First-ever Industry-led Business Analytics Training

Randhir.Net in collaboration with Resume2Jobs and Convergytics is launching a first of its kind industry-led business analytics training starting this month. This would be a Weekend-Only course spread over six weeks. If you either want to start a career in analytics, make a switch into Analytics or are in the Analytics Industry and want to sharpen your basics, here is the Opportunity at a Special One-Time Launch-Offer (Price: Rs. 49,999/-). 

The next batch will be at a substantially higher price and I can guarantee you that. See details of curriculum below and since we have limited seats for this batch, book your seat TODAY by dropping an e-mail to us at contact@convergytics.net. 

You can also call Randhir @ +91.9945.254742 if you have any questions. 

Please share this post with friends who might benefit from this training and they'll thank you for helping find this career-changer of an opportunity.

Certifications - Great Opportunity to add a few to your CV today ...

One typical feedback I give most of my clients (especially freshers and young professionals) who come to me for Resume Improvement - Try and Add one or more Certifications relevant to your Profile to your CV. This will help prove yourself to potential employers (especially when you don't have relevant experience in the field/tool). The obvious question is which ones, how much to pay for it and aren't there free certifications that are worth going for to prove ourselves. While most certifications worth the paper they are printed on cost Rs. 5000 upwards, over the next two days, you and I have an opportunity to get certified in a few relevant courses from Brainbench.

This is what I got in the e-mail from Brainbench today or within the next two days (when it is free). Go ahead and register on Brainbench and get certified. In fact, do your bit for your country and get India to the top of the leader-board (as on today - 3/7 as I post this, India is at No. 3 behind US and Ukraine in terms of Most Certified and No. 5 in terms of those certified with a 4+ score).

If possible, please let me know which ones you got certified as well.

Brainbench would like to invite you to participate in our online worldwide certification competition -Bench Games!

Throughout this event we are making ALL of our 600+ certification tests free -- YES FREE -- fromMarch 5, 2012 through March 9th, 2012.
Learn more about Bench Games: Click Here

The Bench Games leader board will be available starting March 6th. Find out which:

• Country has the most certified citizens
• Person received the highest score on a given test
• Country has the most MASTER level certified citizens

Support your country and get a chance to win free Brainbench annual subscriptions, all while enhancing your resume/CV and online transcript.

To take advantage of this great event, simply log-in to your Brainbench account during March 5th - 9th and start your testing!

The Brainbench Team

Top 7 Resume Blunders

Randhir.net launched the Resume Improvement Service in a big way on Resume2Jobs.net in August and followed it up with a Snapdeal.com offer of doing a Basic Critique and Feedback. This received an overwhelming response and kept our team busy all of this month. With this post, we are sharing the Top 7 Mistakes that we found across 80-90% of the CVs that we reviewed.

1. No Consistency: Stay consistent on the Font (Style & Size) you use, the spacing between paragraphs and lines, the tone and tenor of your voice across content and the amount of text you bold and what you bold. This makes your CV look professional & doesn't distract the reader away from the actual content. Pure hygiene factor, but important nonetheless.
2. Not doing a Spell-Check: How long does it take to open your resume in Word and fix the obvious spelling, grammar and punctuation errors? This is criminal and really says that you are not very quality-conscious and that you are satisfied with mediocrity.
3. Incorrect Tense and Incorrect Person Usage: Use past tense (except for maybe the present position) and use abbreviated third person (Randhir managed a team of  ... is replaced by Managed a team of ). More importantly, make sure that you stay consistent on this across your CV. Not following this can be very distracting to a Reader and makes you appear as someone who is not strong in English.
4. Missing (Contact) Information: I found CVs that had missing dates (on Jobs), missing role/title and one of the best (Missing Contact Information). Whatever you do, make sure that your Phone Number and E-mail are accurate and bold/clear at the Top of your CV (Preferably on every page  if you have a multi-page CV).
5. Not having a Professional Summary: CVs are looked at for a split second. If you can't give your 10 sec story at the top of your CV, you are losing a big opportunity for sure. This one is more relevant for someone with 5+ years of diverse experience. But for everyone, this is a way to highlight the most important things about you that you want the Hiring Manager to know.
6. Writing about your Roles and Responsibilities: 90% of the content of most CVs I reviewed could have been pulled out of a Job Description directly. This again is criminal because if you are like any other Java Developer or Sales Professional, you are not telling me why I should hire you and not the 100 other people that have applied for this same job.
7. Missing Specifics: This one's related to Point 6 above. Make sure you get very specific in what you did at your job and what you achieved/accomplished. e.g. Replace "made a business impact" by "saved US$ 3 MM" and "Appreciated by Client" by "Appreciated by multiple Senior Client Execs for the innovative solution that saved over US$ 1.5mn".

