Career Mantra’s Official Blog

Just out of col­lege or pack­ing your bag­gage to get out soon. We talked to var­i­ous fresh­ers and digged out some very com­mon myths or mis­con­cep­tion they have regard­ing IT job inter­view process. Though there are mil­lions (okay…thousands..or even hundreds..no less) of them we are only putting the most com­mon ones here. This might be dif­fi­cult for for a 10+ yrs expe­ri­ence pro­fes­sional to digest, but this how fresh­ers (or most of them) think. Can we help their thinking…yes..may be.

Myth #10: Low­er­ing Your Salary Demands Will Increase your chances of selec­tion.

When you are strug­gling for a job, some­times you may be tempted to lower your demand and grab the offer let­ter imme­di­ately. Unfor­tu­nately or for­tu­nately an IT com­pany does not think in the same way. It is more inter­ested in get­ting value from you (I mean your work..) rather than sav­ing money on your salary. While ask­ing for a much higher salary may show you a greedy, low­er­ing expec­ta­tion may lower the value per­cep­tion. If you know what the com­pany offers for a sim­i­lar skillset and expe­ri­ence, try to be in +/- 20% range.

Myth #9: A tie is a must for an entry level job inter­view.

While it is impor­tant to be neatly dressed in for­mals, wear­ing a tie will not add any point to your score.Only if you feel com­fort­able with a tie, wear it.

Myth #8: Entry level salaries are fixed and can­not be nego­ti­ated.

While most of the big com­pa­nies adver­tise their entry level salaries, it does vary based on your col­lege, past expe­ri­ence, marks and your per­for­mance in the inter­view process. If you are being asked your salary expec­ta­tion you may have some room to nego­ti­ate.

Myth #7: Only the best per­son gets hired.

Hir­ing a large num­ber of fresh­ers (from an even larger num­ber of fresh­ers) is so stren­u­ous that most peo­ple resort to selec­tion by elim­i­na­tion. It may be on the basis of your marks, degree, FCFS (first come first serve) or any­thing. Do you really think that get­ting a 69% guy is in any way infe­rior to a 71% guy. As long as you have done full prepa­ra­tion you should not get unnec­es­sary com­plexes. If you have not done any prepa­ra­tion for job then any per­son get­ting selected is bet­ter (in fact much bet­ter) than you.

Myth #6: If I write many projects in CV it will catch their atten­tion.

No, It will get you more trou­ble than you can han­dle. High­light only big­ger projects (rather than every term papers you would have done in every alter­nate course). And, be fully pre­pared to answer every ques­tion about these projects.

Myth #5: Writ­ing both C#.NET and Java/J2EE will boost my chances of CV get­ting selected.

Half of the world is .NET and the other half is Java. If I write both skills in my CV I have the full uni­verse (super­set) with me. It is going to exactly dou­ble my chances of selec­tion…Wrong. It would reduce your prob­a­bil­ity to exactly half if not less. The only con­clu­sion a sane (read expe­ri­ence IT pro­fes­sional) per­son would draw is that you do not know any of these. Write (and also pre­pare) only one of them. Which one ? I will answer in a future post. So keep com­ing to my blog.

Myth #4: A flashy resume is more likely to get atten­tion than a sim­pler one.

Unfor­tu­nately the flash in only lim­ited to pan. A per­son who is fil­ter­ing has played it enough.Keep it sim­ple and do not promise that you are going to change the face of the com­pany. More tips on Resume Writ­ing later.

Myth #3: If a com­pany is not cur­rently hir­ing I do not stand a chance.

Though it may look very con­tra­dic­tory, but only 20 – 25% of over­all IT jobs are pub­li­cized in adver­tise­ment or oth­er­wise. Rest all is filled through ref­er­ences, unso­licited CVs and job por­tals. Now you know what to do.

Myth #2: If I have poten­tial, it will get rec­og­nized in inter­view.

If you do NOT have poten­tial, it will def­i­nitely get rec­og­nized in inter­view but if you have poten­tial there is no guar­an­tee of recog­ni­tion. Confusing..okay let me put it very sim­ply. What if you have very good tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and you also have good (inter­est­ing) hob­bies and your extra cur­ric­u­lar record is shin­ing. There is a def­i­nite chance of dis­cus­sion lead­ing to some other path and you not being able to tell the inter­viewer that you have it (what it takes to make a good soft­ware engi­neer). If needed inter­rupt him and try to take the dis­cus­sion to your strong areas. In the worst case sim­ply ask for it by specif­i­cally telling him your strengths.

Myth #1: IT com­pa­nies are more inclined towards stu­dents who have advance knowl­edge of C#.NET or Java/J2EE

This one is the most com­mon (and the bad one too). Kindly under­t­sand that tech­nolo­gies will change com­pletely at least 4 – 5 times in your soft­ware career. What is impor­tant for you is in-depth under­stand­ing of pro­gram­ming fun­da­men­tals and ana­lyt­i­cal skills. IT com­pa­nies real­ize that once your fun­da­men­tals are at right place you can quickly learn new emerg­ing tech­nolo­gies and be pro­duc­tive very fast. Take my word, you are def­i­nitely not going to end you career with any of these two. It is impor­tant for you to spend suf­fi­cient time on your ana­lyt­i­cal skills and pro­gram­ming fun­da­men­tals which will serve as a base for your entire career.