Select, Recruit and Retain

New Ventures

2011-11-04T08:53:00.002-04:00

Have not been writing for a long time. One reason was that had nothing much to say, the other as was getting ready to and looking for new challenges. Have decided to add a bit of zing to my otherwise staid existence as a Human Resource consultant. I have signed up for a new venture "DressShop". it is a foray into apparel e-retailing. This is addition to my existing venture K M Associates. As Edmund Hilary said "It is not the mountain we conquer but ourselves", I too hope to overcome much and achieve,Will keep you all posted about the twists and turns and learning for me in this new venture.

Clarity in Recruitment

2010-09-24T03:41:00.000-04:00

In my opinion the clearer a company is about what would make a candidate successful in their company, the better would be the quality of their hires. Many companies that I interact with seem unable to define what would make a candidate successful in their organization, so they look for technical skills alone when recruiting. This makes it harder to find the ideal candidate.
This does not seem to be the case with WIPRO. In an interview with the WSJ Career Journal, Abhijit Bhaduri, who is WIPRO's Chief Learning Officer say's

"We believe in three things to make a workplace a healthy and a happy place.

The first would be a person’s intensity to win.

Second is the ability to act with sensitivity. In an organization where there is much diversity, not in terms of gender or race but in terms of an individual’s working style, decision-making style, method of communication etc., we look for people who have the ability to act sensitively to such diversity and also respect the individuals around him.

Third is unyielding integrity which is not just limited to honesty and fairness but also goes beyond what one does on a regular basis and also delivers what he/she has said and promised."

As you will notice this has got nothing to do with an the employees position,educational qualifications, work experience etc. This is about the culture of WIPRO, not everyone would fit in and if an employee does not meet the above requirements they cannot succeed at WIPRO.

Such clarity makes the job of the recruiting function easier, they now have a clear cut idea of the cultural requirements when hiring. They can be on the lookout for the behavioral patterns that are essential for success as well as look out for behaviors that would be warning signs.

A must read for anyone interested in applying for a position with WIPRO, or someone who wants to improve their recruiting function and the quality of hires. You can read the article here.

The Tata Conundrum.

2010-08-05T00:58:00.003-04:00

Should the Tata's go outside the family to look for a successor to Ratan Tata? Tata group has an iconic status in the country, as it is seen as the cleanest business enterprise in the country. It is seen as a company that does not pay bribes, speed money etc. to get it's work done. It has a major role in philanthropy and has established the following institutes that continue to play large role in our intellectual and social environment.
Indian Institute of Science, Tata Institute of Fundamental Research, Tata Memorial Hopital, Tata Institute of Social Sciences and

The issue of succession in the Tata group agitates a lot of the Indian professional class.As people who have grown up with the belief that ownership and management need to be split for efficient running of private enterprise, they are finding it easy to say that the Tata group should be run by a non-Tata.

But is it really that easy to be a professional company in the Indian context? The only truly independent non-family enterprise in India is L&T and they were almost swallowed up by the Ambani's a few years back.

An important issue when we have managers separate from owners is how do we align their interests. That is, how do we ensure that the managers are interested in maximizing shareholder returns rather than maximizing their salary or ensuring job stability etc. This is called the "principal-agent problem" and a major source of research in economics and tinkering in compensation theory. All the new methods of payment like, ESOP's, restricted stock, profit sharing etc. came out of trying to control this divergence of interest. If you want to know more about it just click here or here.

But we digress, the key question in my view is, "will the Tata group be the same iconic company without a Tata at the helm?"
My gut feel is it will not, however it will be better for the company as a business. Having spent one year in it's hotel division, I feel that the idea of Tata as a social enterprise seems to have overtaken Tata as a business enterprise. The people have grown comfortable and would do well to be brought back to the idea of maximizing profit and increasing efficiency and an emphasis on result. When Ratan took over as head he tried taking a leaf out of the GE playbook and wanted all group companies to be number 1 or number 2 in their business or be divested. However later on this focus was diluted and a number of weak companies were allowed to stay on in the company fold.

A non-Tata may not be similarly handicapped in taking a hard-headed economic look at the business, which will lead to a more efficient utilization of capital. We in India would do well to understand the concept of Creative Destruction.

There are some who believe otherwise, including my fellow blogger Gautam Ghosh. They want a Tata name to be at the helm as they feel it would help knit the group together and preserve it's values. They also argue that only an owner could have taken the large bets like buying out Corus, Jaguar and Land Rover. Noel Tata has been the name in news, he was doing good things with TRENT, but has resigned from an executive position there to take over as MD of Tata International. In addition to having the Tata surname, he is the son-in-law of Pallonji Mistry, the largest shareholder in Tata Sons, which is the holding company for the Tata group. The smart money is betting that he will take over and the 5 person Search Committee is just an eye-wash.

Why job hopping may be a positive

2010-07-21T03:37:00.004-04:00

I always said Twitter was useful. Thanks to following Abhijit Bhaduri and Gautam Ghosh I was able to read an interesting article. Written by Penelope Trunk it has a different viewpoint on employee loyalty. Penelope basically answers the question, "Who is a better employee, someone who has been with the same company for a long time or someone changing jobs every 2 to 3 years?
Amongst her many arguments I really liked this one.
"Corporate America doesn’t provide stability for its employees. The only people who think it does are really old and completely out of touch. There are layoffs and downsizing and just-in-time hiring and contract workers — realities that barely existed a generation ago. The stability you get in your career comes from you." By the way this holds true for every country, not only America.

This way of viewing employees would have an interesting impact not only in hiring decisions, but also a favorite metric of the HR professionals, "Retention."

Brand Me!

2010-03-29T08:55:00.005-04:00

In this digital age, you are what the internet search results throw up when someone Googles you. (Okay does a Bling search on your name if you want to insist.)
It is true. your name is researched on the web, either before or after the interview. A number of consultants and Human Resource Managers I spoke to said that they make the effort to do a basic internet search for people they hire. They have found that often it is a good way to separate to candidates who seem to be doing equally well in all other respects.Sometimes they have come up with some no-no's also, e.g. inappropriate photographs, nasty comments on blogs etc.
So what can you do to create your own brand. Traditionally it was tough, write articles and hope to get them published. Make speeches at industry seminars or at your local Rotary Club and hope to get a mention in the press.
Now thanks to things like blogs, it is much easier to create your own brand identity. Write about a thing that you are an expert on, comment on other blogs on the same topic.If you can get some experts to comment on your blog and they link it to their own wb pge or blog, your value and name recognition jumps up. It would be great if you created a video on You Tube and it went viral. OK let us admit that it is not easy to do so, but then one can always hope.
The big thing is to be consistent in your output and get your name out in cyberspace. Before you know it you have created a brand.

Employer Branding

2010-02-10T03:00:00.004-05:00

As the hiring landscape is becoming tougher in India, companies are investing time and money in their "employer brand". H R Heads in increasing numbers are getting interested in the concept and they are participating in surveys like "Great Places to Work" etc.to strengthen their company brand.

These people would not be too happy to read this article in ERE.net titled "Revelation – Your Employer Brand Is No Longer Owned by Your Firm" by John Sullivan.
The main argument that John seems to be making is that in this Web 2.0 world the employees both current and ex, as well as a host of other people like vendors, candidates who were not hired etc. can impact your brand.
Companies can only try to shape their brand and cannot control or own it.

I am however actually quite happy in some ways with these changes. In my opinion companies that actually do things necessary to improve their brand experience, deliver on their brand promise etc. will have a core group of committed brand evangelists. They will stand out above the clutter and find it easier to attract and retain top talent.

Meaning or Happiness or both

2009-12-15T02:01:00.004-05:00

Interesting article in BusinessWeek on how people can find more happiness (short term satisfaction)and/or meaning (long-term benefit) in their lives. The article is written by Marshall and Kelly Goldsmith and has some interesting insights for employers. The research may provide ideas to enhance employee experience while at the company leading to increased retention and productivity gains.

Some interesting findings were:
a)"There is an incredibly high correlation between people's happiness and meaning at work and at home."
b)"the number of hours worked had no significant correlation with happiness or meaning experienced at work or at home".
c)"Overall satisfaction at work increased only if both the amount of happiness and meaning experienced by employees simultaneously increased."

These findings can suggest ways to enhance employee experience while at work; indicate what companies have been doing wrong as well as empower employees to find what works for them.

Ravi Venkatesan interview on WSJ

2009-12-08T02:27:00.002-05:00

Interesting interview, the two points that stood out for me were:
a)"The best companies will rotate their highest potential talent through places like India and China and Brazil as part of their development. We will also "export" more talent from India to other parts of the world as part of the same global talent development process"
and
b)"The closer you get to the top of a company, the more important is cultural fit. Indian managers may tend to systematically underestimate the critical importance of culture and powerful mentors and overestimate the importance of performance, loyalty and competence."

The second point is closely related to the emphasis in Indian families and culture on the need to be an expert, and their inability to understand "professional networks". Growing up in India, everyone is aware of family, clan, caste networks and all of them have "negative connotations" in the middle class mind, hence their hesitation to build mentor-mentee relationships in the workplace. Those that do benefit tremendously and go on to do better at the workplace.

Some interesting articles

2009-11-18T00:39:00.005-05:00

Came across this one via Gautam Ghosh's blog. This is an article by Rosabeth Moss Kantor who holds the Ernest L. Arbuckle Professorship at Harvard Business School.
She writes, "the 20th century was called a "society of organizations." Formal hierarchies with clear reporting relationships gave people their position and their power. In the 21st century, America is rapidly becoming a society of networks, even within organizations. Maintenance of organizations as structures is less important than assembling resources to get results, even if the assemblage itself is loose and perishable.

Today, people with power and influence derive their power from their centrality within self-organizing networks that might or might not correspond to any plan on the part of designated leaders. Organization structure in vanguard companies involves multi-directional responsibilities, with an increasing emphasis on horizontal relationships rather than vertical reporting as the center of action that shapes daily tasks and one's portfolio of projects, in order to focus on serving customers and society. Circles of influence replace chains of command, as in the councils and boards at Cisco which draw from many levels to drive new strategies. Distributed leadership — consisting of many ears to the ground in many places — is more effective than centralized or concentrated leadership. Fewer people act as power-holders monopolizing information or decision-making, and more people serve as integrators using relationships and persuasion to get things done." Read the complete article here.
This ties up to the interview with Mindy Grossman, chief executive of HSN Inc., conducted and condensed by Adam Bryant that I was reading on The New York Times. When asked "So what ever happened to command-and-control leadership?" she says ,
"It’s not culturally relevant anymore. Even if you look at generations who are coming up, the idea that you need somebody to tell you what to do and not think for yourself — that’s not our culture. With that sort of manager or C.E.O., you’re not going to keep intelligent, inspired talent, because they want some form of entrepreneurial environment to be able to exercise their talent. I want to challenge them to be able to do that, not tell them to do something my way, especially when they might be able to do it better than me.

Also, all organizations are significantly diverse today. Command-and-control isn’t the kind of corporate culture people want to be in anymore."

Clearly the employee who will succeed in the new corporate culture has to be able to quickly adapt to changing temporary project work groups, rely less on designation and more on ability to link up with a wide variety of colleagues, even outsiders.The person has to be entrepreneurial and able to function effectively and contribute on their own to achieve organizational goals and vision, while building up valuable social networks both within and outside their organization.

The job market uptick

2009-11-10T05:54:00.002-05:00

There is a very upbeat report in the Economic Times that in essence says that by end of next year we should see a large number of jobs been created in India.
Once can read the entire article here.

I have also been talking to a few Human Resource professionals and they too seem to feel the same way. One who is in a BPO said that he is seeing more Request for Proposals from his company, leading to enhanced business and consequent hiring. In fact his firm recently announced walk-in-interviews, a sure sign that a company is in need of immediate addition to their employee rolls.

Increased employment is a necessity for a young country like India which needs to provide gainful employment for it'growing numbers.

Capitalisation as a form of highlighting

2009-09-04T03:52:00.003-04:00

In my role as a recruitment consultant I read through many resumes everyday trying to differentiate the diamond from the paste imitation.
What I find strange is that many otherwise excellent candidates, with a list of achievements under their belt forget the basic rules of capitalization.
I give below some examples that I recently came across:
1)Roll-out of Technology across the Existing and New Bank outlets.
2)PR support to achieve Regional Targets.
3) Working as the Head of Finance Department in a Large Hotel Chain.

I can go on and on with these examples, but that is not my purpose here. I just want to say that it is hard to believe anyone who claims they go the extra mile to achieve excellence, have an eye for detail and are constantly learning when they do not do a simple check on how they have used capital letters.

My advice is do a Google search for "rules of capitalization" and you will come up with a large list. In fact I made it easier and did it for all of my readers.
http://tinyurl.com/nybvj6

What personality characterstics predict CEO performance?

2009-05-19T01:48:00.006-04:00

We all have the visions of the Imperial CEO e.g. Carly Fiorina, Bob Nardelli, Hank Greenberg as the ideal CEO. They seem so confident, articulate and charismatic, while they regally walk around, attending conferences, giving interviews in their private jets and attending high profile events in Switzerland. They seem to typify the successful CEO, till they meet their comeuppance in spectacular fashion, when they just crash and burn.

The ideal that is pushed by HR and academics is just the reverse, they are the ones with great understanding of what makes people tick. They will be seeking feedback from the team,, build consensus before signing off on major initiatives. Someone who if not a trained psychologist, would at least be an amateur one or a sociologist. After all organizations work through people and so an understanding of individual psychology should be a skill that translates into success as a CEO.

Steven N. Kaplan,Mark M. Klebanov,and Morten Sorensen in a study titled
"Which CEO Characteristics and Abilities Matter?" unfortunately have come to different conclusions. They had data from 300 odd interviews by ghSMART a firm that calls itself "The Management Assessment firm for C.E.O.'s and Investors". The company did these interviews for PE firms, both buyout (L.B.O.’s) and Venture capital (VC). making decisions on whom to hire to run companies in which they were investing. Those interviewed are a mix of internal and external candidates.

As they put it , "The typical assessment classifies the CEO candidate on more than 40 dimensions in seven general classifications – “leadership,” “personal,” “intellectual,” “motivational,” “interpersonal,” “technical,” and “specifics.” Descriptions of the assessed individual characteristics are presented in table 1. The technical and specific classifications differ somewhat from the others. “Technical” measures the type of experience the candidate has – in finance, marketing, etc. – at least as much as it measures the candidate’s ability in those areas. “Specific” measures the candidate’s abilities in areas that are specific to the particular deal..."

Using principal component analysis, they simplified it two components,
“The first and most important component represents a general component. This component explains 28% of the variation in the ratings data. All of the individual characteristics load positively on the first component……. These characteristics, a mix of soft, neutral, and hard characteristics, include “hires A players,” “develops people,” “efficiency,” “network of talented people,” “flexible,” “organization and planning,” “aggressive,” “moves fast,” “follows through,” “brainpower,” “analytical skills,” “strategic thinking,” “creative,” “proactive,” “sets high standards,” “oral communication,” “teamwork,” “persuasion,” and “holds people accountable.” It is natural, therefore, to interpret this as the component that captures general talent or ability. This is common in principal component analysis and reflects the fact, documented above, that all the characteristics tend to move together.

The second component is perhaps more interesting. Candidates who score higher on this component have higher ratings on soft skills like “treats people with respect,” “integrity,” “listening skills,” “open to criticism,” and “team work.” Candidates with a lower score on this component have higher ratings on hard skills like “aggressive,” “moves fast,” “proactive,” and “work ethic.” Interpreting these characteristics, the component appears to sort the candidates such that a high loading on the component corresponds to a candidate who can be characterized as a “consensus / team player,” whereas a low loading on this component corresponds to candidate who is arguably best characterized as “fast, aggressive, and persistent.” One would expect Jack Welch – the former CEO of General Electric who
was often referred to as “Neutron Jack” – to score low on this component while his successor, Jeff Immelt, cited in Fast Company (2005) for “holding ‘dreaming sessions’ with customers, developing ‘imagination breakthrough’ teams, and the importance of ‘simplification’,” would likely score higher on this component.”

Then they merged it with data from the performance of the hires, which they obtained from the PE firms which were hiring these candidates for their various investments, as well as external data sources like LexusNexis, CapitalQ, ZoomInfo etc.

This way they had pre-hire data on the C.E.O.'s characteristics as well as data on how they actually performed on the job.
Their finding as summarised by the researchers,
“Finally, we relate the characteristics and abilities to subsequent performance or success. Success is significantly related to general talent, particularly for LBOs. Hard skills are consistently positively correlated with success, while soft skills are not positively correlated and, for VCs they are even negatively correlated with success. Success also is not related to incumbency.”

In other words the type of person who is likely to succeed as CEO is not the warm fuzzy type, who is interested in making sure everyone is on the same page, by communicating extensively with team members, building consensus, getting various viewpoints etc. but someone who is able to take decisions quickly and anticipates issues before they arise. They have the smarts to be analytical and they expect high levels of performance from others. But to me the most important characteristic is the ability to work long hours. It seems one can never run away from the fact that those who are willing to postpone pleasure will do better than those who have poor impulse control. After all the ability to wait in order to achieve something one wants or “delayed gratification” or deferred gratification” is an important life skill.

Asking for help

2009-04-21T04:47:00.007-04:00

Gautam Ghosh writes this beautiful post titled "Want me to help in your job search?"

He seems to be getting a number of e-mails asking for assistance in job searches,and his advice is three-fold,

*If you are taking my email id off this blog and mailing me as part of a mass mailer campaign without any personalisation - without establishing any personal connect - whether you are a PR guy or a job hunter - I will delete your mail.
* Not all HR consultants are executive search consultants/recruiters. I am part of a OD and Training consulting firm. Other HR consultants focus on compensation and related areas. Some HR consultants are Recruiters. Do your homework before you shoot off a mail.
* The body of the email is the electronic version of your cover letter. Don't just state facts - show how you'll impact the performance of the place you are applying to. If I don't see that I am not going to forward your resume to friends of mine who might be looking out for people. Because every time I send a mail out to them I impact my own credibility. To take that decision your value has to be clear to me.

To the above, I can only add the following:

1) Though not a recruitment consultant, Gautam's contact and credibility in the HR domain makes him the envy of a number of recruiters.
2) The best time to build the personal connect is before you need the help. So start now! Networking is not about you can get out of it, but what you can do for others.
3) Ideally the resume should be tailor made for the job opening advertised, or the company the application is being sent to. This way you can highlight how you can positively impact the new organization. If you are not sure which company the resume will be forwarded to, use the cover letter to highlight your achievements till date.
4) BTW no recruitment consultant will forward the resume of a weak candidate, so take the chat with them seriously.
4) You need to make sure that there are no grammatical errors or spelling mistakes in your resume, cover letter or e-mail.
5) Do not pester your contact for a job, just let them know you are looking for a new assignment and that you would appreciate any help for the same. Follow up after a decent interval, the interval depending on how well you know them.

Happy job hunting!

A new blogger

2009-04-03T02:43:00.003-04:00

V Rajesh "Retail Professional with extensive multi format exposure in India " as he labels himself on his LinkedIn profile has started this interesting blog "An Indian and a Retailer!"

I have read many of his posts and found them interesting.As someone who has been associated with the retail revolution in India since 1996, Rajesh brings in a wealth of experience and the professionals eye to the problems and challenges in the retail sector.

Definitely worth a read.

Overactive French Unions

2009-04-03T01:29:00.004-04:00

"Taking the boss hostage? In France it is a labor tactic" is the headline for an article in the New York Times.
It talks of the detention of Nicholas Polutnik, the Head of Caterpillar in France,along with other executives, as the fourth such incident in France within a month.It goes on to say that,

"François-Henri Pinault, the chief executive of PPR, the group that owns Gucci, was trapped by a group of employees who surrounded his car and blocked the road with garbage cans.

In two other incidents last month, workers at a 3M plant held their boss for more than 24 hours in a labor dispute, and workers at a Sony plant held their boss overnight to gain better severance packages."

Now it may be that some see it just as a tactic by the Union to pressurize their bosses, but as someone who has faced a strike, let me assure you that being detained by a mob of employees is no picnic.

Being detained against your will is without due process is a serious crime and should be treated as a kidnapping by the authorities. English common law treats kidnapping as a serious offense and "recognizes the additional evil of detaining someone against their will even without transporting him or her to a different region."Kidnapping - Origins Of The Offense In English Law

The scarier part is that such tactics have a tendency to spiral, as there is a copycat effect. Trade union leaders being politicians have a competitive streak, and they need to show to their members that they are the toughest leaders.Managers too feeling threatened and vulnerable will seek more security and protection. A confrontation between two such parties may get out of hand and lead to physical violence and injury to the managers or workers.

France needs to ensure exemplary punishment for such acts of lawlessness, for economic pain due to job loss will be felt more and more in the future, as companies downsize. No company can afford to have workers being paid while sitting idle, and the sooner the unions acknowledge this the better for all concerned.The media also has a role to play in this, and instead of bleeding heart liberalism,we need hard headed realism from them.

My bigger fear is that these tactics will spread to other EU countries and may even spread to India, which has a history of violent trade unions and a poor law enforcement track record. We will reverse all the progress we have had in the last few years as our political parties,(especially the communists) which had active trade union wings, would love to take advantage of economic and social turmoil to gain political clout and a few extra legislative seats.

Larsen and Toubro rethinks it's hiring

2009-04-02T05:19:00.003-04:00

I am told that L&T has put some of it's offers for GET on hold. Anyone heard the same? Surprising move on L&T's part especially as the infrastructure sector should not be hit as hard as the others.And if you do a Yahoo News search on L&T like I did at 14:50 hours on April 2nd, 2009, it is full of coverage of orders bagged by them.
Strange, looks like they are seeing a slow-down in the future orders.

Is Slumdog Millionaire an Indian film or a British film?

2009-02-24T01:08:00.008-05:00

Just in case you were in a cave the last two months, the film Slumdog Millionaire, based on a novel "Q&A" by the Indian author Vikas Swarup was optioned by Tessa Ross of Channel 4 turned into a film, by the British screen writer Simon Beaufoy directed by the British director Danny Boyle, with an all Indian cast led by Anil Kapoor, Irfan Khan, Freida Pinto and (oh-no, did I say all Indian cast, I meant Indian origin) Dev Patel amongst others. There is also an Indian Resul Pookutty who did the sound mixing (along with two Brits) and how can I forget A R Rahman who did the musical score and the songs.The film is a huge hit winning Baftas,Oscars, Critics' Choice Awards, Golden Globes, etc.

By the way "Warner Bros. which originally had U.S. rights to the movie, and financed 40 percent of its budget which the director said was 7 million British pounds (about $11.2 million U.S.). The movie had been a project of Warner Independent, which went out of business last year before it could be distributed. At that point Warner considered sending it direct to video but eventually relented and sold U.S. distribution rights to Fox Searchlight, while retaining a half interest in the picture." The picture is doing good business across the world and has grossed $160 million till date.

So what is the purpose of this post? Simply that in today's globalised economy it is foolish to become too nationalistic or localised in your approach to doing business.You get the money from wherever it is available, get the most talented team of people to work with, make sure that you are able to handle the complexity diversity causes (issues of language, culture, work style, approach to issues,housing, relocation etc.) and sell the final product in as many markets as possible.

Will it require any special skills? You bet! It will be harder than just having everyone from the same family, galli, mohalla, village, taluk, state or even country, but unfortunately for those who would like to build protectionist barriers and artificial us vs. them divides, talent is spread all over the world and not the prerogative of any one nation, state, taluk, village, mohalla, galli or family.
Jai Ho!

Hewitt survey on recruitment and salary trends in 2009

2009-02-20T01:04:00.003-05:00

Hewitt in it's salary and recruitment trends in India has come out with some encouraging numbers. As reported in the Times of India.

"The survey says the average salary hike in India in 2009 will be 8.2% - the highest in the Asia Pacific region. "
The article goes on to say "less than 16% of companies in India were considering retrenchments while more than 60% are still hiring
. Nine out of every 10 companies were still giving promotions while only 0.83% of companies were resorting to salary cuts, "

Now this is heartening especially as my own totally unscientific feedback was that though increments and promotions were happening, hiring and lay-off trends were not very encouraging. But even I would back Hewitt against my data.

The tough economic times and what they will result in.

2009-02-19T05:56:00.004-05:00

There is a Pramod Bhasin article in Wall Street journal titled "The elixir of youth" wherein he talks of how the young in his company Genpact are reacting to the downturn by suggesting new ideas to save cost. I liked these lines,

"It's the only silver lining of the recession we see: That employees recognize and understand the pain and want to help the company figure out how to grow again."

Today I saw an employment ad for a 5 star Hotel opening in a Delhi location. I was happy that there was hiring happening, but appalled by the fact that it was asking people at managerial levels to walk-in for an interview.
Some things are just not done! The luxury segment is about image as much as actual benefit, and having organized walk in interviews in hotels some 10-12 years ago, I know the chaos that can result if not properly handled.I hope that the hotel gets great value from it's efforts, but I will definitely be surprised if they do.

