Help yourself, Sell yourself

On every rise of the sun not only the population grows but also the level of competition. We have seen countless news where Engineers, MBA’s are applying for the role of a clerk or for the position where tenth standard qualification is the eligibility criteria. Sometime back we even heard where Ph D scholars applied for clerk posts and very recently 4000 people have applied for a sweeper and sanitary post vacancy of 14 and as a surprising fact is among those 4000 applicationsmajority of them were Engineers and MBA’s. The Leaked data of NSSO says the unemployment rate rose to 6.1% in 2017-2018 from 2.6% between 1977-1978 and 2011-2012 which is all high time in the last 45 years. Do we have to blame the government? Or someone? This is where the mantra “Help Yourself, Sell yourself” works in this modern competitive world. As Aristotle says, all the advice in the world will never work until you help yourself.

Everyone will agree that competition has been skyrocketed in the recent past. To sustain in this competition we have to train or get skilled ourselves to reach the end goal. Most of us expect the company to hire us just like that. But, one of the most significant matter is that companies have to produce what customer is willing to pay for it not the one what he feels as required or good. The customers never like to pay for poor quality and we also expect a superior quality for a less price i.e. more quality than for what we pay. The same rule applies to the job market as well. Here the company is like a buyer (customer) and we are the seller (people). We have to make ourselves get ready by looking into or knowing what the market (Company) is expecting from us.

Here are the few success stories, First, Sabrina Gonzalez Pasterski, who is seen as the next Einstein or Stephen Hawking at the very young age of 23. She is a renowned physicist in the US and she has been graduated from MIT with 5.0 GPA which is highest anyone can get at MIT. But the most important thing, she has built an aircraft at the age of 13 and started the same work when she was 10. And she made the test fly while she was at 16 and it was widely recognized by many.

Her research paper was released by great people in the physics world like Malcolm J Perry and Andrew Strominger and she is also known as Physics girl in the Physics world. Jeff Bezos, Amazon founder & CEO, said a workspace is waiting for her in the Blue Origin office which is creating wonders in the space exploration (This company which launched a rocket which flies to space and then flies back to earth and settles down in upright position as it was before flying) and Jeff said she can join the company whenever she is ready and able to work.

A decade back we didn’t have a platform to showcase our talents. What about now? Thanks to internet penetration by Jio, the internet brought everyone connected on the web. There arelargenumber of web platforms to showcase our talent. Say for examples Github is popular web platform for coders. LinkedIn is there for personal brand building, etc., YouTube is there for one who wants to reach more people. There are quite a few people who came from YouTube and made an impact in the entertainment industry. It has become an easy way to reach out to people. Like this, there are many platforms for each domain or verticals of the profession.

LinkedIn is one such place where it helps to create personal branding. It helps many people to show to others about their works, writings etc. Once I came across the post of Sam Baisla, Brand Samosa and Nexel World CEO. He wanted to start Nexel World in Dubai but he doesn’t know anyone there. So five months before the launch he started searching Entrepreneurs/CEO’s through LinkedIn and build Six hundred plus connections within 3 months. Then he reached out to them and created a local team and made a successful venture without spending a pie in a place where he was never been there before. This is just one example like this there are many such examples where LinkedIn has made them reach the right people. The keytakeaway is that help yourself.

Unless or until you are going to help yourself nothing is going to happen or change. LinkedIn is not only for personal branding but also to show your writing skills, as it helps to connect with recruiters and so on. The number of opportunities for writers was very limited in fact very less. Now such platforms are helping to show their writing skills to the audience. The later blogs came but still, it was not able to reach a wider audience but now its upside down. It’s not only about showing our talents but also it helps to improve ourselves constantly from the feedback we are getting from the people.

Like LinkedIn, Github is one place where coders can show their coding skills. Junior and intermediate professionals are likely to be asked by the recruiters, can we see your Github profile? In past decade engineers, were selected based upon resume content or referrals from the colleague and hiring managers had very limited options to test the coding skills by conducting technical interview and code writing. But now the trend has changed. The Github has become the resume of coders.

Sometimes companies give us a sample of their product to test before selling it to us. Likewise, we also should ready to show our portfolio i.e. our talent in the respective fields. These platforms will be very helpful for the fresher’s as well who want to make a career shift to a completely different profile from which they are working now. Say for example marketing person wants to shift to an investment advisor or analyst side he can build many portfolios on virtual trading and show his trading skills in the field of finance. Though it is not the only way or necessary to prove his skills as it helps to make him unique in the market.

One thing is evident in this era those who are ready for consistent learning and upgrading themselves will able to achieve and reach greater heights. Now it’s not the time to wait for opportunities, it’s time to create opportunities and make use of it. We all heard the proverb “Self-help is the best help” so “HELP YOURSELF, SELL YOURSELF”.

-M ChandraShekar & Kumaran R
(M Chandra Shekar, Assistant Professor Institute of Public Enterprise Hyderabad)
(Kumaran R, Student of Institute of Public Enterprise Hyderabad)