Hey Fresher! Want to land in your DREAM JOB??
If you are a student who is looking for guidance on how to land a corporate job in the IT industry
This is a must read!
In the previous post (TGV Blogs #1), we discussed about the problems that the current generation #engineers are facing to become more #employable.
In this post, we are bringing you the Tips & Tricks for professional students aspiring to get into IT sector.
We will cover the importance of staying relevant with Current trends, Acquiring problem solving skills, Preparing to answer interview questions, Learning soft skills, Approach towards learning technologies and Working on real-time projects.
Current Trends:
· Make a note that the hiring trends change and interview patterns evolve. It is absolutely important to understand the technological trends in the market today.
· Gather information about Technical and soft skills on Demand.
· E.g. Google search for “Top 10 programming languages 2021”, you will come across some useful websites like this: https://www.geeksforgeeks.org/top-10-programming-languages-that-will-rule-in-2021/
Always be on the lookout for information on current interview questions:
· Understand the industry expectations from the aspiring students by connecting with employees across major IT consulting organizations and also product-based companies.
· If your college or university is inviting guest speakers to bridge the gaps between industry and academics, you are lucky but only if you get the most of these sessions by listening carefully, noting down points, identifying action items and following them.
· Make an attempt to connect with those professionals on LinkedIn or CoffeeMug and strike a conversation.
· You may also connect with other professionals on the LinkedIn network.
Everyone is willing to help, you just need to ask the right people the right questions!
· You may also try to find out from your family, extended family first or else check with your friends, if there is anyone in the IT industry and learn the basics.
If you don’t find anyone, reach out to us theguidingvoice4u@gmail.com, we will be ready to host a #TGVCareercompass session at your college/university and cover the topics of your choice
Problem Solving skills:
· Solving Rubix cube, Sudoku and other puzzles can help boost the problem-solving skills.
· Cracking rebus puzzles, riddles, answering lateral thinking puzzles should help in enhancing lateral thinking ability.
· Here is a website, where you can find a lot of these: https://www.rd.com/list/challenging-riddles/
· Book recommendation: https://www.amazon.in/Lateral-Thinking-Bono-Edward/dp/0141033088
Please note: Answers need not be right always, but how you approach the problem is important, decomposition of the problem, how you think differently (out of the box) matters the most.
It is not just enough to survive in this world but thrive!
Soft Skills (Communication, Body language, attitude etc.)
· Solid communication skills, business acumen and decent understanding of technology will help you in building a sustainable long term career.
· Communication is not about using fancy words but how simply and clearly someone can communicate.
· Avoid jargons, filler words (e.g. like, you know, umm, ah, etc.)
· It is okay to pause in between but avoid blabbering.
· If you can express your ideas and thoughts to others in a understandable way is important and it will take you a long way!
· Signing up for a toastmasters club and completing relevant pathways would definitely help in
· Building confidence, leadership skills besides enhancing communication skills.
Visit: https://www.toastmasters.org/ to learn more. If your college/university already has an active club signup as a member immediately, else talk to your management and request them to help in setting up one club. In the worst case, join any community club near you.
· They allow anyone to join with a minimal membership fee that goes to the Toastmasters. 6 months membership will cost you around 50–70 USD. But it is a worthy investment.
· Think about what it takes to make a best first impression during the interviews.
· Practice elevator pitch.
· Refer to this site for many templates: https://asana.com/resources/elevator-pitch-examples
Things to ponder about:
· What makes your introduction unique and impress the panelists?
· How can you stand out from CROWD?
· What kind of Body language should you exhibit? (should you change anything?)
· 7% of communication is verbal, 93% revolves around body language. It is not enough to display strong oral communication skills, appropriate body language is also very crucial.
You may visit this site for more information on body language.: https://www.mindtools.com/pages/article/Body_Language.htm
By doing a self reflection about your core strengths and things so unique about you, you will be able to better articulate and sell yourself!
Job interviews are nothing but selling oneself to the interview panel to get hired!
Be prepared to answer questions like:
· Tell me about yourself.
· Why should we hire you?
· What value add do you bring to the table?
