Top 7 Resume Improvement Tips - For even the best

I gave out Free Resume Tips to improve even the best CV all of July on Facebook.com/Randhir.Net. While it has been shared and liked by many friends & clients, I thought it would be great to share them in one place.

#R2J Tip 1: Resume is about what you achieved and what you can achieve and not about what you were supposed to do as per your job description. Check every line of your CV to make sure that this is what it is doing.

#R2J Tip 2: Tables look lame on your CV but are a powerful way of Formatting your content into multiple columns/sections. A cool way to get the best of both is to create the tables, but remove the borders.

#R2J Tip 3: Make sure your most important content is on Page 1 and at the Top of Page 1. A good way of doing this is to make sure your Professional Summary is your 2 minute pitch and the first 1-2 lines of the Summary is your 30 sec pitch. Add Skills, Achievements, a work summary

#R2J Tip 4: Have Certifications, Affiliated to some Industry Forum? Worked with Big Brand Names and are proud of it? Make sure you add the logos in appropriate locations on your CV so that they stand out in your CV.

#R2J Tip 5: Having a Social Profile (atleast on LinkedIn) is more important than ever before? I get 50 visitors on my LinkedIn profile every week and atleast 50% of them are prospective employers or consultants who are checking me out. My company does most of its sourcing on LinkedIn. Make sure you maintain it appropriately. Why is this a resume tip? If you have some great recos on LinkedIn, make sure you highlight that in your CV (Possibly in the Footer)

#R2J Tip 6: Want to switch industries? Want to take on a new role within the current company/industry? Freelance/Weekend projects & Internships in your area of interest and other areas too and a separate section that talks about all of your independent initiatives will help showcase you as a well-rounded individual and a go-getter.

#R2J Tip 7: Last in our Resume Improvement Tips, but definitely not the least. Matching the CV to the Job Description is very important. Matching could be as simple as moving bullet points around, highlighting keywords from JD or rewording parts of the CV to reflect relevant achievements that the Job is looking for. I typically start with a 1.5 page resume and cut down to 1page depending on the role I am applying to.

Do like us on Facebook at www.facebook.com/randhir.net to keep getting tips such as these, special offers on our services and trainings and a lot lot more. Share this with your friends and family if you think they will benefit from our services or tips.

Also, go to the Photos section of our Fanpage to see Page#1 of my 1.5 page resume which has most of these tips incorporated. Feel free to learn from them and do it yourself. If you need my services, I am just a phone call away (+91.9945.254742). You can also book an appointment by going to our website and clicking on the meeting scheduler at the bottom right of the screen.

Google plus plus

Google Plus is up!! While its still lonely out there right now, there are some cool features of Google+. Better integration with my other Google Apps (Chat, Picasa, Youtube, etc), Circles, Hangout and most importantly Sparks makes sure you don't leave Google+ ever. 

If someone can do an update FB and update Google + plug-in soon, we can probably start having some activity in Google Plus and a real fight might just take place in the Social Networking Place. Here's what Hitler thinks of Google Plus. He wants an invite and he wants one real bad. 

 Do you need one too? Ping me if you haven't already got one. :-)

Snapdeal.com Nagar - Why it is a PR Stunt?

Excellent PR (did you say CSR?) initiative by Snapdeal.com. They adopt a village in UP and promise to take care of all their basic needs. Lo and behold, Snapdeal.com is a trending topic on twitter for the last two days. A few reasons why I don't believe it is less CSR and more PR.

1. A company so early in its lifecycle (started in 2008-09 and became big in the last few months). Would they get into CSR this early?
2. Most big players get into CSR when they have no other option. Why would a small player do it now?
3. If they had to do CSR, they might have tried to help in markets where their customers come from (a village or a government school near Bangalore or even within Bangalore for example) I really doubt anyone in Shiv Nagar would have even heard about Snapdeal leave alone buy anything in Snapdeal.
4. If indeed it was about CSR, how did the word get out and how did it spread like wildfire. Here I can give the benefit of doubt to Snapdeal, but it is a little fishy.
5. It is a small company (around 500 people) with around $20 mil in revenue. Why would they get into CSR this early?
6. The Snapdeal painted on the handpumps and on the board above is in the exact colour of their logo and makes it obvious that even if they were not aware of the naming of Snapdeal.com nagar, they took full mileage out of it by painting it all over the village so that when the press comes there to click photos, they get some really good PR juice. :-)

I am therefore inclined to believe this is more PR than CSR. If it is indeed CSR, kudos to the Snapdeal.com Team for thinking big and getting lucky with all the PR that they got. Anyway, even if the villagers themselves came up with the idea of renaming their village from Shiv Nagar to Snapdeal.com Nagar, its a smart move to make sure Snapdeal.com continues to back them and help them (atleast while they are in business :-)) and I hope they remain in business for some time since I've got my fair share of deals from them (A Holiday, A Dental Checkup, A Team Lunch, A massage package gift, a few other products as gifts and a whole lot more). :-)

Read more here and the Snapdeal.com point of view on this here

Dell SMAC Unconference - Discussion on Indian Startups and Social Media

As part of the unique DELL Social Media and Communities Unconference (Follow #Dellstublr on Twitter for more photos and tweets from the Unconference) today, I anchored a session on how Indian Start-ups can leverage Social Media to make an impact and like the other discussions was quite enriching. A side topic that came up was how Dell can engage with Indian SMEs better. Below is the notes that I've taken. 

