• Interview with the International Voice
    Career satisfaction,  Leadership,  Personal Brand,  Success Strategy

    My Interview with The International Voice

    A few weeks back, Japnit Sethi from The International Voice, reached out to me to be a guest in his new show on YouTube. Japnit, a Computer Science graduate student at Virginia Tech (my alma mater), founded this with a mission to inspire the next generation of international leaders from all over the world who aspire to make their mark within the North American Tech Industry. We talked about a wide range of topics, starting with how I got into tech, my early days in the US, Job interviews, learning from my career at Microsoft, and finally, my work as an executive coach with leaders in technology. Japnit did an…

  • Career satisfaction,  EQ,  Personal Brand

    “Tell Me About Yourself” – Why It Is Hard and What To Do About It

    Frequent flyers in the job market already know how this easy question could sometimes become quite daunting. During an interview coaching, I ask the clients to answer it first. Interestingly enough, even the expert interviewers have difficulty talking about themselves. Some of the common patterns are: Pattern 1 – They walk through the resume chronologically. Example: “I received my BS degree from the University of Kentucky, then I joined x company, worked there until 2002 as a junior software engineer, then I moved to y company and worked there until 2007, got promoted to a supervisor position. After that …” (At this point, my brain starts hurting ) Pattern 2 – They…

  • Career satisfaction,  Personal Brand,  Success Strategy

    Job Interview : How to Avoid Negativity about Your Employer

    Everyone knows this interview tip: “Don’t bad mouth about your employer”. But interesting enough this happens quite often. I got some clue when I was talking to my client Tom a few weeks back. Specifically, he wanted to learn how to avoid falling in the trap of talking negatively about his current employer. Apparently he made this mistake in a recent one. To get his perspective, I asked him about his genuine feeling about the current employer/job. What I heard was that he had been looking for growth in certain areas that were not available in his job. This company’s priority (to fix legacy code issues to quickly unblock the…

  • Career satisfaction,  Personal Brand

    Alignment with Passion-Why it is important

    A client of mine is in the job market for a while.  A bit frustrated by the lack of success, he called me this morning wanting to find more ideas.  To get a grasp of where he is, I asked him a typical interview question, “Why do you want this job”? Quite prepared, he replied in an upbeat manner showing his credentials and skills relevant for the position.  So, what is missing from his response? You may have guessed it right; “passion” was the element I was after. When done with passion it makes a job or a task more exciting and meaningful.  With learned skills, most of us can…