· How different are you from your classmates?
· What are your strengths and weaknesses?
· What do you know about our company?
· Tell us any situation where you displayed great leadership skills
· Are you a problem solver?
· How you demonstrate you are a team player?
· How many saloons do you have in your city?
· How many balls can you fit in your living room?
Relevant TGV episodes:
#TGV109 by @Narane Babu Gundabathula Tell me about yourself
#TGV5 by @Shikha Gupta Cracking campus interviews, answering tricky HR questions
#TGV118 by @Nidhi Belani Interview preparation and dealing with #peerpressure
#TGV93 by @Vishnu Nadella Skill set vs Mindset
#tgv147 by @Vijay Banda Future skills and future of work
It is important to exude confidence in every action right from the time your enter into a room till you leave out of it after the interview. Every action matters!!!
Technology:
· Overall sense of understanding of the technology is important. Explore various alternatives to technologies for e.g. Reactjs vs AngularJs: which one is used for what purpose?
· Learn the Pros and cons of various technologies.
One should be programming language agnostic and be comfortable writing Pseudo code or algorithms
· No one is job ready on day 1 but with minimal guidance or support, the candidate should be able to roll on.
· Demonstrate the appetite for learning and enhance the curiosity quotient. Don’t follow things blindly, do critical questioning and get the basics strong.
· Also remember, merely having have great technical skills is not enough, you need to communicate and/or articulate well.
· These days the majority of the IT companies are asking the qualified candidates (those who cleared initial assessment/tests or any online coding assessments on platforms like HackerRank etc) to solve more difficult problems or write algorithms for various problems.
· If one has to be successful in these — it is expected to learn problem solving skills.
Sites to explore:
https://www.imocha.io/ http://leetcode.com https://www.hackerearth.com/ https://www.hackerrank.com/auth/signup
You can’t be in the game, if you don’t know the rules of the game. Forget about winning, you can’t even follow the game.
Projects:
· It is mandatory for all Engineering students to submit a project as part of academic requirements in their last semester. Try to find opportunities for working on real time projects by tapping your networks. Many companies hire interns to balance the right mix of talent.
· By reading newspapers, visiting sites like https://internshala.com, http://naukri.com and being active on LinkedIn and job portals will help you find internship opportunities.
· It is okay to work on a real time project without getting paid rather than paying for a fake project. Real time experience matters.
· Exploring crowd source/open source project opportunities on https://github.com might be a good idea. We will publish an episode on “ Getting started with open source projects “ shortly.
· Building a strong profile on GitHub and actively working on projects will give you great exposure, you can flaunt your GitHub profile on your resume.
· Participation in Hackathons will help you acquire technical knowledge
· You may want to participate in Smart India Hackathon organized by Government of India
Visit these links for more information:
· https://dare2compete.com/blog/famous-hackathons-that-every-engineering-student-must-participate-in
The list is endless, if you need more information please drop us a note: theguidingvoice4u@gmail.com
This blog post has a few excerpts from The Guiding Voice podcast Episode 2 ft. SriHarsha Vadlamani, Technical Product Manager with GE
You may tune in:
Podbean: https://theguidingvoice.podbean.com/e/sriharshavadlamani
YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BGwOXIoOGsM
BTS(Behind The Scenes of The Guiding Voice podcast Ep#2 recording):
1) This was our very first interview on TGV, you will hear the hosts fumbling etc. and also you will witness how the show has transformed in the last 18 months
2) We lost a few sections of the episode recording due to recording tool issues, and had to re-record a portion with Harsha. He was kind enough We have a lot of admiration and respect for Harsha as he is the first one who believed in us and consented to be a guest.
If you are looking for more information on Campus interviews, please tune into Episode#5 by Shikha Gupta
Podbean: https://theguidingvoice.podbean.com/e/shikha/
YouTube:
We’d love your feedback as it will help us blog better.
Please provide your feedback in the comments or email us theguidingvoice4u@gmail.com
Also, feel free to share any other hiring trends that will help the #freshers prepare well for the #corporate #job #interviews
Originally published at https://www.linkedin.com.
