Peeyush Chitlangia, CFA

Most people apply for jobs keeping in mind their perspective. On the other hand, we should think about how the employer benefits by employing us. A key benefit of networking is to be able to showcase what value we bring to the table. Just sharing a resume to an employer does not get us jobs. 1000s of people do this. It is important to show how our skill set adds value to the firm. This has to happen through networking even before applying for a job. Once the value has been established, chance of getting a shortlist are much higher.

I think a resume should be updated every 6 months, regardless of whether one has been employed or unemployed. It helps us assess if we have added to our skill set in the past 6 months. A hard objective look at the resume, and it will tell us if the last 6 months have been productive or not.

A layoff can sometimes be a blessing in disguise. It helps us introspect, about what do we want to achieve in our career. This is also when we can assess if we should work on certain skills, and acquire those. This is a time when one can invest in their career, by opting for some certification courses, and upskilling themselves, so that when the opportunity comes, they are best prepared at that point.

An area where social media helps you is getting an understanding of who the real customer is, and how large is the customer base! In markets like India - where the general assumption is that the customer base would be large, given the demographics, social media is a good ground to gauge what is the exact audience size. If you speak of Education as a segment, the size is considerably smaller that the overall market size for any other consumption product because 1) the user set is specific to the product 2) the purchase is usually one time Social media gives you a good sense of what the actual market size is.

Entrepreneurship in consumer facing segments often relies on customer trust being built. It is here that social media can help built authenticity, trust and brand. When one writes on social media , or posts something, they enable prospective customers evaluate the business provider's authenticity. In businesses such as education, this is really integral to the brand. A user can read what you post on a platform like LinkedIn, and build a perception about whether one has enough depth to be able to teach a particular topic. That is why I would say social media is very relevant in today's age!