‘Why did you change so many jobs’; ‘Can you explain the gap in your career’; ‘What exactly happened when you left your last job’; ‘Can you give a reference from your past employment?’ are few common questions that every job seeker can expect. Many wonder what goes behind such matters and more. A good recruiter will always try to evaluate the track record of the job seeker by mapping a few critical points that would give them a better handle at the decision of hiring someone or not. 

Companies are increasingly finding challenging to control their employment cost. While job seekers look for better payouts, companies look at the value they would get and thus would be looking at a lower cost of hire. 

This is where we have found that many of the job seekers commit mistakes. Some mistakes are small and can be rectified, while few are damaging and acts as a red-light right on the head of the candidate shouting out loud ‘Do Not Hire Me’. 

Here we will touch upon some critical parameters that every job seeker must be aware of five critical things generally ignored before they reach out to companies for their next gig. 

1. Never Hide information about your professional life: Few companies may be desperate to hire bodies to execute some work, but good companies always like to recruit candidates to give them a career. This is where they are curious to know about your past professional life. We have seen candidates telling lies or hiding critical information as it would be unpleasant to talk about it and may directly impact their career moves. Some candidates may have been laid off or terminated due to disciplinary issues, or they just were casual about their job and left it on their own, but sugar coating this critical information would be a big mistake especially when most of this information is now available through background and reference verification. Being truthful helps and is appreciated by most. 

2. Be careful with your Social Media posts: Most of the good companies have now started tracking social media posts of prospective candidates and map the preferences and mindset of the candidate with such social media posts. It would be a good idea to keep your social media interactions healthy and professional. 

3. Frequent job hoppers are increasingly coming under a disadvantage. Serious companies avoid taking such individuals. If you are job hopping too frequently beware, you may be ticked out even before you have an opportunity to meet your interview panel.

4. Talking bad about your company or colleagues may be a good gossip for few, but for recruiters, it is a definite red signal. If you can be cynical about your company and colleagues in the previous firm, it can be the same in the new company too. Companies look for positive energies; try to be good and reasonable. 

5. It is not so important about what you do in your job, but what skills you build. In the technology industry, skills are taking precedence over everything else. IT Companies may find difficult to give you projects that may have something to learn, but if you wish to land in some high paying tech job, you should be building your skills using your spare time nevertheless. Going open source way and demonstrating what cool things you did beyond work becomes a big plus, but chilling out after work and not updating your skills may rust you out pretty fast in the technology world. 

 Also published at Marketing In Asia