Is your CV blunder free?

Recession is in, jobs are a rarity, but applicants are plenty. In such a cut throat race the need to have an error free CV (Curriculum Vitae) is very important. Candidates today are trying to make their resumes different and impressive, so that they stand out. In the process, they end up making major blunders. A badly written resume ends up in the dustbin, completely knocking out the candidate's chance of getting a job.

A recent research done by TeamLease Services, a staffing company found that 90 percent of the randomly selected 500 CVs had 'some or the other form of error.' With piles of job applications available to HR managers, it is doubtful if erroneous CVs would be entertained.

Here are few of the top blunders made in a resume:

1. Biography: Marital Status - Yes
   
   
2. I laugh easily, but do not suffer fools gladly. I expect the same effort as others as I give myself.
   
   
3. Weakness: Fresher
   
   
4. Interests: Open to learn, make others laugh and feel happy, enjoys the nature.
   
   
5. Family details: Father - Death
   
   
6. Objective: To always spread positively within the branch and reduce the grape vine.
   
   
7. Notice Period: Minimum two (1) month.
   
   
8. Career Objective: To consistently develop by learning and sharing skills with a focus on the ultimate objective in order to achieve higher goals in conjunction with the growth of the organization and to set a name and be recognized in the industry.
   
   
9. Marital Status: Marriage
   
   
10. Profile: To prepare the whole film production plane and financing plane.
    
    
11. Contact Email: www.aradhana@rediffmail.com
    
    
12. Areas of strength: My background to date has been centered on grooming myself as a well-rounded person.
    
    
13. I am quietly forceful, original and sensitive.
    
    
14. Languages known: English (Good), Malayalam (Native), Hindi and Tamil.
    
    
15. Career Objective: Seeking a final placement in any organization to untilize the plethora of skills I have developed during my whole career.

The study revealed that many resumes are written in great haste and no attention is paid to detail. Candidates in an attempt to impress go overboard and consequently make a mockery of their bio-data. "The situation worsens when candidates make silly mistakes due to sheer oversight and sometimes overconfidence. A CV is the first piece of information about a candidate that reaches the potential recruiter. It is always advisable to have one's bio-data proof read and checked by professionals, or someone proficient in English.

So, is your CV blunder free?

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Mobile Mashups: Breaking Out of the Pocket

What is a Mashup?

Mashup is a very general term for an application that incorporates realtime data and services (APIs) from 3rd party sources over the Internet. A Mashup is often very focused and task oriented.

Although the browser is the most accessible platform for developing and distributing a Mashup it is by no means the only platform, and arguably not always the most appropriate from an end-user perspective. mWorks, for example, provides a platform for creating mashups that run as an application on your mobile phone, Apple Widgets and Yahoo! Konfabulator both provide a platform for creating a mashups that run as Widgets on your desktop, and the list goes on. The important thing to remember about a Mashup is that it is an application that leverages realtime data and / or services accessed over the Internet. The delivery mechanism for the Mashup is completely independent. In fact, many mashups are available in mobile, widget, and browser versions.

The mobile browser is NOT the only platform “open” to the developer. You may be surprised to find out that you could create a mashup using SMS and Java in addition to the browser on a device.

Things are getting really interesting in the mobile development field.

Five years ago when you talked about application development you were most likely targeting web browsers, desktop computers, game platforms or very limited phone OS’s. On each of those platforms the vast majority of the input was via the user’s fingertips — text, buttons and joysticks.

Today’s devices obviously offer so much more. Touch, GPS, compasses, accelerometers, and proximity detection to name just a few previously unavailable input modes. This has made possible a raft of new types of applications.

The idea that the mobile phone should be a one-stop shop of digital services is universally shared in Asia. There's also a convergence of features among cell phones, personal digital assistants, cameras, MP3 players, and high-speed wireless networks that's turning mobile phones into all-purpose digital devices.

But the combination of disparate features into one device isn't just a top-down phenomenon pushed by carriers and manufacturers. Consumers often take the lead, playing with user-generated content in myriad ways. They can seamlessly "mash up" or combine, say, music or video from various sources and integrate applications from their personal computers and printers with their handsets.

The feature-power of mobile phones and the creative melding of content and software applications are bound to increase as 3G mobile handsets and ever-speedier wireless networks continue to be rolled out across the region.

Korean handset maker LG Electronics is also trying to export high-end multimedia mobile phones to the U.S., where the mashup fad is also entrenched, though more PC-based. LG's Fusic mobile phone delivers an array of services over Sprint's high-speed network. Subscribers can access Sprint TV and Sirius Satellite adio via the handset, buy songs, and copy tunes from one handset to another—or even transfer music collections to a car radio or personal computer.

Japan's mashup scene is more dominated by small Web 2.0 venture businesses than programming-savvy individuals. A company called DigitalStreet has come up with software filters that let mobile-phone users view Web pages that would normally only be accessible from a PC. In the past, businesses had to direct cell-phone users to special Web sites that were pared-down versions of the actual site, with few graphics, loads of text, and limited content.

The new programs aren't limited to Web browsers. For instance, a program called Fileseek lets you check out the latest YouTube videos from your cell phone. I see real potential as we move forward with the synergy and integration between mobile social media and enterprise applications. I am reminded how much Web 2.0 trends will drive mobile technology. When I originally started to design mMashups I had it in my mind to create a platform that would allow me to pull together interesting web services in a way that was intuitive and useful on any mobile device. Today, web services are now passé and terms like Ajax and Mashup are gaining in popularity; but this does not change the fundamental technology and concepts upon which mMashups was originally designed.