Improving your chances of finding a better job or being successful in your current one1

2009-02-09T08:25:00.003-05:00

On one of my LinkedIn groups, I read a request asking for help in “enhancing the number of offers one gets” so I decided to not only answer there, but to write out this post as a general guide to finding a job or in some cases a better job! So here goes:

This is unfortunately one of the toughest times to be out looking for a job. However there are certain general guidelines I can give that might help.
1) Upgrade your skills and qualifications: Make sure that you are constantly adding value to yourself and upgrading your skills by joining relevant professional courses. They are also a great signal to a recruiting manager that you are someone who believes in investing in yourself and will therefore be a good long term investment for their company.
2) Network: Though the digital world is a great way to expand your network, the strongest bonds are formed face-to-face. So go out and join a professional association and make sure that you attend their meetings. Volunteer your services to the association, it helps raise your profile and gives you a chance to interact with others. At the networking sessions do not be a wallflower, but go and interact with others. One caveat however, do not become too enthusiastic and become a pest by taking too much time of the others.
3) Spread the word: Yes most jobs are still found by word of mouth. This is the best kept secret of recruitment consultants. This is how we manage to unearth the passive candidate, the one who is quietly toiling away at the workplace as she is very successful at what she does and her company has been rewarding her regularly. Let your brother and his girlfriends, as well as your aunt (yes the one you have not spoken with for a long time) know about your job search. You never know whom they will speak to about this and what it will unearth. But do let them know what you do, what your strengths are and what you are looking for -the basic two-minute elevator pitch.
4) Find some Mentors: Seniors at your workplace should be able to guide you while you grow your careers. They can help you assess your strengths as well as point out your weaknesses. More importantly most of them have industry and professional networks, and they can plug you in. Recommendations count in this game, public ones like the ones on LinkedIn are great, but the best are the ones given when the recruitment agency is calling to do a background check.
5) Succeed in your current assignment: This is often an overlooked weapon in your arsenal. Most people fail to realise that success in your current assignment, helps create a positive buzz and leads to job offers. Many consultants as well as managers from other companies will often ask your work colleagues for recommendations and they will usually recommend people who are good at their job. After all they do not want to ruin their reputation as judges of talent, by recommending those who do not do well.
6) Raise your profile: Write a newspaper column or blog. Establish your reputation as an expert on some topic by writing about it. After all if you are doing something, you are supposed to know about it. What better way to create that reputation, than being seen as an expert on your work, whose column/ blog is read by many others.
7) Watch your image: Most successful people create an image or persona of success and spend a lot of time and money on nurturing the same. Every professional in this day and age of Google, cell phone cameras, and yes blogs, needs to do the same. One needs to project a professional image, without obviously sounding/appearing old and out dated. So be careful about how you dress, talk, write and project yourself not only at the workplace but after work also.
8) Get a great resume: As someone who has been reading resumes for a long time now, I find it amazing how many times people get it wrong. Most resumes not only have design issues, amazingly they have grammatical and spelling mistakes as well. Resumes are your sales collateral, they might not get you a job, but they sure can lose you one.

Follow these tips, and you improve your chances of succeeding in your current assignment as well as getting a better job either outside or within the same company. Remember that this is a competitive world and every little bit helps.

A Layoff Tracker

2009-01-29T06:47:00.002-05:00

Found this Layoff Tracker for Tech industry. The best part is that they have managed to update in the data in the last two days that I have been looking at it.

Is there anyone doing similar stuff for India? My bet is that most companies in India will not be reducing numbers via layoffs. They would most likely be doing so by natural attrition or even by utilizing the "fig-leaf" of performance management.

Leadership is about finding the right talent!

2009-01-28T02:20:00.004-05:00

The Washington Post has an interesting discussion going titled "Over the Hill or just Overlooked?" The discussion uses the idea that a 37 year old quarterback has taken an American football team (the Arizona Cardinals) to the Superbowl.
Actually the Washington Post puts it much better;

"The perennially mediocre Arizona Cardinals made this year's Super Bowl in large part because its coach, Ken Whisenhunt, picked 37-year-old Kurt Warner -- a former superstar widely considered to be washed up -- to be the team's quarterback.

Do leaders too often ignore experienced but under-performing talent in their organizations and, if so, why? How do you identify the good comeback prospects and help them to pick up their game?"

They have some interesting comments on the site by the panelists e.g. Michael Useem of Wharton writes "The most valid data for predicting future leadership performance, the research suggests, comes not from the manager's boss but from the subordinates. In other words, the top person is often less effective at identifying leadership talent than those who are most immediately affected by it". You can read his take here.

My belief is that most organizations which have been around for some time, seem to have a lot of talent which is being underutilized. This talent is both an opportunity and a threat. The organization has to be constantly evaluating it's people to see that they offer them job's that fully utilize them, provide them learning and growth and a sense of achievement. There is nothing worse than wasting an individuals potential and there is a cost to carrying resources that are not utilized.

Wage cuts, a way to avoid job cuts?

2009-01-17T04:23:00.005-05:00

Very often I get into a debate about the need to cut jobs as a way to reduce costs. I am of the opinion, that companies need to ensure that they survive and have a healthy rate of return for their shareholders, if job cuts are the only way to do that, so be it.

Since raising earnings is not really an option for a company facing reducing demand, cost reductions via job cuts seem to be the only way to ensure profitability. However a number of companies in the US and Canada are cutting wages in addition to lay-offs "a tactic economic historians said hasn't been wielded broadly since the Great Depression." as per the WSJ article titled Big Firms Deepen Job, Wage Cuts.

Wage cuts may only be possible in a soft employment market, for even the highly productive or top performers do not have much demand for their skills. The low demand for employees is not limited to one firm or industry, but seems to be a global phenomenon.

Should this strategy be adopted by companies?

Since the pain associated with a loss is felt more than the joy associated with a similar gain, salary cuts hurt employee morale quite severely. Note that unlike the laid off employees, the employees who have faced wage cuts, continue to work with you. In case you decide to go with this strategy, you need to think it through and devise a plan to implement this. The important part is to communicate with your employees. Hopefully you have an ongoing internal communication strategy and you just need to augment the communication process. What would work best is to appeal to employees altruistic sense. One needs to emphasize how the new strategy goes a long way in ensuring that some of their colleagues/team members, people in the same trenches as them, do not have to face a lay-off in these tough times.A little pain shared by all, will save their brothers in arms a lot off pain. Done the right way, and if the company has had a history of team rewards, a wage cut could be better than job cuts in ensuring the survival of the firm.It would lay the basis of a strongly welded team that has gone through tough times and would be ready to work as a well oiled machine, once the economies start to grow again.

Mumbai attacks

2008-11-27T01:57:00.004-05:00

As an ex-employee of the Taj group of Hotels (IHCL) and the Oberoi’s (EIH Ltd) I am saddened by the dastardly act of terrorists who have invaded these two fine institutions. As I write this, the terrorists are still inside and the army, the NSG and others are trying to neutralise them.

I speak with some empathy, as I have seen the impact that a bomb blast in Searock Sheraton which was located in Bandra,(Mumbai) had on the employees. Though no lives were lost in the blast that took place in March 1993, a thriving hotel with a phenomenally charged team of employees was eventually sold. The pain still lives on amongst the then employees. I was a Personnel Executive in that hotel and was among the many who were transferred out of the location.

There are some employees inside these two hotels who are known to me, and they are in my thoughts. I am praying that they, along with the others trapped inside, come out safe and sound and go on to lead long, happy and productive lives.

Regretfully the terrorists, by singling out hotels’ and restaurants’ frequented by foreign businessmen and tourists, will only add to the downturn being faced by the Indian economy in general and hotels in particular. The papers are already reporting the cancellation of the ongoing India England cricket series, and there is speculation that the Champions trophy scheduled for December is in jeopardy. I am sure a number of other visitors and businesses will look again at their India plans.They will delay, if not cancel, their India visits and investments.The cost of security will also go up, as hotels and others add more stringent security procedures. This will add to the economic pain being felt in India.

It will be many months before these two hotels come back to functioning normally. They will suffer extensive damage and will have to work very hard to rebuild. I am however proud of the Taj group which has already announced on its website:

“We will rebuild every inch that has been damaged in this attack and bring back the Taj to its full glory. 7.30 am IST, November 27, 2008.”

I am sure that The Oberoi hotels and their able management team will do the same and not let the terrorists gain victory. It is important that we do not let the purveyors of violence break our spirit and resilience. The only way to fight the darkness is to build and grow and seek the light.

Negative Rumours

2008-11-18T03:05:00.005-05:00

Gautam Ghosh has a blog-post on the above topic dated Nov. 9, 2008
Someone wrote to Gautam as under:

I have been following your blog since over a year now which has helped me immensely in managing the human resources for a small firm of about 100 people.Now, the business is 3 years old and is going through a major change (new services,new clients, projects being pulled out etc.).So obviously the core group is getting kind of insecure,and a few of the influential lot( who've been around for the longest ) are spreading false rumors about the company.Moreover, it's them who we look up to for getting through this phase.My boss (who also happens to be the COO) seems to be oblivious to this and when talked to believes in Theory Y.

Am in a fix as to how to handle such employees? We definitely can't terminate them on such grounds. It's a small company and in such times every negative comment would be harmful in sustaining a calmer and trustworthy work environment as earlier.

Looking forward to your guidance.

Gautam's advice can be read here.

Here is my take on the problem:
Rumours are like the mythical Raktabija. You scotch one rumour and a thousand seem to spring in its place. So how is one to cope with such a terrifying beast? Like Goddess Kali you have to understand the nature of the beast. What is the life force of rumours? Why do they seem to multiply? What is driving the spread of rumours?

Rumours are a means of communication, using informal channels. They spring about as the official channel is not doing enough to communicate about an event/ important trend or activity that can have a major impact on the employees. It may also be that over a period of time, the official communication channels are not trusted enough by the employees, and so they need to check on what is going on using unofficial channels. Many a time, people with their own agenda (usually informal leaders) use these channels to spread their own version of the truth. This is a power-play or it could reflect their own sense of insecurity and unease about the changes happening in the company. They may not have been consulted about the change or they may have opposed it and therefore are now being side-lined by those pushing through the change agenda.

As the HR Head your need to do the following:
1) Gently remind your boss of the need for change initiatives to be as inclusive as possible. Better still present him with an interesting book on change management, something that has laid it out in twenty easy steps or so. You better read it too, and read a few more so that you become the expert on the stuff ( the thought leader as Gautam would succinctly put it.)

2) Get your boss, better still the CEO/chairman someone with real authority to start addressing employees using town-hall meetings, small group meetings, skip-level meetings, the works, to address the change initiatives in your company.What was the need for the change, what is being done, how the company is going about it, what will be the impact on individual employees etc. If you are in one location it will be easy, if not use the marvels of modern technology to get the various offices to listen in at the same time or fly in your top team to them.

3) Ensure that communication is an ongoing process within the organization. Make sure that all important news, whether good, bad or ugly is shared as quickly as possible, with all the employees. This will build trust for the official channel and instead of depending on rumours; employees will tune in to the official communication channels.

4) Lastly (only because I am running out of time and patience) remember that all change creates winners and losers. The losers will have to reconcile themselves to the new order of things, if they do not, your top management will have to ask them to seek new opportunities outside. The last thing your company needs at this moment is an atmosphere poisoned by rivalry at the top. As it is a large number of change initiatives fail, one in which top management is not on-board does not have much of a chance of succeeding.

Lower salaries!

2008-10-21T01:53:00.003-04:00

The headlines say it all, economic slowdown is definitely going to impact salaries in the corporate sector. Airlines seem to hog the headlines as of now, but from what I hear, other industries are also be impacted.

With layoffs and lower attrition figures, it is clear that HR departments will no longer feel the same pressures to grow salaries as a retention tool. The other pressure on salaries comes from higher offers to fresher’s i.e. the new batch gets hired at salaries higher than the previous batch. Looks unlikely to happen in the short run.

