5 Ways To Get The Job - Even If You're Not The Most Qualified Candidate

As a job seeker, you'll always have competition - and you may not be the "best" or most qualified candidate for the job. But that doesn't mean you can't get it.

No one knows this better than Nishant Bhajaria, a career coach and product manager at Nike.

Bhajaria landed his first job by going to a career fair in college - one his friends deemed not worth attending - and inquiring about a random financial analyst position, even though he was a computer science major. He thought he might be a good fit anyway, and ended up tweaking the job title and description with the hiring manager.

"At a career fair that allegedly would have no opportunities for me, I walked out with a same-day interview and a job offer for a position whose description I co-wrote," he says in a recent LinkedIn post.

From his experience, Bhajaria discovered several hidden nuances to job searching. Most importantly: you don't have to be the perfect candidate.

Here are five of his biggest lessons about how to get the job, even if you're not the most qualified person out there:

Don't get hung up on job titles.

"Job titles are like Madison Square Garden," Bhajaria says. "The iconic New York venue is neither square nor a garden." The same holds true for several jobs as well. Just because a position doesn't have your ideal title doesn't mean you shouldn't look into it. Dig deeper and ask questions - it might end up being a great fit.

Never stop learning.

Even if you're under-qualified when you apply for the job, remember that you will learn new skills and grow in the role, Bhajaria says. Prove your worth by showing not only how valuable you already are, but how valuable you have the potential to become.

Introduce yourself to as many people as possible.

Introduce yourself to everyone.

It's easy to get caught up in the idea that job searching is all about who you know. However, Bhajaria points out that who you don't know can prove just as important. Even if you're nervous or uncomfortable, introduce yourself to anyone and everyone - you'll impress people and give them reason to remember you. "By asking for someone to give you their time, you are showing them respect," Bhajaria explains.

Make yourself visible.

It's impossible to be in a "right place at the right time" situation if you never put yourself out there. You might not think you're the most qualified candidate for a job, but the position's yours if you're the best of who's there, so don't be afraid to apply for anything you have a shot at. "If you have a tendency to undersell yourself, remember this: you don't always have to be the best to win," Bhajaria says.

Don't give up.

Job hunting is often tough, exhausting, and discouraging, but a little perseverance goes a long way. If you back off at the first taste of rejection, you greatly reduce your chances of luck working in your favor. "You are the sum total of your efforts, not just one failed interview," Bhajaria reminds us. Keep tweaking your resume, sending in applications, and going on interviews - your determination will pay off.  

5 Hard Truths From the Person Reading Your Resume

Resumes are very personal documents. In fact, whenever I'm reviewing a resume, I always ask permission before I mark it up. Who am I to edit your life's work?
That said, I can almost guarantee you that the way your career counselor handles your resume is not the way it will be handled once you submit your job applications. After speaking with many, many recruiters, here are some hard truths I've learned.

1. If your relevant experience, education, or skills are hard to find at a glance, your resume might as well be blank.

It's understandable to want to make your resume stand out a bit from the typical resume, but getting creative in InDesign isn't the way to do it. As the head of Google's HR states, "Unless you're applying for a job such as a designer or artist, your focus should be on making your resume clean and legible."
In other words, no funky formats. You're far better off spending your time trying to maximize the top half of your resume. This could mean writing a resume summary with your most relevant qualifications or maybe pulling all your most relevant experiences into a separate section at the top of your resume and relegating the rest into an "Additional Experiences" section. As long as you're trying to maximize traditional resume formatting rather than do something entirely different, you should be safe.

2. If it's not immediately clear from your experience why you're applying, no one will connect the dots for you.

Whether you're a career changer or just applying for a reach position, if a recruiter's initial reaction to your resume is confusion, you're not going to get very far.
So, make sure you connect the dots for the reader. It's likely that you have an idea of how your skills can be transferred or why you're more skilled than your years of experience might let on. But, unless you spell it out on your resume, the recruiter probably won't be able to put the pieces together — and you'll never have the chance to explain in person./
One way to solve it? Using a simple objective statement. While you should definitely not use an objective statement if you're applying for a position that makes perfect sense — or if it's a cliched "I'd like to use my skills at an innovative, fast-growing organization" — if your background is a little unusual for the job you're targeting, a brief explanation might just be what gets you to the interview.

