I will start with my own story. I was working in a reputed MNC for almost 12 years. During these 12 years I hardly bothered to look out for another job – reasons what I realised later were I was in a comfort zone, I was getting a good salary (at least for me and my family’s well being and survival, it was a good amount), routine job work, no burden of any new skills to develop, no official politics (what I used to think that time). During these 12 years I got promotions twice with a fair amount of increments, but I was happy because of the above mentioned things. Overall I was in my own world and never thought that I also had to struggle to get another job.
During the recession also, though people were getting pink slips for last 2 years or so but I was happy because I used to think that my job is safe since I am working for an important role and company cannot take such a decison to throw me out since I am a loyal employee serving the company from last 12 years.
But, to my surprise… suddenly one fine day, things got changed, I also got the pink slip and I had to leave the company within one month. And then came those things in my life which I never expected. Suddenly I started to think about getting a new job for me and my family’s survival.
I prepared my CV and uploaded on various job portals but did not get any call for initial 2-3 months. I tried contacting my friends to help me get a job even with lower salary than what I used to get, but nothig worked out. But as they say there is always light after a dark tunnel, I also got a call for an interview after the struggle of 3-4 months.
But the struggle was not over yet, it was just a beginning; the main problems were yet to come.
After 3-4 months hard work, finally I received an interview call, I went for the interview but to my another surprise my interview did not go well, even I can say it was very bad… I messed up the whole interview because I was not prepared for it. I came back home, spent a week for analysing what went wrong in the interview and started writing down things whatever comes to my mind, filled lots of pages and finally I ended up with my analysis.
During these 3-4 months, I spent my whole time in searching for jobs, applying on various job portals and talking to my friends to get a job. But I did not spend time on one thing that was working on myself, which I realised later that it is the MOST IMPORTANT thing in the journey of job searching for any candidate.
To cut short my story, I worked on my myself and finally I cracked the very first interview and after that I never failed i
n any interview and passed all and now I am working again in another MNC with almost double salary and better postion from my 12 years working company.
From all these happenings in my life I learnt only one lessons that is always be prepared for the worst.
And to be prepared for the worst, you would have to work on yourself.
Work on yourself
Majorly, there are 2 parts of Work on yourself – first is is preparing for interview and second is Develop your skills (work on your skills). We will talk about these 2 major things in detail.
- Prepare for Interview
- Develop your skills
Prepare for interview
After reading my story till now, you would have understood that getting an interview call is so important and it takes lots of hard work but this all hard work gets wasted if we are not prepared for the interview.
I started preapring for interview, spent couple of weeks for learning/unlearning interview skills and finally I cracked an interview and got a job. After working for almost 1 year in that company I tried for a better opportunity and got an interview call and this time since I was well prepared I went for it, cracked it and got the salary offer far better than the salary of my last to last company salary.
Conclusion
With my own experience I concluded that to get any job, 2 things are most important and we cannot ignore them. without them we cannot get a job.
- Interview preparation
- Skill development
I am starting a series of blog posts on this website, where I will explain these 2 aspects. I will talk about the whole process of interview and how to prepare for any interview, what interviewer wants, etc. etc..
