 I'm Charmeen, welcome here to the session on finding your first job or it could be your nth job, but the agenda is basically to find your next job. I have been in the tech industry for 17 years, actually it's 18 in Feb, work for all the fang companies. I currently work at Amazon Lab 126 and their devices ARG, which you know they manufacture the ring and the echo and everything. And I previously worked for Intel, DocuSign, Cognizant and a few other places, too old. I think I'll just stop here. That's my LinkedIn profile. I'm actually going to be mailing this presentation out once we're done so you can actually look at my profile yourself. The agenda today, the reason I actually am doing this session is I keep getting approached, a lot of people have actually asked me to help them build their resumes and how to network on LinkedIn, basically. Even the most fantastic resume may not land you an interview. Sorry, I'm very sensitive to sound. And basically I'm also going to cover a little bit of internal hiring tools that companies use. This is actually very confidential information which people don't normally share, but the reason I want to cover it, I want to show how to make your resume pass through those tools. So without further ado, let's get started. So why do you think your resume is important? What could be the reason that you feel your resume should be excellent? Number one, of course, first impressions matter, right? You really want a good resume because apparently there's research out there. I don't know how true that is that recruiters spend six seconds looking at a resume. I don't, because I hire a lot of folks who have a lot of qualifications. So it takes me time to read resumes. But especially when you're beginning your career, there are hundreds of grads who are applying for jobs. So recruiters don't really have a lot of time to look at them. So there is research that shows that six seconds is the maximum amount of time a recruiter spends on a resume. That's why you should be having the best possible impression out there. 98% of companies use an ATS. The reason I mentioned that number, ATS is basically an internal tool that companies use to track resumes. And these tools actually rank resumes on the basis of given criteria. The companies decide the criteria. So you really want your resume to look good in that ATS. And this actually seems very basic, but a lot of undergrads and sorry, people who need first jobs make this error. They'll just save the resume as resume.doc. I once actually downloaded a set of resumes together and they kept getting overwritten over one other. Because they've just named it resume.doc. There's no name on it. There's no identification information. And there is nothing which tells me one resume is different from the other. I actually had to go back and individually download them and rename them because they kept getting overwritten. We really want to avoid that. So best format, use first name, last name. And you can add here if you have a common name, you know. So I would suggest actually using this format for naming your resumes. Resume is actually for presenting your contact information. So primarily it's gonna be your email and LinkedIn. You can add your phone number too if you're open for cold calling. I highly recommend adding a phone number. Sometimes recruiters just pick up the call and call you up. But if you don't like getting calls, email is fine too. Make sure you add your LinkedIn URL as well to it. And please keep in mind resume which has a contact information, an email ID which says I'm a hero at gmail.com is very likely to get rejected. Nobody likes unprofessional resumes, I'm sorry, emails. It's actually an internal joke within recruiters when we see funny email IDs, which actually make no sense. And this is more of what you call an entry level error. A lot of folks make. I would highly recommend making an email ID just for your job search. So there's no mixing between your personal stuff and your professional job search. And why else is your resume important? It highlights your qualifications, right? It actually shows what makes you unique. This one is actually important which I'm gonna go into more detail as we progress. But every resume should be edited and made suitable for every job that you apply to. You should not be applying to jobs in a bulk. Like okay, I see 20 jobs I'm gonna apply to each without thinking if I'm suitable for it or not. You need to update your resume for every single job you apply. And this is very important because companies have basic qualifications they check. And if somebody doesn't tick all the boxes there, you get an automatic rejection email saying you're not qualified for that. So we have to be very careful of what you apply for. And I'll tell you why a little bit later on. Stick to a traditional resume. Do not make lots of tables, graphics, colors, photos. Please, no. ATSS, the internal tools that I talked about. They cannot parse resumes which have a lot of tables. So they actually jumble them up. And we actually have a difficult time reading them. I would rather move on to the next resume than try to unjumble stuff. So please, no tables. If you're making a table, make it a PDF doc so that it actually, I can at least see the PDF doc instead of, when they parse it, it might be jumbled up, but at least the document will show the table. But I recommend not having tables. These are some general tips I have here. The most commonly used resumes are in a chronological format. Starts off with your most recent experience and then goes to the previous ones. And this is a one which is actually preferred by a majority of employers. Nobody wants to see your first experience and then