Personal Branding for Job Interviews : Techniques ( T & P Series on Wednesdays: 11)

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Personal branding is a process by which one can market himself. It is extremely important for the fresh graduates applying for various job interviews. You may think that how I can be a brand. I am just a person with a degree. This is not the case. You already have a brand of yourself. It only needs to be polished and managed. 

 

Every day, we use different products. These products are from different brands. A brand offers a promise of a certain quality or standard at a certain price point. These brands could be either budget-friendly or luxury. You can have a nice budget-friendly Titan watch or you may like to wear a Rolex watch that stands out among most of the other brands. The same is with us also. We need to behave ourselves as a business of one which has a specific brand. It offers certain value-added services to the employers as the clients. This is called personal branding. Personal branding imparts value.

 

A fresh graduate wants to be recruited as early as possible right after college. On the opposite, the employers are like shoppers. They want to pick up the right talent who can solve their problems in the company. Besides, they want a return on the investment (ROI) as the salary & overhead. Therefore, one should look worthy of investment to get hired.  In the job market, personal branding helps you to stand out. It systematically showcases your skills and worth. Besides, it helps to set up your narrative to the world. When you do not have a brand to lean on, you are just a commodity.

 

As per career experts, when you become a commodity in the job market, you lose your value. As a result, you get less pay because a hundred others like you can offer the same service at a lesser cost. On the other hand, when one gets some experience, he gets high pay. This means that the experience imparts value to his branding. This is nothing but value addition. Most of the time, we forget about value addition which needs to be done often. We stop learning and keep on repeating. As a result, the brand value gets stagnated and is replaced by the new blood in the job market. Back in the day, IBM used to maintain data on employees ' skills. The management noticed that in each department, there were people with the same skill sets. They came to a conclusion that these employees could be rerouted or transferred from low work department to the ones under a heavy burden. This infers that the employees with the same redundant skill sets are an easy victim.

 

A vast majority of college students in India are not aware of personal branding. After college, the graduates undergo struggles. Eventually, some of them learn these life lessons by the hit and trial method and the rest continue with the usual way. In the process, one loses his /her valuable time. The good news is that one can develop his/ her brand while undergoing education in college. It needs only some careful considerations on the part of the students.

  

Soft skills & hard skills

 

Soft skills and hard skills take time to develop. Rather, it is an ongoing process. One cannot develop these skills overnight. There should be a conscious approach right from the beginning of college life. Nonetheless, students show little interest in skill development even if the consequences are known to them. By the time, they reach the final year, it is almost late. One should remember the old saying “time and tide waits for none”.

  Soft skills

Soft skills are those skills that cannot be quantified but proved. Some of the must-have soft skills in young graduates are communication skills, adaptability, teamwork, leadership, problem solving, critical thinking, etc. If you observe the skills, there is no way to measure them. But you can prove them during your interactions with the employers. You can read more about it here. 

 

Communication

 

Communication is the most important and at the same time is the most overlooked among all the soft skills. One should take steps to improve communication skills most preferably in English. Companies or organizations looking for good communication skills in candidates. As a non-native speaker, we all face problem while communicating in English even though we are proficient in writing. We have accent and fluency issues. Whether we like it or not, we have to master the art of speaking in English for better job prospects. Some of the best ways could be talking with your peers, taking public speaking courses, and recording yourself while speaking on various topics. These activities help to overcome shyness. I use a special technique. This is called an audio diary. Every day, I make an audio recording of daily activities before going to sleep at night. Initially, I included my daily activities and later on, I started putting some of the important daily news. You can read more about it here.

 

  Adaptability 

 

Adaptability means flexibility in a candidate. Why is it so important? Well, the world is changing at an unprecedented speed. Technology in every sphere changes in a blink of an eye. So, the way of doing business also keeps changing in tandem with ever-changing technology. Somehow, the fresh graduates need to keep themselves trendy. For that matter, one can keep himself updated with the latest knowledge in the field. Suppose, you are a computer science student, you have to have a grip on the latest technologies such as AI, Machine learning, blockchain, etc. In simple words, if there is something new coming out, one should learn it by attending courses, workshops, and conferences. It shows your adaptability to the changing needs. Twenty years ago, civil engineers used to draft layouts by hand. Now a day, they do it with CAD-based drafting software. Now, if a fresh civil engineering graduate appears for a job interview without the slightest idea about CAD-based techniques, he would look like a caveman. Nobody likes to have a relic in office. It is bad for business. You can read more about it here.