My research (with help from co-workers Viktor Stephen and Amit Kapur), has turned up an interesting list of services and sources of services. Amit pointed me to http://www.programmableweb.com which has an impressive list of XML APIs for creating mashups. Technorati and Feedburner also have some interesting APIs for navigating and browsing blogs and feeds. Sites like Flickr and TextAmerica have some interesting API’s for accessing a wealth of image content, and Google and Yahoo both have API’s for a variety of things. In addition there are some UDDI registries for for premium Web Services such as StrikeIron and XMethods.

Mobile Mashups sounds like a really interesting niche to me.

Five rules for posting your resume online

Sometimes when you apply for a job online you can feel like you're sending your resume into a black hole. Here are some tips for finding the right sites and getting results.

A few years ago I would not have hesitated to tell you to put a lot of time into visiting sites and posting your resume. After all, what did you have to lose? I’ve changed my mind. You can waste a lot of time, and even money, if you visit a lot of sites.

Today, there are literally hundreds of sites, and some are not even based in this country. With the advent of online payment services and inexpensive Web site hosting, anyone can put one of these sites together, and entice you to give them some money to post your resume. Who knows if companies even know they exist or care to search their databases?

Call me cautious at this point, because I haven’t given up on the Internet as a career resource. To keep people from sinking too much time and effort into online job searching, I have developed a few simple rules for when and where to post your resume and hunt for jobs:

Rule #1: Never pay a big fee for posting your resume on a site or for using resources on a site. The site may look great, but you don’t know what they are doing with your resume. They could also be making up job postings. Reputable sites should be getting fees from the companies that search the cache of resumes, not from you.

Rule #2: Don’t bother posting to a site that is national or international in scope if you are not willing to relocate. If you don’t want to move, then spend your time researching companies in your area and sending them resumes. Check the local papers for jobs, and make sure to check the job postings on the papers’ Web sites.

Rule #3: If the IT job postings on the site require so many diverse skills or an arcane mix of skills, then don’t bother applying for those jobs. Skip job postings that require you to give your salary requirements or current salary. It's hard to believe, but companies use the online sites to test salary ranges and job descriptions. They have no intention of hiring, but they’re trying to do some research on the cheap.

Rule #4: Post on a broad-spectrum job site only if you can quickly find at least five recent job openings that interest you. Fewer than five means the companies that need your services don’t use this particular site as a regular resource. (This rule doesn’t apply for specialized IT job sites.) Also, if you can’t read the job postings before you post your resume, then the site is of no use to you and you should skip it.

Rule #5: Look for sites that are specifically geared for what you do or want to do, such as trade associations and peer organizations. They often have job and resume posting sections. Savvy companies know to go there, rather than the general job sites, when looking for that one special person with the IT skills they need.

Let me give you an example of how to hunt jobs on the Web while keeping these rules in mind. Say you are a manager who manages teams of programmers, software testers, and so forth. Write down your top five skills and three most important perks for a new job. Write down your title, plus three or four other titles that you think someone who does what you do might have.

Since you work with software, begin your search by visiting a software trade association Web site -- such as NASSCOM (http://www.nasscom.in/). You check out the postings in the JobsNetwork section of the site. It’s easy to find the kinds of jobs you’re interested in because the section is set up for IT people who work with software. You post your resume here. You visit a couple of other trade association sites, and decide to post your resume at one or two because they have interesting job postings and more than a few are management level.

You then check out the job postings at the corporate sites of several companies in the area that you know do software development. Even if you don’t see a job posted that fits you, look for the e-mail address of the HR department and send a brief synopsis of your resume highlights in the body of the e-mail. (Don’t send an attachment because many corporate e-mail servers now discard mail with attachments because they are trying to ward off viruses.)

Finally, you browse through the online job postings at the major daily newspaper sites for your area and any area you might consider moving to, just in case you might find something. When you find something, you respond to the ad as directed. If a company name is listed in the ad, visit the company’s Web site and find the HR contact. Send a brief e-mail saying you’re interested in a job you read about in the paper and include your resume synopsis in the body of the e-mail.

Then, you pat yourself on the back because you’re using your time wisely, and you’re on you way to a new job.

News: India Inc buys 143 US cos in 2 yrs

The greater engagement of US with India seems to have benefited the former during the economic downturn as thousands of Americans managed to save their jobs when Indian corporates went on a major acquisition drive in the US.

During the last two years, Indian companies acquired 143 US firms across various sectors. While 94 deals were concluded in 2007-08, in the following year when the economy was on the downturn, Indians bought as many as 50 US entities that were on the verge of closure, saving thousands of jobs.

A study, jointly conducted by Indian industry association FICCI and Ernst & Young, said Tata Chemicals, Wipro, Reliance Communications and Firstsource Solutions were some of the top Indian entities that were involved in bailing out US companies in the red.

The report released on Thursday said IT & ITeS, manufacturing and pharmaceuticals were the prime sectors in which most of the deals were formalised. Indian companies from the IT sector have over the years been aggressively expanding in the US market.

The deals were predominantly debt financed with cash being a popular mode of payment. "This trend probably extends from India Inc's traditional preference for cash transactions in the domestic merger and acquisition space," the report observed.

The Ernst & Young report says the boom in the Indian economy in the last three to four years made the domestic companies cash-rich which provided them with access to more capital than in the past.

Interestingly, one of the key factors, as the report cites, behind more acquisitions has been the liberal policies introduced by the government and RBI for overseas investments.

According to RBI data, in 2007-08 the total outbound investments of Indian companies amounted to $18 billion. In the first half of 2008-09, at least 2,000 proposals valued at $9 billion were cleared for overseas investments in joint ventures and wholly owned subsidiaries.

Source: ToI