10 tips to getting started in a professional life

Published in

a curious life

4 min readMay 20, 2017

There are on an average 1.5 million (that’s 1,50,00,000) engineers graduating in India each year, what is it that differs you from the rest from being just any other undergraduate/fresher to getting a good start of your careers?

10 tips to getting started in a professional life:

1. Be confident:

“Confidence is the key to success”

Your confidence stems from two basic things — your skill set and your communication skills. If you are confident, the person hiring you will be confident that you are a good fit for the job.

Know yourself first, because companies want right people, not the best people. If you know your strengths and weaknesses, and how your virtues can be made to suit your job, you’ll have just the right amount of confidence.

“companies want right people, not the best people”

P.S. Don’t be a smartass know it all, everyone hates them. No overconfidence.

2. Learn to project yourself:

I’ll be frank here, the competition out there is cutthroat. And you have to pimp yourself out. Put your best face on, like the shiny new shoes and the crisp linen shirt with a sharp tie you put on for the interview, your online image also needs a serious makeover.

P.S- the shirt-tie thing may still work for the regular 9–6 job that you’d see much of your peer group join, but the startup revolution currently underway care more about your skills (actually all about it :D).

3. Good Email ID:

Your email id is like your online equivalent. It is the primary key to your existence in the jungle. Go easy. crazy.sal.16@gmail.com will not work. Keep it simple, keep it professional. Everything works the same but it creates a subconscious image of yourself in the person in front of you. A crisp email id can make the difference between you getting that interview call or your existence being ignored for all eternity, however amazing your profile / skills maybe.

4. Nice Résumé and CV:

Keep it short, Clean, nicely formatted and Don’t lie,

I host it at Dropbox/Google Drive and forward link to it to everyone, which I keep on updating with same name, so wherever somebody opens that links gets my latest résumé. [Tip]

5. Make a [good] LinkedIn Profile:

Your LinkedIn profile may be the singularly most important thing in today’s world. It is the literal equivalent of “who you are?”.

Have a Clean simple Photograph, I chose mine to showcase my skills.
Get a unique URL: LinkedIn | Unique URL
Chose a Defining Professional headline. NOT something saying “Working at student”, “Student at XYZ”, “Fresher”, etc. Change it to “Computer Science Undergraduate at Stanford”, “Android Enthusiast”and “Computer Science Graduate”, etc.

Here’s mine LinkedIn | Arpit Goyal

6. Write good emails :

“I wnt job as web dvlpr” is not the best way to introduce yourself. Emails are an extension of yourself. Even if you can not come up with an awesome cover letter, a simple introduction and a few crisp points outlining your compatibility for the position applied is enough. Neither does one require an essay on your aim in life nor just sending a “Pfa resume”, will suffice.

In a single para try to make it crystal clear, why you should be hired. Use some common sense: never define yourself in past tense, you’re not a story, come straight to the point (without being rude) and please never write the FB/ WhatsApp english/hinglish.

Email attachments: As a rule all documents you are attaching should be in a pdf format, with a clear label to what they are. Name your attachments relevantly and sensibly. Don’t send in editable formats (.docx, .doc) unless asked for.

Checkout grammarly for writing better english, without grammatical errors and spelling mistakes.

Watch Glove and Boots | Fix Your Grammar

7. Know what you want to do:

Think about where you’ll be in 5 years
Volunteer or shadow someone in a job you’re interested in
Dig into those side projects

Also Know what a Product based company means, know what a startup is. Most importantly, know where you want to see yourself working, what kind of culture you support, the one full of idiots and mediocre or Workaholic rockstars.

Also read What is the dark side of a job at TCS [or any other Service based MRC]

8. AngelList:

Another must have for any newbie is an Angel profile. (Yeah, I am biased towards startups. :P)
If you wanna go for startup be ready to have fun but before that have a good angel profile

Here’s mine Angel Jobs | Arpit Goyal

9. Follow:

Follow 10–20 professionals : from your dream career, read their struggles, what helped them overcome.

Follow Blogs, at least know the market demand, trends: Mashable, LifeHacker, TechCrunch, ReCode, Hacker’s News, etc.

Make account at StackOverflow, GitHub, Quora If you’re being interviewed for a good Developer position, you will be surely asked for at least one of these.

Must watch: Steve Jobs: Connecting the dots, Stay Hungry Stay Foolish.

10. Internship

Meaningful internships can give your career a 50% edge over your peers. Those holidays you get as your semester breaks? Invest them wisely. Just getting an internship for the sake of getting marks/certificates is the stupidest thing one can do, go have a beer and play football rather than spending 2 months “IT training” at BSNL, Railways, etc.

Also read Four Ways to Figure Out What You Really Want to Do with Your Life

Success is yours 🙂

Feel free to comment and drop your views / suggestions. Ask any doubts if you have here in comments. Have a nice day.