If you can make sure you avoid these, your CV is probably better than at least 50-70% of your competition depending on your industry/sector. This is what I saw from my experience over the past 3 months. Take a look at your current CV and let me know which of these are mistakes you have made. If you feel, there are others that belong here, please do post your feedback/comments either in the comments section below or on our Facebook Page.

Bio: Randhir Hebbar is a seasoned Resume Development Expert (Website: Resume2Jobs.net) and Hiring Manager with 10 years of experience in IT/ITES/Analytics Consulting. For any of your resume development needs, he can be reached at cv2randhir@gmail.com or on the phone at +91.9945.254742. We are also on Facebook (here and here) and on LinkedIN.

Mysore Calling ... Day 2

The next morning started off with a guided tour of the farm where we saw Ripe Guavas, Lemons, Tangerines, Chickoos, Mangoes (Not too many considering the season has ended) and a few other fruits I was seeing for the first time and pretty much every vegetable one might need for day-to-day cooking. It was really nice to pluck some ripe Guavas (with the red core) and almost instantaneously bite into them. Yummm!!! Around 11am, got ready and decided to do some sightseeing. Since we were quite close to Infy, decide to go down memory lane and see how Infy had changed (if at all). We obviously couldn't get in but we did stop over at the Gate and ask the Security Guard at the Infosys Gate (for random directions which we didn't need) as we got a peek past the gate at some of the Buildings. We drove around the compound looking at some of the other buildings and facilities and decided to head off towards the city before one of the security guards posted at a height near the 4 corners of Infosys Campus shoots at us assuming we are terrorist doing recee. :-)

We then went straight to the Mysore Palace got tickets and went around watching in astonishment the Palace and the Life of the Maharajah and the poor dude(s) (Wodeyar and his children/grandchildren) who missed out on all the fun because India gained Freedom and became a Democratic Republic. I had of course been there a few times, but was surprisingly the first time for Bhagya (someone who had studied in Tiptur for 4 years and probably visited Bangalore tons of times). Some minor shopping (Sandal scented Incense Sticks, Perfumes, Soaps, etc) later, we headed off to the Jaganmohan Palace. This included an Art Gallery and a Museum which had all of the utensils, weapons, dresses and portraits of all the Kings and their History. I also learnt on this visit that the fifth King of the Wodeyar Dynasty was actually (Ranadhira Kantheerava) Narasaraja Wodeyar I (1638–1659). For some weird unknown reason, this made me happy. :-) A little more shopping and we decided to take a break and head back home (to the farmhouse) but not before we stopped over to have some pastries. Did I mention that before the plans for the trip got finalized, we were actually on the GM Diet. :-( Need to start afresh or maybe screw the diet and get back to some workouts.

Before we reached home, I saw a sign-board that read Kalidasa Road and this again brought back nostalgic memories of the 3-4 months spent at our Apartment on KD Road (It is Bangalore’s MG Road equivalent in Mysore). Decided to drive around and find our old Apartment and get a pic or two. We finally found it after asking a couple of people for directions. Since it had started drizzling, we managed with pics from the car and headed on to the farmhouse.

Since it was Ganesha, Periyaswami had cooked Ganesha's favorite sweet - Modak. Had a couple over lunch and hogged the other dishes he had cooked. We were also warned to keep enough space for the evening's special - Persian Veg Pulao. After lunch, had some nice filter coffee (yummm!!!) and after a lot of thought decided that Brindavan Gardens and the Musical Fountain was not to be missed (especially since KRS was not too far from Mohan Uncle's farmhouse). Started around 5ish and we were at Brindavan after some bumper to bumper traffic around a kilometer from the entrance to KRS where the Parking Fee was being collected. The parking lot was packed to the core and with great difficulty managed to find what was a suspect parking slot. Even though I was a little worried that my new car might get nicked by someone trying to sneak in the gap between my car and the next line, decided to take a chance since there didn't seem any better options. 