your current experience at the last. So everybody prefers to see what you're doing currently. I would say mostly relevant are the last three to five years, not what happened ten years back. Focus on the most compelling parts of your background for the role when you're writing it. Don't have to have more than five pages of resumes, especially if you're at entry level, one page is enough. And I'll show you how to make it. If you have a lot of experience and you have a PhD and done a lot of scientific studies and you have so many research papers, you can attach an appendix. And for me personally, I have 18 years of experience and I have a one pager. But if you really want to write a lot, two pages is enough. Anything more, nobody has the time or the energy. Recruiters are very busy people. You are looking at resumes all day, so you're trying to see where you can fit in the first page. That's why your most recent experience should be your most relevant experience. Keep it to one page if you're applying for entry level roles. Internships too. And have a one inch margin around. And keep font sizes, types, and bullets consistent. Try not to have different font type fonts in the resume. And utilize section headers and bold them, like objectives, qualifications, education, and all that. Okay, you're gonna do a deep dive in a heading. Of course, keep your name right and try to put your first name first and the last name first instead of using commas, like my name is Sharmin Hamidah. I will not write Hamidah, comma, Sharmin, I would rather do Sharmin Hamidah. Just makes the job easier for whoever is reading that. City and state is enough for your address. You don't really need zip codes in a full address. Nobody really, actually you think it's better you don't. Nobody, you don't really want anybody googling where you live to find out, okay, they are from this zip code. It is hard for them to travel to the office or something. We want to get rid of all biases. We wanna get rid of all biases when we do that. We have to remember, city and state is enough. Email, I've already mentioned this. Make sure it's appropriate. No inappropriate stuff, please. And yeah, as I mentioned, separate email IDs for your job search. So the phone number, of course, make sure it's correct. And have a professional voicemail, no songs, no funny stuff, especially when you're looking for your first job. I think this is more appropriate when you're looking at your first job. You really wanna put your best foot forward. Feel free to add your LinkedIn, or if you have a personal website, or you have some GitHub code out there, you've actually built something online. Just add it, no problem at all. Actually, I'm just gonna go here. So I have here a sample here, which actually shows what I've just spoken about. So just keep an eye on that. The next is actually objective and qualifications. Actually, both are optional. And I would seriously recommend using both, because you can actually change the objective and the qualifications according to the job that you're applying for. So especially university grads in terms or career changes have an objective where you can state your career goals. And you can also mention what you're looking to do on the particular job that you're applying for. Qualifications, again, they are optional. There's no need to include them, but I again recommend including them. This is actually important because you change the qualifications according to the role you're applying for. I'm not saying you're lying on it. You're just changing. Basically, some jobs need Python and Java experience and some need JavaScript and something else. So you wanna write what that job requires. If you've done it, of course, instead of mentioning everything. So you basically change it according to the position you're applying for. You don't have to make wholesale changes. You can just maybe have to change one line there. Maybe just talk about how suitable you are to that particular job you're changing. There's a lot of elbow grease here. That's a lot of hard work, right, when you have to basically change according to the jobs that you're applying for, but the competition is intense and that much hard work is required. Keep education, next. I recommend the education part next for folks who are again looking for their entry-level roles. This is not particularly the location if you are looking at an experienced role. If you have five years' experience, anything about three years' experience, education actually comes below the experience section, but if you are an undergrad or if your experience is less than one year, then I actually recommend keeping it here after the qualifications. You have to mention years. You don't really have to mention specific date. That's for recent grants. You don't have to say March 2022 or whatever. You can just mention here. And no need for GPA unless it's 3.5 or above. If it is less than 3.5, it's actually better not to. And of course you can mention the related coursework as well. If you still have to finish your degree, if you're still studying, absolutely list it, you can just mention expected graduation and the year. You don't really have to take it off. And this is usually when you're looking for internships, right? You do your internships in your third year or final year. So basically that's for that. Experience, right? Let's say you've done an internship. Let's say you've done one small role for like six months and you really wanna write everything about it. Please don't because you really want to write only the relevant responsibilities there. You really don't want to mention everything you've done. Check the job description. Sorry, I mentioned JD there. That's a