This database will be a very handy tool in your job search.

I hope you found this information useful. In my next blog, we will tackle another important aspect of job search. I know by now you must have already guessed. It is none other than editing your resume!