"Do the job you love and love the job you do"

IN this era of global competition, the focus of education should be on enhancing employability of the students of professional courses rather than merely seeking employment. This is the only way to ensure sustainable employment. 

What's employability? 

When an employee adds value to the employer's investment in the human resource by effectively performing intended functions, he/ she is employable. It's important that educational institutions focus on integrated development of knowledge, skills and attitudes of students for holistic personality development. Knowledge based on information and data should lead to understanding and wisdom. Skills in its multifaceted dimensions require the capability to use domain knowledge wisely for good of humanity. This calls for communication, interpersonal skills and personality pre-dispositions like initiative, leadership, team playing, positive thinking, integrity, respect for self, others and the environment and of course time management.

'Total quality person' 

A positive attitude comprising both time and work discipline is perhaps the most powerful attribute to enhance a person's employability quotient. Every problem has a solution for anyone with a positive attitude. A negative attitude finds problems with every solution offered. A great mind and a greater mindset are essential for excellence. Integrity and trustworthiness are vital for success. In domains of technology, a set of good human values is a pre-requisite to ensure that technology contributes to progress and improved life quality. Hence, every engineer, scientist, professional or manager would succeed in life if he/she is also a good human being. It is an interesting coincidence that the weighted sum of the words 'ATTITUDE' and 'DISCIPLINE' in each case adds up to a perfect 100 by giving increasing weight to alphabets (A=1, B=2 etc.). They make you a 'total quality person'. Patience, entrepreneurship, innovation, integral thinking, eye for details and capacity to analyse as well as synthesise are some other attributes that will stand you in good stead. In today's world of electronic revolution one must one's computer skills on a regular basis .

Learn to learn

Learning to learn is the trait that enables us to our knowledge fast and retain our employability quotient. Knowledge is said to double every 72 hours and if we do not update, unlearn and re-learn, we are left behind. Today we have to run to remain at the same place!

Weakness to opportunity 

Analyse your strengths and weaknesses and choose a career where your strengths are leveraged and weakness minimized and converted to opportunities to improve. "Do the job you love and love the job you do" is a mantra for success in life. Excellence and indifference can not coexist. If we nurture our young talent well, the demographic dividend that we have in India, can ensure that we lead the knowledge driven society and become a major supply source of globally employable Indian talent

Career in Retail Could be Rewarding and Fun

New-age retail is fast becoming an attractive career destination for most youngsters. For most of us, retail implies interaction with a well-groomed, smiling and helpful store assistant. However, this image is a mere trailer because beyond the frontline, emerging retail is much more; a structured business with huge infrastructure, logistics and massive manpower force driving the splendid show at the back-end.

Opportunities abound 

Changing retail landscape scripted a new trend in the job market. Formats like departmental stores, hypermarkets, supermarkets, speciality stores and western-style malls are all gifts of modern retail.

Let’s take a glance at a few recent news items:”Ferrari opened first showroom in India”, “Multinational retailers Walmart, Carrefour and Tesco to open stores in India”. As new organisations debut, current ones expand, and foreign brands compete for local eyeballs, they all translate into increased manpower requirement.

According to a report titled ‘India Organised Retail Market 2010’, published by Knight Frank India, during 2010-12 around 55 million sq ft of retail space would be ready in national capital region (NCR) and other metros including Hyderabad and Pune.

Hop on the retail bandwagon

Retail offers career destinations, not just job options. Vacancies are available from entry to senior management level, says the spokesperson, India, of global apparel brand. There is a pronounced need for professionals in middle and senior level management level, she adds. Growth in a typical retail organisation, (Eg: Apparel) goes thus: trainee, stores manager/category sales manager, regional manager, territory manager, national head.

Find the right profile for you

The candidate and job should find a match in each other. Whether it is product retailing or service retailing like- airlines, travel or hospitality-the challenges are distinct. So, find your right pick.

When you make a selection, it is advisable to map your qualification and aptitude with the product/service you are going to serve. Let’s take an example of a coffee shop retailer who sells café lattes and mochas. A common beverage - coffee - transformed into a designer product caters to the habit of drinking rather than the product itself. In this type of retailing, the test lies in enhancing delightful customer experience. A pleasant smile and sophisticated communication skill are desired qualities here.

Some of the skills sought by retailers are fundamental: friendliness, honesty, work ethics, malleability and a good personality. Employers value creativity and initiative-taking traits in an employee. All competitive companies invest in training of their employees. Many skills can be learned and developed with education and experience. The truth is, with the entry of transnational companies, high level of management programmes will be needed to help bridge the demand and supply gap at managerial levels, says Goel of Ambience.