term recruiters use. I'll change it when I send it out. So job description basically stands for, sorry, JD stands for job description. And you have to check the job description and list what are the similar responsibilities you had in your role when you're listing your experience. And again, every job you apply for, that has to change. And I'll tell you how to do that as well. And if you are an entry level recent grad, somebody who's trying to find their first job, list your volunteering and internship experience. Volunteering only if it's relevant. Let's say you made a software for your local library or if you're in social sciences and you volunteer at the local shelter, then absolutely list it, but it should be relevant to the role you're applying for. Volunteer experience is good. It's considered as a great plus. Next is skills or memberships. And these actually again, check the job description, highlight the ones which are relevant. And if a tool is listed, if you're listing a tool, be prepared to ask, be asked questions about it. So interviewers will definitely ask you. Let's say you mentioned that you are great at MS Excel, right? Cover the basics. And if you're an expert and you listed there, then you are expected to know the in-depth details. Don't list it, no padding of resumes because you can get caught during your interviews. You might pass the initial screen of passing through the internal tools, but you may not pass the interview. Interests are optional. May or may not be relevant to the position. They're actually good conversation starters. Let's say you play football and you talk about your interests. So a lot of companies actually start off by asking, what do you do in your spare time? Interviewers like to discuss how you work outside work, how you function outside work. So this is actually a pretty interesting one if you have an interesting hobby. List it, even if you don't think it's interesting. This is actually a verb list of resumes I researched and added. Resumes should not say responsible for creating. Created, that's how you start. Achieved, pioneered, reduced. So it's all verbs that you use when you're writing your responsibilities. Try to include, especially in your experience sections, when you're doing the responsibilities part, have verbs in there. Okay, so this is a resume deep dive we've just completed. I'm gonna give a couple of minutes if anybody has any questions about it before we jump on to using LinkedIn for your job search. Any questions? Absolutely, no, no, no. I said, if it's 3.5 or below, don't. Otherwise, absolutely, yeah, better to mention. That's a good GP, right? Under 3.5, they will just go for the person who gets more. I have not seen resumes, so I've hired interns in my last company. I've not seen anybody who was actually at 3.5, even 3.5 get hired. The competition is intense in bigger companies, right? Smaller companies, it may not be as much, but if you have anything less than 3.5, don't. Does anybody have any other question? Okay, we can move on. Since we started late, so I'm just gonna jump into using LinkedIn for your job search. Before I go there, I'm gonna ask the younger ones here. So, which social network are you on? No social media, like personal social media? Oh my God, I'm impressed. I thought he's gonna say TikTok or Facebook or what about the girls? Okay, that's good, that's good. So, I was thinking that all the youngsters are on social media and they're not interested in LinkedIn. I'm glad to know you are already on LinkedIn. So, these are some of the facts about LinkedIn. This is the first place recruiters go to when looking for people. And the first place, there is no other place, right? People go to, recruiters go to. I interviewed a couple of university recruiters before I started this session in my company, and one of the recruiters actually told me he hires 40% of his candidates from LinkedIn. It's not the people who apply to the jobs. He actually goes and searches for them and he uses that technique for 40% of hiring, which is a big number. Because, you know, when you post an entry-level role, hundreds of resumes come in. So, he's actually doing his own sourcing because he wants to find the perfect fit. The ones who are applying may not be the perfect fit that he wants. So, being on LinkedIn is the most important part of your job search. It's where people go. Recruiters go to find their first talent. LinkedIn supplements your resume. It's not your resume. It actually supplements it. You don't have to restrict it to one page. It can be as many pages as you want. It can be as detailed as you want. I'm gonna do a deep dive in some of the sections of your LinkedIn profile, but this is where you actually show who you are in much more detail than your resume. It lets you research, by the way, if you find a job which you like, you can go on to LinkedIn and find out who's the recruiter who could technically be posting that job. The hiring managers, you know, the employers. Basically, it allows you to research everything about a job that you want to know. It's how you find your next role. This is very important. Do not use LinkedIn like your personal social media. No personal opinions, no fights, no discussions on political topics. You might see other people doing that, but I highly recommend not doing that because that's gonna stay on your profile forever. And nobody wants to know what you think of the local election or the local controversy that's happening. Do not use it like personal media, and I cannot emphasize this enough. Because if it comes up, then a hiring manager sees it and they don't agree with your views, then they're not gonna hire you. So no personal stuff on that. There are over 