Marketing: An underrated but effective skill for everyone

Recently, I was contacted by a friend to help his young cousin out with some career advice. Honestly, I was quite fascinated by the CV and I believe that the young graduate had more experience in Machine Learning and Statistics than me.

But of course my years of experience allowed me to quickly compile some feedback that I felt was important. Living in Italy, there are a few things you learn in Europe that many Indian students fail to apply.

MBA students at the IIMs are quite aware and do thorough job in marketing themselves. Nonetheless, here is some advice for young Indian graduates who are looking for a job.

Here is my letter to the graduate looking for a job and career advice. Hope someone find this useful in some way.

Advice to Indian students and graduates looking for a job

“Hi,

You have a great profile and I would only advice you to stay confident and keep looking out for opportunities.

As a young graduate a little industry experience will help you develop your interpersonal and managerial skills further. After a few years of experience, I am confident you will even be able to start your own start up.

With regard to your tech skills, they are very strong.

But I think you need to work on your marketing skills. By this I mean, to be able to communicate the complicated work done in a simple language. Time to upgrade an Academic CV to a Business CV.

Firstly, I think you need to keep your work ex on top above your education. Try to elaborate it more, explaining cultural learnings etc also. Show that you are a fun person to work with.

Try to stress more on what real world benefits your skills or projects can bring. Check this out:

Imagine a busy recruiter having to scan through thousands of CVs. If you can add some action words in your CV for each project (like: Delivered, Organized, Coordinated, Analyzed, Managed, Calculated etc like these ), Try your best to stick out with some unique experience mentioned.

You can try to elaborate your experience a bit more on LinkedIn. Fill your LinkedIn up as much as you can.

Think of yourself as a Sales person selling your skills to a company or job. Hence, its important to know your technical strengths and also learn to market it.

Companies like people with decent interpersonal skills, hence stress more on team work projects and leadership roles. Make sure to add these attributes.

Focus also on some interests like hobbies. It can be anything, even traveling and cooking. If the recruiter likes the same stuff it always helps.

Most young graduates are very modest and do not market themselves well. This is my belief.

Since you have worked on Financial applications as well, you could keep targeting Banking and Quantitative Digital Marketing positions.

Let me know if you need further elaboration on this.

Will get back to you soon.

Kind regards,

Vineeth