Guest Post: Jayesh Nachnani

Jayesh is one of Chris' Summer 2011 Professional Speaking students at Carnegie Mellon University. In this post, he writes about getting the job you want.

There are two fundamental questions one needs to ask oneself before looking for a job. These are:

What kind of role is he/she looking for? and

Which companies best suit his/her requirements?

Finding companies and roles first requires that we find out more about ourselves. Knowing what we are looking for is often not a straight forward question and requires some amount of soul searching on our part. For example, working for a small start-up in California is very different from working for a huge bank in New York. People also prefer different types of roles and companies at different times in their career. Once we have analyzed our preferences (along with our strengths and weaknesses) it is time to look for companies and roles that match these.

An excellent way to research what qualifications and responsibilities each role requires is to go through the Occupational Outlook handbook (http://bls.gov/oco/).The handbook contains up to date and comprehensive information regarding the nature of work, job outlook, projections and earnings of various roles in diverse industries. Matching these with our own preferences is a good way to shortlist the roles.

Researching the kinds of companies we want to work for is extremely important. This can be done in various ways. Websites like vault.com and glassdoor.com provide valuable information. Other ways to find about companies is through alumni or personal networks. Information sessions by companies and networking events can be great ways to find out more about our dream companies. Once a few potential companies are identified, going through the company websites provides valuable insight into the inner workings of the organizations.

One of the most important things to do in order to get a job interview is to be proactive. We should always have a few copies of our current resume and business cards handy. The function of the resume is to get us the job interview. The resume should always be up to date. It should highlight our strengths, past work experience and achievements that ‘fit’ with the job we are looking for. In this day and age of social and professional networks, having an updated and presentable public profile is also extremely important. Employers tend to look up people on social and professional networks.

One of the best ways to get an interview is to get referred. Often, we don’t realize that we could get ourselves referred through various people. Attending conferences and networking events and handing out our business cards and resume are also brute force ways of getting the job interviews. For those of us in college, career services are one of the most important ways to land interviews. If the above stated methods cannot be used for certain companies, posting our resume in response to requirements listed on company websites can be a useful way to get a few calls.