65 million decision makers on LinkedIn, and I read a statistic that there are 180 million people in the US on LinkedIn, which is half the population. So you need to be on it. Network, network, network. How do you find your next role? Your network on LinkedIn. That's how we do it. So this actually is pretty self-explanatory. You build your professional network on LinkedIn. That's how you benefit from it. You add connections, you know? This is where you actually add connections from your own universities, from your own networks. All of these are people whom you might know. Even people from your own university, right? They may not know you technically, but they will actually be okay to take your invitation on LinkedIn to connect. That's how you network. That's how you build your professional network. You know, you can also research whichever industry you're interested in, whichever programs you're interested in, and basically find your next role. That's the aim, right? This is very important. Networking with university recruiters. I'm not a university recruiter. I think we need to understand the difference between university recruiters, technical recruiters, professional recruiters. University recruiters specialize in hiring from universities and entry-level jobs and internships. So when you're networking, when you're trying to search for them on LinkedIn, you have to actually search for university recruiter, or student programs recruiter. Basically, you have to look for people like that who specialize in hiring entry-level roles, internships. You don't have to subscribe to premium account on LinkedIn. You actually can get exactly what you need. If you wanna send a message to a recruiter, you send a connection message. It gives you a text box to send a message, and you do that. You don't need a LinkedIn premium account. You don't have to pay for that. So that's important. So you use LinkedIn for your professional branding, right? You actually use it to market yourself. You basically get noticed, and you connect with professionals, university experts, influencers, and you get started. How do you get started? You share your experience with others. You actually talk about professional topics, and you get noticed like that, and you get hired. And your professional branding is super important. It's your external image of you. I'm not saying it's your actual image, it's the external image that you wanna project. You wanna project a very professional image, right? So that's what LinkedIn is for. So here's a deep dive in your LinkedIn profile. If you see, the first is, of course, the introduction, right? I actually copied this from a female candidate on LinkedIn, and I'm going to go through her profile fully. I removed her name, but I felt she had a great profile. It kind of shows exactly what she's looking for, okay? So she has a photo on there which shows open to work. There's a banner which you can offer, which basically says open to work. Keep it open. Do not hesitate to have that banner on your profile. And it exactly tells us that she's seeking a full-time new grad position in 2023. She's at University of Pennsylvania, and she's looking for, if you look at the grayed out area, she's looking for data analysts, data scientists, business analysts, et cetera roles. And there are some stats here which show if you don't have a photo, it actually is a negative. I used to have a lot of difficulty with this because I did not like to have my photo on there. Personally, I'm sure we all face this challenge. So I actually have a very, I have the luxury of being in this industry for so long that I can get away with a very hazy kind of a picture. But if you are a recent grad, I would highly recommend having a picture there. You're going to have more views because of that photo. You're also likely to be receiving more messages from recruiters. People just like to see who they are reaching out to. So have a photo there. And of course, your location is super important because recruiters want to know where you're based. And also you get an opportunity to show where, you'll have the opportunity to show that you're open for anywhere in the US or specific locations in the US. This is the second section I wanted to cover. I'm not covering every section in LinkedIn. It's pretty long. I'm discovering the basic, most important ones. So the about and the featured sections, right? The about section actually is prime real estate. This is where you actually show you, like what are you, what are your motivations, what's your personality. It also talks about, you know, how you would present yourself to hiring managers or recruiters. So that's your elevator pitch, right? If you had to introduce yourself and talk about yourself in 30 seconds, what would you say? That's the about section. The one I copied here again from the same person who I felt was really good, they had actually mentioned what they're looking for. They had their specialties listed and even their email ID. If you'd like to connect, connect me at, and I just took out the email, but you can see clearly that they've given that. Make sure you include keywords of the skills that you're most interested in working in. So LinkedIn recruiter, recruiters have access to something called LinkedIn recruiter, which allows us to filter according to the keywords that occur on your LinkedIn profile. So you want to have all the keywords there that actually are in your career objectives as being, you know, I wanna work in front end development or something like that. So you actually need to be mentioning them. The featured section is actually your play area. You can upload your resume here. Actual one page resume. You can upload any personal projects, websites, anything you want. Basically, the recruiters and hiring managers to see. Experience, again, it's gonna be very similar to your experience on the resume, but you need not restricted. You need not restricted. It's actually good to have details here. It's actually good to have details here. And I've given some stats here which actually show that if you have a detailed resume with a detailed work experience there, you're more likely to get messaged. Education and license and certificates, right? So this one is actually interesting. Education, of course, includes everything you've studied in all the universities, majors, coursework, everything. Certificate of completion actually are, you know, certificates that you get from LinkedIn if you pass their courses. So if you see this person, she had actually passed one, two, three, four, five, six. This is a lot of effort she's made in various skills that she's worked in. And LinkedIn recruiter allows recruiters to actually search for people who have passed these certificates. If we get time, I'll show you. I wish I could show you. Actually, this is not my laptop, sorry, I can. But I am basically, I have copied a screenshot of how a recruiter searches for profiles and maybe that will give you an idea. This is the fifth step, the skills section. This actually is the most important section. So I was attending a conference last month of which LinkedIn had conducted and they VP of their marketing team mentioned that the person, the candidates who have a good skills section, the unemployment gap for them is less, like two months less on an average from people who have not listed skills on their resume. So this on the LinkedIn profile, this is actually the most important section. LinkedIn actually searches on the basis of the skills. So you wanna mention every skill that you know. You actually, again LinkedIn recruiter allows recruiters and hiring managers to filter on the basis of skill. And in these skills, you actually can pass tests which, you know, get the certificates of completion. So short recap, right? As if you're speaking in the first person, tell your story, basically keep in touch, network, network, network. I'm gonna stop here. I'm not done talking about LinkedIn, but because you covered the profiles part, does anybody have a question? No, right, we move on. So how do you find a job using LinkedIn, right? Turn on the open to a green banner. That's the most important, I would say. Because again, that filter exists to find people who have this banner open. Use this time whenever you're, you know, supposed to be on social media, right? Personal social media or otherwise, to network. Send invites to people in your fields. Send invites to hiring managers. Send invites to recruiters. They are the people who are gonna be seeing what you post on there. And if you are, if you really have some good stuff to say, they will pay attention. And don't wait until you need a job to start networking. Don't wait until then. You have to be networking always. That's how job searches work now. Like say, I want a job next week. This is today's not the day. You should have already built a network around that job. Let's say you're targeting a specific company, right? Let's say you wanna work for Uber. And you should actually be looking at Uber folks every single day. If that's the company you're targeting for. And you mentioned data science, right? So whichever company hires or you see influencers on data science, you should be connected to those influencers. That's how it works. Alumni tool. LinkedIn actually has a very good alumni tool which actually finds you alums for, you know, the universities that you work in. And even the companies and cities that interest you. So you can actually go to these alumni tools and find people whom you would like to connect with. You can also join groups. These are interest-based, interest-based groups. So you can actually use whatever interest you have and join that group. There are thousands of them out there. And of course, you can follow the organizations that you're interested in. Any company that you're interested in. And every time they post an update, you will see it in your feed. And be active on professional matters. No personal discussions, as I mentioned. So this here actually shows you how to use LinkedIn search engine to find recruiters who, you know, specialize in hiring for student programs, university hiring, internships, and entry-level roles. Use Boolean. And if you don't know what's Boolean, learn it because it's going to come handy quite a bit. So is it invisible? I'm sorry. I can't see. Is it visible what I Google or what I searched there? I'm going to send this PPT. But yeah, you can see, right? Student programs recruiter. I looked for a student programs recruiter in Amazon. And if you see everybody who came, actually is a student programs recruiter at Amazon. Amazon has this term they use called student programs. Other companies may have different terms. So you have to actually search using different terms. Somebody might call them university recruiters. Somebody might call entry-level recruiters. Or they can be different terms. I actually had to do some digging myself to get that name. And now I have a list of people who actually turned up because I actually got the right term there. So use Boolean effectively. That's very important. And to get these many results, you need to have a big network. Because when you don't have a big network, the results which come will actually not be too many. Because these results are based on the network you have. This is not Google. Google will give you every result right now. LinkedIn actually works on how big your professional