Take your retail pick

Popular retail caters to masses and luxury retail is slave to classes. Luxury retail is one emerging segment in retail. The other being e-retail. The luxury retail, an estimated $500 million market, is yet to open up in India. Luxury retail thrives on aspirations of individuals.

E-retail doesn’t render conventional buyer-seller interface but trading happens in virtual space. As per Internet and Mobile Association of India (IMAI), the e-commerce market which was worth Rs. 19,688 crore in 2009 is likely to grow to Rs. 46,520 crore by 2011 year end. 

In e-retail one can choose a career under one of many verticals: Merchandising, Operations & Logistics, Sourcing, Marketing, and Customer Service, Finance or IT.

Avail of a bright future

The scramble for focused talent, high on calibre and creativity will increase. Capable managers from disparate industries like FMCG, BPO, telecom, and Hospitality quick to adapt to the needs of customers will be in demand. And the requirement for more educated, knowledgeable, and motivated people will arise. As the market grows, the competition gets stiffer, the wages will also get better.

Writing Your First Professional CV

 
It takes at least two days to write a superb new application, addressing the issues and organising the information so that you sell yourself. The biggest error most people make is throwing away a great chance by rushing a mediocre CV out at the last minute. Regard your CV and application letter as work in progress and give it a polish every couple of months. You never know when you will be asked for it.

As a professional CV writer I have known people return to the same agencies that had previously refused them, this time with a great application that gets them noticed. The difference between managing your career and just letting it happen can be more than the cost of your home over the course of a lifetime. You need to take this task seriously right from the start.

You do not need to be headlining the trivial details of your life like your address and what primary school you went to. You do not need to tell someone that the document is a CV.

For each occupation and each level of each occupation and for changes of career and country there are key things you need to be saying that recruiters want to hear. If you already know enough then spend some time listing these key things before you ever start writing your application. If you need more information, then start collecting it, start finding out what buzzwords, concepts and competencies that will carry conviction.

If you follow a boring format or copy out your job definition it will be dull as ditchwater to recruiters who have to read lots of applications every day. You need to reach these people where they get interested. The story of your career needs to build up expectations that you are worth meeting. You need to tell them the context in which your achievements have taken place and let them know what value you offer for the future. Enter the page content here.

Do not pepper your CV with titles like PROFILE, CAREER OBJECTIVE and SKILLS unless you want to appear like someone who has slavishly followed a template. You can have an introduction to your CV but there's no need to label it. All you really need is a few sensible headings such as PROFESSIONAL, CAREER and PERSONAL - under which you can group your skills/qualifications, narrative of achievements and necessary details.

Bulleted paragraphs are a great way to save space and add impact but they need to be congruent. They need to relate to the one before and the one after in an intelligent way. Lists of superlative claims with no substantiating evidence cannot be understood in context and cut no ice with anyone.

The medium is in the message. If they have reached the third paragraph of your letter and glanced at your CV, you have already shown them that you can communicate. There is no need to tell them you are a GOOD COMMUNICATOR, a SELF-STARTER or a GREAT TEAM PLAYER in so many words. It needs to be implicit in your account of yourself, not stuffed under their nose as a grandiose claim. People who do that look naive; people who get good jobs come across as mature enough to know how to say things that matter about the real issues involved.

People cannot help but be impressed by talented design and clever typesetting. Your choice of fonts and styles, however, is somewhat limited by the restrictions of email and online CV Builders. You need to find out what these restrictions are by studying the word processing program you are using and asking yourself: how can I be sure that my fonts and format arrive on the reader's computer the same way they left here? If you want to make a subtle and sophisticated impression you need to start finding out about the technicalities by actually reading the help files and manuals you have so far taken for granted.

Your letter needs to sing, summarise, promise, capture the spirit of what's best about you. Safe, boring, over-length, repetitive letters that regurgitate your CV or try to match every single minor point in the job definition will have one damaging effect on the reader - they will think you are not very bright.

Professional writers throw away more stuff than they publish; put it all down and then reduce it until you fit two pages. If necessary group your entire EARLY CAREER under a separate heading and just give each job a line or two. Place the focus on the last 5-10 years and the highest levels of activity and achievement. Cut the minor roles and competencies which are already implied by the big stuff you do. Write your brief and powerful introduction last; when you know what you need to say to summarise your offering, and don't bother giving it a heading anyone can see what it is.