Amit’s e-world

A few days back, when I was attending a lecture in the Leadership elective, my phone suddenly started buzzing. I stepped out & took the call. The lady at the other end introduced herself as a recruitment consultant. This was for a job I had applied to a few days back in an area that interests me most - outsourcing advisory. After a few questions clarifying my past roles and current status, the discussion went into a normal interviewing mode, and I was starting to say things about my leadership experience, my understanding of the role, what attracted me most to apply, my top 3 strengths that I bring to the role and all those general interview questions. What’s more, I was even asked for references. All this information on a call that was unscheduled & ill-timed. I think I managed the call well, and was assured that my case would be taken further with the client.

This experience re-affirmed the importance of career focus - an advice that many career pundits preach. Had I not been fully aware of the role & the sector, I am sure I would have stuttered my way through the impromptu discussion. However, interview preparedness is not the only benefit of career focus. It helps you in a few more ways as explained under.

First, if you are really interested in a sector, you can select appropriate people in this sector to talk to. With the proliferation of professional networking sites, alumni database and your own contacts, getting people to speak to, to help you get a better understanding of the sector, is not difficult. In fact, career focus helps you channelise you energy in identifying the right people to speak to. Quite simply put, it isn’t possible to network with 100 people you had no common connection with & maintain them as part of your life-long network. Networks are really important in getting to understand the companies / sector. Often, company websites present a very rosy picture about what they do, but an insider’s perspective of what they do, is perhaps much closer to reality.

Second, you can make better applications to fewer companies, if you are applying direct. Any good job hunt strategy is the one that uses all the channels avaiable for recruitment i.e. campus recruitment, direct applications, networking, recruitment consultants. Managing your job search along with your MBA is an under-rated challenge. Ultimately, you are stuck with either of two approaches. Make a high volume of applications with low customisation of your applications or the reverse: make a low volume of applications with a high degree of customisation / tailoring of your application, specific to the job description. Invariably, people without a clear career focus tend to adopt the first approach for most of the applications. Needless to say, the second approach is more time-efficient & effective.