network is. If you have many connections who actually work at Amazon in student university hiring, that's how you find them. This is definitely not Google. You have to keep that in mind. These are a set of tips on finding a job while studying. You have to be super organized. You have to basically know timelines, what you're looking for when you should start looking for a job, when you should start applying. And this actually is very important because it gives you an understanding of what you're facing. Let's say you're graduating in six months or a year from now, you should actually start thinking about it right away, even a year from now. When I spoke with the university recruiters in my company before this session, one of the things they mentioned is a lot of candidates miss out by applying after they have graduated. That's not the time you apply. You start applying when you're studying. That's a mistake. The second thing is, of course, at an university career phase. This was the number one advice I got. Bring your resume and hand it out. In fact, the recruiter I spoke to, he also got hired in a career fair. The universities conduct career fairs, so you take a bunch of your resumes and you just give it. There are a lot of companies which come to you in the career fair and you just give them. That's the way they do the outreach. So they actually establish these relationships with the universities. So that's a good way to get noticed. Alumni events for networking. So universities also conduct alumni events. They are good because it actually includes people who have already graduated and who might be in great jobs in the fields you're interested in. Being touched with your university alumni office because that's where those folks are coming for the networking events. So you can ask questions, you can get referred, you can connect with them on LinkedIn, build your network. Again, we keep getting back to building your network. And if you have a website, build it. Show your resume on there. Make a website showing I love this. I'm looking for this job. Host it. It's not expensive. I think it's like five to $15. That's a great way to get noticed. Every company, actually I'll rephrase that. Every company beyond 100 employees or maybe 200 employees will have a website and if they're hiring students, they will actually have, every company will have a website but not every company will have a student programs website. So most of the companies which hire at a scale higher than the 100 to 100 people, they'll have a dedicated section there which actually shows the times, the years, the dates of when they are conducting these events, when they will be meeting people and when they'll be hiring for internships and everything. So whichever company you're targeting, go on there, no dumb dates and everything. That will help you. Keeping ourselves informed is a big part of finding your next role. Get noticed by recruiters. Easier said than done, right? So we have to actually be active, again, network. Okay, so in the sophomore year of college, you can actually get repeat internships. Basically, let's say you do an internship. The next year they might actually, if you do a good enough job, if you do a good enough job, of course, they might ask you to come back and repeat it. And if you do a good enough job, they'll give you a full-time offer too. You don't even have to go through all this. So use your internships quite well. Do your hardest to do well in those because they will call you back. They need people. So if they find a good student who does great in their internships, they will give you return internships and they'll give you a full-time offer. So, yeah. Okay, get involved in extracurricular stuff because let's say if you have a lower GPA, that's one way to offset it. Let's say if you have a football scholarship that you studied on, but your GPA is not great, it does not matter. List that on your resume, you know? And that might actually land you an interview. And that's when you're in, right? You take the interview, you do well, and that's it, that's your door open right there. There are lots of jobboats out there. Since I only spoke about LinkedIn, I have a list of jobboats here which will come up now. Make sure you post your resume on all jobboats. LinkedIn is not the only resource. Of course, it's the resource, but there are multiple jobboats out there. Sorry. Yeah. So then, of course, you can actually have the elevator email pitch ready whenever you apply for a job. And you know who the recruiter is, let's say. You can actually send a note on LinkedIn to the recruiter saying, I've applied for this job. This is why I think I'm suitable, and send them a note. You are quite likely to get noticed because if they have 50 resumes and somebody has approached them directly and they have said why they are good enough for the job, that gives you an advantage, right? I've already mentioned this. Create a list of companies which interest you. Create a daily alert, every website actually, every job board, including LinkedIn. You can create a daily alert which sends you job listings which match your profile and your interest. And can you get an introduction? If you have somebody who works there, can they give you an introduction there, right? Can you search for target companies? Can you see somebody who works there in your network? Can you ask them? Can you refer me to this? Internal referrals are very important for companies. It encourages employees to refer people. So if an employee refers you, it's actually half the battle one because every hiring manager is required to look at referrals, even if they are not good. They are required to look at referrals because they are