Get placed Off-Campus

We live in the world of competition and uncertainties’.  Neither did we all attend the top institutes in the country for our studies, nor were we lucky enough to get through our favorite job profiles/ companies during our campus placements (if we got placed at all).

But this shouldn’t let any of you down. You should realize that there is whole new world of opportunities for you, waiting to be tapped and spotted right. Now that you are being given the opportunity to pick any pearl in the ocean, you must pick the best one. It just needs a little bit of your time and effort.

In today’s free world there’s rarely any job that doesn’t align with your qualification, unless (ofcourse) if you’re a design graduate and want to work in a genetics lab. So, minus these absurdities, and you can take up almost any role that matches your skills and resume a bit.

I know people working in Communications despite having studied Botany at college and those working in Operations despite having a B.Tech in Electrical and those working as Managers for Finance teams despite having studied Textile Engineering.

So, don’t think you got stuck with a degree and ‘No-Placement’.
Always believe that you are more privileged than those who got placed on-campus as they were given a limited domain of opportunities to choose from.

Step 1- Identify your skills (your real skills not the ones that need to be put on your resume):

Try finding if you are good at convincing people or you are good at organizing events or you are good at stats or software handling or writing or at procuring material.

Look back and try to see what you have done best at school. Could be anything (doesn’t really need to be on your resume), could even be things like talking your friends out of a silly relationship or could even include organizing informal cricket matches early morning at 5:30 a.m. or convincing your friends to spend the night before your exam, drinking. They all add up to your skills. They really do.
Yes, you gotta make a list of all the crazy things you have done and let it be defined by a skill.

Now make a list of those skills in turn.

Step 2- Identify the Job Role that most appropriately matches your skills:

For example if you are good with talking and convincing people, you can get into marketing.
If you are good with numbers, you can try analytics or banking.
If you are full of creative business ideas, you can be an entrepreneur or try working with a startup in a nascent stage.
If you are good at helping people, you can be a teacher or a trainer or a counselor or work with an NGO.

Now make a list of the possible jobs that you can apply to.

Step 3- Make a list of companies that offer these job roles and list them in the descending order of your priority, which could be money or work culture or both.

Step 4- Heavy Networking:

Now is the time when you must get down to heavy networking on Facebook, Twitter, Google+, Linkedin etc. Try spotting the people in your nearest friend circle or friends of friends who are working in the same field that you wish to work in. Get their contacts, call them or just go for coffee with them. Tell them what you are interested in and try getting the insight of their job roles and try knowing if that fits you well or not. Don’t rush! Think it over wisely.
Try meeting lots of people working in the industries that you are interested in, and always know that you are the best judge.

Make a list of the people who can best help you by referring you to the job openings available in their industry. Request them to refer you for the X profile whenever there’s opening in the company they are working for. Show them how you are fit for the role by fixing your resume a bit as per the role demands.
(I will be talking about resume in the next post)

Make a list of people who seem even slightly inclined towards forwarding your resume and email your resume to them all.
Don't forget to follow-up!

Note: Always send your Resume as a PDF file.

Step 5- The Next Step of Selection- Aptitude test and Interview:

If the Company finds your profile to be matching their criteria, you can either be called for an interview directly or for an aptitude test prior to an interview. Try digging out what the test might include by talking to the people freshly recruited by the company and depending on what the test would include, you can pick up any general aptitude testing book and practice on it. The Interviews will mostly be a candid discussion since you are joining as a fresher/trainee, they don’t expect you to know everything, but still you must do your pre-interview research by talking with people who are already working there and went through the same process. 

Trust me the world is small, and it is very easy to reach out to anybody and everybody in the age that we live in. So, get out into the world and talk. And, this time talk with a purpose of learning and getting references.
You can turn things around for yourself, if only you play smart.

And if the odds are in your favor you'll be offered a joining letter today. If not today, it'll happen sooner or later. So, don't lose hope. Keep Trying! The process is difficult and a bit time consuming but never impossible.

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You gotta do what you love or die finding what you love. That's the only way you make the best of your time on this planet.

How and when to choose the best career for you- 8 Rules to know

Conditions Apply: The below-mentioned rules are only applicable to people who are singly sustaining themselves and not a family. So, better get on that road while you are still single and don't have to support a family. For having to support a family will change the equations for all of the below.

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Growing up in a society where any career-thought other than ‘Engineering and Medicine’ is considered as blasphemous, we all are made to do whatever we are SUPPOSED to do and not what we WANT to do. We are made to think what we are supposed to think not what we want to think. 

And, in that process, the fervor of doing things that we are really good at gets dissolved and washed away.

I am writing this post just to motivate the crazy lot of you to pick up the little remnants of whatever fervor and caliber is left within you and get on the ship for a new expedition to explore what’s best for you.

There are a few rules to finding the best career for you.

