Mastering SAP Job Interviews: Part 1 - Strategies for 100% Success

Hello everyone, I'm Vikram Aditya here. Welcome to GH Soft Tech and in this session we are going to discuss about the success in SAP jobs and I'd be suggesting you a couple of steps that you can follow with to get 100% success in SAP jobs. And this is my part 1 of the sessions on SAP jobs. I'm going to prepare few more sessions on SAP jobs in the future. So, basically the first and the foremost important thing is you need to keep up to date with the latest SAP developments. In a dynamic and competitive job market such as SAP consulting, it is vital to keep your skills, qualifications and technical knowledge up to date. So, SAP has been on fire for acquiring new softwares and new technologies. New SAP acquisitions generally lead to increased demand with only a short supply of resources. Gaining experience in new SAP products early on, especially if they complement your existing specialization within SAP can really give you an advantage. This is the most important thing that I'd suggest everyone to do. So, examples of such SAP acquisitions include Ariba, Business Objects, Concur, Fieldglass, Hybris, SuccessFactors, Sybase and Cyclo. So, I'm also going to discuss in another session about regarding what type of advanced technologies that you need to learn, which will complement your existing experience or existing knowledge on SAP or SAP different modules. So, keep an eye on new products and areas that SAP are actively marketing and talking about. These are usually purchased by SAP customers within a very short period of time and soon require SAP consultancy to work on it. Experience in SAP HANA and HANA related skills such as SAP S4 HANA, SAP Finance and now, right now, we have SAP S4 HANA Finance will make you a more attractive prospect to potential SAP employees. SAP cloud-related areas such as SAP Business by Design are also highly desirable at the moment. So, we have how to update your SAP knowledge, use your spare time to attend training sessions and work towards SAP certifications and other industry related qualifications. As I have been telling in the previous sessions and I continuously keep telling everyone that SAP certification is not very mandatory unless and until the client insists on it. Most of the requirements look at the kind of knowledge that you have and the kind of expertise that you have to handle the client requirement. That's what is the major focus in almost all the companies where they hire SAP consultants. Whereas, there are very few requirements in which we need to go for a SAP certification and you can subscribe to www.youtube.com and update your skills for free and you can just browse for 15 minutes every day. Each session will be for 15 minutes and every day you can learn a new thing and if I am discussing something which you already know, maybe you can skip that and you can go to some other video. You can also check out our playlists. Playlists will have you a different set of videos. You can pick one playlist, which you can watch on a daily basis. You can also visit our website sapeducation.blocksport.com or saptechnical1.blocksport.com or sapfunctional1.blocksport.com Now, other than that you can keep attending SAP conferences such as SAP Sapphire and SAP TechEd are helpful for keeping your finger on the pulse. Setting appropriate RSS news feeds is also a good way to stay in the loop with the latest SAP news in your feed. The second most important thing is the language. The fluency on a particular language is very very important when it comes to it. Not just SAP jobs, any software jobs. English being the global language for SAP for all the business and indeed for SAP would be my primary my primary recommendation for those who don't already speak it fluently is the first thing. I spend some time to become more fluent in English. And next step is speaking more than one language fluently can greatly increase your desirability to potential SAP employees. Speaking the local official language or the language spoken at one of our client's subsidiaries could be a different differentiator, especially for the international SAP rollout products. So, examples are Arabic for Middle East clients. And becoming fluent in languages like it will help you in getting a good job. So, referring to SAP's growth plans in China, Co-Chief Executive Bill McDermott said in a recent interview in Beijing, the potential here is just really. So, we want to treat China as it's a second home. So, considering the huge potential of this growth market, learning Mandarin Chinese would no doubt give you access to thousands of new SAP career possibilities over the next few years. And for consultants open to working in Germany, the home of SAP, learning German would be a great asset. So, it will open the door to employment opportunities in a country with one of the most stable economies in the world and a huge number of local SAP clients. It will also improve your prospects for securing SAP jobs in German-speaking parts of Switzerland, where you can find some of the most highly paid SAP positions. And network is extremely important when you are looking for the next changeover on your job or for a fresh start. So, your network is your net worth. That's what is the quote. So, keeping in touch and networking may seem like a hassle, especially if you are busy in your current SAP positions. However, ongoing networking will help ensure SAP work doesn't dry up in the future. So, make the effort to stay in touch with old colleagues. Also, strive to make new useful contacts by attending SAP networking events, networking events, user groups and SAP conferences. And the best way to keep in touch with your colleagues is not sharing some jokes or not sharing something which is of entertainment, you know, try to share something with them, which is really helpful for their career and they would look at you as a professional friend, like, you know, every one of us have that intention to upgrade in our technology and all. And those who actually support us to do that will always be a good, you know, support. I mean, they will have a good rapport or a good impression on them. Utilizing social media sites for professional SAP