Most of the candidates appearing for the CAT entrance exam are busy preparing rigorously for the exam but in the wake of preparing for exam and GD-PI process some of them give less importance to profile building and skill upgradation process. Most of us start working on this part either after their CAT exam has been conducted or in the later part of the CAT preparations. As a result, they are left with a little amount of time to work upon their profile building.
So to avoid this kind of haste, one should start building their profile in well advance. To begin with one can start working on the five points mentioned in this article and post completion of those five points, one can start building upon with more advance courses and skill upgrades that can be added to your CV’s. Post completion of these points you can adopt a more Specialization oriented approach and choose more advanced courses accordingly.
Below are the 5 points that I suggest you should work upon to build your profile from Scratch : -
1.) Start building your professional Network (LinkedIn) : -
If you have a decent LinkedIn profile with a nominal hundred connections, you should start working in the same direction and add more relevant connections in your profile. You can even add certifications and achievements of yours to make your profile stand out from others. Also If you can manage to get recommendations over LinkedIn from your previous or current employers, managers or Team lead, it would be an icing on the cake.
However, if you are a fresher and you haven’t created your account on LinkedIn, its high time you open an account and start building it. This is going to help you a lot in future. Start with adding relevant connections. Avoid sharing and liking irrelevant posts and keep your profile professional as much as possible.
2.) Learn Microsoft PowerPoint : -
One of the key skills of Manager is to deliver a comprehensive presentation. Keeping Comprehensiveness in mind you should learn to keep your bullet points short in slides and grow your memory muscle to deliver subject matter hidden behind those bullet points.
In B-school there is going to be a rigorous use of Microsoft PowerPoint as you will be asked to deliver a presentation on frequent basis so be ready and know your way around PowerPoint. One can take help of YouTube or search courses available on various online platforms to learn Microsoft PowerPoint.
3.) Learn Microsoft Excel : -
It is overwhelmingly stressed by majority of Corporate organisations and educational institutions to learn a powerful yet simple tool i.e. Microsoft excel. Also it is a trivial fact that many prestigious B-schools expect their students prior to joining the MBA program should have fair amount of knowledge and experience in using Excel. Microsoft excel is one of the Cardinal tool in a manager’s arsenal. It is an important tool to organize, manipulate & visualise data or apply various arithmetic operations to it. The potential uses are endless, however If one has to summarize then it can be said that it is used in Calculation, accounting, creating various charts from the data, to create important log sheets and inventory tracking etc.
4.) Learn Basics of Accounting : –
As you know Accounting is one of the basic subject being taught at B-schools in 1st semester. Students coming from Engineering background are bit skeptical about this subject and find it hard to learn this subject as its pedagogy advances in the B-school classes. So to make things easy one can try to complete free courses available at corporate finance institute website (https://courses.corporatefinanceinstitute.com/courses/learn-accounting-fundamentals-corporate-finance) under the Accounting fundamentals section. These online courses will enable you to get familiar with components of three basic Financial statements i.e. Balance sheets, cash flow statement and income statement. Also you will get a certificate for completing the course.
5.) Learn Marketing Basics : -
In the era of Covid-19, process of doing things are continuously evolving and so are the ways of marketing. The term Marketing is getting more closely associated with Digital Marketing. Google has been providing us a fantastic online certification course in digital marketing called “Fundamentals of Digital Marketing” at free of cost. It’s a 26 module course comprising of Video lectures and Quiz at end of every module.
I am sure this five trivial but important learnings would stay with you throughout your B-School journey and would help you in building your profile for the B-schools interviews. Further they would also give a rudimentary knowledge of the complex Subjects that you are going to learn at your B-school.
