The most important and the first two things HR wants in a candidate

No 1. Humility – having the right attitude

When I write this word “humility” I invariably get reminded of Mr. Sachin Tendulkar. Ever wondered what is special about his greatness, it’s his attitude, his humbleness. During my corporate career i have taken nearly 1500 interviews, just by the virtue of this experience on meeting a candidate i can fairly make out about 40%- 45% about one's candidature and whether he fits into the requirement. Now imagine a professional who for last 10 years has been interviewing day in and day out, he is like a scanner or an X ray machine. You do not need to open your mouth for him to judge you. Some of these recruitment guys are so good that they are literally see through you. Keep that in mind and now read on.

Because of the generic myth of importance of flashy degrees the candidates gets a misplaced attitude of high and hotheadedness which proves fatal for the job search. Some people feel that the value of the degree is directly proportional to the salary package (s) he will get. If a candidates starts feeling and demonstrating over confidence showing off his degrees it’s a sure shot recipe of being rejected. Humility is the first thing the HR's want in a candidate. The candidate’s needs to exhibit that he understands that there is a lot to learn and he is willing to learn. A lot of times unknowingly candidates display misplaced attitude in their resumes when they increase the font and highlight their degrees to grab the attention of the HR.

A leading Bank's HR head called and told me "Abhishek please stop lining up MBA's." I was flabbergasted, i asked "Why" and the reason he gave me was "You know what these guys are fed loads of redbull in their campuses so when they come out they all are 2 feet above the ground, whereas a normal graduate who is clearly an under dog is slightly on the defensive that he is competing with MBA's, in that scenario the graduate tends to work more at lesser pay package and definitely has lesser attitude.As regards to application oriented domain knowledge both are clueless so we have decided to hire more of graduates."

And this is absolutely true that some of the corp-orates are now slowing distancing themselves from the breed of these B and C class MBA's. 

I would like to add that MBA is quite useful provided you do it from an "A" class institute. If you really plan to go for MBA bell the CAT.

No 2. Business Ethics

Ethics are those things which a child learns at his mother’s feet which get cemented over the years with the paradigm one keeps. It’s a debate whether conditioning can change the attitude and ethics after certain age so this becomes second most important thing for the HR’s to see in the candidature of the person who has to be hired. Simply put it’s the way a person conducts himself in a business environment. The decision to behave ethically is a moral one, companies want employees to decide what they think is the right course of action.

Just a small example; I get more than 200 resumes every day, the other day I got a resume from rita4funinmumbai123@____.com, now what do you think this email id gives a picture of, should I seriously take Rita as a candidate ready to be a Pro or should I delete the mail, small mistakes like these jeopardize your chances of getting a job. Have you got a professional email id which is different from your personal email id. Try and get mail id’s like abhishek.singh@evolvexl.com if you cannot find it available on Gmail who stops you to have one on zoho.com or for that matter any new mail id. It does not make any difference whether your mail id is on gmail or zoho, but more importantly it should have a professional look and feel. These are the first lessons that professional education should teach there students.