Get Yourself Work-Ready by Kamal Kant

Leaving university with a good degree is an indisputable pre-requisite in the graduate employment market. But this alone is not enough to secure your first job.

Optimally, the skills, competencies and abilities you develop during your university years and the experiences you gain from industrial attachments and temporary jobs will help to give you an edge over the next candidate.

In a highly competitive employment landscape where fresh graduates are finding their job search challenging, employers are seeking candidates who can hit the ground running.

It is essential to not just bury your head in your books while you are in university, but to continue to develop your interests beyond the academic and acquire some work experience.

This will help to enrich your life and your resume. Many graduating students are so focused on academic results they often overlook enriching their life beyond lectures and assignments.

Employ ability skills are more important to some organisations and employers than the specific occupational, technical or academic knowledge and skills associated with the graduate’s degree. The desired skills for today’s fresh graduates fall into four broad areas: self-reliance, people, general employment and specialist skills.

1. Self-reliance skills

These skills include self-awareness and being proactive. Employers usually want to know how purposeful and focused the candidate is. They want to discover his beliefs as well as how realistic his career expectations and goals are.

Being proactive includes having resourcefulness, drive and self-reliance. Among the gamut of self-reliance skills, employers are also looking into the graduate’s ability to market themselves modestly in a positive but persistent manner. The ability to network and be an astute decision-maker is another quality that distinguishes good candidates.

2. People skills

In the people skills arena, employers want to know whether the candidate has worked in a shop, supermarket or restaurant, engaged in fund-raising activities for charity, or participated regularly in voluntary work.

These are front-line work areas where individuals are likely to develop people skills. Being a member of an orchestra, participating in a team sport or having a leadership role are also good indicators of people skills.

In essence, employers try to determine whether the candidate has engaged in activities that have helped to develop his interpersonal skills, effective communication competencies and leadership abilities. They are seeking candidates with customer-centric attitudes who demonstrate a friendly and caring attitude, and can handle difficult situations diplomatically. Employers also want candidates who are comfortable with diversity associated with globalisation and multi-ethnic workforces.

3. Other skills

Of course, general business skills like problem-solving, flexibility, business acumen, computer and numerate literacy, and commitment are desired personal skills. Candidates who are versatile, willing and multi-skilled definitely have an advantage. However, specific occupational skills and specialist relevant knowledge are equally important in certain occupations.

Many employers also prefer graduates who have gained practical work experience and have a better idea about what the world of work has in store for them. Employers are also looking for personal qualities in fresh graduates that include cultural intelligence and an ability to connect with colleagues and partners who are a generation older than them.

According to some employers, completing an internship, industrial attachment or a community project in an under-developed country remains the useful road to the improvement of workplace soft skills for graduates.

Your degree is no longer enough to land you a job. You will have to demonstrate that you are work-ready, willing to put in hard work and not fearful of challenging tasks.

Can you prove all this and more in an effective resume? Will you be able to demonstrate to and persuade a potential employer that you have what it takes to succeed in their business? Will you be able to live up to the promise of being a well-rounded employee in your first six months at work?

Consider these issues, then try and fill the gaps in your resume. Seek the help and advice of career counsellors or friends who have work experience. With some effort and a positive attitude, you will boost your ability to find the job you want.

How To Sell Without Selling by Manoj Sharma

Here is a scenario you are probably familiar with if you are in sales:

The marketplace is competitive. You need to meet your targets. Time is running out. Desperation is in the air. The buyer is not that keen. You know you need to differentiate, but the similarities are too obvious to hide.

You pitch passionately. It does not seem to work. The buyer tells you he is going to buy from someone else. Once again, you are left facing that all-too-familiar sinking feeling and you hate it. You wonder what strategic sales approach will make a difference.

After years of working with, coaching and learning from the top sales professionals around the world, I have compiled a list of selling “don’ts” or principles that will help you to benefit from the art of selling without selling.

Don’t sell ice to the Eskimos

Make people buy things they need. You can create desire by being compelling, you can seduce people to your point of view and you can even exhibit your undying passion for your product or service. But a true sales professional is one who discovers a customer’s needs and fulfils it.

Do this for your customers and you will surely create a sales pipeline that keeps rewarding you past the first interaction with them.

Don’t make an elephant climb a wall

Buyer’s remorse is painful to deal with. If you have convinced your buyer to buy above what he can afford, it is like getting an elephant to climb a wall — it is not natural and even if it does get up the wall, it is going to come crashing down hard on you.

