How to land in a dream Job.

 

 I am a great believer in "Project-based learning". 

Or what is popularly known as 70:20:10 learning.

Also labeled as "ALP - Action learning projects" or "Hands-on" Learning. 

The majority of learning comes from "Doing" or by "Dirtying one's hand". 

Here is an illustration. 

I was talking to an MBA 2nd year student. Almost all of her classmates are struggling to find a suitable job and blaming the whole environment for their struggles. But she landed a suitable job. The icing on the cake is - this is the kind of profile she was eager to join!

With curiosity, I probed - what she did in the last year!

1. Took up a course in Social Media Marketing at a not-so-well-known institute. 

2. Took up a google course in digital marketing.

3. Completed five internships. One full-time and the other "on-demand" shorter in the off period.

All in the area of social media/digital marketing. First, two bullet points are added to a knowledge bucket, while 3rd a skill bucket. (Three buckets are KSA -Knowledge, skills, attitude - backbone of competency) 

No wonder, her passion, and experience paid off.

It would have certainly made her shine in the fresher's resumes & interviews. 

I think a couple of things can ensure, that she can go places, and her career is on a fast track.

1) She shall consider the next couple of years as an "OJT" - on-the-job training and keep a learning attitude.

2) Read regularly, which can be as little as 15 to 20 minutes (1% of the day) daily on digital marketing. Even this little time will be equivalent to 5 to 6 books in a year. It's a power of habit and compound effect. 

3) Find a mentor in social media marketing and digital marketing. 20% of the 70:20:10 formula comes from a good mentor. 

This particular strategy is excellent for getting any job or even in career change efforts too. 

(Sometime back I wrote an answer on Quora for this and got sizeable views in HR community. Here is a brief...)

1. Every job has 3 to 5 core competencies. Identify the key competencies required for your target job. Any HR professional or faculty shall be able to help you with this. Informational interviews will also help. 

2. You can work systematically to develop these competencies. Take the help of mentors/teachers and design ALP - Action learning projects for "hands-on" practice of those competencies. 70% part of the work!

3. Find a mentor for that particular competency or project. Get his mentoring. 20% part of the work! 

4. Read books, and take classes for theory. Participate in discussion forums etc. This is a 10% part of the work!

5. Repeat the cycle for the next competency. 

Though there is no hard-n-fast rule or laws/theories there, you will be able to grasp one competency in 4 to 6 months of period (Mastering will take longer). Thus 3 competencies over a year-n-half or two. 

A period that overlaps your MBA journey. And you will have decent preparation for an intern or fresher interview. 

The presence of projects and keywords will make your resume sail through search strings and short-listing. 

Action learning will make you super-confident in the selection process, which mostly consists of interviews. 

Certain way to a dream job !

(I have worked with a few students and professionals and will be more than happy to help!)

[Image Source: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Job-1.jpg]

Sleepy students and early morning class !

Today morning when I met first year student in lift, she was not active as one should be.

I casually asked, so do you have class now?

And she cribbed - yes, this morning 0900 class is bad. And it was not good, even when it was at 0930 last term. We normally jump to conclusion that oh they spend night in futile stuff like movie, Facebook, mobiles, parties and crib in morning.

But still it made me think!

I have normally morning class once a week and I can sense they are drowsy, sleepy and not that alert in the class. They keep up popping in the class even after scheduled time. What I found (thanks to Google) is that ‘darkness hormone’ melatonin is the cause behind it.  The level of melatonin reaches high earlier as people get older. Thus for your faculty who is in his late 40’s or 50’s (or more!) this melatonin begins its effect at 10 pm, while for students – who are not so aged, the same melatonin shows its effect at 1 am.

Moreover when you keep your mobile at fingertips, browse Facebook, pumps up caffeine this further disturbs your sleep cycle at night. 

Irrespective of hormone or behavior, lack of sleep surely leads your behavior to moody, impulsive, and you show  poor performance in academics. I am proponent of  early morning routine and myself trying to go back to it with New Year resolutions round the corner. I hope students also should learn to strike a balance in their night-activities and morning-routines. Here are some useful tips to start with. 

I too try my morning classes to be more participatory and action packed , rather than mere lectures !

Your thoughts, suggestions and comments are welcome. 

Image source: http://www.com.cuhk.edu.hk/varsity/0401/Periscope/school05.jpg 

On being a teacher ...

I attended  Gurucharan Das's  "India grows at night" book release function by BDB Book club.

I liked his style and picked up his "Difficulty of being good" for reading.

It is lucid and brilliantly written book. It uses Mahabharat - its characters, and the various dilemma they face in dealing with the ethical questions. Most appealing aspect of the book is the way author brings his learning from the stories to the ethical dilemmas that we face in our day to day life. Most importantly - why be good ?

To make his point across , he narrated the story of primary school teacher , published in "Times of India" in 2005. In his own words ,

..  a man who has bicycled 32 kilometers each day for the past twenty years without missing a single day of school. Because of his commitment, as well his ability to inspire students, a surprising number of his former students went on to become hugely famous.  When asked about the roots of his motivation, he answered, 'Teaching is my dharma,'..

I could not locate the original story online. But it is riveting. I can sense from my own experience and can see around that the teachers who do their work as "dharma" or "swabhaava" - are touching the life of their students.

Question that is more pertinent is - can this "calling/swabhaava" be nurtured in first place ? if yes , "how can we nurture this".  It is more riveting - when the same book points to the 2004 research of Michael Kremer of Harvard university along with world bank members that ,

One in four teachers in our government primary schools is absent and one in four, although present, is not teaching. Thus one in two teachers out of roughly 1.5 million primary school teachers is not doing his/her job.

If we repeat this for graduate and post-graduate teachers ,will the results really change to opposite side of spectrum ? Hence nurturing the calling for teachers - will be important question !.

(Image source : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Gurcharan_Das_%28as_on_26-Sep-2012%29.jpg )

Perils of higher Education !

Unemployment vs. Education level. (Ref-1)

The times of India article mentions , "Higher your education, harder it is getting a job" .

So true .

The data in the article is converted in the bar-chart for the want of better presentation.

So probably we have one more reason for not going for higher education, and the figures are startling in rural regions. This is unlike the other countries where higher education normally fetches the better opportunities.

This is like a high-light on the recent news article that says - seats for engineering and MBA schools are vacant - as there are more number of students than seats.

Points to really ponder for stakeholders in higher education. 

Ref-1 : Data is picked up from the times of India article : http://ow.ly/ckFfY