Grads, want a job? Do CV yoga!

The idea is to work on your CV from pre-final year itself instead to wait for the final year, says Kounal Gupta, CEO, Henry Harvin Education.

Photograph: Patrick Fallon/Reuters

The transition phase for every student from college to become a professional is very tricky.

After finishing college, they are now expected to be financially and socially independent.

In fact, college learning is more about academics and less about practicality, still, college years are very crucial to kick-start your professional journey.

Finding a job after college is a daunting task and you are about to step into the 'real world.'

There is no magic formula to get a job but there are always small steps you can take to control the process and boost your odds significantly.

Here are some tips on how to find a job at the end of college:

Utilise your vacation by doing more internship

Students, utilize your vacations to the maximum. The number of vacations is directly proportional to the number of internships you can finish during a calendar year.

During college, we all get summer vacation, winter vacation, and even some gaps thanks to the festive season.

Never ever underutilise them. Make the best use of it by doing as much internship as possible.

We must understand that colleges were made to support industries. So we must get industry experience simultaneously so that it doesn't come as a cultural shock when you join a company.

In order to get one, you have to be active on internship websites.

If you don’t know what kind of internship you want then apply for all and take whatever you are getting.

Don't over evaluate initially because you will gradually understand about your interests, strengths, and weaknesses, who you are, what you want while working.

Attend at least one professional training every six months

Upskilling is not a want anymore, but a need. You don't have any choice left.

It is high time that people actually adapt to this famous quote in their lives- ‘change is the only constant’.

What skills you have presently or what skill you are being taught today may not be relevant tomorrow.

One must realize that 21st century means disruption and, disruption of skills will be the highest.

To quote one of our research findings, 'Life of one skill set will not be able to survive more than 5 to 7 years. Thus, in a 30 yrs long career in the private sector one will be required to upgrade one's skills set 6 times at least, else one will be replaced by a robot or someone else.'

Few recommended training institutes which provide professional training are NIIT, Henry Harvin Education etc.

Students should imbibe this at the grass root level. Four years of engineering is a long time, higher education institutions cannot keep their curriculum at pace with changing technologies.

So by attending professional training regularly, you stay afloat to the changing times.

You must have an active presence on the job portals even before pre-final year

Students generally make this mistake of getting introduced to job portals in the last few months of their college life.

That's the main reason why they are not able to make full use of the job portals. A survey by Henry Harvin Education reports that only 7 out of 100 students have an active profile on job portal at the end of the pre-final year.

The earlier you get accustomed to the job portal, your chances of fetching a job increase exponentially. Job portals are like digital markets to sell your profile to companies. And at present, digital marketing cannot be taken lightly.

Constantly create content

The more content you will create, more beneficial it will prove to you.

Content is an asset that will definitely generate results, even if you are a student. Create blogs articles, research publications, project reports, videos etc.

Content helps you in selling your skills to the world. If you don’t know how many content types exist in just text form -- there are over 30+ types of content.

If you don’t know how to write content, you can take help from a number of content writing courses that are popular among the students. Professors need students who can work with them on their research.

You can join hands with them and collectively publish research papers.

Convert what you have learned during the internship into authored articles and documents which can be published on the web.

Linkedin is the best platform to publish content.

Collect recommendations on your Linkedin profile from the others which will build your trust score.

Practice 'CV Yoga' every month

The practice of CV Yoga is not anything new, as this simply relates to continually curate and enhance your CV throughout your preparation for the job.

This CV Yoga has two main Asanas:

Asana 1: Every month one should work on these questions: Who am I? What skill set do I have? What experience do I have? How can I add value to a company? And, how can improve the answers to all above questions?

Asana 2: Show your resume to someone experienced from the industry. Irrespective of you being in the first year or the final year.

Take his/her advice; identify which advice is worth implementing set a deadline and implement!

The whole idea is to work on a CV from pre-final year itself instead to wait for the final year.

 The author Kounal Gupta is CEO, Henry Harvin Education, that trains aspirants in business education.