I know of numerous sales professionals who close sales, whether in “small money” consumer environments or “million-dollar” business environments, only for the buyers to come back and demand a recourse or, worse, take legal action.

Don’t fall into this trap; the euphoria of making the sale will not be worth the gloom of the sales recovery that follows.

Don’t sell the steak, sell the sizzle

When a woman wants a dress, she does not buy it because it looks good on the mannequin or even because it looks good on her. She buys it because she envisions the impact she will make wearing that dress, either at work or a party. Find the benefit and sell that. This is what in the sales profession we call “selling the sizzle”. Focus on this and not on selling the steak.

Don’t just sell on emotion or logic alone

There are sales staff who sell purely on emotion and there are those that sell only on logic. These are practical sellers; they convey the hard facts, are happy to deal with the figures and will work out the return on investment for you. To be a top professional, you need to learn how to incorporate both selling styles.

Don’t be a hit and run artist

You often find yourself in a hurry to close the deal. And who can fault you when you have targets to meet and deadlines to beat? But rushing is not the hallmark of great sales professionals and is not conducive to selling without selling.

To sell without selling, you need to take the time to engage people in a dialogue, a two-way communication in which both parties take turns to listen. A major key to selling without selling is to build relationships.

Relationships are built on a foundation of trust, which is gained by listening and speaking with genuine sincerity. Unfortunately, this takes time, which “hit and run” salesmen don’t want to invest in.

Don’t sell the way your competitors do

The “same-old” can never lead to the “different-new”.

There is terminal normality in the marketplace.

Organisations are selling similar products at similar price points, hiring similar people with similar backgrounds who think similarly, sell similarly and have similar branding, marketing and sales strategies.

Selling without selling requires the customer to feel the difference without you having to sell the difference. Think about that long and hard and see what you can come up with to differentiate yourself.

Don’t sell like a prophet

A doomsday prophet and an overzealous priest are not great role models for salesmen who want to build lasting relationships which will allow them to subsequently sell without selling.

Don’t pressure sell, nobody likes it. Don’t artificially create time frames if they truly don’t exist. Don’t create doomsday scenarios or induce fear.

Don’t overstate the truth. These are typical things salesmen have been taught that make them sell like soothsayers. Just be genuine and truthful.

Eliminate the “don’ts” and you will be left with the “do’s”. This approach will go a long way to building great relationships.

It will allow you to sell without selling when other people are desperately attempting to “sell”.

Writing An Effective Resume by John Koh

Your curriculum vitae or CV creates the first impression that recruiters and prospective employers have of you. Before even meeting with you, your CV already starts selling you, in a positive or negative way.

Your CV is like a mini-biography of you. You will have a compelling story to tell if you have prepared a great CV. Readers will quickly pick up salient points about your skills and work experience in a logical and concise manner. Not only will a great CV generate strong interest in you, it also distinguishes you from others competing with you for the same job.

Conversely, CVs that are unstructured, written poorly or contain missing information typically do not get past the first round of selection. Employers will question your professional ability and your chance of getting a job interview will diminish considerably.

So, how do you prepare a good CV? Here are four key points to help you:

1. Write concisely

A well-written CV is one that is concise and contains all the essential information about you in a simple and readable format.

Job seekers typically err on the two extremes of writing CVs — they are either too lengthy or so brief they hardly say anything about the applicants or the value they can bring to prospective employers.

Keep your CV between four to five pages long. Anything beyond that risks losing the attention or interest of the reader.

2. Talk about yourself

The first section, which draws the reader’s attention, is your personal information. This includes your full name, contact information (telephone numbers, e-mail and home address), education, professional qualifications, technology skills and language skills.

This section should also include a statement or short paragraph about yourself, and a summary of your key strengths and skills, career achievements and aspirations.

Employers typically use this to determine your suitability for the job. It is one of the criteria used to decide whether or not to grant you an interview.

3. Share your work experience

The next section sells you as a potential candidate for a role. Get all your facts right and list your work experience in reverse chronological order.

This means putting your most current work experience first. Employers typically look at your current job and its relevance to the role they are hiring for.

Summarise the scope of your responsibilities neatly and use bulleted points where necessary (if there are more than two areas you wish to cover) to enable the reader to gain an accurate understanding of your role.

Be specific when writing about your job achievements. For example, if you were directly responsible for managing the profit and loss of a department, list down in numerical terms how much you did to increase revenues or save costs.

Also list qualitative achievements, such as job promotions, awards recognising your efforts, or improvements and positive changes you have made during your tenure.