3. If your resume is difficult to skim, it probably won't be read at all.

There's some debate over how much time a recruiter will spend looking over a resume, but everyone agrees that it's less than 20 seconds. What does that mean for job seekers? It means your resume needs to be as easy to read — really, skim — as possible.
Read: Don't make your font so small that it's barely legible. It doesn't matter how much more you're able to fit on your one-pager if no one is reading it. And don't let your bullet points drag on to that third line. Two is all you get and, more likely than not, one is all that will get read. (Here's a bit more on how to make your resume easy to skim.)

4. If you expect to get your resume in front of a hiring manger, you need to first make sure you get through HR.

That means making sure a layperson can understand what you're talking about in your resume. It doesn't matter if you're managing complicated supply chains, coding complex algorithms, or conducting cutting-edge research on nanolasers — none of your impressive feats will reach the appropriate hiring manager if you can't at least explain it in a way that a nontechnical human resources representative can understand well enough to put you in the right pile.
This means cutting the jargon, giving proper context, and focusing on results. Use the job posting to your advantage here — find the keywords and present your work the same way they do. I know, jargon can be pretty fun to use and starts to get instinctive when you're around it for long enough, but step outside of your industry bubble for a bit and try to approach your resume as an industry outsider. The easier you make things for HR, the more smoothly your application process will go.

5. If your contact info isn't correct, nothing else matters.

Finally, don't be that person who has everything a recruiter is looking for but is just impossible to contact. Check, double check, and test your contact information. Typos are always bad, but a typo in your contact information is probably as bad as it gets. It's a really crummy feeling to notice an incorrect email address a couple months into your job search. Don't let that be you.

Did I miss anything? What are some hard truths you've learned about resumes?

8 Steps to a Successful Career Change

More than a decade ago, I made a career pivot from corporate communications director to almost-all-commission recruiter. I took  Uncalculated risks and managed just about every aspect of the transition in a haphazard manner. Fortunately, I got lucky. It all worked out.
But looking back, I can't help but think to myself, "Dude. That was reckless."
This, after all, was my livelihood. This was my life.
If you're considering a career pivot, I'm going to appeal to you to do things differently. Much differently.

SEE ALSO: The Real Reason Your Job Isn't the Right Fit

I'm going to appeal to you to follow these key steps:

1. Start with the why

So many people know they hate or have outgrown their jobs, but they don't have much awareness beyond that. You've got to get clear on the why before you just start steamrolling toward something new. Otherwise, you could end up in a different spot, but one that you still ultimately hate — and what's the point of that effort?
Think about these questions: Why do I want this? Why do I think this new career will make my life better? What might the downsides or risks be?
Sometimes, in going through the exercise, you realize that things actually might not be as rosy as you'd fantasized about at all. And sometimes? The path will become even more appealing and make even better sense.

2. Get clear on the what

What does this new job or career look like? What does it not look like? What's it called?
Also, a very important question to consider: Do I have any career capital in this? In other words, are you going to be able to leverage your skills, your contacts, and your professional brand to make a successful transition?
So many people drink the "follow your passion and everything will fall into place" Kool-Aid. But scientific research — done by a computer scientist named Cal Newport — shows that those who "follow their passions" statistically have a lower probability of finding long-term career fulfillment than those who leverage existing career capital when making a shift. Newport suggests — and I firmly agree — that you're much better off pivoting into roles that leverage the career capital you've already built up over the years and drawing upon these areas of expertise in new and creative ways.

3. Figure out the what's it gonna take

Are you lacking certain skills that you need to be an attractive candidate for this new type of role? Do you need certifications? Classes? Licenses?
Sometimes, even if you do, it's entirely within reach. It could be a simple matter of taking an online course and gaining some baseline proficiency so that you can say confidently, "Yes, I know Excel" or "Yes, I can work in QuickBooks."
But sometimes, you need more extensive education or licensure. You need to sleuth this out and make decisions on whether you're willing to make the front-end investment this pivot requires or not.
You also want to outline the additional resources you'll need in order to pull this off and trade-offs it may require. Will you need child care support? Will this effort take time away from other relationships or activities in your life? Can you get your family on board?
Assuming you feel "all systems go," after this, you now need to build a plan.

