Richik Sinha Roy

Ditch the 2 hours it will take for this work. Use this prompt on Google Bard or Bing AI (both are free and can search the internet) "You are an expert recruiter specializing in understanding salary trends in the market. I want you to tell me detailed salary trends for a {Job Title} with {years} in {Industry}. The candidate has {skills/certificates}. Search the internet, specifically, Ambition Box, PayScale, LinkedIn Salary Calculator, Glassdoor, Levels.fyi and other similar websites. Please check the URL's you give me to make sure that they are accurate. Respond in markdown with the following sections: - A summary of the salary trends and range for {job title}, {years} and {industry}. Give the data from each of the websites separately"

Start networking early, not just when you're in a job crisis. It's the quickest path to finding employment, often overlooked by many. But avoid desperation or casualness, like not sending a personalized note with your connection request. Do this. 1. Identify the right folks on LinkedIn Connect with hiring managers, peers and senior leaders. Pro-tip: Check the recent activity to avoid connecting to dead profiles. 2. Personalise invites with a personal story or recent company updates. Example - I connect to Wipro because it's the only company migrating infrastructure to cloud. Pro-tip: Engage with their content and endorse skills to warm up conversations. Finally, ask for an information interview and follow-up 2-3 times.

No matter the role you interview for, employers want to know if they can depend on you to complete tasks and meet objectives efficiently, within their budgets. So, be ready for some behavioral or situational questions to make your best first impression. Use the CAR framework (Challenge-Action-Result), to structure your interview answer in a way that blows away the interviewer. For instance, if you are a Marketing Manager answer like this- Challenge: was to scale up the revenue for the third quarter in a market that has slowed down. Action: Analysed data, identified -13% ROI on marketing but a loyal customer base. Pivoted to focus on adoption, introduced a referral program. Result: Repeat customers surged, leading to a $1.5M profit.

The first thing is to understand what is relevant? A lot of job seekers don’t get this. Think about this, when you update your resume, you recall everything you’ve done in the current/recent company and start penning them. This is a big mistake because everything you did isn’t relevant. The only thing that’s relevant is what is asked for in the JD. Just read every point of the JD, and show overlaps with your experience. Here is an example - JD - Candidate is required to run Facebook ad campaigns. On your resume - Ran over 56 Facebook Ad Campaigns with budgets of USD 500K and ROAS of 7x. Repeat this for every requirement of the JD. That is what is meant by “Relevance”.

This is a really tricky question to be asked in an interview. Why is it tricky? - Employers want to gauge commitment and ambition, and hope to find out your true intentions behind applying for this role. The real hidden question? - How well do your goals align with the company's trajectory? A terrible answer - “I see myself starting my own company.” or “I see myself earning X dollars.” Here is how to answer it well - Demonstrate ambition while ensuring alignment with the company's goals and vision. “I’m really excited about the [industry vertical] space right now. I hope in some time, I'll be at a senior position at this company and become an expert in [skills] so that I can ultimately [goal that aligns with job description].”

Honestly, you update your resume only when you want to job search. But your profile on LinkedIn and any job portal is a whole different game. Why? Because recruiters find you there. I suggest you update your profile at least once a month, even if it is just one bullet point about your latest achievement that month. What you're essentially doing is keeping your profile fresh as per their algorithm and always on top of the pile for profile searches. That means you will keep talking to recruiters, know the latest job requirements and salary movements. Also, you save these contacts as part of your network. Then if in 2 years, if you feel stagnant or not getting at least a 10-15% raise, your next job opportunity is but a call away.