Seven Things You Must Do In an Interview

IN THIS ISSUE:

1. Seven Things You Must Do In an Interview
2. Job Forecast for Graduates: Still Sunny
3. Seven Minutes to Success
4. You Say Engineer, I Say Physicist
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1. Seven Things You Must Do In an Interview

Don't fidget. Don't slouch. Don't talk too much or too loudly. These are
among the myriad bits of advice that an interviewee should heed. But what
about the do's? A Business Week article explores seven things you must do in
an interview. You must show that you can use the information you gathered
before and during the interview to understand what the company's--and the
hiring manager's--concerns are. Employers covet employees who get the big
picture--meaning the products and markets beyond the specifics of the job.
So listen carefully, which is itself another uncommon but learnable skill.

2. Job Forecast for Graduates: Still Sunny

Ever notice that, even in the midst of an industry downturn, companies
rarely suspend their campus recruiting efforts? That's because companies in
cost-cutting mode will willingly trade the salaries experienced employees
for those of recent graduates. A Forbes article says that the newest
entrants to the talent pool should ignore economic indicators such as the
unemployment rate. "It's not unusual for the new college grad marketplace to
not correspond with the economy at large," says Kathy Sims, director of the
career center at the University of California at Los Angeles. "I've been in
this for 30 years, and you rarely see a connection."
3. Seven Minutes to Success

Small gestures can make a big difference in how you're perceived by others
or in your efforts to get ahead. An Advisor Today article presents a list of
100 life-changing "micro-actions"--each of which, it says, are easy to do
and require no more than seven minutes. These include clipping an article
and sending it to a colleague, calling a mentor to ask a single important
question, writing a handwritten note to someone, thanking them for making
your job easier.
4. You Say Engineer, I Say Physicist

Salaries for tech jobs in India have skyrocketed as U.S. and Western
European companies, eager to take advantage of the relatively low wages
there have ratcheted up demand for the country's best and brightest. To keep
wages down, Indian outsourcing firms, who compete on labor costs, have begun
hiring graduates with general science degrees rather than engineering
graduates. Those with science degrees typically demand half the starting
salary that their counterparts in engineering do. "You don't need
engineering graduates for every job," says Azimm Premji, chairman of Wipro
Ltd., an Indian conglomerate that owns one of India's leading outsourcing
firms. "Science graduates are significantly lower cost and we are graduating
a million of them a year."