Perseverance and Optimism

If I look back, on the past 6 months that I have spent on job hunt, the two most important factors that helped me attain my objectives were:

Perseverance

Optimism

I had always maintained a positive attitude, despite so many rejections. I have never shirked from hard work and kept on applying to my target companies.

You must be desperate to know how did I get this job and how many rejections did I have. Firstly let me make one point very clear here. I did not apply to any job on internet (job-search engines and websites) or through head-hunter except 3 jobs, which were recommended to me by my MBA colleagues. However, I did not even hear back from the companies to whom I applied through internet.

When I joined MBA, I was told by our career services that networking is the key to successful job hunt in this part of the world. I started making contacts with alumni and friends since January this year. I attended all the company presentations held on Cranfield and in total I put in about 40 applications. All these applications were either to the companies that visited Cranfield for recruitment or through Cranfield alumni. I got interview calls from 10 different companies. There were a few interview calls from Cranfield’s year-book CV as well. I travelled widely, for attending interviews and assessment centres, through the UK, Singapore and Dubai.

I had an open mind regarding location and sector. I was clear about my post-MBA role and that was my only target. I did not mind where I would be posted or what kind of sector it would be. This worked well for me as I am from supply chain background and I guess my skills are transferable to any sector or any company.

Since January 2008 I used to spend about 50% of time preparing CVs and in networking. I would tailor my CV to each and every company. Having one general CV for all companies/ jobs is suicidal. I would interact with alumni from my target company, would spend hours on Google trying to find more about the company and would thoroughly access the company’s website as to what that company values the most. What is it that I can match between the target company and my experience and competencies?

At last, I was in a position where I had final confirmations from 4 different companies before accepting the offer from Arcelor.