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Jobhunting Tips for the Visually Challenged, Blind, Jobseekers, India

Education and training in vocational skills are basic and should not be confused with job-hunting skills. These have to be to be acquired.

Lima Sehgal

Over the years, I have come across several jobseekers with disabilities, and the aspect that has been singularly glaring is that there has been no training and guidance for them to compete in the job-market with all the others there.

The disability aspect, or even calling it differently abled, is just an armchair discussion that does not mean much if you are jobless. Neither does waving quotas, reservations or government policies matter if you are jobless.

Education and training in vocational skills are basic and should not be confused with job hunting skills, which are not automatic gate passes that come with your degrees and certificates. These have to be acquired.

Here are some job hunting tips-

Do not ever entirely depend on any vocational or educational institution to help you find a job.

Most educational or vocational institutions do not have the competence to function like full fledged Placement Agencies. Simply because they are not designed to be one. This makes them terribly handicapped in their ability to continuously search, find and create jobs openings with companies.

Let me give you an example of what happened with me.

I was looking for a tele-caller for my company and my friend who runs motivational courses wanted an office assistant, and we decided that this would create an opportunity for two blind candidates. I took charge of interviewing candidates and one of the well known blind institutions in Delhi lined up candidates. I was unable to make a selection. The criteria for job functions could be catered to but on all other grounds like personality, English fluency and grooming the institution did not have the capacity to make an accurate shortlist. Something that a good placement consultant would never do, because a shortlist for a job is based on general selectiona and not on select availability of students.

The approach to job hunting requires an aggressive rather than a defensive attitude. I am frequently questioned by jobseekers asking if they should I mention their disability in their resume.Just remember that resumes are not a summaries of who you are and what you can do.Even the perfect resume cannot magically get you a job. If you think that mentioning you disability will work to get you into a special job quota, or a special sympathic scenario, then go ahead. All is fair in this jobhunting war.

Do an effective coverage of placement consultants

Meeting placement firms is of crucial importance. In your case a physical meeting is essential so you can impress them, with your personality and they can comprehend how competently you can handle interviews. Dress well and make sure you look pretty and handsome.

Never bring your escort to the interview table

It is very important that you do not bring your escort to sit at an interview, be it with a placement consultant or with the personnel manager of a company. Confidence and independence are you best strengths, and these must be conveyed.

Courtesy Jobnet Directory of Placement Firms & Companies.

Copyright@ Lima Sehgal 2011

Posted under Jobhunting Tips for visually challenged, blind

The Placement Industry India

Will anyone be able to catch the placement industry by the Jugular? When, so far, no one has been able to find it? Wow!
I must admit that a few other things took me by surprise while I was compiling the next edition of Jobnet’s Directory Of Recruitment Firms.
Firstly, the old cliche ‘Survival of the Fittest’ is not applicable here and secondly, never was any industry so underestimated in its power to survive.
What keeps rankling is the thought that why does everyone keep talking about the placement industry needing a common platform? Placement agencies themselves admit to a lack of organised systems and controls in their trade. Is it a weakness? Or maybe the strength of the placement industry today lies in their lack of organisation?
Perhaps all this arises because one is uncomfortable if one cannot identify the jugular, or even catch a whiff of a pulse.
I guess it gets uncomfortable if one has no ghost of an idea on how to encash on a bunch of people who collectively represent such a large mass. The government wants to enforce laws and taxes. Most job websites have become placement firms, and now expect their competitors to collaborate or pay up. The newspapers and magazines promise visibility without commitment in accuracy in catering to specific needs. So why does it come as a surprise to everyone if, under the circumstances, no one in the placement industry can be convinced to part with their money?
The more I see of it, I’m impressed. Placement consultants march to their own drummers. The extreme competitiveness with each other has produced a new breed of entrepreneurs like no other. Perhaps it’s time to look at the placement industry at its face value rather than the colour of its collar.
It’s like that old game of trying to pin the tail on the donkey blindfold. It’s easy to guess who gets to have the last laugh.