 Rule 1.     Don’t let your University degree rule you over, if you don't like what you are doing

Only if we were all born wise and free, we would have all gotten ourselves the most appropriate Graduate degree possible to let us be the masters of our own careers. Unfortunately that is not the case for most of us. Despite taking every next step warily and choosing our education after a lot of contemplation and discussions, we still find ourselves dissatisfied with what we are doing/studying. Revelations about your own career are not defined by time, they can happen anytime during your life. Be it 2 years into graduation or 10 years after.

You gotta let the revelations rule you over until you decide to break those bars and are free to try the next best thing for you.

Give yourself time and let not a friggin’ piece of paper (University degree that is) define what you are SUPPOSED to do.

If you are good at story-telling, be a Story Teller.
If you are good at jamming, just go out and jam.
If you are good at training dogs, do it!

Don’t let the education define your career!

 Rule 2.      Stop worrying about what people will think if you’d do it

If you are too worried about what people would think when you’d take a job with a travel magazine after studying Economics at University, or if you’d want to work on an organic farm after pursuing a MS in Artificial Intelligence. Stop Right There! Take a break! Question Yourself!

What makes your life worthwhile? Doing what you love? Or putting on a show?

Let those answers ringing in your head decide what you should do next.

People will always talk for years and years to come, they will put in their best to let you down. But what if that same organic farm is feeding millions, 10 years thence? What then? Would you really care about what people thought or said back then?

So, choose what you like and choose it wisely. And then give it your best. Make it bloom for the world to see. Make people regret for what they once said about you. And then just put on that ‘Swagger’ and go around.

Rule 3.    Don’t let your age define what you should do next

No matter if you are 15 or 25 or 35 or even older, don’t let the age define what you are supposed to do.
Even if you have spent 35 years of your life doing something that you abhorred, you can at least save the rest by not doing the same. Like I said Career Revelations are not time defined. So, even if it’s at 35 you realize you were put in the wrong role all these years. Open those seat belts and get ready for a Skydive.
If you’ve been a Software Engineer all these years, but love to teach Math. Go ahead, be a Math teacher.

 Rule 4.  Don’t let the money you earn decide what you should do 

Ohh! Burps! This one I’d say is the most difficult thing to give up on when you have gotten used to the comforts of those cushions you just bought. You might be earning a lakh a month or may be two and still not be happy with what you are doing. So, I’d say-It’s a trade- off here and you’d have to make a choice if it’s the money you want or it’s the love for something that you just realized and would want to follow it. Tough Call! Ain’t it?
But, you never know, if you give up your job for learning how to brew a beer and someday come up with your own concoction that the whole world is swigging every night. You’d be making 100 times more money than what you’d be making if you were in the same job for all those years, and to top it off you’ve enjoyed your time to the most reaching that level.

Rule 5.  Build your skills, not your resume

One of my favorite quotes by Sheryl Sandberg- “Build your skills, not your resume”. You spend 75% of your lives figuring out how to embellish your resume to climb the career ladder up higher, but does it really matter if every evening, sitting with your friends, you crib about how horrible your job is and how much you hate it?
And still struggling to make your way up, huh? How ironical?
No wonder we all live in the world of Ironies.

I liked how Sheryl Sandberg, at one of the Harvard commencement speech, talked how this whole career thing isn’t like a ladder anymore, it’s like a ‘Jungle Gym’. You should be ready to step down, up, sideways, just to know what’s best for you.
So, even if you’ve been a manager of a finance team, you might want to try the HR for once, if you think you are slightly good at it, and you never know what changes you might bring around.

So, I’d say you should always be ready to experiment new things even if it means stepping down a level or 10, you will only be developing new skills and will sooner or later find what you are best at.

 Rule 6.  Don’t let the past experiences define your future

Make the past experiences count, but not define what you want to do next. Not only education, even if our past experiences don’t comply with what we like to do next, we always take a back seat without even bothering to give it a second thought.

So, even if you’ve been into fashion industry for 10 years and want to try your hand as a Public Health associate, go ahead  and do it!

Rule 7. Gather as many experiences as possible

I’ll be talking mostly about myself here J Having had a passion to just read Shakespeare’s works as a kid, I still got into Biotechnology (reasons: the usual), but I still never gave up on the experiential learning in my life. The books will never give you what experiences do.
As for the experiences: I have worked with Subway making sandwiches, as an assistant at CBI (CFSL) extracting DNA, as a Research Scholar at Harvard Medical School studying organ transplantation in mice, as a Content Writer, as a Research analyst, done the corporate shit and now given up on all, to teach a couple of slum kids in my front yard and to start working on something new with my friend.

And, I’m still in the process of finding what’s best for me. So, don’t settle for anything usual, I’d say. Immerse yourself in a new experience every now and then to figure out what is it that you really want to do.

Rule 8. Be ready to take risks in your career

Transitioning isn’t easy. It depends on what your risk appetite is. Do whatever to enhance that appetite. And like Steve Jobs said – “Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish”

10 steps to International Internship

After getting a myriad calls and messages asking me about how and when and where, I decided to make it simpler for you all by sharing the whole process of International Internship through this blog. 

So, let’s get started.