networking is also a great way to increase your chances of being hired for potential SAP jobs. LinkedIn has become an essential networking tool for SAP constant with over 5 lakh SAP related professionals. Registered a number of sizable SAP groups and large number of SAP jobs hosted by both SAP clients and SAP specialist recruitment agencies. So, keep in touch and if you have a LinkedIn profile, update it on a regular basis and then you also be active in LinkedIn so that you can keep getting requirements which are up to your expertise. Another great online network for SAP consultants is SAP Community Network. Contributing comment blogs and SAP advice here can increase your reputation within the SAP community and also help you to make new meaningful contacts who may well have SAP work for you at same stage in the future. So, other useful sites would be Twitter, Zing, Facebook and Google+. But, people who are seriously looking out for professional networking, I prefer them to stick to LinkedIn and SCN. Understand the requirements. Make sure your resume reflects all those aspects that the client is expecting out of the desirable candidates. The primary skills, secondary skills, desirable skills and better to have skills. All these are very important when you are looking out for a job. So, you have to make sure that the primary skill of a particular requirement is actually the concept on which you have the skills. Let's say you have experience on a primary skill. For example, let's take the example of SAP ABAP and SAP ABAP is your primary skill and your secondary skill is HANA ABAP. Actually, the client's requirement for desirable skills would be a person who also has a basic idea on HANA development and better to have skills as something like BO, Business Objects Reports. So, what you have to do is you need to have at least a basic idea about desirable skills and better to have skills. If you have that feels, at least you can mention in your resume that you have basic knowledge, but make sure you really have a basic knowledge on it. Spend some time on it and have a quality kind of a, you know, spend some time and have a quality kind of information about that particular desirable skills that you can have a clear picture and even in the interview, they can feel that, you know, you really have had some, you know, homework and then came for the interview. So, if I take an example, if the client is looking out for SAP HANA ABAP professional and you applied with SAP ABAP profile, you may not get a call. So, I've seen a lot of people, I've been in this industry for almost 15 years now and I've been seeing a lot of people who basically don't focus on what exactly the client needs and they think that, you know, they somehow have to get a job. You will definitely not get a job if at all, if you're not following, if your resume is not aligned with client's requirement, that's for sure. So, understanding the requirement was very important and next is like what I would suggest everyone to do is practice, practice and practice. As the quote goes like this, practice makes man perfect, man in the sense any human being. So, here, this is what actually, you know, I would suggest you to practice. So, now, the thing that you need to understand is what exactly you gain from practice is the confidence and the clarity on the subject. When you talk about something, you talk more clearly and more confidently when you have good expertise on that particular system. So, I'd suggest even if you're working or if you're not working on SAP, I suggest you to spend some time, quality time on practice and if at all, if you are looking out for SAP server access, Take a server and keep practicing, take an online server and keep practicing on it on a regular basis, especially I'd suggest you to go for SAP S4 HANA platform. Select good SAP recruitment agencies to work with. The majority of SAP consultants find their jobs through SAP contracts via recruitment agencies. Therefore, choosing the right recruitment agency to work with is also an important aspect and can influence the chances of landing your next SAP position. So, choose a few good agencies to work with and keep them updated with your resume, ability and latest contact details. So, you also can work out on the recruitment agency whether they have a good specialization in SAP and how are the rates and all these things and the reputation also and the geographical location. You can check out all these things and then you can decide which one is the best for you. If at all, if you are looking out for any kind of contract jobs or permanent jobs, you can contact us at jobs.sap.com, we can be in touch, we can get in touch. So, ensure your SAP resume is the best it can be. So, writing an effective SAP resume is an essential foundation for building a successful SAP career. So, when being considered for a new SAP employment opportunity, your resume is normally the first thing an employer uses to decide if you are suitable for the SAP position on offer. So, it is no surprise that candidates who write the best SAP resumes are those who are invited for the interviews and who ultimately get hired. Now, let us say, now let us more detailedly understand about this one. Resume plays a very important role in landing you for an interview. So, if you are getting a call and if you are invited for an interview, it means that your resume is something which has been selected. So, they do not randomly select a resume, a recruiter or the client will generally check for the primary skills, secondary skills and then desirable skills. They go through the entire resume and then they give it. So, it is also very important sometimes to have all the keywords that the client is expecting. For example, if you are looking out for a job on SAP BW and the client is actually expecting BW on HANA. If you do not have a BW on HANA, you cannot expect a call. Even if you get a call and even if you are in the interview, you might not get to the interview because the focus of the client is to hire an SAP BW on HANA considered and not BW considered. So, we need to be very very serious about what the client is expecting. I have seen more than 90% of the candidates ignore what the client is expecting.