considered as, they came in through our employees so it's good. So internal referrals are very important. Search for decision makers and add them to your network. This is also very important. Again, how do you find those people? You boolean search on LinkedIn. And leverage your contacts, get introductions and take the conversation offline. Meet them for a coffee. Meet them for events. That's how you build your network. Okay, this is something I really wanted to show you. How it looks like to a recruiter. When I'm looking for candidates, each of those fields I can use to search for candidates. This is a backend peak. This is not something that anybody has access to. It's only recruiters like me. Our companies actually take this. If you see, I can filter out people who are open to work and I can filter out people with specific skill sets. I can filter out people on the basis of their location and I can filter out on the basis of the companies that we work with. The keywords on the resume, the skill set, yours at the company. I mean, there are hundreds of filters that I can apply for. And I actually tried to show the seniority on the right side. I just tried to copy a couple of screenshots there. I can filter out on the basis of entry level. I can filter out on the years of graduation. It's pretty detailed. So that's why it's required to have an LinkedIn profile which is superbly filled out. It looks great and is your everyday go-to for applying for jobs. Any questions so far? No? Let's move on. These are the websites that I actually listed for finding entry-level roles. Handshake is your place, I would say, after LinkedIn. It's an org which specializes in finding entry-level roles for people who have no connections, no networks. They actually have collaborations with lots of companies, especially in the Bay Area. I have met them multiple times. They have these lots of openings they work with which are actually, companies give them to fill and they fill it using the students that have applied at this website. I'll be sending this out so you should have this information. This is actually one of the most important things I would say when you're applying for a job. Apply for the filters correctly. Do not look for jobs which say mid-level or senior if you're looking for an entry-level role. And the reason I actually circled the must-have, companies actually create a set of criteria and when you apply, let's say they say five years experience in JavaScript and when you apply with two years experience the system automatically rejects you. Make sure all the basic qualifications. It's called must-have here. Sometimes companies will call it basic qualifications and then they will call it preferred qualifications. So basic qualifications, you're supposed to meet 100% of it. Otherwise it actually becomes a legal compliance issue because companies are required to only hire people who have all the basic qualifications. Preferred qualifications, it's fine. If you don't have those basic qualifications you're getting an automatic rejection. So when you are applying for a job you actually have to look at this and tweak your resume each time. So when you have a basic resume built, look at the job description, change the skills section and change the qualifications every single time. That's a lot of hard work. I'm not gonna deny that. But to get noticed, to pass through the internal tools that's what you have to do. That kind of, I'm not saying you have to make up stuff. It's only gonna be the things that are mentioned in the job description that you are comfortable with. But it will get your resume. I'll show you how and why it happens but it will basically show that your resume matches the job to the recruiter. I'll show you how that looks like as well. So understanding internal hiring tools, right? Anybody know what's an ATS? This is basically, it helps the companies. It's called an applicant tracking system, by the way. It helps companies, you know, I'm sorry, I'm sorry. To keep a track of the candidates who apply. This is something you should remember for everything that you do in your job search. So there are some very sophisticated ones like Birgday, Teleo, Beamerie and we use an internal indigenous one called Hire. They are so sophisticated. They may not ask for your permission but let's say you applied for a job. Let's say if I've applied for a job and when the recruiter looks at my profile in the ATS they can actually see how many jobs have applied in that specific company. They can see if I've attended any interviews. What was the feedback last time? If I attended the interviews and let's say I failed the interview, why was it a failure? And it has integrations with every social media network out there. So if you're on Facebook, if you're on Instagram, if you're on TikTok, if you're on Google G plus, they still show G plus on it. Everything is shown there. Like Recruiter can just click on that single button and see your whole social media history online. It is very important to remember this because people think that companies do not look at your personal social media, that's not true. All ATSs are built to have these integrations. And this ATS actually is used by every single, it's 100% it's 100%. So the more sophisticated ATSs do the integrations, the less sophisticated ones may not do the integrations, but they will still have all your history on there. So think twice before you are rude to anybody because that's gonna go in the ATS and it will be there forever. So the US does not have loss preventing the companies from keeping it forever. So the European Union, they have something called the GDPR which requires the companies to delete all data which is more than