Resume not getting shortlisted ?

Hold on. It is not only about luck. Trust me. It is about skills, credibility, visibility, supply and demand to a very large extent.

It is not enough if you have skills. In addition, the world should know that you exist (visibility) and can clear the interviews (credibility) given an opportunity. It matters because companies spend significant time and money screening, shortlisting and interviewing hundreds of applicants already.

There is an order in which you fix things.

1. Ensure your skills are relevant, polished and top notch. There is no point chasing the job openings without it.
2. Get a higher degree from a reputed institute if possible.
3. Network with people in key roles both online and offline (if you join a reputed institute this aspect becomes easy). Tell them how you have been sharpening your skills over the last few months and how you are ready to interview for challenging roles. Request them to refer you at their workplace.
4. People don’t mind referring other genuine and capable people. In fact, they get paid for it in some places.

It is a fact that companies don’t have time to even screen all resumes they get on their websites or through consultants. Your resume should impress the person screening it in like 3 seconds to get shortlisted. So, how is it going to stand out among the millions of resumes floating around? Think about it.

-Imtiaz Mohammad

I had the same question about......

I had the same question about more than a decade ago when I wondered what separates the class toppers from an average student like me.

Luckily I had the chance to be around a topper and observe him and his actions.

What I learned from a class topper.

While I was in school I was an average student. I studied enough to score well but never topped the class.

However when I was in std 8th, I had a chance to sit besides a class topper.

Here is what I observed and learned from him.

1. He had a tremendous zeal to score well, the intensity with which he studied showed up on his face.
2. The amount of enthusiasm this guy had to tackle the exam was mind blowing. If you ever see him revising before an exam, you would think that he was a maniac. Compared to him I was like Meh… its just an exam, let’s write the paper and get over with it.
3. He honestly prepared till the last moment, he made sure that no answer is left unrevised. He genuinely immersed himself into books. Not like others who study before exam just to show off.
4. His enthusiasm was contagious, you wont believe that after sitting besides him for an exam even I started studying with more zeal and more passion. I became genuinely interested in studies. This is the very reason you should surround yourself with great people, we end up becoming a bit like them.
5. As soon as the exam ended, the very next moment he would start preparing for the next one. He knew the value of every minute and utilised well.
6. Most importantly he didn’t consider this as work or something he has to do but he genuinely enjoyed studying and being a class topper.
7. Was he talented and had more IQ than others? I have no idea, but I can assure you one thing that he put a lot more effort to study the same topic than others did. If he was really talented and had a god gifted photographic memory then he wouldn’t have had to put so much effort into learning/memorising things.
8. Was he lucky? He had the same set of Questions to answer as others did. Although he might have had other advantages like a favourable and conducive study environment at home, better coaching however there were plenty others who had much more advantages than him.

These were my key takeaways form him which I follow to this day:

1. It’s all about how bad you want it. If you are competing with someone else for a thing then the one who gets it is the one who wants it the most.
2. There is no substitute to hard work, even if you are super talented.
3. Enthusiasm matters a lot, if you are not enthusiastic or excited about something it will be much harder to succeed at it,
4. Being genuine always pays, always be genuine to you work and it will reward you back.
5. Enthusiasm and positive energy is contagious and it shows up in your work. So is negative energy. Hence one must do all the possible things to surround yourself with positive and energetic people and cut out all the people from your life who are inherently negative.
6. Value time, it is your most precious resource and hence put it to good use.
7. Luck is definitely a factor, however not as much as you think it is. It does have an impact but the effect of ones luck only amplifies when you put in the hard work.

-Saurav Sharma

Consistency

Consistency: Understand than improvement is not a one day game. Improvement is a gradual and a very slow process. You can only start working on improving certain aspects of your life today, does not mean that you will see the result in the next day or even next month. Why most people are skeptical about self improvement is because they lack patience and expect fast results. To improve upon anything, its’ important that you do it on a daily basis. You don’t need to do a lot but you need to do it daily. To remember this, keep this phrase in your mind “Doing a little everyday > doing a lot a single day”.

-Saurav Sharma

What is important in life: luck or hard work?

Let’s assume there are 100 big containers numbered from 1 to 100 and one of them has gold in it.

Two people ‘A’ and ‘B’ have the chance to win this gold, all they have to do is break open these containers until they find gold.

Odds of finding gold in those containers would be 1 in 100 as per probability theory.

Its A’s turn, he starts off breaking the containers, he opens the first one, then the second and then the third, goes on till 24th and is too lazy to open up the rest and gives up.

A later discovers that the gold was present in the 28th container, which means that had he broke 4 more containers he would have won that.

He would have been called lucky if he had tried just a little bit hard but he didn't, he was too lazy to do so.

It’s now B’s turn, he starts off breaking the containers, 1,2,3,4…..till 50 and still no luck but B is still determined and continues breaking them and finally discovers gold at the 78th container.

What conclusion can be drawn from the above example?

Even if A was lucky to have gold in the 28th container the luck didn’t favour him because he was lazy.

Even if B had a bad luck because of having gold in the 78th container, he overcame his fate by overcompensating it with persistent and hard work.

Which means that:

Luck does exist but it favours the people who take an honest effort.

Bad luck exist too but it can be overcome by compensating it with hard work.

Although this example might sound lame(it actually is) most of the things in life work in a similar way, your odds of becoming successful eventually increases the more shots you take.

I would vouch for hard work any day as effort is something you can control.

Another funny thing is that people like to believe in luck because it seems so effortless and magical.

People in the real world look at people like ‘B’ who walk with a pot of gold and say how luck they are to get that gold.

However what they fail to see is the work that’s behind it.

Only intelligent people go to IIT ?

-Saurav Sharma

It’s much simpler than you think

Success is not all about hard work, it’s a combination of multiple factors combined together.

However, the two major factors contributing to success are hard work combined with consistency.

If you truly want to become successful in whatever you want, you need to be able to work hard over a consistent period of time.

Let’s face it, we all can work hard for a day or two. We can do extreme workouts, follow strict diets for a day or two but the real challenge is to be consistent with it for an extended period of time.

Why most people don’t succeed:

People get all inspired and jacked up about achieving something, they plan meticulously and decide to start from tomorrow.

They almost overachieve on their first day, however what they don’t realise that it wont be possible to sustain that level of willpower and effort over a consistent period of time.

You may work hard, study/work for 16 hours a day with just 4 hours of sleep but what we fail to take into consideration is how sustainable it is over a long period of time ?

What successful people know & do:

They pick the optimal combination of hard work & consistency.

They work hard enough to get things done but not so hard that they don’t feel like working the next day.

The ripped and muscular guy you see at the gym has been consistently working out and dieting for years.

The people who own million dollar businesses have been in business for decades.

The people who have achieved great positions in their careers have been putting in consistent efforts for years.

The guy who topped the most competitive exam has been studying consistently since the first day.

With consistency you can work less:

If you are consistent with working on a goal, it takes relatively less effort to achieve it.

For example, it is much easier for a fit person to loose weight as compared to an overweight individual who has never had a workout in his entire life.

A fit person is able to have a pizza and skip a few days of workout whereas the individual who is overweight has to be much stricter with his workout and diet.

Same applies to other domains as well. Whether you are a student, a professional or a businessperson. The more consistent you are much easier it becomes to achieve something.

Hope this helps.

Mistakes that should be avoided during UPSC Prep

-Saurav Sharma