Copyright © 2009, Jobnet magazine
Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet magazine.

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal, Research by Jobnet

The job market and the Indian professional

Unfortunately, no one can hand us the blueprint of our future. And the Indian professional is aware of that.
We have just come out of a phase that has squeezed our guts. The job market has never been more unkind. It has also watered the growth of a tendency to encash on the jobseeker’s insecurities.
All that baloney of literature on websites and in the print media — How not to Make a Resume; How to Compete; Where to Network; How to journey through Job Websites; How to pick the right Headhunter, etc. etc.
The good news is that all of it has been dumped in the garbage bin. The jobseeking professional has become streetsmart. He can actually read the small print. For example, the difference between “How to get through an interview” and “How to get to an interview”.
Marketing oneself in such a competitive environment requires a unique entrepreneurship. Basically, the Indian professional has always been strong in networking but low on expansive self advertising techniques. But the new flowering shows that he is quick to react to the need of the times.
And the time for amateurishness is gone.

Copyright © 2009, Jobnet magazine
Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet magazine.

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal

Forget It
Lima Sehgal

Youth orientation is prominent in today’s scenario. I suppose it existed earlier, but the longer one is around, the more prominent the fact becomes.

From the commercial point of view is the premium on youth justifiable? Hard statistics show that youngsters are valued, because they have a competence for risk taking, and accepting positive change more readily. Every year’s survey shows that IIM, Ahmedabad graduates for example get starting salaries that are uncomfortably close to yours.

Gossip in companies brings to light the fact that the one factor that somehow does not digest well is the justification for such high salaries. Does the fact that some brand new MBA kid earns more than the boss of your company make sense?

What about work experience? What is its rateable value? If lack of experience is what the kids are being paid so well for, what becomes horrifying is the fact that it happens to be the one asset that you can no longer possess.

In a world where change is the essence, the past becomes a handicap. When conditions are constantly changing, the ability to ask the right questions becomes more important than knowing the right answers. Because In decision making, assumptions have to be current. The hard part is to let go what has worked in the past.

Henry Ford made the Ford car company very successful by sticking to the formula of only one colour for the cars he sold — black. His marketing philosophy was ” You can have any colour you want, as long as it’s black.” He did not feel the need to change his formula, and, when a new consumer class came up after World War I that demanded a choice of colours and styles, the Ford car company lost market share to General Motors.

Experience implies that we have found our shortcuts, figured out the opposition, and worked out the methodologies. That is precisely the problem. When assumptions change, so do the parameters of application. The exploratory spirit is an important one to preserve and older, more experienced people shy away from exploration.

Specialisation has reached a stage where it also has become detrimental to personal success. We have had to become experts. This narrows our perspective on the whole picture. Psychologist Abraham Maslow said, “People who are only good with hammers see every problem as a nail.”

The same applies to experience. It narrows our perspective, and also curtails our risk taking behaviour. Which in turn implies that as our knowledge gets outdated and we get obsolete with time we tend to stick to tried and tested paths. We become relics.

“Mr. J. XXXXXX (AVSM, PSM), Retd., MBA / LLB.”

We flaunt it on our visiting cards and pepper our conversations with anecdotes of our past achievements. But nothing really helps.

Are we what the world is looking for? We put in a lot of effort in polishing our resumes, but almost no effort in polishing our skills, in the hope that our past successes will compensate for our current shortcomings.

The worst part is seeing someone do something successfully, that you believed was impossible. . Once, Columbus asked the courtiers in the royal court of Spain, if they could get an egg to stand on its end. They tried, but could not stand it upright. Then, Columbus boiled the egg, and squashed it down upright. They said, “It’s not fair — you broke the rules.”

Columbus said, ” Everything is fair, once you’ve done it.”

And that’s the same thing that Kerry Packer said, when he revolutionized the gentlemanly game of cricket!

I guess that’s all that counts.

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal