Fresh Graduates Galore

'Tis the season for recruitment of fresh graduates in Malaysia. And although there are many students graduating all around the year with presence of so many universities and colleges as well as batches, most graduates of the public universities will be, or are going through their final year examinations at this point of time and will be seeking employment by April.

For me as usual, I'd put up my advertisements in Jobstreet in the hope of attracting the top talents from the local universities. And as usual, I will get the fair share of applicants who can't be bothered to give answers for simple questions or who give short abrupt answers or those like the one below.

1. Why do you think you can make a difference in this position?

First of all, I am a monash gradutes who studying in Business and Commerce degree majoring in e-Business. With the knowledge that I get from the degree, it is enough for me to make the difference in this position by using technology to improve the operation by shorter the time, reduce the cost and increase profit of the particular company. As for the customer, with the advancement of technology it can help the company to provide better customer service like providing 24 hours helpdesk service to the customer where there will be computer which assist the customer to solve the probelm and not the human. On the other hand, other than the business subjects, I also taken up other programing subject such as vb.net, ASP.net and so on which equipe me with more idea in improving the business operation by usinr technology, web content and so on. Other than that, the eperience that I get from my previous employer is that, even the company is running is a lost, with some restructuring being carried in the company, sime investment on technology must be used to cut down the cost of running the business, for example by replacing workers with the networking system which link the front-end office with the back end office, which it can help the company to cut down cost on human resource by fire off the internal office boy as well as the back end manager and front end manager. With the network system that is available, the front end manager can control the whole business operation which including the back end office operation, and the boss can deal with one manager instead of two manager which help the company to save the cost. Besides that, it also help the company to reduce the time, where it is believe that time = money, with the network that is available in the company the document and other Private and confidential document can be handle properly in the shortest time as everything is through compnuter and no third party can ready the content.

I will not fault the candidate for effort, for his reply was one of those with a decent length. But typical many many candidates, the candidate was weak on two "simple" things:

1. Long as the answer may be, if the reply does not "answer" the question posed, then the answer is as good useless. The above candidate spent a great deal of space giving a lecture about "office operations" instead of telling me why he can make a difference, simple as the question may be.
   
   
2. The candidates English is no where near the worst of the lot of resumes which I have received (more than 200 in total for 2-3 positions). But I definitely have difficulty fully understanding what he is trying to say. There are obviously critics of my occasional lapses in English as well, but I believe its fair to say that I did not have language error(s) in practically every single sentence like the above composition.

So for prospective candidates out there, if you are serious about the application, think long and hard on the answers, and if you are weak in English, make sure somebody else good at it checks them too. There's no point getting knocked out before the interview stage when you might have a better chance to "defend" yourselves.

For more tips and tricks, read here and here.