We got lucky with a new line that got formed at the Ticket Counter and rushed to enter Brindavan Gardens. It was better than I had memories off from my last visit (Of course Bhagya wasn't with me the last time round ;-) so she does get some credit) and around 7ish, we decided to head off to the North Block of Brindavan where the Musical Fountain was showing. We were shocked to see the bridge packed with people trying to get to the other end. But left with no choice, we decided to join the rush and after about 15mins of struggling through and guarding our purses & camera from pickpocketeers, we finally got to the Musical Fountain area. It was pretty impressive but for some weird reason, there was a 10 min gap between every set of 2-3 songs. After watching a couple of sets, we decided to sneak out midway through a set so that we don't get caught in the rush again. It was a great decision because we were back at the parking lot in 5 mins. Had a couple of Sugar Cane juices and started back towards the farmhouse. It was a nice short drive back as well with lot of overtaking maneuvers that would have made a Schumacher happy. Yummy Persian Pulao and lot of home-grown fruits later, we were ready to crash.

Also Read ... Mysore Calling ... Day 1

Coming Up ... Mysore Calling ... Day 3 & Some Pics

Mysore calling ... Day 1

Long weekend and plans of a Ooty+Kerala Trip cut short due to Bhagya's needing to go to Hyderabad on Saturday meant that we had to come up with a quick plan for Wed-Thu. Wed morning as we start typing in Google "Places to see near", the first Auto Suggest option that comes up is Bangalore and then comes Mysore. That's how we make plans in the Internet or Google Era.

Even before I could pick Bangalore and hit enter, we are both like "Purrrrfecttt!!!". We had been talking about visiting Mohan Uncle's Farmhouse in Mysore for quite some time now (He had moved in around 5 years back when I was in the US and somehow everytime there was a family trip to Mysore, I had been out of the country). I had been talking about giving my new i10 some work (I had done around 400kms in 2 months considering that my office is 10mins from home). Bhagya had not been to Mysore really except for a trip with friends to Balamuri Falls a few years back. We decided within minutes to go for it, asked Mom and Dad if they wanted to join (Mom agreed since she wanted to catch up on loads of gossip with her bro - Mohan Uncle and Dad decided to pass considering his coming in will mean finding a security guy and that is such a pain at such short notice.

Started off around noon after a call to Mohan Uncle to confirm he was going to be in town and had the most painful 1km on the Mysore Road Flyover (Eid celebrations and people coming out of / going into the Mosque there combined with Metro work) meant that getting out of Bangalore took a good 2 hours and the last 100m of the Mysore Road Flyover took 45mins. Once out of Bangalore, it was the most amazing driving experience (going at  80-100kmph consistently) and switching back and forth between 4th and 5th gear through most of the journey and by around 4:30ish was near the outskirts of Mysore. A 30-45min break for lunch at Kamat Lokaruchi (Just after Channapatna) meant that I had done about 140kms in under 2 hours. 

A couple of calls for directions later was at Mohan Uncle's Farmhouse in Emerald Enclave just behind Infosys (My former company and the campus where I spent the most fun 3 months of my career during Infy Training). Since it was around 5:30 by the time we got in, had some snacks & coffee, we decided not to do any sightseeing and went for a long romantic :-) walk around Emerald Enclave. Bhagya said that it would have been more romantic if we had gone out with one Umbrella instead of two or better still without Umbrellas and got drenched/danced in the rain. I decided that with the small size of the umbrella and the fact that one of them was broken slightly, we were safer from catching a cold and spoiling the weekend with one each instead of one for both of us. How unromantic eh!!! :-(

We came back to some hot food cooked by Mohan Uncle's cook Mr. Periyaswami. We obviously weren't very hungry at 8:30pm considering we'd had a full North Karnataka Meal at 3pm and Snacks at 5:30pm. But we ate enough to ensure we didn't hurt the hosts' feelings. :-)


Please read ... Mysore Calling ... Day 2
Coming Up ...
Mysore Calling ... Day 3 & Pics