 

  Teamwork and leadership

 

Modern company culture is all about teamwork. One-man shows are nonexistent these days. In the current set up, a close-knit team is allotted with a project. The team may consist of strategist, technical experts, financial analysts, business analysts, marketing and salespeople as per job requirement. To lead this team, there will be a leader who will be a pretty experienced person in that business having a square idea in all directions. Therefore, the fresh graduates must understand the core idea of team play. A team player is a valuable team member who contributes constructive suggestions and carries out duties assigned to him diligently.

As a fresh graduate, one should show himself as a good team player. How can he do so? My advice is that one should engage in some kind of college activities such as training and placement cell, student activity cell, entrepreneurship cell, etc. These activities will give him the much-needed teamwork experience. Then, one can work up the ladder to be a good leader in the team. One should keep in mind that one should himself as a leader in a team. It is better to be elected by the team as the chosen one. You can read more about it here.

 

   Problem-solving

 

Businesses run into problems in production, distribution, marketing, sales, and whatnot. They need people who can go to the bottom to find out the root cause and provide a unique solution. Problem-solving is a rare talent. Such people do not go out of work ever. How can one be a good problem solver? You have to be an expert. As a fresh graduate, you have to have a commanding knowledge of your subjects. Then, only you can see through which others have overlooked or skipped while finding a solution to a problem. You can read more about it here.

 

Critical thinking

 

Critical thinking is widely exercised in western education systems. It helps people to be creative. A person can have critical thinking about a topic when he knows about it very minutely. For example, you have two systems A and B and you are asked to find the best. Then, you have to study both the systems and observe minute intricacies before concluding. Once critical thinking develops in one’s mind, one can create something new. To develop creative thinking, one can take part in various competitions of their field such as Hackathon in the case of engineering students. You can read more about it here.

 

  Hard skills

 

Hard skills are measurable such as project management, financial management, project planning, sales and marketing, business analysis, etc. It is earned through hands-on experience. For example, you work in a research institute and are handling a project on a particular topic for many years. In the process, you have become a highly skilled person in that topic. In this case, your research activities & project handling experience including planning & financial activities are hard skills. You can read more about it here.  

 

Resume

 

A resume can be called the personal marketing brochure. It lists the candidate’s bio-data, skills, hobbies, interests and industrial experience, etc. The resume should be written carefully as per the job description on a single page. Many students submit a ‘copy-paste’ type resume by changing the name only. These resumes look redundant and don’t attract much attention. Generally, employers take 3 to 6 seconds to read a resume and form an opinion about the candidate. If you set the image right at the beginning, you have some advantages already over others which is a great thing. Therefore, it should be viewed as a tool that can effectively push one’s branding if crafted properly. You can read more about it here.

 

  Networking 

 

People underestimate the power of networking. Most of the time, industries have vacancies which they do not advertise and recruit on a referral basis. Getting the information about such vacancies and having the reference from your peers can be a big thing. This means that you already have goodwill before appearing for the job interview.

 

One can network with people meeting them personally or via online mode by various online platforms suppose Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In, etc. The easiest way to network is by being part of an alumni association to connect with the members. Generally, alumni keep a soft corner for their juniors. They seem to be eager to help out the juniors in their modest way. Now a day, networking through social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Linked In, etc. is on the rise. Job aspirants can maintain a healthy social media presence. The social media profiles should be professional. One can build a network by sharing, commenting, and healthily tagging the contents without any controversy for a few hours in a month. You can read more about it here. 

 

 If you like the post you can read or gift the author's books “B.Tech Guide Book" & "Campus Placement Guidebook" available worldwide in Amazon in Kindle format. These book will help you strategize your life. You will find many important things which are not discussed anywhere. Click in the link below.

 

 

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