Is this an Indian phenomenon? Not really, it might actually be worse in the developed world. From what I read, it looks like that at least for now, there is a lot of pressure to regulate salary. How come such a socialist attitude in the bastions of capitalism? One reason is that government money is being pumped into their financial institutions, and with that comes pressure to rein in the galloping pay packets.
Wall Street Journal reports that “More countries move to curb executive pay, at companies with and without government rescues.
AUSTRALIA: Prime minister seeking executive-pay rules for finance firms to discourage excessive risk-taking; he will then propose the rules to the international community.
FRANCE: Business leaders adopted code of conduct that prevents 'golden parachute' exit payments for failed executives.
GERMANY: Compensation for top executives at banks tapping government bailout funds capped at €500,000; bonuses, stock options and severance barred.
NETHERLANDS: Top executives of ING Groep NV agreed to give up 2008 bonuses and limit severance if dismissed in exchange for government financial injection.
SWEDEN: Participating banks in proposed bailout must agree with government to limit compensation for 'key executives.'
SWITZERLAND: UBS AG agreed as part of recapitalization to use international best practices for executive pay and government monitoring.
U.S.: Limits on corporate-tax deductions on executive pay and 'golden parachutes.' Firms also must recover awards based on inaccurate results and bar incentives for 'unnecessary and excessive risks.'
U.K.: Government is taking board seats at two big banks, permitting more oversight of pay practices; regulator wants investment banks to drop pay practices that may have encouraged risk-taking.”

I am praying that the Indian government does not get into the act. With their usual ham-handed approach they are sure to get it wrong and drive out talent from Indian industry.

Switching To Human Resources

2008-09-25T01:01:00.007-04:00

I had written to Arvind Rajan Vice President of People Operations at LinkedIn after my last blog post, as I was interested in knowing what prompted him to switch careers. After all with this great debate that I read everywhere about HR professionals seeking a seat at the table, here is one man who had a seat at the table switching to HR. I wrote:

“read an interesting article in WSJ in which your CEO Dan Nye talks about how he decided to hire you over others with HR experience and skills. I highlighted this in my blog today.
I was interested in writing about why you decided to take up this position. After all you were moving from being an entrepreneur to an employee.
What were the factors that made you decide to take the job? What swung the deal as far as you were concerned? If you reply, I will be happy to publish your answers in my blog.”

Arvind was kind enough to respond as below:

“It wasn't an easy decision. When I began working here on a consulting project early this year, I had no intention of taking a full-time gig here. However, as I began working with the company, I became increasingly excited by what LinkedIn could accomplish, and decided to climb aboard for the ride.

It definitely has been a bit of an adjustment to (a) being a bigger company and (b) not being the person in charge. But so far so good :)”

Arvind this is to thank you for your reply and to wish you the best in your current assignment. I hope more and more people switch to HR from generalist positions and vice-versa. This is the only way that the false perception that HR professionals do not understand business will change.

Hiring for Skills or Leadership

2008-09-17T04:55:00.003-04:00

It's been a long time since I last wrote a post. So excuse me if I am a little rusty.
I just read an interesting article in the WSJ. In the article Dan Nye CEO of LinkedIn talks about his decision to hire a generalist Arvind Rajan as the Head of Human Resources. He discusses how he was impressed with the leadership skills of Arvind Rajan and decides to go ahead with the hire,despite Arvind not having a background in Human Resources. Of course he took the views of the founder of LinkedIn and some investors, one of whom had prior experience as VP of HR.

I have sent a request to Arvind asking him how and why he decided to shift to HR from being a CEO. Hopefully he will respond and I may able to bring you the other side of the story.

Coincidentally today itself, I read a blog post by Aruna Dhir dated July 28th titled

"What would you prefer in an employee, if you had to choose only one? Why ?"

which expresses the view that passion is the one attribute we should focus on when hiring an employee.

The big daddy of free classifieds

2008-05-12T22:29:00.003-04:00

Just wanted to see if any one is out there using Craigslist as a tool for recruiting. For those who may not be aware, Craigslist is an online forum of classified ads that was started in 1995 in San Francisco. More details may be found here.

"Craig (of the List) Looks Beyond the Web" is an article in New York Times which talks of the site and it's founder Craig Newmark. One thing that has astounded me is that the site is very popular in the US for recruiters and others who would otherwise use the classified pages in the newspapers. In India however this has failed to take off. An explanation may be provided by the words of Clayton Frink publisher of The Capital Times in Madison, Wisconsin who is quoted in the article as saying

“What Craigslist does well is build a community and a feel of a community,” he said. “Building communities is going to be critical for any online product, whether a newspaper or not.”

It is my opinion, that in India it is difficult to build any community based initiative amongst the middle class, we are inherently suspicious of any activity which requires us to band together with others.

Is the party coming to an end?

2008-05-12T01:31:00.003-04:00

The TOI in an article "IT hirings may drop says

"The recruitment projections being made by leading Indian IT companies clearly show a 10-20 per cent drop in the number of people likely to be hired by the industry in the current fiscal year (FY) compared to the previous year."

People in the know say that this is an inevitable consequence of the slowdown in the global economy, especially the American economy. The TOI goes on to say

" This is happening as Indian I T companies are not only grappling with the uncertainty of US recession, but also the urgent need to improve their revenue per employee to remain profitable in the face of challenges like talent crunch, rising salaries and appreciation of rupee against dollar. "

Hopefully the recent fall in the rupee against the dollar will spell relief for the IT companies and their potential employees.

Hiring for a Greenfield Project of an existing firm

2008-03-25T01:08:00.003-04:00

I came across this question on Linkedin recently.

“What hiring strategy should be followed for a fairly large new Greenfield project?

Lot of industries are growing and enhancing their capacity and portfolio through acquisitions/mergers of existing entities and sometimes there is a need to set up a "Greenfield Set-up" at different locations.
My question is as to what is the best hiring strategy (quantitatively as well as qualitatively) the "Parent Industry" must follow for recruiting the white collared and the blue collared for the Greenfield with respect to:

#Skill level and experience
#Freshers to be trained
#Transfer of man-power from existing resources
#The mix of people for a new Greenfield so on and so forth”

As this was a private question, I took the posters permission to also reply to it on my blog. Here is what I said

Ideally for a Greenfield project, the company should do the following:

1) Make sure that the organization chart for the new site reflects the needs of the future, and is not a replica of the organization chart as it exists in the current plant/work site. Make it flatter, less supervision.

2) Ensure that the jobs are defined so as to empower the people who are going to work at the new site.

3) Change the culture of the new site to encourage more participatory work-style, rather than the traditional top-down, boss knows best attitude. This will ensure that you not only attract the hands, but also the hearts and heads of the employees.

4) Get a large number of references from your existing employee base. Use existing employees to market the new employment opportunities to those whom they know and interact with. But ensure that you have a robust selection process in place to rule out bias and ensure hiring on merit.

5) Get the word out early and often! Build a buzz in the market about your new site. Crank up your PR machine and ensure wide coverage in the press. Make sure that your marketing department is involved in drafting the advertising for these new jobs. As an old HR hand, I can assure you that most HR people cannot be creative to save their soul. If they have one left after a year on the job.

6) Hire the top honchos early. Make sure that you have the future H.O.D.’s on board and involved in the hiring process. In fact they should be involved right from the time staffing requirements are being mapped out.

7) Use your new site for training fresher’s, but send some of them to the old site for exposure. Or send them all, depends on how many numbers and how much money is involved. After all it is better to spend money upfront on hiring the best and training them, rather than lose out due to poor quality of your people. On their return ask them to submit a report on what they learned.

As for your experienced hires, send them to the old site, (if they are not already from there) but ask them to submit a report stating what they recommend be done differently in the new site and why. Incorporate the suggestions that make business sense.

8) Make sure that you select only those from your existing site, who will be able to fit into this new set-up. They should not only bring in phenomenal technical skills, but also great attitude. Be careful that you do not import existing salary structures with your hires from the existing plant.

9) By mix of people, I assume you mean how many to hire from existing plant. The new site should not be seen as a way by the departments to offload their problem employees. The new site is a new project, and is not started to solve the HR issues of the existing plant. Do not export the problems from your current site. However hire all those who are good, who bring a positive can-do attitude and who will contribute to building a new institution. You may use this as an opportunity to provide growth to employees who have shown signs of being ready to handle more responsibility.

10) Hire pan India, go out and interview across the country. Look upon this not only as a one time expense, (as it is, it will be drop of the total project cost) but as an HR- marketing cost. You are strengthening the employer brand and we all know brands are invaluable in today’s competitive market-place. For some of the top jobs, think regionally or even globally. Thanks to technological advances, geography should not be a limiting factor.

11) Stop thinking blue-collar and white-collar. Think of them as employees who contribute in different capacities. Ensure your canteens and locker rooms are not encouraging this segregation. They should be the same for everyone. Yes I know people are paid different amounts, but that is the only difference that you should have.

12) Hopefully as an existing employer, you have a strong employer brand and you will attract potential employees in droves and your only problem will be how to say no to so many applicants.

Job losses in Indian export sector

2008-03-20T03:25:00.002-04:00

Just in case you missed this news, which was tucked away in a corner in most newspapers.The Pioneer reported that

" The Government on Wednesday admitted that rupee appreciation against dollar has resulted in a loss of about 20 lakh jobs, besides a decline in exports.

"In certain sectors like textiles, leather, marine products and handicraft, there is a net decline in exports, which has led to job losses. It was estimated that unless remedial measures are taken, the total job losses could be as high as two million," Minister of State for Commerce Jairam Ramesh informed Rajya Sabha."

I first wrote about such a possibility

in my blogpost of January 25, 2008 titled "Impact on hiring of the American economic slowdown"

Blogs now lead Main Stream Media in breaking news!

2008-03-04T00:00:00.005-05:00

I just read an article in the Business Standard titled "Are You being Served" by Prasad Sangameshwaran dated Tuesday March 4th 2008.

The article states that
"In an employee-driven market, some service sector companies are trying to work their way around the acute talent crunch." and how are they doing that ?

The article quotes a number of HR Heads from the service sector, among them
H N Shrinivas, senior vice president, human resources, Taj Group of Hotels who says : “There is no talent shortage in India. In fact, we are among the few countries in the world with a surplus of raw talent.”

And what is raw talent ?

The article goes on to explain that these are the employees from Tier II and Tier III cities, those who do not speak Queen's English, do not necessarily have a post-graduate degree etc.

And what is their explanation or why are they doing that?

“Our experience has been that the attitudes and values of employees from semi-urban centres is far better,” says Shrinivas

But how do you train them, or make them ready to perform?

The article quotes the ICICI CHRO Ramkumar as saying

"We decided to offer a bridge course to offer training in sales and service operational skills to create a ready-to-deploy workforce base in the country. We will teach banking not as a theory, but as a vocation,”

Where have we read similar stuff ?
In a post titled "Bunty Aur Babli in the Corporation" by Abhijit Bhaduri in the blog The OD Collective dated October 7, 2007, a full 5 months before.

Congrats Abhijit for spotting the trend. But then it is not surprising, he is "down there in the trenches" so to speak, working as the Head of HR for Frito Lay.

Great Employee Morale at a lower cost

2008-02-26T03:43:00.005-05:00

Came upon this article at Inc.com via Jim Stroud 2.0.
In the article "Paychecks Aren't Everything" Michael Alter writes

"I often ask business owners whether any of their employees would work for free. I get a puzzled look in response.
"No, really," I say. "If your employees were independently wealthy and didn't need to work to make a living, would they work for you?"
You see, that's the holy grail of employee compensation. Create a work experience that is so incredibly awesome that folks will work for you for less money than they might otherwise demand. Let's say, for example, that you install a ping pong table and a pool table in the office. The ping pong table runs $500 and the pool table runs $2,000. You've just invested $2,500 in employee happiness. So, what's your return on investment?
Now, suppose you've got 70 employees and you estimate that you can pay each employee $100 less per year in salary, simply because they love the idea of working at a place that encourages employees to have fun. Lo and behold, you've just turned that $2,500 investment into a $7,000 payroll savings, an annuity that pays out every year and pays even more as you grow your firm. Plus, there's the added benefit of improved morale that hopefully will boost productivity and add an incremental bump to profitability. (That's assuming you manage your employees well, and they don't all stop working and just start playing games all day.)
Holistic Compensation
The lesson here is to think about compensation as being much more than cash. A higher pay rate doesn’t guarantee employee loyalty or longevity -- but an outstanding work environment and unique perks may. "

Now as any decently educated/experienced HR guy knows, this is the idea behind most benefits and employee policies, they cost less in the hands of the employer than their value to the employee. Similarly an organization culture which is open, participative and provides employees an opportunity to learn and grow while contributing to organizational success, doing jobs in which they are given responsibility and recognized for their achievements is seen as essential to attracting and retaining the best and the brightest. The ideal being in the language of Herzberg's Two Factor Theory, a mix of the High Hygiene and High Motivation factors to create a highly motivated workforce with few complaints.

