RAI + TimesJobs = a retail-specific job portal

In conjunction with TimesJobs.com, Retailers Association of India (RAI) launched RAI.TimesJobs.com. Focused solely on the retail industry, this online job portal will be promoted actively among the 400+ members it has. This portal is expected to aid those in this industry – both employers and jobseekers – to efficiently recruit/ get recruited in a time-saving, low-cost way.

R Sundar, CEO, Times Business Solutions, has said, “This partnership is the beginning of a long and flourishing relationship between the country’s leading retailers’ body – RAI and TimesJobs.com.” Kumar Rajagopalan, CEO, RAI, has added, “We are proud to be associated with TimesJobs.com and are sure that RAI’s alliance with India’s premier recruitment portal will provide tremendous value to our member companies.”

The Importance of Jobs and Careers

The starting point for planning one’s work phase is to distinguish a career from a job. A job should be seen as a step towards a career and not as an end in itself. In order to plan a career, therefore, it is important to understand and identify one’s own potential and strengths and embark upon a path that is built around them.

The gaps identified to meet the industry expectations can be filled by relevant training programmes in order to be equipped with relevant skill sets to launch into the career of your choice. Just having several strings of qualifications in one’s resume are not enough, training and qualification with reference to the career are accorded more value by the employer.

Career orientation would require one to be focused on developing one’s skill sets in the specific domain as well as develop the all round capabilities beyond the narrow definition of the job.

While it may not be easy for all to have a very clear vision at the start of the career, being focused on doing the best at every stage of the career and have willingness to learn and adapt continuously would bring in sharper focus on career goals and build the resilience to navigate towards these goals.

Premium Career Services - Make your career come true!

TimesJobs.com has achieved the distinction of becoming India’s No.1 Recruitment Portal in India with the largest number of active job-seekers and a database of over 8.5 million candidates.

In addition, the massive database of over 200,000 better paying jobs are available from more than 25,000 TimesJobs.com clients, including blue-chip companies from India and abroad. This ensures that no matter the job search, it always yields results.

Recently TimesJobs.com has come up with a brand new addition to the job portal which has been released for the first time ever in India. The new feature is a Premium Membership on all the TimesJobs Career Services. It includes such things as having an external public profile viewable on any search engine, being the first to know about new jobs being released and other premium benefits.

PREMIUM BENEFITS – With the InExTa Advantage, you can double your chances of getting an interview call. The Preferential Job Messenger helps you to beat the queue and see matching jobs before anyone else. Stand out from the crowd in employer search with Resume Highlighting. Applyvantage helps you in applying to jobs of employers who view and are interested in your profile. And Public Profile helps you to broadcast your profile on the internet.

With Premium Packages, you can get:

• Professionally written resume for target job market in India, Gulf and Abroad.
• Send resume to the top recruiters in India and Gulf.
• Take advantage of the combo and Get 20% discount

To know more about our Career Services, visit: http://www.timesjobs.com/candidate/candidateServices.html

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Ace your interview

Many say that the ‘tell me about yourself’ question is something that an interviewer asks when they are out of things to ask you about or say. Many times an interviewer may simply be asking you this just because they have not yet had a chance to look through your resume yet.

Assuming your interviewer is in this position, you can make the most of it by relating how your specific skills and talents coincides with the needs of the organization. Having read up on what kind of candidate they’re looking for helps when using this approach to get the job.

Other reasons that interviewers ask this type of question are because they want to:

• Hear your thought pattern
• See what’s important to you, by assessing what topics you talk about
• Assess your language and grammatical skills
• Buy time while they look over your CV
• Confirming what you have already written in your CV
• Look for loopholes in your resume
• Gauge your personality, etc.

Remember that this question can make or break your interview. Answer it by summarizing your accomplishments and academic achievements in a chronological way.

Be yourself and stick to the truth. You can’t go wrong if you follow these guidelines.

How to discover your job strengths

What do you enjoy doing? What makes you feel energetic? What do you do well? These are no ordinary questions.

Answers to the above questions can lead you to the most precious asset you have for building a successful career: Your strengths.

Why bother about strengths? When you use our strengths, you will enjoy your work and give your best performance. Opposite is also true. Failing to use your own strengths is a recipe for boredom and mediocre performance at work.

You may wonder if you have any strength in the first place. Indeed, when people see a great musician, painter, orator or sportsman perform, they recognize readily his/her strength. But they fail to ask themselves what their own strengths are and quietly assume they have none.

There are three main reasons why people fail to leverage on their own strengths. First, what you are good at comes easily to you. Therefore, you may take it for granted. For example, if your strength lies in, say, leading people, you may find this activity so easy that it may not appear as anything special to you.

Second, your strengths may be such that you may not be able to publicly express them, unlike in the case of a painter or musician. Therefore, no one, including you, recognizes them.

Third, since many people do not recognize their strengths, they fail to develop them. As a result, the strengths remain dormant, like an unpolished diamond.

Here’s how you can spot your own strengths if you don’t already know them:

Feelings
Pay attention to the activities that give you a feeling of joy or enjoyment. That’s a clue to your strengths.

Energy
Do you suddenly feel energized while doing certain activities? If yes, that’s another clue to your strengths.

Achievements
Look at all your past achievements and see if you can detect a pattern of specific activities. If you can, these particular activities are nothing but expressions of your strengths.

Excellence
Find out what you excel at consistently. That’s a definite clue to your strengths.

Compliments
Interestingly, people can identify others’ strengths (and weaknesses) quite easily. If you can notice others’ strengths, they too can notice yours. So, if someone compliments you for good work, pay attention. He may be pointing at your strengths unconsciously.

Compulsiveness
A person’s strengths are like a blown-up balloon under the water–they keep surfacing. Sub-consciously, you may feel a compulsion to express your strengths. For example, if your strength is writing, you may grab any opportunity to write.

Ask yourself: “What do I feel compelled to do?

Yearnings
Like a magnet, your yearnings pull you towards your strengths. So, if you catch yourself longing repeatedly to do something, say, teaching others, therein may lie your strength.

Rapid learning
If you are able to learn a particular skill rapidly, that again is a clue to your strength.

Losing track of time
Not being conscious of the time while you are doing something is one of the most reliable clues to your strengths.

Ask yourself: “What do I enjoy doing so much that it makes me lose track of time?”

Feedback analysis
This method was suggest by management guru Peter Drucker. It works as follows:

1. Whenever you take a key decision or action, write down what you expect to happen.
2. Later, perhaps after a few days, weeks or months, compare the actual results with your own expectations.

According to Drucker, if practiced consistently, the feedback analysis will reveal to you both your strengths and weaknesses.

With so many ways to uncover your strengths, it is time you unleashed them to enjoy your work, give superior performance and savor success in your career.

Atul Mathur is the author of three ebooks: 5 Quick Steps to a New Job, The Best Career Move: Know Yourself and The Secret of Finding the Right Career Direction.