look news india
There is a common belief in the corporate and business world that if there is a career break of a few months or years in your professional career, then it becomes almost impossible to get a good and respectable job again. But an alumnus of the country’s most prestigious institute, Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad (IIM Ahmedabad), has completely demolished this conservative thinking. After a long career break of almost 3 years, Annapurna Virdi has not only made a comeback but has also achieved a great position in the extremely challenging and competitive global job market like London.
After facing continuous rejections for months in the initial stages and not getting any positive response from recruiters, instead of giving up, Annapurna made some revolutionary and unique changes in her CV making strategy, which completely changed her fortunes.
When recruiters remained silent despite excellent profile and IIM degree
Annapurna Virdi had an MBA degree from IIM-A, the country’s most premium management college, along with years of experience in consulting and working in large startups. Despite this, when he entered the London job market after a long gap of 3 years, all he got was silence and ignorance from recruiters for months.
Recalling her difficult times, Annapurna says, “London’s job market follows its own strict and different rules. I was completely new to the environment there and on top of that, I was trying to come up with a non-linear CV during a very difficult economic recession.” While freelancing during her career break, she worked on advertisements and campaigns for leading global brands like IKEA, Kurkure, Reliance Geomart and Urban Company, and even auditioned for Yash Raj Films; But despite all this, he had to face the bitterness of continuous rejection in the beginning.
Annapurna’s 3 master CV strategies that changed the game
After careful research, Annapurna realized that in today’s modern corporate era, an advanced computer software shortlists or rejects your CV before any recruiter (human being) sees it, which is called ATS (Applicant Tracking System – ATS). He then completely redesigned his CV strategy, which is a huge life lesson for any job seeker or professional with a career gap today:
Creating an ATS Friendly CV: They greatly simplified the format of their CV and made the CV software-friendly by cleverly using keywords from key ATS tools included in the job description, rather than just trying to impress humans.
Presentation as a positioning document: They stopped seeing the CV as a simple timeline or index of their past work. Instead, he prepared it as a special ‘positioning document’ that proved with solid arguments why he was the best fit in the world for that particular role.
Complete focus on impact and relevance: Eschewing the traditional chronological layout, he structured his diverse roles (such as consulting, sustainability and creative work) in a functional manner that highlighted the impact of his work and achievements at the top of his CV.
Important advice given on mental stress of career break and loss of identity
Inspiring the youth and women who are wandering in search of jobs and disappointed by rejections, Annapurna said that when there is a break in career, people often do not talk openly about the fear of losing their identity and mental stress.
He gave a very beautiful advice when he said, “A gap is just a gap of time, it can never erase your old abilities, knowledge and skills. So do not take every rejection you get during long and tedious recruitment processes personally. There may be some shortcomings in your strategy which can be rectified, but a lot of things also depend on the economic condition of the job market at that time.”