I was wondering however if the HR/comp. and ben. folks do try to compute the advantages to their company when proposing a benefit/policy?
Do they actually try to compute a rupee value?
I wonder?

Whose responsibility is employee safety and security ?

2008-02-21T04:45:00.005-05:00

The Supreme Court in a judgment today has allowed the prosecution of it's then MD Som Mittal for the rape and murder of a female employee in 2005. The lady was raped by the cab driver who was hired to bring her from her home for the night shift. The prosecution is under the Karnataka Shop's and Establishment Act.

To me the big news is not the Supreme Court order, but some of the reactions of readers of this news item on TOI, you can read them here.

One writes "when the female employees supposed to work from 9am-6pm ,would be made to work late,sometimes till 2:00 am, and most of the times the managers and male co-workers would shrug off the responsibility of arranging cabs or dropping them safely. My last company's manager said this is an added cost to the project and i should cooperate by making arrangements on my own for "some" days"
Another comments " Come to gurgaon to see the gundagardi of call centre cabs on the road."
While a third says "All companies apply the same shortcut to save money and avoid any responsibilities to hire any random person in cheapest cost."

Now to me all this highlights the negative image and work atmosphere the poor transport arrangements are creating for BPO's. This is when the BPO's find it difficult to hire and retain employees and they spend money on fancy consultants and interventions to jazz up their employer branding. If this news is picked up, not only will this harm the HP India employer brand, it will tarnish the HP brand world-wide. HP is famous it's employee friendly culture and this will be a big dent on it.

The key to preventing such an incident is to ensure that the laws of the country are followed not only in the letter but also in their spirit. When talking to HR managers I often get the impression that labour laws in the country are outdated/not relevant and so should be ignored/circumvented with impunity. Maybe they are so, in which case the companies should actively work to get them changed, but till the are there on the books they need to implement them dutifully.

Love is in the air

2008-02-05T04:48:00.001-05:00

What with Valentines day around the corner, there is talk of romance everywhere. From Archie's and Hallmark Cards to chocolate shops and restaurants. There is even a new survey Romance at Workplace, conducted by staffing company TeamLease Services and widely reported in the media.

It is covered under the headlines
"Bed and board(room)? It’s no big deal, say execs" in the Hindustan Times which breathlessly reports that

"A third of those surveyed also saw no harm in romancing a married colleague, while 44 per cent said an affair was often a strategic move to climb the corporate ladder." and "Asked why an employee would have a relationship with the boss, 59 per cent of Delhiites interviewed said it would be for “quick promotions or a higher salary”.

The article goes on to say that

"A majority of respondents (56 per cent), however, felt that organisations should not intervene in workplace romances."

Interesting stuff and on the face of it looks that organizations should at the least get out of the way of office romances and at best actively encourage them.

But as anyone who digs deep will realize that a lot of employees, two-thirds to be exact saw a romance with a married colleague as wrong, and they would not be too happy about an organization that encourages the same. More dangerous is that 59 percent of Delhiites thought that an affair with a boss is for "quick promotions" or for higher salary, a classic definition of "quid pro quo sexual harassment".The Supreme Court in India in 1997 set out the Vishaka Guidelines, for resolving and preventing sexual harassment. Remember that employers are responsible for providing safe work environment for women under the law.

Also you may have low morale due to " paramour favoritism" claims from third parties who feel that they were negatively impacted by the relationship as is reported in the same Hindustan Time article

"Ameeta Sinha (28), a BPO employee in Gurgaon, seconds that. She and a colleague joined the organisation around the same time. “My colleague was soon promoted as operations manager because she was having a scene with our grey-haired, hot-shot boss. Her salary now is twice mine."

Now we know that most romances fail, in the sense that they do not lead to marriage, so why should office romances be an exception to the rule. Thus the rise in office romance will leave a number of embittered employees and their recollection of the romance would not be as rosy as the reporting in Hindustan Times would make us believe.

It is therefore necessary that organizations take adequate steps to insulate themselves against possible charges of sexual harassment. Some of these steps could be :

I] Create a realistic policy.

II] Communicate the Policy

III] Enforce the Policy uniformly

IV Create a Complaints Channel, ideally create a telephone hotline that employees can call

V) Create a Complaints Committee

VI) Train and retrain your employees on sexual harassment

VII) Create sensing mechanisms to nip sexual harassment in the bud, surveys are an ideal tool.

VIII) Commitment from top management

IX) Document everything

Happy Valentines Day

The Global Seervices 100

2008-01-30T01:56:00.000-05:00

"The 2008 Global Services 100 is a compilation of the world’s most innovative service providers, selected on the basis of a research study conducted by neoIT and Global Services Media." is how their website defines it.
The Indian ITES sector has done well and the net is abuzz with the news.

"Indian IT firms top Global Services 100 list" is how Silicon India has highlighted it, while The Hindu says "29 India-based IT companies among world's best 100"

The story for me is that Indian companies are learning the importance of managing brand perceptions. This is as important as ensuring that the brand delivers on it's promise. Maybe just maybe if the companies continue to work at it, one day we may see that some of these brands move beyond that and become what author Kevin Roberts calls Lovemarks in his book " Lovemarks: the future beyond brands" .

Are one of those who asks, why an HR person should be interested in the same? Then you should read this post "Do You Have a Lovemark?" by Abhijit Bhaduri in the OD Collective.
As he puts it
"The Employer Brand is what people believe is the promise of an organization as an employer. In a competitive talent market, that is the reason why someone chooses to put your organization's name as an employer on their resume - at least for a while."

Impact on hiring of the American economic slowdown

2008-01-25T01:07:00.000-05:00

The other day someone asked me "What will be the impact of the American economic slowdown on hiring trends in India?”

The way I see it, there will definitely be an impact on the hiring trends in India in the areas that were export led like ITES, apparel and textiles, jewellery, carpets etc. The impact will be greater than normal due to the dollar depreciating against the rupee. Thus the demand reduction combined with dollar decline will add up and lead to slowdown in hiring. That said, we should not rule out enhancement of demand due to growing business opportunities in Europe, UK, other global markets and the one that most analysts seem to miss, the domestic market. If the demand from these areas is good, it could more than compensate for the loss of business in the US.

There is an interesting article here in Knowledge@Wharton titled

"Reversal of Fortune: How Will Indian IT and BPO Firms Cope with a Global Slowdown?"

The article says ""We are already seeing a much easier employee hiring situation as fallout," said Raman Roy, chairman and managing director of Quatrro BPO Solutions. As firms become more careful in quoting prices, the demand for talent to fuel growth at any cost is moderated, providing a needed breather from the high rates of attrition that have come to characterize the business in India. "Currently, most companies have hedged up to a year's worth of dollar receivables," said Roy, who is widely considered the father of India's BPO business. "The real challenge will come next year, when those hedges run out and we will see a lot of uneconomical companies quickly wither away."

The key to the overall hiring situation will be domestic growth; if the economy continues to grow we will not see a slowdown in hiring. The rate of growth both of employment numbers and salary however may slowdown.

How Investing in Intangibles -- Like Employee Satisfaction -- Translates into Financial Returns

2008-01-21T06:15:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in Knowledge@Wharton which quotes research by Wharton finance professor Alex Edmans. The research showed
"that firms cited as good places to work earn returns that are more than double those of the overall market"
The article goes on to say that "To test his theory that happy workers generate better returns, Edmans used the annual survey published by Fortune and conducted by the independent Great Place to Work Institute in San Francisco as a measure of employee satisfaction. Edmans says the survey is a valuable gauge of employee satisfaction because it is based on in-depth surveys of a firm's employees, rather than just an external observation of stated policies."

This has interesting implications for HR Managers who have to constantly prove to their top management that the actions/policies they recommend make business sense.This and other studies like Watson Wyatt Human Capital Index®: Human Capital As a Lead Indicator of Shareholder Value show time and again the benefits of practices that treat employees as individuals. The focus in any progressive organization should be on educating and empowering employees to face one-off situations, enhance the quality and business impact of what people do and create a workplace that allows learning and growth.

Globalization of organization leadership?

2007-12-12T22:46:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in the New York Times, "Seeking Leaders, U.S. Companies Think Globally". As the article puts it
"Mr. Pandit joins 14 other foreign-born chiefs who are running Fortune 100 companies."

I agree with the article that this trend towards internationalization of organization leadership is a reflection of the global nature of business, increasing numbers of foreign students in the US and companies recruiting globally for their top management. The mobility of labor increases as you go up the hierarchy, and companies are also interested and willing to invest more resources in the search for the ideal candidate.

H R Outsourcing

2007-12-11T02:49:00.001-05:00

Economic Times has an interesting article "A very personnel touch" in which it talks of the many firms that have entered the field of HR Outsourcing and the challenges they face. It quotes Gautam Ghosh as saying
"I hadn't made policy for an organisation until now," he says. "And that's what makes it more rewarding and challenging."
The fact that a number of small and medium sized organizations have started to utilize these consultants is an indication they they appreciate the need for professional management. I am sure that with his wide and varied experience and a curious mind, Gautam will add tremendous value to these organizations as they seek to bring their HR practices at par with the best in the world.

The OD Collective: Bunty Aur Babli in the Corporation

2007-11-02T01:31:00.000-04:00

The OD Collective: Bunty Aur Babli in the Corporation

Interesting post by Abhijit, he talks of this phenomenon of people from non-metro cities, non-public or convent schools coming in increasingly larger numbers into the workforce.
As per him "The talent crunch forced organizations to look beyond those who spoke the Queens English. The social change in the office has been palpable. Slowly but surely, the workplace has been adapting to the new inhabitants of cubicles. Over the last few years, there has been a steady dilution of the number of "regular" folks in the offices. The "Buntys and Bablis" - the people from small towns and rural areas have become a growing minority that we have to learn to include." This has happened as a result of the "talent crunch", and the catchment area had to be widened.

I personally feel that this is happening more at the front line, the experienced hire from the small city, school or unknown company is still a rarity. More importantly IMHO, this should become a strategy for an organization to outperform competition. Too often the organization fails because everyone at the top has similar views as they have similar backgrounds, education and life experience. Also they do not understand or relate to their customer as they do not share their world-view or aspirations. Diversity helps an organization break out of this insularity, allowing them to connect with, understand and more efficiently service their client needs.

India as offshoring destination

2007-11-01T00:53:00.000-04:00

I came across this article in the BusinessWeek magazine. It states that "According to XMG's latest study on the onshore and offshore delivery of outsourcing services India will account for 11.5 percent of the global market in 2007, compared to China's 4.4 percent share. " XMG is an IT research, advisory and consulting firm, headquartered in Victoria, Canada.

The article goes on to state that "The research firm also said India will continue to lead the offshore segment through 2010 with at least 15 percent share. "

The effect of this growth on employment figures, the balance of trade, property prices etc. in India are obvious. This is much more heartening news than what I had been hearing especially in view of the decline of the dollar. This has already hit our textile and other exporters badly, and it was being predicted that the software and BPO sector would be next. This is happening because while the dollar has fallen against the rupee by 12 odd percent, it has only fallen about 3 odd percent against the Chinese yuan. This obviously makes it much more profitable for the Chinese exporters, who can offer better dollar prices.

My information sources are strictly anectodal, though buttressed by news reports such as these, which says that Infosys will have "another new unit that will expand its business in Australia, China, Japan, West Asia, Canada, South America and Latin America." which I take as evidence of changing market conditions in the US.

New Location

2007-10-10T02:24:00.000-04:00

Just wanted to update you all that I have moved on to India, and am settling down. The move back was exciting but it took some adjusting to the new realities in India. The thing that strikes one most is the sheer energy and enthusiasm of the people. The last ten to fifteen years seem to have changed the culture in India. (Before I go any further, let me clarify that I am limiting myself to the employees of professionally run private sector enterprises, and do not seek to endorse or even speak about the public sector here.) There is a positive feeling in the air, with a high level of confidence and a "can do" attitude. People I speak to believe that tomorrow will be better than today which already is better than yesterday. This attitude is infectious and a great morale booster when you are working with others in a team.

The new look Indian cricket team and the movie "Chak De" epitomise this new India and the change in culture. This is the reason why both have attracted such fanatical fan following for they seem to reflect people’s aspirations to succeed. The new slogan in India seems to be (with apologies to the Star Trek slogan) "To do what no Indian has done before."