4. Manage flaws in your CV

As you accumulate work experience over the years, how desirable your profile is to a prospective employer depends increasingly on the jobs you have done and the companies you have worked for.

Employers seek to hire candidates with a track record of success in a similar role, as there is greater certainty that they will do well in the role.

Firms are wary of job hoppers as they doubt their staying power after investing in training and inducting them into their jobs.

Conversely, if you stay too long in one job or company, it may raise questions about your ability to adapt to a different environment or job scope.

If this is the case with you, think over carefully the various roles you have filled and skills you have learned over your long tenure.

How many times have you been promoted within your role? Have you been exposed to different functions across the firm? How much of your experience would be directly relevant to the new employer?

Another potential flaw in your CV is the appearance of gaps. This is common especially in the current economic environment in which a significant number of people are retrenched or laid off from their work due to corporate restructuring.

As much as possible, fill those gaps in your CV with clear descriptions of what you achieved.

Be truthful about what you have or have not done and never be tempted to insert false information in your CV. The truth can easily be verified through reference checking and deception can cost you the job, or worse, tarnish your reputation in the job market.

10 Ways To Get Noticed By Andrew Lucy

In his book, The Purple Cow: Transform Your Business By Being Remarkable, author Seth Godin speaks of the need to continuously differentiate and then re-differentiate to stay ahead of the game and “beat the competition”.

In looking for any new job opportunity, you must see yourself as the product and the employer as the customer. How do you stand out and convince the employer to choose you?

This can also work the opposite way around — as an employer, you want the best candidate to “buy-in” and join you, making you the product and the prospective employee your customer!

Either way, why not first exploit the same principles we all use to attract “real customers” and re-apply them to the task of landing a dream job or dream candidate?

So, how do you make yourself stand out from the crowd without donning a fancy dress costume?

I believe there are 10 basic and easily followed traits and actions that can help (eight of which were first prescribed by Richard St John in his book, 8 To Be Great: The 8 Traits That Lead To Great Success).

1. Passion

This is at the top of the list and is often referred to as “fire in the belly”. If you enjoy what you do and who you do it with, feel motivated, acknowledged and rewarded for it, money becomes secondary. But it will come, as a natural consequence of the passion you have and the success to which that drive leads.

2. Hard work

Realise that results should, and will, be rewarded, but don’t ignore effort and hard work. They are essential and need to be encouraged and recognised, whether or not there is an immediate pay off in dollars and cents.

As an employer, dismantle the fear culture and bring on the incentives. Even a donkey will kick out against the stick eventually, but he will always follow the carrot.

3. Practise

Get really good at something. Listen, question, practise, learn — and always think!

4. Focus

Don’t run around trying to do everything. Concentrate and excel process by process. If you are the employee, showcase your top skills. If you are the employer, your primary business and the culture you establish are your key attractions.

5. Keep pushing

As an employee, push through shyness, self-doubt and being passed over. Find a mentor and let him or her help you grow. Then move on to the next opportunity.

As an employer, press on through downturns by valuing and preserving your staff and communicating with them. One day, it will be you who needs them more and they will return the favour with their loyalty and wholehearted support, rather than through grudging self-preservation.

6. Build a service culture

Don’t just offer service. Give your customers, employers and employees something they want or need, and for which they are prepared to pay or work to obtain and keep. Make your culture one that serves something of real value.

7. Persist

Never give up and don’t let negative people hold you down! Everyone fails now and then. The winners are those that seek the distinctive “purple cow”, swim through the sludge, turn it to manure and reap the harvest.

8. Let the ideas flow

Good ideas come from observation, curiosity, asking questions, solving problems, networking, connecting and risk-taking!

No one can ever become remarkable by conforming — sometimes it is best to simply go with your gut.

9. Accept feedback

Warmly embrace criticism, complaints and failure as useful feedback. Only through your mistakes can you grow, learn and improve. Then can you become truly remarkable.

10. Connect with people

Communicate with your customers, your employees, your employers and your colleagues on an emotional level not just a commercial one.

But, more than that: delight each other! Always go beyond what is necessary to close the deal and provide not just what is expected, but what is needed. Those are things that you can only discover by listening more than you speak.

Remember that when you pay for attention, it becomes merely advertising and hyperbole, and people think that you are just trying to sell them something.

Instead, win loyalty from your new customers and your old ones, and from your staff and your employers. Loyalty is generated by people feeling good about you and spreading the word.

While marketing can sustain you and may bring in a few more leads, loyalty and the brand image that comes with it can truly grow your business and your reputation — and make you an employer or employee of choice.