Boston Twilight- View from MIT

Step 1: Begin 6 months before the date you want to start your dissertation/Internship.

This timing is very critical to the application of the internship, for the visa process to any foreign country usually takes a while, so we keep a good buffer time in hand.
While the visa to Europe is comparatively easier to get than the USA, the US Embassy can be really a pain in the butt, especially for us Indians and especially those of us applying to biological sciences. Yes, you geeks better get aware of the term “The Pink Slip”.
It’s a sort of document which puts you to further inspection into the study of your research, destination of that study, your mentor, etc.

But don’t worry, it’s just a sort of formality, your visa will only get delayed by a month or so.

Step 2: Make a list of Universities you want to apply to based on their ranking with respect to your course of Interest.

For the ranking in US, you can check out http://www.usnews.com/rankings or Forbes.
For the world ranking, you can check out http://www.forbes.com/sites/susanadams/2014/03/05/the-worlds-most-reputable-universities-in-2014/.

For Biotechnology, I’d applied to Harvard, MIT, Stanford, Max Planck, Imperial College London, Oxford and Cambridge.

Step 3: Dig out the specific departments you want to apply to on the university website.

Once you have made a list of the universities you want to apply to, make a list of the departments you want to apply to.
There can be many departments which match your interests, credentials and past achievements.
For example, based on my past experience and interests, I’d applied to Immunology, Microbiology and Genetics, in the aforementioned universities.

Step 4: Identify the Professors working in the fields of your interest and start shooting emails.

Once you have made the list of the universities and identified the departments, start spotting the Professors working in the field of your interest. Read a couple of their research papers (if not thoroughly, just go through their abstracts) and start shooting emails.

Try to keep the emails as short and crisp as possible.

And if you are not sure about the area of your own interest, just keep shooting emails to the professors in the alphabetical order from the list of Professors in your department of interest.

Sample Email that you can use:
“Dear Dr. X,
I am a masters student of (mention the department), pursuing (mention the course) with specialization in (mention the specialization) from (mention the current university).
I am presently working on a review paper/ project/ anything that you are doing and is of relevance to the Professor

I am very intrigued by your area of research. (Talk a little bit about the professor’s research paper, if you have read) I would like to know about the opportunity to work with you in your research group for my thesis, from January through May, 20XX.
I am also attaching my resume and statement of purpose for your consideration.

Waiting in anticipation
Sincerely,
Your Name”

Note: Don’t forget to attach your Resume and SOP

Step 5: Replying, Following-up and Letters of Recommendation

The Professors will definitely reply sooner or later, but don’t get disheartened by the negative ones, the positive replies are soon your way.
In a negative response, the professors will usually say that they either don’t have funds to assist an international student or that there is no space in the lab to accommodate another candidate.

Keep emailing. Don't give up. I used to email hundreds of professors each day, beginning from 1^st of May, 2012 until 17^th of May when I got my first positive response.
It’s after hundreds of emails that you get a positive response.

The most important part of emailing process is “Follow-Up”. If you think that the reply you got is slightly positive, mark that email and keep following up until the professor asks for you to send him 2-3 letters of recommendation.

Get two letters of recommendations emailed to the professor, from your professors in the current University/ your project mentor/ whoever you think you have a good rapport with. And, soon you'll be having letter of invite in your hands.

Step 6: Arranging the Funds

If you are applying well ahead of time, you may be able to find a funded internship, and all that you’ll be taking care of is just your flight expenses.

The positive in the negative:
If the professor replies that he doesn’t have funds to assist you then that means he could have you work with him, if only you could take care of your expenses. And if you really can fund your internship, then follow-up right then, telling him/her that you will be able to fund your stay in XYZ city.

The lab expenses will anyways be taken care of by the professor. All that you need to worry about is flight, lodging and fooding.

Step 7: Taking care of the expenses: Lodging and Fooding

I will only be talking about any city in the US for now:
If you want to live luxuriously, traveling around, trying different food and wine J then anywhere USD1200-1500 per month would do. But, if you can save on the lodging (because for me it hardly mattered), then you can make do in USD1000. .
If your sole purpose of an international internship is just the internship, then you can make do with USD 700-800 p.m.

Note: The aforementioned expenses may vary a bit according to the standard of living of the city you are going to. I am talking about one of the most expensive cities along the east coast of USA.

Step 8: Scheduling the Skype interviews and phone call

Once the Professor is impressed by your application and the funding is all sorted from your side and his too, then he might want to schedule a phone/ Skype interview with you and if the odds are in your favor, it will all come out right. You’ll soon receive your letter of Invite.

Step 9: Schedule a date for the visa interview as soon as you receive the Letter of Invite and Visa documents.

Once the deal is done, the professor will be sending you the official letter of invite and the visa documents from the university/lab you are going to. As soon as you receive those, you can schedule for your visa interview and start preparing.

Step 10: If the visa gets approved, pack your bags and fly J

The International internship is the easiest way to immerse yourself in your favorite city, culture, research, university etc. Each one of us must give it a shot. It sure as hell is going to be a lifetime experience