I personally am with a search firm K M Associates, and we are involved in searches for the retail, pharmaceutical and hospitality sectors.
Some open positions with us are:
1) Corporate Controller for a pharmaceutical firm based out of Bangalore. They are looking for about 10-15 years of experience post qualification. Ideally a Chartered Accountant, though they would consider an MBA (Finance)
2) Public Relations Manager for a five-star Hotel based out of Mumbai. They are looking for someone with about 5 to 8 years of experience in the field, to handle the complete range of PR activity.
3) Sr. Manager H R for a retail company based in Dubai. They are looking for an MBA (HR) with about 10 to 12 years experience, who can be in charge of their Resourcing and Capability vertical in HR and assist the Head HR in the Organization and Talent Management vertical. This person will work closely with the HR Head in key HR Organization Development projects. They want someone who is delivery focussed, solution driven with a strategic bent of mind. The individual in addition to resourcing should have had solid HR generalist experience.
4) Asst. Manager Resourcing for a retail company based in Dubai. An MBA (HR) with 5 to 7 years of post qualification experience in recruitment and Resourcing. Experience in a corporate setting as well as a recruitment firm would be ideal.
5) Food & Beverage Training Officer for the largest industrial catering firm in the Middle East based out of Abu Dhabi. They are looking for someone with about 5 years of experience in a five star hotel or industrial catering firm. The ideal candidate would be a lady with 3 year F&B operations experience and about 2 years training experience.

If any one is interested in these positions, or knows some one who is, feel free to send any queries or your resumes at:
sudhanshu@ekahgroup.com or call at 91-9871483357

Cost of Attrition

2007-10-01T03:02:00.000-04:00

Times of India has an article on attrition in the KPO industry. It quotes Evalueserve co-founder and chairman Alok Aggarwal .

"In the last four to six months, attrition has touched alarming proportions in the range of 25 to 30%. Such a trend is really worrisome for the industry and might even discourage many players from entering the market," Evalueserve co-founder and chairman Alok Aggarwal said."

As I keep on harping, the ability to retain employees is not only a nice thing to do, touchy-feely, but has hard financial implications. The companies that are better at retention of talent, will gain at the expense of their competitors who are unable to do so.

Flexi-work arrangements to retain talent

2007-09-28T03:34:00.000-04:00

Watson Wyatt has an interesting survey report showing that firms have increased the use of flexi-work arrangements, and it is one more quiver in their arsenal of talent retention policies.

To me flexi-arrangements are about the company caring for anindividual employee and trying it's best to accomodate her/his unique need.Though it does add to the administrative and managerial issues, the payoff in many cases will outweigh the benefits.At the very least this will make an employee happy that the company cares.

Turnover and Knowledge Retention

2007-09-27T02:54:00.001-04:00

Two days back I spent an evening with H R Managers from a leading hospitality chain. I asked them what were the issues that faced HR. Without hesitation they named recruitment, followed by retention as their primary concern. The tremendous boom in the Indian economy has opened avenues of growth and opportunity for a number of employees and now they are in the driving seat. Also the psychological contract between employer and employe having been changed by lay-offs, VRS, VSS etc. employees do not seek to retire with a company.
They are looking for companies that challenge them, engage them and manage to make each day at work fun and allow themopportunities to learn and grow.
Now turnover or loss of employees due to retirement or resignations apart from the aspect of finding a replacement has an aspect of institutional knowledge loss. Monster has come out with an interesting report on the same, based on interviews with a large number of H R Managers.
It says
"The study reveals that while HR managers recognize the looming issue of losing institutional knowledge due to retirement, many face barriers to establishing strategies and tactics that help preempt the problem. Key findings include:
Turnover vs. Retirement: More firms perceive conventional turnover as a higher risk to losing organizational knowledge than loss due to retirement, as younger workers leaving an organization not only take away knowledge, but typically bring it to competitors.
What You Can’t Measure, You Can’t Manage: Only 23 percent of firms report having a formal method to actually identify the knowledge that needs to be protected and retained.
Proving ROI: 43 percent of respondents cite the ability to measure the ROI and effectiveness of a knowledge retention program as a chief stumbling block to implementing a formal strategy.
Unmotivated Workers: Only one-third of firms report that their workers are rewarded or encouraged to share organizational knowledge with colleagues"

..."Key recommendations from the study include:
C-Level Accountability: Appoint a Chief Knowledge Officer to be responsible for organizational knowledge.
Pinpoint the Goods: Implement a formal program to actively identify key knowledge assets and its sources.
Employee Incentives: Provide knowledge-sharing incentives for employees and incorporate standards in performance reviews.
Tools for Involvement: Create a blogging forum and mentoring program whereby employees can redistribute and access organizational knowledge."

Read the full report by Monster here.

Mittal in the news

2007-09-27T02:46:00.000-04:00

Sunil Bharti Mittal profile is definitely on the upswing. The Wal-Mart deal has him been covered by the New York Times. The article can be read here. I liked this quote from Sunil Mittal,
"I like to express myself through large, transformational projects".
What I am impressed with is the ambition and scale displayed by Indian companies like Bharti, Reliance, Indiabulls etc. For someone who has seen Indian companies afraid to invest, being not allowed to produce more than what their licence allowed, this is a welcome change.

I T Firms learn to grow their own talent

2007-09-04T00:38:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in the Times of India on how I T Firms are coping up with the talent crunch.

IT firms hiring grads to meet demand, says that

"two trends are making themselves obvious. One, that companies have begun hiring science and math graduates. And two, that hiring of fresh graduates has outstripped that of experienced personnel; there are no experienced hands to be hired in any case. "

The benefit is not limited to ensuring the availability of employees, as the article explains:

"While talent crunch is driving companies to look for people in places they wouldn't otherwise, there is also a blessing that isn't so obvious in the crunch. In most cases, the amount IT services companies spend on salaries is roughly half the revenues they earn. Getting in graduates from other streams give companies the room to keep salaries lower while they figure out how to manoeuvre around."

Now if this is not killing two birds with one stone, what is?

Vacation When You Want to, for as long as you want to!

2007-08-31T00:33:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in The New York Times, on a trend at IBM USA.

"It’s every worker’s dream: take as much vacation time as you want, on short notice, and don’t worry about your boss calling you on it. Cut out early, make it a long weekend, string two weeks together — as you like. No need to call in sick on a Friday so you can disappear for a fishing trip. Just go; nobody’s keeping track"

You may ask how this works?

"employees at all levels have made informal arrangements with their direct supervisors, guided mainly by their ability to get their work done on time."

So why is everybody not off to the beach?

"But the flip side of flexibility, at least at I.B.M., is peer pressure. "

Before you rush of to implement it in your company, make sure that the employees are not paid hourly, and that the business does not require that a certain number of employees are physically present in the company premises. It would also help if the company has a culture where people are driven to perform.

Podcast on Recruitment and Retention

2007-08-29T01:25:00.000-04:00

Prabhi Jha, head of human resources at Indian drugmaker Dr. Reddy's Laboratories, discusses recruiting and retention in one of the world's tightest labor markets (India), with Workforce Management staff writer Jeremy Smerd.
You can listen to the podcast here.

Bill Conaty on how he shaped HR at GE

2007-08-08T06:36:00.000-04:00

Whether you love them or hate them, you just cannot ignore them. The old sdaw seems to fit the HR practices of GE perfectly.
Workforce Management has an interesting article in which their HR chief Bill Contay speaks about how this culture was created, why it was created and some pointers on what other HR people can do to ensure that they get the much coveted but little realized "seat on the table".

Jobs. Jobs everywhere but not a single response from anywhere!

2007-07-02T14:17:00.000-04:00

This could be the cry that I hear so often from people. On discussing further it usually unfolds that they have been applying steadily for jobs online, but have not heard from any employer till date. The New York Times has an article "So Easy To Apply, So Hard o Be Noticed" explaining why this is happening,

"With the rise of online company job sites, along with job boards like CareerBuilder and other niche sites, it is easier than ever to apply for a job. At the same time, it is much harder for a résumé to be noticed."...."It quotes Wendy S. Enelow, executive director of Career Masters Institute, an association of résumé writers and career coaches based in Peterborough, N.H as saying "he harsh reality is that the No. 1 goal of most recruiters “is to eliminate and exclude as many people as possible."

So what does one do to get a job given this paradigm shift?

“Your job is not done after you click ‘send,'"
........................“You must also find some sort of inside contact.” advises the article.
Happy Reading.

Is Passion for your work necessary?

2007-06-29T15:54:00.000-04:00

This is something endlessly debated by HR/OD professionals and like all such debatable topics definitely an important and always interesting one. I recently read an article in the New York Times Finding Passion at Work which has some interesting insights to this age-old question . The author MARCI ALBOHER got a number of career coaches and advisers to answer the following:
" The people you write about seem to build satisfying careers because they have many passions. What if I’ve been working for a while and have never found anything you can call “work” that I’m passionate about?"

I hope you enjoy the advise as much as I did.

Corporate Governance takes center stage

2007-06-15T21:29:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in ET How Rishad Premji survived the Wipro interview, on the process used to induct the son of Azim Premji into Wipro.

"Rishad had to face up to three industry stalwarts: Ashok Ganguly, a former chairman of HLL, N Vaghul, non-executive chairman of ICICI Bank and PM Sinha, a former CEO of Pepsico’s South Asia operations. As independent directors on the board of Wipro, one of the India’s best-known software firms, the three gentlemen had an onerous duty to perform. They had to see if Rishad, the son of the man who controlled more than 80% stake in the company, was fit enough to join his dad’s company."

As an observer of the Indian corporate scene, I feel rather than the fact that a professional approach was utilized to induct Rishad, the more significant part of the news is that the media is interested in corporate governance issues. The Indian media attitude in earlier years used to be that public companies were "owned" by the promoters or majority share-holder. This is a good first step and more media attention is required to ensure that companies that float shares in the stock market are run in the interest of the shareholders.

Decline in Job Satisfactin in US

2007-02-28T14:17:00.000-05:00

The Conference Booard has released a report stating that job satisfaction levels in the US are declining. Some highlights from the report;

"Today, less than half of all Americans say they are satisfied with their jobs, down from 61 percent twenty years ago"

"Satisfaction is also low for performance review processes, workload, work/life balance, communication channels and potential for future growth"

"Less than two out of every five workers under the age of 25 are satisfied with their jobs. This segment of the population has the lowest level of satisfaction and the lowest level ever recorded in the nearly 20-year history of this survey."

Boy I would really hate to be in the shoes of people who are devising retention strategies for some of the companies out there.

Video Resumes anyone?

2007-02-26T17:23:00.000-05:00

Time has an interesting article on video resumes being used by some to get an edge in the job search process. It goes on to quote Jason Goldberg, CEO of Jobster as saying
"I can see a day when video as part of the résumé is the norm."

Now Jason is miles ahead of me in predicting trends,but I would like to believe with the other HR folks out there, that

"video résumés will invite lawsuits by candidates who could claim bias based on race, gender or age--indiscernible on paper but not on video.."
The other problem that I see is the difficulty in getting video search just right. I know that there are several services out there, but none of them is at the level of the mastery that Yahoo, Google etc. have in text search.

However whether you believe in the new thing or not, do go out and enjoy the great resume titled Impossible is Nothing.

The party to continue

2007-02-23T12:50:00.000-05:00

To me the news that Morgan Stanley will now go it alone in India as this article in New York Times reports means only one thing,
The M&A activity in India is expected to continue growing. So we will see some more large mergers like the Tata-Corus deal, the Ranbaxy-Terapia deal, or the Matrix-Mylan deal etc.

From the people point of view, this will lead to more opportunities for professionals in the investment banking sector in India.

Wal-Mart In India

2007-02-23T11:14:00.000-05:00

The New York Times has an article on the reaction to Wal-Mart's entry in India. How people are demonstrating against it, afraid that they will be rendered jobless.

"In New Delhi, more than 100 protesters shouted “Go back Wal-Mart” and waved placards saying “Save Small Retailers.” Some broke through police barricades and burned an effigy of a dummy with “Wal-Mart Down” scrawled on it."

Now I agree that once Wal-Mart enters India, if it's famed supply-chain gets it's act together, there will be many retailers who will find it difficult to compete and will have to shut shop.

However, and this is what many people seem to miss, Wal-Mart does mean lower prices for the consumers. If I have my math correct, there are more consumers than small retailers in India. The benefit of Wal-Mart entering India clearly outweighs the pain it will cause to the retailers, who will be forced to become more efficient, lower prices or close.

And this does not take into account the other large players like Reliance already entering the retail space. The retail space in India is bound to change, and from my view-point for the better. We see smarter stores, more customer friendly behavior, prices clearly marked and displayed, better and larger selection of products etc. And this does not take into account the benefits of a professional cadre of retail experts being created by these large players, who will ensure that this sector grows to provide employment opportunities to a large number of Indians.