SEE ALSO: Help Me Find a Job! Emails to Send to Your Network

4. Make an action plan

Begin with the end in mind with your action plan. What's your primary goal and ideal timeline?
Once you've got that nailed, break it down into major milestones— skills you need to acquire, people you need to meet, things you need to wrap up in your current job, personal things you need to attend to prior to making this shift. What are the milestones?
Assign yourself daily or weekly tasks so that you know what, exactly, you'll be doing when you sit down in front of your computer in the name of "career pivot." You don't want to freewheel this.
As you complete these tasks, you'll also likely notice how small steps tend to have a snowball effect and give you both momentum and confidence that this is, in fact, a very real possibility.

5. Track the effort

Respect yourself enough to track the effort. Monitor how you're doing and what you need to be doing next. Set up reminders so you follow up on things when you need to. If you're going to invest time and energy to make this happen, invest the time and energy to track your progress.
A simple Excel spreadsheet will do you wonders. If you're not an Excel person, use the tool that makes the most sense to you so you don't abandon ship on it.

6. Shift your brand

You will need to shift your professional brand so that you make sense to your new target audience. Simple rule: The easier you make it for them to "get" you, the better the odds that they'll want to know more.
Nobody's going to deduce how or why you "may" make sense for any particular role or career path. Forget about it. Instead, you have to make it "smack in the forehead obvious" on your resume, your LinkedIn profile, your cover letter — why you make perfect sense for the roles you're applying for.
Your competitors, at least some of them, are going to look great on paper, because they've been in that industry or worked in similar roles for several years. So how are you going to brand yourself in a way that not only makes you seem logical, but maybe positions you as a clear standout?
Here's an example. I once worked with a CIA agent who wanted to become a geologist. So he went back to school to earn a geology degree. He was at the top of his class and had everything going for him. However, as he neared graduation and started applying for positions, nothing happened. His classmates, on the other hand, most of whom had no prior professional experience, were getting calls for the very positions he wanted.
I took one look at the way he was presenting himself on paper and realized what was going wrong: He was a CIA guy on paper. I'm certain that the decision makers for these geology positions were confused: They couldn't quickly see that he was a terrific geologist. They really couldn't easily see that he was a geologist, period.
I asked him how that CIA experience might be advantageous to his future role as a geologist. He replied: "I have been in intense field settings. I've had to navigate and overcome the most extreme environments, in the most remote locations. You can literally drop me anywhere and I'll not only be okay; I'll succeed."
There was his hook. And that's exactly how we shifted his professional brand.

7. Mobilize your posse

Get your people on board, especially the ones you know will always have your back. Yes, you might need to be a bit covert about your intentions if you're still employed elsewhere, but this is no time to operate completely under the radar. Pick your most trusted contacts and enlist their help.
And when you do, be specific. Telling people, "Hey, I'm thinking about becoming a grant writer" is fine and well, but it doesn't really spell out what you need, or how — specifically — they can help the most.

8. Get in cahoots with the right people

You absolutely must get to know passionate and successful people working within that new field of interest. Don't stress about this. People are more generous with their time and input than you think, especially when you show interest in them and acknowledge or validate something they're doing professionally.
Always remember that no one wants to be ambushed. The best way to approach is by paying a compliment or noting something that they're doing that seems interesting or impressive. After you build a bit of rapport, then you can ask for a favor or a bit of their time. And without a doubt, thank everyone who gives you input and advice along the way. Better yet, implement their input. This is the best thank you that you can give.
The reason so many people stop short of ever making career pivots is because they're scared. Terrified.
Change is terrifying. Fear of the unknown is terrifying. Fear of failure? The worst.
So what is the secret of those who make it to the other side?
In many cases it's quite simple: They took one small, deliberate, and brave step toward the goal every single day, even when it was inconvenient. Even when it was terrifying.

They weighed things out and decided to take a full-on run at it. Now it's your turn.

Startups engineer salary hike for freshers, bring cheer to upcoming joinees

Starting salaries for fresh engineering graduates stagnant in the Rs 3.5 to Rs 4.5 lakh band for 5-8 years are showing signs of going up, bringing cheer to the roughly 1.5-million students graduating next year.
One reason: e-commerce companies and other startups are stepping up hiring and offering better salaries, forcing mass IT recruiters to increase starting pay packages. TCS, which has hired around 25,000 students from campus in FY15 and will recruit 36,000 in FY16, may be the first to start offering more. "We are definitely looking at it, but at this point, I can't disclose whether we are raising it or not," said Ajoy Mukherjee, executive vice-president and head, global human resources for TCS. The firm introduced city allowances for its campus recruits and trainees last year for the first time and will offer them this year, too.