Primary Topic: Indian Startups: How can they leverage Social Media to make an impact?

1.       Demand Generation

a.       Build a gaming app around your application

b.      Start Contests or Quizzes around your area of expertise/product

c.       Launch Deals – Exclusive to Social Media

d.      Provide exclusive logins to gain exclusivity and word-of-mouth

e.      Limited referral links to each user (e.g. Gmail/Faceb)

f.        Referral Marketing

g.       Referral and Reward Schemes/Loyalty Programs

2.       Branding

a.       Be the brand that your relevant audience talks about

b.      Identify areas where you want to specialize.

c.       Answer questions on Linkedin and Quora on relevant topics

3.       Social CRM

a.       Connect to customers

b.      Integrate with offline channels

c.       Get feedback on products/service

4.       Idea-sourcing (Ideastorm/Feedback)

a.       Lot of companies doing this were cited

5.       Connect to the Ecosystem – Startups (especially SBs) need a lot of help on this.

a.       Lawyers

b.      Developers

c.       VCs to reach out to for funding

d.      Accountants

e.      Website designers

f.        SEO

6.       Operations / Supply-Chain: An example is a popular snack brand rewarding customers who report shortage of the snack in the neighbouring store with a free pack. There were several instances of people tweeting just to get a freebie. But the brand became a lot popular and sales/marging went up significantly year on year.

Other Points Discussed:

1.       Focus on the right channels with the relevant customer segments engaged there

2.       A good product is primary to winning in Social Media.

3.       SB vs.  MB obviously a factor to consider and will impact your strategy

4.       Good content (Zoozoos, Dominos and others listed) important for getting a content to go viral and good content is key for Start-ups

5.       Is ROI in Social Media low?

a.       Conflicting points of view on that.

b.      Summary that if you plan and execute this well, it can work for you and work cheaply for you.

Secondary Topic: How can Dell help Startups and also benefit from it?

1.       Ecosystem

a.       Grow its own (Using #Takeyourownpath as a starting point)

b.      Plug into existing ecosystems like Pluggd.in

c.       Build a Twitter Handle around this DellSMBHelp or SMBEcosystem something like that

2.       Financing

a.       Connect to Angel Investors/VCif not directly finance

b.      Legal Constraints listed as something that might prevent direct funding

3.       Purchase a Social Networking Company / Community site focused on startups?

4.       Things we are already doing in other regions

a.       Be the advisor for SMBs on relevant areas

b.      Become thought leaders on things to do/avoid in a start-up either personal or as a company too.

5.       Social Benefits

a.       Donate PCs to Villages and help start KPOs/BPOs

b.      Government incentivizes such initiatives and will be part of our CSR initiatives

6.       Business Plan Competitions and Mash-ups for Start-ups with a stall around listing our products

Those who participated (Thank you for contributing to the discussion) or even those who didn't with other ideas, please feel free to contribute or provide feedback on my twitter handle @rhebbar or in the comments section below. 

My blog has now become all about crowd/idea-sourcing now anyway. :-) My Other recent crowdsourcing posts:
Ideas for a car purchase
Ideas for my website name

To ensure you don't miss any of my blog posts, please click on subscribe to add my blog in your favorite RSS Feed Reader.

You can also follow me on twitter @rhebbar to get frequent updates on this and my blogs and talk to me on anything under the sun (including investing, entrepreneurship, MBA, cricket, travel).

Big Loser

#bigloser is trending on Twitter and I am considering joining it. :-)

A few details about how this works: A Sponsor is a person who cares about and feels a friend/family member needs to lose weight.A Participant is a person who loses the weight and does a good turn by getting money donated to charity with his efforts. As someone on Twitter said, instead of me donating money to the gym and not use it, let me at least get money donated to a charity and feel good about myself. No greater motivation than doing something for a social cause and boosting my self-esteem.

While at first glance, Rs. 10/person/kg might seem like a small number, it surely does add up especially looking at the way it is trending.

So, now that I want to be a #bigloser. Any volunteers who wants to sponsor me? You'll need to donate Rs. 10 per kg I lose to a charity of my choice. Please drop in a comment or send me an e-mail (arhebbar at gmail) if you want to sponsor me. :-) To make it sweeter and MOTI-vate myself to do something significant, if I lose less than 5kgs by Feb 2012, I'll match your donations.

I have to mention this just to rub it in. While this is not really the same thing, a friend Ravish (remember this, Ravi, Gops, Chandu, Mahaniya and the rest of the gang) had bet against my losing 10 odd lbs in a little over a month way back in 2006 and lost the bet as I lost way more than 10lbs. So, while I am not as healthy (unhealthy to tell you the truth) as I was way back then, there sure is potential. :-)

To ensure you don't miss any of my blog posts, please click on subscribe to add my blog in your favorite reader.

You can also follow me on twitter @rhebbar to get frequent updates on this and my other blogs along with hear from me about other things I find interesting as well as provide feedback on this post or my other posts.