4 Things IT guys should do to be a strong MBA Candidate
I'm not sure how many of us have gone through the LBS Blog Post where the current student Manish explains his experience of recruitment at LBS explaining in detail the recruiters' perspective of an Indian IT guy. Although we might be familiar with some of the tips he has provided but when put into words, these become hard rules. We are all aware of the fact that since there are too many of us (Indian IT males I mean), the things we do daily are somewhat achievements for us. For example, designing a web page for the team where individual status is tracked is quite an accomplishment. But think of a person who does not understand the "impact". For him, it was just another techie thing and the resume is tagged as "programmer profile".
We have be different from the herd and thus take each step carefully so as not to be tagged as "just another programmer". There is nothing wrong in being a programmer. The difficulty arises when we do not show the impact of our actions through our profiles.
Manish quite beautifully explains the steps that should be taken to avoid being termed as a geek. He says, "the moment the recruiters see 2 high tech companies on your CV, it is thrown into a pile with other geek CVs".
Although I did mention some points to differentiate in my article for diversity, here are his tips to help cross the line, in his own words:
1) A solid CV with almost no technical buzz words (I would say any thing more technical than hardware, software, database would be red flagged). Your future employers do not care that you used multithreading and ajax for developing something cool. They want to know how much money your company saved/made from your work. They want to know the business impact, not the technical impact. Secondly you will see all your peers have achievements in each bullet while you as a technologist do certain things everyday because that's what you do at your job. I had this problem but you need to make every bullet in your CV speak of an achievement.
2) A solid internship in your area of interest: This is the biggest hurdle but one you mustn't compromise on. If you do an internship in your area of interest, you can build a convincing story about your aspirations.
3) Serious Involvement in clubs: To show your commitment to the area you are gunning for.
4) Something extra: Language skills, passion for things outside school etc. When 300 of your peers are all overachievers, often recruitment decisions boil down to marginal things and this is where your "other" skills come very handy.
