LUMS Alumni Office and the Career Services Office (CSO) organised a session on CV Writing and Interview Tips on Thursday, December 15, 2016 at A-16, Academic Block. The session was conducted by our alumnus Asim Maqbool BSc Computer Science 2005, who brought 11 years of work experience with him and his journey after LUMS.
Asim Maqbool started off by introducing himself. He started working in Techlogix in Pakistan and later moved to IBM where he worked for three years. He then went on to pursue his Masters from Australia. Asim later start working at Deloitte, UK for four years as a Senior Consultant. He is currently working in a Financial Software firm called Misys. His work life involved a lot of travel to Europe and many countries including China and the Middle East.
Asim shared very useful tips for CV writing. He started off with informing the audience to make two versions of your CV, it must be fully structured and not to write big paragraphs. He also said that instead of creating a long and boring list with all your qualities (e.g., disciplined, creative, problem solver) try to connect them with real life and work experiences. In other words, you need to back these qualities and strengths up, else it will appear that you are just trying to inflate things. Try to write your CV in bulleted points and make sure if you are experienced, write projects which you have done. Use “buzz” words and intelligently place them in your CV and relate these words with specific tasks.
Asim then went on to share some interview tips. He said don’t run after that companies who “hire in bulk and fire in bulk”. He said when you’re done with your first interview at a Company, keep chasing them as they take a lot of time after the interview to come to a final decision. Furthermore he said if you get a call for an interview from a top company abroad, make sure you have knowledge about the global market.
The session ended with an interactive Q&A session.