three years old. So you have a reset every three years, you make a mistake after three years, you know it's gonna go away. The US does not have it. You are rude to a hiring manager in 2010, it's gonna be showing up now. Two, I have people who have applied for 175 jobs and I'm thinking maybe they're not good enough. So no bulk applying. It just defeats the purpose of applying. It makes the recruiter biased. I mean you really don't want to be known as the person who just applies for everything. I mean imagine you have applied, I have people who have applied for hundreds of jobs and you're thinking why are they not getting even interviews after all these applications, right? So you really wanna be very, very targeted in your job search. And ATSS, they actually can be your friends in the process because you can look at the job description and the company set criteria and I'll show this to you. You see this? It actually allows you to, you see the stars there? This is just one type of an ATSS, every ATSS is different. I just took this screenshot of something on Google. It actually shows you against the criteria of what those resumes look like. And if you are getting those five stars, that's where the recruiter is going first. By the way, not every ATSS will have stars, mine doesn't, this is just a sample of what it can look like. It's very important to remember to have those keywords on your resume. That's how the ATSS work. And keep in mind 100% of the companies have ATSS. Everybody has an ATSS. So that's where they track your profile, that's where they talk about you, like when you attend an interview, that's where hiring managers and interviewers go to put their interview notes. That's where all your salary discussions offer decisions, everything is on the ATSS. You go in there, it's like a huge database on every candidate. So that's why you should be very careful of about keeping your resumes ATSS compliant. That's it. That's all I have. Any questions? Yeah, sure, go ahead. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So that's the thing, we don't have any laws preventing us from doing that like the European Union does. So yes, yeah. And it's all about social media. Not just social media, anything, okay? So here's the deal, right? If it's on Google, if something can be Googled, that means it's visible to the ATSS. So they're not asking for your login information into websites and all. They're just Googling that stuff and it's integrated here. So if you had a major controversial push on a website or on a newspaper like New York Times or somewhere, you got into an argument with somebody that's visible to everybody, let's say. So it's showing up on your ATSS profile. And it also shows where I apply. Oh yeah, no, no, not the other companies. Only your, I work for Amazon, right? So I can see who applied for the job in Amazon. It's all visible, yeah. Yeah. I mean, sometimes there might be roles there, right? So we are trained as recruiters, we are trained to use, I mean, it's something that's the most basic thing every recruiter learns. So they might see that you were suitable but the role got closed because they hired somebody else. Something could be the reason. But even you have applied for 200 jobs, it kind of shows that you're not doing a very targeted search. So keep your job search targeted. So not at the interview stage, but they have background checks once an offer happens and that's where you will be required to. No, no. So what happens is once you get an offer, let's say, and every company, and it's not just a big company, every single company has a background check. It depends on how that background check looks like. So the bigger ones, they actually ask you to submit your paperwork, yeah. But it depends on the company. Some might ask, some might not ask. So they mostly look at whether you've passed certain courses that you've claimed, that you attended, and with it. Oh yeah, so I have been asked for my transcripts. Yeah, so when I was studying, and I actually had to run around quite a bit because I didn't have them in the country, so. Yeah, yeah, they can. I'm not saying every company will, but they can absolutely ask. That's a background check, right? They want to make sure that you are who you are saying. They want to make sure if you have an MS degree from Berkeley that you have the degree, and you've just not made it up. So background checks are actually pretty interesting. They can be quite intense. Like they will go and look at your criminal history, which is actually the most stringent one. If you fail the criminal thing, everything else actually is out of the door. They do a social security check. During the criminal check, they actually ask every address you lived at, and they also ask, they go to the court in that area, and they do that check whether you had any. Even DUIs turn up on it, misdemeanors, felonies. So every company has a list of rules. Like DUIs are fine for some companies, but it may not be fine for some companies. So those rules are set internally by the companies themselves. Most of the time, keep in mind, if they have federal contracts, like they work with the government, the background checks tend to be very stringent. If they don't work with the government, then they are okay. School. So the coursework would be at school, but if you have any certifications at Coursera, I would add there. Yeah. We done? I know, I understand. Oh, one. It has been great. Just last thing. I actually have a paper here with your names and emails. If you can give me, email out this presentation so you can actually use the LinkedIn details and everything. This is Akala everyone. Thank you for coming. If you have any questions, I am right here.