INFOCUS
Bharat Gopalan
Bharath Gopalan specializes in Learning & Development and
works with Madras Cements. He holds master degrees
in Human Resource Management as well as in Psychology.
He is deemed as a national resource person by Training Division
(DoPT) of Government of India for conducting Direct Trainers’ Skills course.
I am looking out for a job. The internet has so many ways to write
a resume and it’s pretty confusing. Could you suggest a format
that I could follow?
- Thaigarajan K, Chennai
Yes, I agree, there are myriad ways of putting together a resume.
But essentially, formatting of resumes can fall into two or at the
most, three broad types: the functional format, where you
emphasize on your specific skills and accomplishments in the
order of relevance and importance to the position you are
applying; second is chronological format, where you list your
experience and education along with details preferably, in the
reverse chronological order starting with the recent one first; and
the third type of format is a hybrid of the first two.
Choosing the right format should depend to a large extent, on
your career history vis-à-vis your target job. If you have breaks in
career or have diverse work experiences that don’t align to a
clear career path, then the functional format comes in handy.
Since this format focuses on competencies and
accomplishments, the career discontinuities get conveniently
camouflaged.
Chronological format is probably the most commonly used one.
Since there is complete transparency about the career history,
most interviewers prefer this over the functional type. You can
also use a combo or hybrid type, where you can highlight your
specific skills and accomplishments as in functional type and
follow it with brief listing of jobs held with dates as in chrono
format.
Though there is no hard and fast rule for formatting your resume,
you must remember that all your resume can do is to take you to
the next stage of selection process. Most recruiters, who end up
scanning hundreds of resumes everyday hardly spend about a
minute on each of the resumes. So, it is important that the right
words pop up from your resume before they decide to hit the
‘delete’ key. So, it would do you a lot good, if you keep in mind
the good old dictum of communication: accuracy, brevity and
clarity.
How much value does an MBA have these days?
-Kumaran, Chennai
Your question sounds like if an MBA is worth considering at all, a
natural apprehension probably arising out of the mushrooming of
all kinds of B-schools with different kinds of management
degrees. The value of an MBA would depend largely on what you
expect out of it, which apparently is dependent on the present
stage of your career.
If you are looking at a full-time MBA option for getting a
head-start in your career, then you should be choosy and select
a handful of probables that enjoy a good placement record and
brand name with due consideration for other factors like
affordability and your confidence to slog through the selection
grind. If you want to derive the value you expect from your MBA,
you should compulsorily do the necessary research and
introspection before jumping in to a B-school and be rest assured
that any and every MBA can’t take you to where you want to go.
If you are already in a job for some years now and wondering
whether an MBA could hitchhike your pay and position, then it
would depend a lot more on you than on the MBA you acquire. If
you do a bit of survey around, you maybe surprised to find a good
number of seniors who have failed to salvage their stagnating
careers with their add-on MBAs. Your employer will be ultimately
interested in seeing how your new degree can contribute to the
bottom line. So, any which way you get your degree, be it on-line,
part-time or distance mode, all that matters is not what you get
but what you do with it. So, pursue a course which is not just
another tag to your name but one that can help in building your
capabilities that can manifest as visible performance in your
work.
Photo Courtesy : Yos Wiranata
INBOX 1305 | MARCH 2010 | 41