I wonder

2007-02-20T12:39:00.000-05:00

Among the many areas that interest me, one question I find endlessly fascinating is;
What makes an executive succesful?
Let me be clear, by success, I mean the rather narrow definition involved in, and measured by promotion in one's job.
In this context, the current CEO of Daimler Chrysler Dieter Zetsche, is undoubtedly succesful.
His previous job was running Chrysler from 2000 to 2005, where he is reputed to have pulled a succesful turnaround.

As the Time magazine article in April 2006 puts it,
"Germany's Dieter Zetsche has earned a reputation as the auto industry's top mechanic. He has already done one star turn, restoring Chrysler to profitability after years of losses."

Now if that is so true, how come I read
this ,

" Germany's DaimlerChrysler AG is preparing to sell or spin off its troubled U.S. Chrysler Group, two published reports said Monday."

OR this

"DaimlerChrysler stock gets a lift from talk of Chrysler spinoff"

So I still keep on wondering, what actually leads to success in a job?

Infy's expansion plans

2007-01-26T18:57:00.000-05:00

In an interview with Businesseek Nandan Nilekani talks about, among other things, Infosys' expansion plans. How have they managed to sustain this blistering pace of expansion.

In his words "We believe we have created a new business model which is faster, better, and cheaper than the legacy firms. We are using the power of technology and global resources to have people globally doing similar high-quality work."

On the question of how many more they will need this year, hold your breath, " We are hiring 30,000 people by December."It sure means interesting job opportunities for a lot of people, though I do not envy the recruitment department at Infosys.

I find his assertions confident, without being brash. You can read the full interview here.

The new compensation philospohy!

2007-01-26T08:19:00.000-05:00

It seems that in the world of CEO pay, there is a new austerity campaign at work. The negative press devoted to outszed CEO pay seems to have resulted in new CEO's trying to ensure that they are seen as "Not greedy!"

As this article in Businesssweek highlights. So what will be his pay-out?
"Home Depot set new CEO Frank Blake's base salary at $975,000 and his bonus target at 200%, or $1.95 million. Of the target bonus, 70% is based on achievement of financial goals and 30% on achievement of individual performance measures, the company said in a filing with the Securities & Exchange Commission" as per the article in Businessweek.

The New York Times in it's article, Home Depot Chief’s Pay in 2007 Could Reach $8.9 Million
"Home Depot may pay its new chief executive, Frank Blake, $8.9 million this year, less than the $39.7 million it paid his predecessor, Robert L. Nardelli, who was ousted this month."

Is this an indication that the era of the super-star CEO is coming to an end?

I really doubt it, and this article from Forbes will help explain why.

Dealing with difficult colleagues

2007-01-19T07:38:00.000-05:00

Since most of us make our living working with other colleagues, the skills necessary to work with others play an important role in deciding how succesful we will be. This is the reason why inter-personal skills, emotional intelligence etc. have such a resonance.

The ultimate test of these skills is when we have to deal with the really difficult colleagues, those who eem to specialize in creating problems, finding problems with any new project, creating problems for others etc. We all know them or worse have to deal with them day in and day out.

The New York Times has an interesting article "Help, I’m Surrounded by Jerks" by Stephanie Rosenbloom on the same and the booming industry that has sprung up to teach people on how to cope with these difficult people.

The interesting part of the advice sems to be "the problem is not the difficult people themselves. It is you.....................people exhibit difficult behavior because they have a need that is not being met. Understanding that need — a colleague may be snappish, for instance, because his personal life is in turmoil — helps take the sting out of his or her actions, they say."

Imagence Partners

2006-09-28T16:01:00.000-04:00

I am happy to note that Gautam Ghosh, whose blog is such a pleasure to read, has finally coe out with a name for his business venure. He has named it Imagence Partners. Here he explains how he came up with the name,

"We also wanted a name that captures our philosophy behind the OD, HR and Blog consulting work we aspire to do: and that is that it is not possible for us as external consultants to have the answers that the clients may not know, but that as external people, we have less of their blind spots and can see more possibilities. If these are identified then they would evolve and develop into strengths for the future.

Thus emerged (an appropriate word) the words - Image/Imagine and Emergence - that coalesce to form Imagence.

Partners - because that's what we are, of each other, and that's what we aspire to be for our clients :-)"

Here is wishing Gautam all the best in his new venture.

Dell Adds 500 Engineering Jobs in Texas

2006-09-25T14:06:00.000-04:00

Dell Adds 500 Engineering Jobs in Texas is big news, big enough for their Chairman Michael Dell to anounce it, and the Governor of Texas Rick Perry to be with him, when he does so.

Yahoo Builds Brickhouse Around Talent

2006-09-19T15:10:00.000-04:00

Yahoo Builds Brickhouse Around Talent is the title for a post at GigaOM Liz Gaines.I reached it via the post Creatively retaining talent when I clickedthis post at Gautam's blog.
"Yahoo is in the process of setting up an in-house incubator in an attempt to hold onto its expensive talent.." writes Liz. The discussion on the blogs generally views allowing people the freedom to do their own thing as a great retention tactic.

I am sure that the creative types in Yahoo, Google, 3M etc. love the freedom to be out there trying to make new discoveries, inventing new machines, discovering a new process etc. on projects of their own choosing. However to answer Max's question
"Could you see something like this at Pfizer or Ford?"
Definitely yes at their labs.The sales people or the guys in accounting may not find it fun to spend 20% of their time inventing new stuff, they may prefer instead to get some time to volunteer at their favorite charity, or the flexibility to design their own sales route, or a new procedure that is less bureaucratic. As any good HR person can tell you, one size fits all recipes/ solutions do not exist for human beings. If they did, all organizations would be carbon copies of each other.

Hence the need to find a different retention tactics is dictated not only by a different business model, industry, market etc. but by differing human nature itself.

Random Thoughts

2006-09-12T10:57:00.000-04:00

Sometimes during the day, as I read various web posts, newspaper articles or magazines I start to try to connect the dots or decipher the pattern behind the news. One such thing that has been bothering me is the recent news of a large number of employees leaving Dell to join Lenovo. Now some of it is obviously the result of William Amelio from Dell becoming the CEO of Lenovo.

I however am a firm believer in the theory that employees leave a company mainly because they are not fully satisfied with their current assignment, or superior, or growth opportunities or the company etc. I see this everyday in my job as a recruiter. I find it almost impossible to convince an employee who has been having a great run in a good company which is doing well to even listen to a pitch for another assignment.

This is why I believe that the reason for the large number of people leaving Dell is that they are unhappy with it and Lenovo may just be the only boat out there.The more I read about news like this and this the more I am convinced that it was a case of employees leaving Dell rather than them joining Lenovo.

To get ahead work longer!

2006-09-05T12:15:00.000-04:00

Forget what the management consultant's keep harping about "Work smarter not harder", or the other refrain of HR consultants "Work-life balance". If Shankar Vedantam's article "In Today's Rat Race, the Most Overworked Win" in the Washington Post is to believed, those who work longer hours get ahead over others. Though he has quoted only from experiences in law firms, I like the explanation he has for the phenomenon that though workers want shorter hours, the work week seems to be actually getting longer;

"...the paradox arises because of the changing nature of the workplace. In a growing number of professions, especially those that involve thinking and social skills, managers and owners find it difficult to measure the day-to-day performance of employees.

When employees make tangible products, it is easy to measure performance based on the quality of the products. But when work is intangible and involves aesthetics, judgment or social networking, employers do not have easy ways of measuring how important such activity is to the bottom line, Cornell sociologist Marin E. Clarkberg said.

"When you have an undefinable product, there is a temptation to measure output in terms of hours," she said. "In law and a lot of amorphous professions, when you are trying to win a case or being a professor, you are doing things like thinking. It's not like little widgets you produce which you can count."

Now I really do not hanker after reduced working hours, or spending too much time developing interests apart from work. I remember as a Management Trainee, being told in a meeting by Yogi Deveshwar, Chairman ITC Ltd., (who was then heading their Hotel Division) "no-one ever died of hard work". But then I believe in the old adage "Get a job that you love and you will never work a day in your life."

Continuous learning as a retention tool!

2006-08-28T14:13:00.000-04:00

Interesting article here on how an opportunity to learn is being used as a retention tool in the Indian business world:

"If you wanna keep them, you gotta teach them — that seems to be the new mantra for HR managers. Learning organisations, meaning those which ensure constant employee learning, tend to retain employees better, agree HR professionals. With learning becoming a key differentiator for companies vying to retain talent, corporate varsities could be the next big thing in HR policies in the country."

The only caveat is that this band-aid approach to HR issues has a tendency of becoming a way to introduce the "next big thing". This is often a result of three factors:

a) Benchmarking: Another way of saying, keeping up with the Joneses or should I say Jains in the Indian scenario.

b) Job- Hopping: A manager job-hopping from one company to another has a tendency to apply tried and tested methods, those that he had seen work in the last company.

c) Nobody has a clue to what is the cause of the problem and so have no idea what the solution should be. Now no one gets promoted by confessing they have no clue what to do, so the safest bet is to try out the "next big thing". If it is being done by the 5 top multi-nationals and 3 of the fastest growing Indian firms,etc. etc. how can it not be the solution.

So before you implement something, check if the solutions are required or would work in your company which may have a totally different business strategy, competitive landscape, culture, employee profile, etc. from other companies where the particular solution has worked, or is being claimed to have worked.

Why oh why do they not pay me what I deserve?

2006-08-17T16:01:00.000-04:00

Since most people I meet, talk to seem to feel that they are underpaid (or at least tell me that!)I feel that they might find this article of use in evaluating how well they are paid vis-a-vis others and what they bring on to the table.

How would Narcissus do as a CEO?

2006-08-15T17:54:00.000-04:00

If you always believed that your boss was in love with himself, and wondered what impact this self-love has had on the performance of the team,two academic types have done some research to answer this.

As the Economist puts it:

"Arijit Chatterjee and Donald Hambrick, of Pennsylvania State University, examined narcissism in the upper echelons of 105 firms in the computer and software industries.........
Narcissism naturally drives people to seek positions of power and influence, and because great self-esteem helps your professional advance, say the authors, chief executives will tend on average to be more narcissistic than the general population. How does that affect a firm? Messrs Chatterjee and Hambrick found that highly narcissistic bosses tended to make bigger changes in the use of important resources, such as research and development, or in spending and leverage; they carried out more and bigger mergers and acquisitions; and their results were both more extreme (more big wins or big losses) and more volatile than those of firms run by their humbler peers. For shareholders, that could be good or bad."

Fly Fishing

2006-08-06T15:20:00.000-04:00

It was a lovely day outside, temperature ranging from 69 to 87 degrees and the sun was playing hide and seek. Ideal for a walk I felt and so I went for a two hour walk on the Delaware & Raritan Canal. (I am lucky enough to live just next to this lovely trail; you can see some photographs here.)

I love to walk for it gives me the opportunity to reflect on things and I am able to devote time and thought to any issue that I might be facing at that time. I have realized that walking does not require much active thought, so most of your brain power can be used to reflect on other things. One can take any knotted issue, tease out the various strands, uncurl them and lay them out till the problem at the core is revealed. Once the problem is revealed, finding a solution is so much easier.

Today not having any issue that I was grappling with, I was able to look around and I saw a few fisherman, who were fly fishing in the canal. I got to observing one person in particular and saw how beautifully and with what great patience he would move the rod in a semi-circle all time paying out the line and not letting it touch the ground or the water. The line and the yellow fly were a blur, poetry in motion! Once a long enough line has been let out he would flick his wrist and the fly would land at a spot on the water. The fisherman would let the fly rest for a moment and then reel in the line. I did not see him catch a single fish in the ten or fifteen minutes that I watched him, but he was still at it when I crossed him again on my return about forty-five minutes later and there was a look of rapt attention on his face. He was not aware of anything else around him, but instead was totally focused on casting his line and reeling it in.

Now you may wonder what this has to do with selection, recruitment or retention. Patience I say and all will be revealed. During the rest of my walk I started to think on how this was like selection and recruitment. To be good at the game of recruitment, and to be able to find a great candidate, this ability to repeatedly cast your hook is what you need. I have often seen recruiters get disappointed if their first few calls do not result in a candidate interested in the position, or worse still if they find a candidate and they send him for an interview and he is not selected and the worst-case scenario of the candidate being selected but not taking the offer for some reason or the other. What we need to understand is that we need to repeatedly cast the line, and we need to get better at doing so with time, trying to figure out which patch of water may have the hungriest fish and how to land the line smoothly so that the fly looks as natural as possible.