Sangeeta Gupta, senior vice-president for Nasscom, said, "Different IT companies are evaluating the increased competition from players like e-commerce and may need to relook at salaries."

Infosys and HCL declined to comment. Mid-tier companies, who, too, haven't increased starting salaries at campuses for years, are also taking a re-look. "Fresher salaries should definitely go up this year," said Anand Deshpande, CEO, Persistent Systems. Competition with start-ups for engineering talent is one of the reasons. "A lot of the freshers are mostly salary-driven (in their choice of employer)," he said. Persistent's average offer for freshers over the last few years was Rs 3.75 lakh.
Engineering colleges say mass recruiters like Infosys, Wipro, TCS, and Accenture offer between Rs 3.5 lakh and Rs4.5 lakh for an engineer, and this amount has not changed much in the last 5-8 years. Only specialised units of these IT majors like R&D offer higher compensation. Placement cells of top colleges have noted a dip in acceptance rates of offers made by these large IT recruiters, primarily because of low salaries. "The number of students opting for mass recruiters paying Rs4 lakh salary has fallen. Salary plays an important role in decision-making and many are opting for IT profiles offered by core firms and e-commerce companies this year," said one of the placement team members of NITK, Surathkal.

In stark contrast, startups offer salaries up to Rs 8 lakh, and in some cases, even up to Rs 12-15 lakh. A placement team member from one of the campuses of Birla Institute of Technology said that TCS, Accenture and Wipro recruit at least 500 students out of a batch of 2,100; but just 30-40% of offers they make are accepted. "IT companies say salaries remain unchanged because they have to battle high operation and training costs, along with attrition at the junior-most levels," said the BIT campus placement team member who did not wish to be named. "IT companies offer a sense of job security, but that alone (without adequate pay) is no longer enough," he said.
The placement seasons at non-IITs, where IT companies make a bulk of their hires, started in September.
NIT Warangal's placement team also held talks with large recruiters over salaries given at campus placements. Infosys recruited more than 100 from the college this year, but did not increase salary, according to a placement team member.
Starting salaries may not go up too much too fast. "Startups do not have the numbers advantage because they hire comparatively low numbers," PK Sharma, head - resource management group, at Tech Mahindra said. "In the long run, colleges will need support of the big players."

5 ways to build a successful career in the software industry

From the Jan-Sep 2014 period, there has been a 21 per cent increased demand for IT/Telecom professionals, shows RecruiteX, the TimesJobs.com Recruitment Index. Software professionals top the demand charts among the top professions in the IT/Telecom industry

TimesJobs.com recently conducted a High-Tea session with T Shivaram, HR Head, SAP Labs India to guide software professionals on how to build a successful career in the Indian Software industry.

Stay Updated With Latest Trends And Technologies: It is necessary for software professionals to keep themselves updated with the latest technology relevant to the industry. One has to be aware about the changing trends. A software professional has to be aware of the emerging technologies, how they will be impacting the business and start learning them. For example, today, there are quite a few experimental languages such as Google’s dart which impact web programming. It is a must-have knowledge for software professionals.

Invest in Online Learning Mediums: Investing time and effort in training offered by the employer or through online courses. Today, there are free online courses available to upgrade one’s knowledge in their domain and even outside their domain. It goes without saying that one must have self interest and inclination to get this right.

Get Connected: For a software professional, it is good to network through professional bodies or forums where they can exchange ideas with their peers, globally. In fact, this is the most effective and quickest way to get updated about new technologies and trends.

Hot Skills: From an IT skill set perspective, the hot skills are network security, application and database development and cloud computing. A software professional should also have programming skills in android or any mobile device. From a job-seeking perspective, networking skills is the most important weapon when looking for an opportunity.

Soft Skills: For long term success in addition to the technical competence, skills in other areas such as communication, customer engagement, basic financial knowledge, project management and people management skills are essential as one grows in the hierarchy of a company. The industry is looking for people who understand the technology but can also be ramped up quickly.

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