Job Hunting in the UK: Career Aspirations and Soft Skills

Once you have passed the "selection criteria of the recruiter", there would of course be technical evaluation. No IT company would recruit a technical person without having a thorough grilling on the technical part. While that is no different anywhere, there were a few surprises for me in the UK hiring process:

Your career aspirations are really important!

Back in Pakistan, we don't take career aspirations too seriously. In fact, the person being interviewed also thinks that career aspirations have been asked just as a formality, and the interviewer doesn't mean anything from that question.

So, if you are serious about some job opportunity, below are some tips:

Tip #3: Make sure that you read the job specs very very carefully.

In fact, you should be knowing the specs by heart, and if you are really serious about the job you have applied for, you should tailor your answers a little bit around the specs of the job.


Tip #4: Be ready with an answer when asked "where do you see yourself in the next 3-5 years."

Believe me or not, at one place I had cleared all the phases of the hiring process (agency screening, 1st online test, 2nd online test, technical + soft skills phone interview, 1.5 hours technical face-to-face interview, group manager interview, HR manager interview) but I was turned down at the end. Reason: I wanted to be a technical lead in a few years time but the department head didn't foresee a managerial position to become available in a couple of years.