Kailash Shahani, an HR expert, discusses the importance of maintaining complete and accurate online profiles to attract employers. He makes several key points: 1) Candidates should fully complete their profiles and include all relevant work experience to demonstrate care and suitability for opportunities. 2) Profiles should be free of grammatical errors and typos, as these indicate poor communication skills. Candidates should thoroughly proofread their profiles. 3) Using relevant keywords that match desired skills and qualifications makes candidates more discoverable to employers searching online. 4) Customized URLs and participating in relevant industry groups enhances online presence and demonstrates expertise. 5) Candidates should be honest in their profiles,

1. “Keeping the online profile updated
attracts the employers” – Kailash
Shahani in interview with Rediff
Rediff – How far it is necessary to complete the profile?
Kailash Shahani, Managing Director of Morpheus Human
Consulting Pvt. Ltd. Expresses "Candidates who fail to put
complete profiles indicate to a hiring manager that the candidate
didn't care enough to finish it," he says. Kailash Shahani also
added "Candidates should talk about freelance, contract or part-
time work they might be doing, and explain the types of job
opportunities you're seeking.”
Rediff – Grammatical mistakes turns off the employers – is
it right?
Kailash Shahani - Remember, employers check out the
candidate's social networking profiles to evaluate their
communication skills. Nothing screams poor communication
skills and sloppy work louder than bad grammar and incorrect
spelling.
Take a copy of any resume and I am sure there will be typos and
grammatical errors. Some of these errors are unintentional
and take place out of lack of proper education, while in
other instances, it occurs also when the candidate outsources the
contents of his profile externally. No matter how hard pressed
the candidate is, it is important that he/she does a spell check
on the contents before uploading or sharing his/her profile. It is
equally important to proof read your profile for grammatical
errors.

2. Rediff: How keywords in the profile help the employers?
Kailash Shahani: It is important to use keywords in your
profile.
He says, "The world wide web is a vast resource sharing
information. Candidates have to ensure that their social
networking profiles are complete and rich with search-engine
friendly keywords. Having search engine-friendly keywords that
describe your skills and experience helps employers find you
before they've posted a job ad."
For example, in the case of a candidate from IT field, keywords
would be programs he specialises in like C++, Java, Visual
Basics, etc. For an art designer, keywords would be Photoshop,
Corel Draw, Flash and the like. Keywords could also be your
educational qualification, namely -- post graduation, masters,
diploma, mechanical engineer, or other soft skills you specialise
in, like negotiation skills, communication skills, etc. One of the
best ways to find out keywords would be to check the
requirements on the job profile listed on various websites. Find
out if you have included them in your profile.
It is important that you highlight these keywords in your profile.
Keywords are essentially skills and achievements that will attract
the employer's attention to your profile.

3. Rediff – Why “User-Specific URLS” are important?
Kailash Shahani: In the world of social networking, having
an exclusive URL or domain name is almost everything and
adds a lot of importance to your profile.
"Facebook and LinkedIn let users create URLs for their profile
pages that include their names. It makes your profiles more
search engine-friendly. If a hiring manager types your name into
a search engine, your Facebook or LinkedIn profile with your
name in your URL will have higher prominence in search
results. Also, list these URLs on your cover letters, resumes and
business cards," says Kailash Shahani.
For example, having a LinkedIn profile with the URL
http://www.linkedin.com/in/kailash.shahani would be
preferable over something like
www.linkedin.com/beautifuldeath.
The former would give the employer the impression that the
candidate is serious about his career and has taken the time and
effort to own a domain name. These are little things that you
need to take care of while creating your social profile.
Rediff: How “Group Subscriptions” affects the online
profile?
Kailash Shahani: Most job sites have access to niche user
groups and communities pertaining to specific areas of interest
and specialty. These groups could be great sources of
information, to say the least.
Candidates should join online groups in their area of expertise.
The best groups to join have lots of active members. Groups

4. allow you to share and validate your expertise. Ask intriguing
questions that will spark discussions with other like-minded
Individuals, and add your two of your own. These groups are a
great way of demonstrating who you are professionally. Since I
am an HR professional, I subscribe to groups that are leading in
the domain of recruitment and people management. If you are
an advertising professional, you will subscribe to groups like
agencyfaqs and exchange4media to name a few.
So, find out what the leading groups in your area of interest are
and subscribe to them. This will not only enable you with live
feeds and provide you frequent updates on your area of interest
and work, but at the same time, when an employer visits your
profile, he/she will find a featured list of these pages and groups
on your profile, thus adding to your chances of employability.
Not convinced? Just try to visit an unknown person's profile on
Facebook or LinkedIn. You will see a list of pages and
communities that the user has subscribed to. Go back and see
what your profile page looks like when visited by an external
user. Find out and unsubscribe yourself from pages or groups
that are irrelevant to your profile.
Rediff: Recruiters are very particular about integrity of
information provided to them.
Kailash Shahani: I would like to share an incident - Once, a
candidate had approached us for the profile of an HR
consultant. Her CV looked very impressive and we were looking
forward to meet her in the interview round. However, when I
asked her to explain more about her profile, she did not seem to
understand my question and went on talking the next few

5. minutes on an altogether different subject. When I repeated the
question to her, she confessed that she did not know much.
We encounter similar situations on a daily basis. This is also
because they are not honest about their skills and fear rejection
and failure if they displayed their lack of skills. But the truth is, it
will eventually be exposed when you face the panellists. There is
absolutely getting away."
Chances are, you may be hired for your honesty or be deprived
for your dishonesty. The key is to be honest, anyway.