Job Skills

Most important / essential skills for a job seeker

Jan 24th, 2009
by admin.
4 comments

What do you think are the important that a job seeker must have in order to land a good job? Which the employers generally look for in the prospective employees? Do not scratch your head if you dont’s know – just keep reading the Career Cola regularly.

Here is a list of five most critical skills compiled by our career experts:

1. Ability to communicate: People who usually land up in a good job are mostly those who are good at speaking and writing. Employers tend to hire people who are able to express their thoughts efficiently through verbal and written communications.

2. Technical Skills: The information technology is definitely a must these days. Most job openings require people who are computer literate or know how to operate different office equipments like personal computers, fax, copier etc. Most employers do not necessarily need people who are technological graduates (i.e. they have studied the technology) but they definitely need people who are able to use technology for day to day office work. Using word processor, accounting software, Internet are some of the important technical skills.

3. Interpersonal Skills: Most jobs these days require people to deal with other people within or outside that office. Interpersonal Skills are an important aspect considering that success of any task depends on multiple people. Some of the important interpersonal skills are ability to negotiate, team skills, and leadership skills.

4. Thinking Logically: The employers these days need people who will be able to generate effective and logical solutions for problems at hand or for a proposal or an office activity.

5. Research skills: The candidates for any job these days should possess the ability to research. This does not means that you will be doing research as in scientific or technical sense. This is in order to do simple searches in a particular context and dig out data needed by a particular activity. This can be using internet or may be an offline activity.

So next time you are preparing yourself for any employement. Look at this list and evaluate if you possess these skills in desired measure? This may help you in landing up in that great job. What our readers think – they can respond to this post by writing comments below.

Time Management for a successful career

Mar 12th, 2008
by admin.
2 comments

is an important building block for foundation of your career. Effective helps in improving overall personal effectiveness. is something that could be limiting your success level today. The skill of is about knowing what to do and when to do.

Why manage your time

Good time management helps you in bringing you in control of your time, your life, your stress & energy levels, and helps in maintaining a balance between your work & Personal life. Time management is easy as long as you commit to action, you can improve your own time. One of the major irritant in time management is lack of commitment to stick to your schedules. Management of time by – better planning, delegating, controlling your environment, understanding yourself and identifying what you need to change about your habits and routine will go a long way in improving your effectiveness.

Multitasking OR One-at-a-time

When you are faced with the lot of things to do, go through them quickly and make the list what you are going to do. Prioritize your tasks and tackle the important one’s first. Do not starts lot of jobs at a same time, if you keep the weekly work schedule you will be able to control the time allocated for your tasks.

Decide your Time Management Strategy

Delegate: As with the rules of delegation and authority given to you, try to delegate as much as it possible for you, this make your job more easier by avoiding the wastage of time and duplication of efforts.

What to do / What not to do: Some questions you should ask

  1. What is the most important thing for you to be doing right now?
  2. What deadline you got?
  3. What happens if you don’t do this?

Some quick tips to save time

  • The key to successful time management is planning and then sticking to the plan
  • Review all work you are doing and check its usefulness. Whether you are doing some waste effort which is no use?
  • Setup templates for your regular tasks as this will avoid the wastage of time.
  • Use the time management tools & Template or create some work charts.
  • Delegate as much as possible for you because delegating your work to other is a great and appropriate way to save time.
  • Avoid picking up phones and stop keep checking emails every 10 minutes. You can decide when you will take calls and look up yours mails.
  • Avoid unnecessary meetings and conversation.
  • Get it right the first time. Take your time to do a quality job. It may take more time to complete the task, but there is a lesser chance of errors. This way, you can avoid making time-consuming corrections.
  • Whenever you complete important tasks within a stipulated period, give yourself a little treat. This will give you an incentive to complete work on time.

Further Reading: For advanced reading we suggest you to go through the masterpiece of time management – a book called “First Things First” by Steven Covey.

The five most unprofessional behaviors of job seekers?

Mar 8th, 2008
by admin.
No comments yet

We know that the job market is very hot now and offers are raining on candidates. However most candidates are just collecting offers while waiting for right offer. In their pursuit to build a successful career they evaluate various options but many times handle the whole process very unprofessionally. This leaves a very bad impression on company and even if you are not joining that company – why leave an unprofessional impression?

We have compiled here a list of five most unprofessional behaviors from candidates, which can be avoided.

(1) Not joining after accepting an offer: With the job market being hot candidates are loaded with multiple offers. There is no issue in having multiple offers – however accepting multiple offers is very unprofessional. If you want to shop around and buy time from company before accepting offer – simply ask them for time. What is wrong in asking, “I need some time to think before I accept you offer”. Be assertive and do not come under pressure of company whose objective is see that you accept offer and join at the earliest.

(2) Not attending Interviews after accepting the schedule: Another common unprofessional behavior common these days is candidates are accepting the schedule and not attending the interviews. Nobody is forcing the company / job on candidates and they should be professional enough to say no if they have no interest in job and want another schedule.

(3) Not informing company if missing an interview: Many candidates just assume that if I am not making for interview as per schedule – nobody is getting affected. Please note all professional companies line up panel of interviewers who wait for you. Many times companies just discount the candidates who miss interviews without informing.

(4) Accepting to go for interview without understanding the job profile and then refusing at later stage: If the career is yours then responsibility to study the job profile and decide whether this is what you are looking for is also yours. No recruiter can make you understand the profile if you are not listening. So please ask for job profile in detail and make a well-informed decision on which you need not to go back.

(5) Claiming on your resume what you are not: A resume is just a paper and will not be attending the interviews on your behalf. I have seen many candidates complaining that the interviewer has just stopped the interviews midway or too soon. On checking with interviewers we found that these candidates have misrepresented the details on resume and there is no point in talking further.