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Job hunting needs to be viewed in a perspective of totality.

Lima Sehgal

Job hunting leaves a trail of rejections over time, but we seldom go beyond defining the process beyond, win or lose.

Instead of asking if we are on the right track, we are too busy with the search. For example, if we stay in Delhi, all we think of is that we want a Placement Consultant in Delhi, or just a job in Delhi.

Job hunting needs to be viewed in a perspective of totality. It is definitely about beating a track through the jungle, but where survival is more than having a machine gun as a survival kit.

For starters, the research is more important than the search. Most of us can quote a vacancy with admirable accuracy, but there is very little knowledge about the company’s definition about suitability. We worry more about the polish of the resume, the dress, shoes, the style, the confidence, but much less about listening to the rhythms of a company’s being. Winning or losing is unimportant, but not developing a sixth sense to comprehend a company’s individuality or emotionality is like inviting murder to interview rationale.

We worry so much about the competition but beyond the superficial or the statistics we do little to understand it. But it is worth considering the fact that it is not always the best guy, the more experienced or the slickest interview savvy dude, who gets the job. The heaven favored, come in various bottles and packages.

How many of us bother to find out about who won what you lost?

The definition of successful survivors in the job market jungle is definitely not about those who never get bitten .But about those who, irrespective of either winning or losing or being wounded give equal importance to knowing both facts – Why Me? and Why not Me?

Copyright © 2011, Jobnet magazine, issue 179

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

Today, the job seeker’s fear is focused not just on finding jobs, but more on missing out on one.

Lima Sehgal

The intrinsic nature of the job market is chaos. But that’s no assurance for someone who is trying to maintain balance with a surfboard on a tidal wave.

And we worry about how savvy we can get?

We’ve learnt to look for jobs world-wide on the internet with easy elan, but we continue to be as unplugged as ever. And yes, we can juggle hundreds of placement firms with confidence. But it doesn’t mean that they have a fish to catch.

One squeak and there are a million hands to help. What with the proliferation of placement firms and other services that promise to polish, groom and sell you, and those that promise to zap, zoom and shoot your resume to every corner under the stratosphere.

Today, the job seeker’s fear is focused not just on finding jobs, but more on missing out on one.

Though their neon lights can be quite bewildering, definitely the support systems for job seekers are useful. We must grow up enough to know whom to blame for not getting job offers. It’s may not be faulty resumes, defective personality packaging or ineffective mass resume distribution — there just might be no vacancies.

Déjà vu? Of course it’s the same old problem. Only, since the last generation, the paper has been replaced by Power Point.

Try and try again isn’t applicable only in Kindergarten.

Copyright © 2011, Jobnet magazine, issue 103

Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet magazine

Courtesy Jobnet’s Directory of Placement Firms

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal

The treadmill effect is rampant in the job – seeking process in India

Lima Sehgal

Ever since the list of holidays has become longer than the list of working days, business has boiled down to taking pot-shots. Oops! I thought that was the prerogative only of Bush and Saddam.

Though everyone in the job market claims to be working harder than before, one admits that the treadmill effect is rampant. Lots of sweat, but reaching nowhere.

One of the reasons for it is that the job-hunting process has moved from hi-tech to primitive. The all-fangs-and-claw technology is the only one that has, over time, proved to be unfailingly accurate.

Competition for jobs has taken new dimensions. The glamour and gloss will not entice any more. No pussy-footing any more. And those who complain about learning new tricks have forgotten that they were the same old ones.

Publications, and especially job websites unable to cater to the hunger of the masses of job-seeking professionals are in danger of closing shutters. The placement firms are surviving only because the job-seeker has become wiser — than them. Luckily, head-hunting and networking is keeping both of them inter-twined.

A few months later, the shape of the job market along with it’s lifelines and information systems, will reveal an alien landscape.

Change is always a raw deal. Especially when it is too premature to pluck or cook. All we can do is wait for it to ripen.

Copyright © 2011, Jobnet magazine, issue 98

Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet magazine

Courtesy Jobnet’s Directory of Placement Firms

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal

With more organized information available on placement firms, job seekers in India are finding that spreading the nets wide with a personalized and assertive approach with placement firms is yielding a better catch than mass -mailing resumes.

Lima Sehgal

Clinging to the flotsam and jetsam doesn’t necessarily get you Kate Winslett. Or so the placement industry has realized.

Those in the recruitment business say that, though, the aftermath is not pretty, the job market crises does not call for a salvage operation but the makings of a new beginning.

The placement business has opened with a new vigor. To the job seeker’s delight, they have become more realistic in candidate handling. Vacancies are few, and the competition severe. This has resulted in an improvement in the processing speed. Be it the job seeker or employer or a placement firm, no one has time anymore to spin good impressions. Only results count.

With more organized information available on placement firms, job seekers are finding that spreading the nets wide is yielding a better catch. Once upon a time, the credibility of placement firms was judged by the volume of clients or vacancy offers- But not today. The good ones are those who know when to say no.

It is certainly warming up, but I think it is more than just the weather.

Copyright © 2011, Jobnet magazine, issue 97

Republication or dissemination of the contents of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet magazine

Courtesy Jobnet’s Directory of Placement Firms

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal

Resume- making artistry lures Indian jobseekers

Lima Sehgal

Employers have finally got down to seriously asking those evergreen questions all over again. A natural fallout of which is putting the potential employee through a microscope.

This has resulted in a new wave in the job market. There are hordes looking for professional expertise in making a resume…for someone who can identify the crucial value factor in a person…or at least think up of one where there is none.

Now, there is a new mushrooming business in town — that of resume making — online and offline. Each one claiming better artistry over the others. For the thirsty jobseekers in the middle of a drought, this one last straw of hope is not left in vain.

There is a cheer amongst those who now have new baits for old hooks. Of course, it will definitely be a flash in the pan; but till it lasts, all of us must look more kindly towards bio-emails that blink, flash, space into infinity, or sing. And be thankful that it doesn’t get worse — like perfumed paper.

Till then, I guess, blink-blink is better than blinkers!

Copyright @Jobnet magazine Issue 182 , 2011

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal

Jobseekers in India are now demanding authentic services for real needs. There is more to the job search than mass mailing resumes by proxy or getting job alerts.

Lima Sehgal

Over the past two years, the Indian Professional has discarded many misconceptions about the job market. For better or for worse, the perspectives are clearer.

It is a big relief to know that the grass is no greener on the other side of the fence, and the competition out there is competing just as hard.

Reality, though unsavory, is preferable. It comes as a relief to know where one stands – even if one is not standing on one’s own two feet.

The guilt of not trying enough, or not knowing where to try became the gullibility on which service organizations mushroomed. There is a very fine line between giving help and giving jobs. Jobseekers need more than a formula that works only if all the ingredients are right. Anyone knows that it needs more than that to bake a cake.

But, now, there are diminishing takers for resume mass emailing services, for registration of resumes on websites, for training programs to motivate your soul, or for the ‘How to succeed in an interview’ toolkit.

Jobseekers are now demanding authentic services for real needs. Not just a packaging and props industry.

The Indian jobseeker has developed a unique self confidence, born not from the discovery of a niche or from the acquisition of job offers, but from an understanding of what really does not work.

This sixth sense has now become an instinct. Realizing that in the ocean, the predators are not the only competitors is sometimes the one single chance we give ourselves.

Copyright © 2011, Jobnet magazine, issue 90

Republication or dissemination of the conte90nts of this article are expressly prohibited without the written consent of the publishers of Jobnet magazine

Posted under Articles by Lima Sehgal