(This article was earlier published on Dawn’s Blogs: http://www.dawn.com/2011/07/27/how-to-get-hunted-down.html)
Disclaimer: This article has nothing to do with ‘head hunting’- the phenomenon. But somehow, somewhere it has to do with how to make yourself absolutely indispensable to the ’hunters’ in the job market. Go figure!
Inspiration struck. It did at the most unlikely of timings. It was when I was getting a particularly long lecture from my sister (which inevitably turned into a fight) about the hazards of laziness and purposelessness of life. What was I doing with life? Where was the much needed direction? Graduation from a top-notch university is all well but what now? And bla and bla and bla… In situations like this, one retaliates, fights, gets annoyed and true to my cue, I did all of those. But much to my heart’s dismay, I realized she was absolutely right. What now?
Upon graduating from one of the best universities of Pakistan, one’s eyes twinkle at the thought of ‘high prospects’, ‘career ladder’, ‘corporate world’, ‘golden opportunities’, ‘high-ended challenges’. However, at the outset of a debilitating economy and a condensed job market, the world view of this twinkling eye becomes less shall we say, twinkly. Needless to say, the dreams remain dreams and you become just one of the unemployed graduates of a crumbling nation. You used to be a luxury good. People used to look at you in awe. Now you are just a normal good, your demand increasing only in proportions to the demander’s income which puts you in a bit of a fix because the demander’s income is decreasing. Alright, economics was never my forte, but you get the picture.
I did get a job but I want to dwell least on that. I want to talk about what happens when you have to start at the beginning and you are lost like Alice, down a rabbit hole.
Let us assume here that you are not starting your own business and you don’t have your dad’s friend sitting at the Managing Director position in an air-conditioned suite specially built for him at a multinational company; how do you get a job?
So you start at a good university- take 10 points. If it is a brilliant university- take 20. You dropped your CV at your career services office- take 5 more. You registered on naukrijunction, rozee.pk, bayt.com, chabee.com, a dozen others (who send you birthday wishes, I just discovered yesterday) – take 2 points, you actually made profiles on these websites- take 10 points, (If I could, I would give you a 100 points because it is really a hassle), you subscribed to their emails- take 1 point, you made a list of all the companies you ought to be applying to- take 1 point and then you proceeded to apply to all those places, by hook or by crook; online applications, resume uploads, cover letters, the works – take 50 points. Now that you have all these points, where are you?
And that is the ultimate question. You may be doing the things which bag you so many points but how do you know what you are up against?
Much like relative grading, consider yourself a candidate in competition with a million others, similar to you or not so similar to you, all appraised on a bell curve. Where do you fall on this curve and how do you get yourself to be in the most desirable category, category C. You may have all these cool points we just calculated above, but is that enough? And how do you know it is enough unless you know what ‘enough’ is?
Ofcourse, find out in Part II of this article.
