Employability is right combination of knowledge, skills and attitude that makes job seekers more likely to be able to convince the recruiters to gain employment and be successful in their chosen career path. This would benefit the company, corporate world and the community at large. Unlike the popular myth, the real goal for a career aspirant must not end by getting a job; rather it must also aim at retaining the job and flourishing in the career. Employability must instil the sense of competitiveness, goal orientation and engagement in extra-curricular and co-curricular activities, volunteering, live project, internship and work experience along with curriculum-based learning. Employability is a long-term, holistic approach and hence it must be practised by all the career oriented people in every stage of their career cycle. It cannot be achieved overnight and hence you have to prepare yourself for the same. Your preparation towards successful career is like making a tasty food item that needs sincere efforts in preparing it through several stages, for which you need to identify and nurture your skills with utmost care.

Before you jump on to applying for a job, sit back and create your profile, add the right combination of your achievements and accomplishments so that your candidature looks too good to resist.

Interaction between the recruiter and job seeker is like a buyer and seller in the marketplace. In a marketplace, seller and buyer meet for fulfilling their personal and professional or organizational objectives. Buyer has a certain need or problem and looks for a solution. It should have benefits coming at a reasonable cost giving him or her, the unique value as compared to other alternatives. Marketer hence must offer the products with necessary features and advantages which will cater to the value expectation of the target customers.

In case of recruitment, the job seeker and recruiter are like marketer and customer respectively and whole recruitment process could be understood from the perspective of marketing as mentioned. Hence, the candidates applying for a job must understand the value expectation of the company and must prepare and present themselves as per that expectation. In marketing, this is done by applying promotional techniques such as advertisements, demonstrations, sales brochure preparation etc. Job seekers must also prepare such presentation document that must summarise personal and professional profile of job seekers covering career history, academic qualifications and future plan. A resume is a one-page summary, whereas Curriculum Vitae (Latin for ‘the story of your life’) or CV is a longer description of such profile.

Resumes or CVs are valuable and important because they are the first and in many cases the only direct communication of a potential candidate with a potential employer. Moreover, when recruiters need to shortlist candidates for face-face interview from a long list of applicants, they take the decision on the basis of content and format of CV or resume. Hence, presentation is very important while preparing CV or resume since it could make an immediate positive impact and increase the likelihood of being chosen. CV writing is thus essentially a marketing tool that creates an opportunity to the job seekers to sell himself or herself and his or her abilities to employers. It there should have:

• Relevance
• Quality
• Clarity
• Usefulness
• Brevity
• Positive outlook
• Updatedness

Thus, CV or resume writing is an art that needs to be taken seriously.