“I am overqualified. I am underqualified. I don’t have the experience. I am too old for this, they need someone younger. I am not supposed to complain in this economy, atleast I have a job. Whaa !! Not everyone is supposed to change the world. ”
Do you hear (or worse, use) these sentences often? I am sure you do. I have, myself, been guilty of committing this crime several times.
Here’s an interesting story that proves the same:
Folks at one of my favorite startups, shared that they had an opening for a ‘Software Engineer’ and were looking for referrals. I decided to share the ‘open’ position with my alumni. But, I decided to make an experiment out of this. Yeah, I know. I am a big weirdo.
Let me throw in a few numbers. There are over 9000 members on this page. Most conservatively estimated, 1000 final year students, towards whom the post was targeted. GharPay is a seriously cool startup and all of that jazz but, let’s just say it still doesn’t touch many of the undergraduate’s heart strings as a dream job. So, 23 people inbox me their intentions to work for this setup. Few of them asked the CTC and the job location. I obliged and commented on the same post with the information.
The salary is commensurate with what the top guys get at some of the more established companies . So, I was expecting a little more enthusiasm.
The 23 people who did send me their intention to apply by inboxing me were replied by me to send in their resumes. Guess, how many of those resumes turned up?
15 out of 23. All it’d have taken is a minute to attach them and click ‘send’. So, Stage 2 filtration done, without any effort from my side. I told the other 15 people (and remember, I am giving them an illusion that they have ‘made it to the next round’) to send in sample of the codes, the best they have written till date. All of this is actually part of GharPay’s recruitment process. Now, we have the really interesting part. A grand total of 1 person sent the sample code.
Finally, I sent in 2 referrals to Arpit (co-founder at GharPay). The other one was that of the cousin of one of my friends who insisted that I sent her resume anyways.
When I sent in the referrals, I shared with Arpit this same experiment of my mine. Here’s is his reply:
My experiment was not an anomaly, after all.
The point is that there are dozens of parameters out there which will lead to your disqualification from a job application process. Make sure that at least, you are not disqualifying yourself.
An expanded version of this blog post was first published on my blog acethesystem.com. GharPay has since been acquired by Delhivery for an undisclosed amount and Arpit and Abhishek are working on a new startup.