Like fishermen we need to improve our presentation to the candidate. After all the candidate that we want are those who are not actively looking for jobs, applying right left and center for each and every possible job, but those who are relatively successful and happy with their current job and assignment. They are by nature wary of and often besieged by headhunters, so they are not likely to bite at each and every fly that lands near them. So next week will see me once again actively looking for candidates, finding out new ways to approach them, tweaking my presentation and hopefully helping some more people achieve their career goals, all the time enjoying the process as much as the actual act of placing a great candidate.

Moving up the value chain

2006-07-27T15:04:00.000-04:00

Interesting article in the BusinessWeek on how Indian companies are moving up from plain vanilla "call centers" to more sophisticated work. As the Business Week puts it

"Indian outsourcers have begun turning down call center contracts, preferring better-paying deals for processing mortgages, handling insurance claims, overseeing payrolls, and more."

The reason as the article analyses are many, from
"U.S. corporate clients continually try to ratchet down prices" to "wages have increased and qualified workers have become scarce. In many shops, some 60% of staffers quit in the first year"

This is the reason Human Resource function has become so important in India, with a good professional worth her weight in gold.

Turning Freelance

2006-07-25T12:07:00.000-04:00

Just got an e-mail from Gautam Ghosh that he is leaving his current job with Deloitte to venture out on his own with his wife, or as he put it Turning freelance

One can sense the feeling of excitement that he is experiencing by just reading the post.

As I told him he has the name recognition and the credibility to make a success of his new venture, and I wish him the best in his endavors.

Google Trends

2006-07-05T08:19:00.000-04:00

An article The Internet Knows What You'll Do Next in the New York Times, led me to Google Trends. As the article says
"It allows you to check the relative popularity of any search term, to look at how it has changed over the last couple years and to see the cities where the term is most popular. And it's totally addictive."

Once there I got interested in trying to figure out which of the following four words;
Careers, Recruitment, Jobs, and Employment would people search for the most.
I found was that they ranked in the following order
1) Jobs 2) Employment 3) Career 4) Retirement
The funny part was that in the News reference volume the rank was
1) Career 2) Jobs 3) Employment 4) Recruitment

So it seems that while those who write about it,(the HR pundits?) want to talk about careers, the employees know that it is about the current job. After all, in this quickly changing global economy, where Mergers &Acquisition’s, changing technology, currency fluctuations, rising wages, new competitors etc. mean company's need to and actually do hire or lay-off to meet changing demand patterns, most people will work for multiple companies. So people are less interested in long-term employment with a firm and the promised long term benefits and growth opportunities, but more in what the current opportunity is and what it would pay.After all who can guarantee that the company will exist a few years down the line, or whether it will be in the same business even if it does? Thus the consequent shift in emphasis from Careers to Jobs.

My advice for whatever it is worth, as a first step companies should replace their “Career Section” with a “Job Section” on their web-sites, step two start thinking harder about retention strategies.
As the article in The New York Times points out
“When people went to the home page of Google or Yahoo and entered a few words into a search engine, what they were really doing, he realized, was announcing their intention"…."If somebody were to add up all this information, it would produce a pretty good notion of where the world was headed, of what was about to get hot and what was going out of style" and Google Trends just did exactly that and made it available to us.

Globalization of managerial talent

2006-06-22T16:33:00.000-04:00

The Economist has an interesting article on how since companies have not succeeded in localizing managerial talent "Although the end of foreign postings has long been predicted, many companies are sending more people abroad than ever before. But they are trying to keep down the costs of doing so. The traditional business-class expat, usually male and Western, is steadily being replaced by an economy version who may well come from a developing country."
As a result
"Well-educated Indians, Chinese, Brazilians or Mexicans—often armed with degrees from foreign universities—are perfect candidates for many European or American firms that want them to gain experience in the head office before they take on greater responsibility in their home markets."
Sanjay Joshi of WIPRO had an interesting explanation for use of expatriates by his company "We sprinkle Indians in new markets to help seed and set up the culture and intensity,” says Mr Joshi. International postings also help to spread good business methods across the company and to attract skilled employees. “In the past, India never had world-class brands,” he adds. “Now, a big part of our recruiting is telling people that they will get a chance to work abroad.”

The increasing use of non-Western managers will lead to diversity in the workforce and the consequent benefits for companies. It should also help in the creation of a globalized work-force that understands the challenges of a global economy.

Dearth of Middle Management Talent

2006-06-19T16:09:00.000-04:00

Read an interesting article on the dearth of middle management talent in India at Tech Curry. The post quotes Manuel D’Souza, VP-HR, Intelenet Global Services as saying "It’s very easy to find candidates with more than 14 years and less than four years of experience, but hiring middle managers with relevant experience can be quite a challenge."
This resonated with me for I am currently executing a mandate to recruit for an AVP/VP positions in HR for a global provider of high-quality business and technology services. These openings are based in Gurgaon, Jaipur and Hyderabad in India. This is a fast expanding organization and is seen as one of the best in its line of business. Working for them does add to the market demand. They were looking for post-MBA about 10 years experience in India for the AVP position and 14 years for the VP position. Salary was not a constraint for the right candidate, and they are seen as one of the better paymasters in the Indian BPO market.

The response for the position was very low, the reasons being
a) That candidates who would fit the experience requirement and meet the exacting standards of being functionally strong as well as great at communicating are not exactly thick on the ground to begin with.
b) Those that do have many other options.

I am however hopeful that by pegging away, calling up referrals I will eventually end up with the right candidates.

The passing of an era!

2006-06-16T07:11:00.000-04:00

The old order changeth, yielding place to new,
And God fulfils Himself in many ways,
Lest one good custom should corrupt the world.
Morte d’Arthur by Lord Alfred Tennyson

The news that Bill Gates will be ceding control at Microsoft is something that may not come as a shock to many who have followed his growing interest in his philanthropic work and the important role that the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation has in the lives of millions, but it sure is a big change not only for Microsoft, but for all whose lives have been changed by the introduction of PC's.
The New York Times article where I read this, quotes George F. Colony, chief executive of Forrester Research as saying,
"I think we'll look back at this day as the separation between two eras in software — the first being software in a box, and the second software distributed over the Internet for free and funded by advertising.."
Google which has emerged as the biggest threat to the Microsoft business model, has already started with it's launch of spreadsheets and word processing software as this article notes.

Gautam Ghosh on Management: Why Lefkow is in the wrong zone.

2006-06-08T09:45:00.000-04:00

Gautam Ghosh on Management: Why Lefkow is in the wrong zone.
Interesting take by Gautam on the article by Lefkow. Being an ex-HR Manager and currently running a recruitment firm, I can feel the frustration expressed by both Gautam and Lefkow.I agree with Gautam, that the HR function has the greatest impact when it is treated holistically, breaking it up only creates moving parts that often work at cross-puposes.
However looking at it from the Recruitment Department's perspective, I can agree with Lefkow that their interests might be best served by not being associated with a function, which has a negative perception. Also HR has the unfortunate tendency to be legalistic and bureaucratic, tendencies that are all too easy to see and ridicule.But then all this comes in handy when you are faced with an EEO complaint, and the paper work is all that protects you from a multi-million dollar ant--discrimination suit. So my advice is for recruitment departments to continue to be part of HR, with the addendum that HR Heads should start to be become business leaders.

Expanding the employee pool

2006-06-08T09:02:00.000-04:00

Finally Indian industry is realizing that it cannot do it all by itself. The reality is that it is necessary for employees to learn the 3 R's in school for them to be able to contribute to their fullest and realize their growth potential, a fundamental right for every human being. It is almost impossible for industry to take on the task of teaching the basics for it's employees. HR leaders in industry know that there is pressure on them to justify spending time and money, both resources in short supply,in training their workforce.

Nasscom President Kiran Karnik therefore has it correct when he says, "tie-ups with state governments and educational institutions were the need of the hour with emphasis on changing curriculum at school levels..."

How a Third Party Recruiter Adds Value for the candidate

2006-06-06T11:54:00.000-04:00

Interesting article by Anthony Haley on why dealing with a third-party recruiter is often beneficial for a candidate, and why they prefer to deal via the third-party recruiter rather than directly with a company.

The third-party recruiter can be a powerful channel for any company, however good their other recruiting channels and should not be overlooked in the company's desire to control cost of recruitment. A company should not settle for less than the best candidate just to avoid recruitment fees, for one should not forget the old saying "Penny wise, pound foolish."

"Nobody's perfect, but a team can be."

2006-05-26T15:42:00.002-04:00

After a month's gap in which I was in Dubai and India, this speech by the Siemens chief on globalization seems so apt to me.
The article in knowledge@wharton quotes the Siemens CEO Klaus Kleinfeld as saying "Corporate leaders must build international organizations to compete in today's economy and be prepared to defend globalization at home."

As I see it, the action is everywhere in the world, limited only by a nations willingness to create physial infrastructure and human capital. All that is needed is the desire to do better and to ensure that a level playing field is created to liberate a nations entrepreneurial energies.

As Klaus Kleinfield says "In today's world, knowledge travels faster than ever before, so if you are talking about a sustainable competitive advantage, probably the only one is the quality of the people you have and the way they interact as a team."

Advice for those looking for their first job

2006-04-24T09:45:00.000-04:00

Mary Ellen Slayter at the Washington Post writes about the book "Confessions of a Recruiting Director: The Insider's Guide to Landing Your First Job" by Brad Karsh in her article A Recruiter Tells What Won't Impress. Let me confess, I have not read the book and it does not look likely that I am reading it in the near future. That said, the information in the book seems good. Some nuggets as covered in the article are below:

"Most résumés are never read....And if yours happens to be read? You'll get 15 seconds, tops, to catch the recruiter's eye...
Most cover letters are never read, either. But you still have to write them, for two reasons. One, companies want to see if you will put in the extra effort. "Some companies will use it as a screen against people who apply to every job opening they ever see," Karsh writes. Second, it is a chance to show something extra that isn't on your résumé.
Most people welcome "networking" calls. "People love to talk about themselves and give advice," he writes. So don't be shy; pick up the phone."

There is much more here that should be useful to those looking for their first job, especially if they have no one with recruiting experience to advice them. On second thoughts I might just go ahead and try to read the book, I too will learn some more. After all advice about networking is always beneficial, whichever stage of your career or life you are in.

Memo to self.,"Clean up the office."

2006-04-04T16:39:00.000-04:00

This is a "I told you so moment" for my wife. She always has held that those who keep a neat and clean office do better career wise than those who do not. Now Anne Fisher at Fortune seems to support her thesis. You can read the article here.

It makes sense in a perverse sort of a way. Since impression management is such an important part of success in a career, a clean office creates the impression of someone in control of their work and so
a) On top of it.
b) May be ready to take on more responsibility.
So get to it, as part of the spring cleaning, you might as well get the office cleaned up.

Why U.S. Business Is Winning

2006-03-27T10:32:00.000-05:00

The Washington Post has an article by Sebastian Mallaby Why U.S. Business Is Winning which explains why American business is doing better that their competitors in Europe or Japan.Apart from the obvious ones of greater competition and a lack of regulations that hamper business and stop them from growing as well as a focus on meritocracy, Sebastian Mallaby feels that the bigger reasons are "American business excels at managing service workers and knowledge workers: at equipping these people with technology, empowering them with the right level of independence and paying for performance. So the era of decentralized "network" businesses is the American era." In addition
"Moreover, America's business culture is perfectly matched to globalization. American executive suites and MBA courses are full of talented immigrants, so American managers think nothing of working in multicultural firms.The immigrants have links to their home countries, so Americans have an advantage in establishing global supply chains."
The last is a point that I strongly agree with, having worked in Bombay( now Mumbai) at the start of my career, I have always felt that the reason for it's preeminent position as the commercial capital of India was it's ability to attract immigrants from all over India. As other cities like Bangalore, Pune and Hyderabad have become more cosmopolitan, they too have boomed and now find it easier to attract talent from all over India and even foreign countries.
The lesson for companies, learn to be a place where multi-culturalism thrives, equip your managers with the skills necessary to work with cross cultural teams. Individual employees need to build skills necessary to work with diverse multi-cultural teams, skills like cultural sensitivity,communicating across cultures etc.

Result of Lying on your resume

2006-03-22T23:33:00.000-05:00

Following up on my February 21st post, there is an article in The Economic Times Wipro fires employees for faking CVs which says

"Wipro has just fired some employees for faking their CVs. It has also filed police complaints against several recruitment agencies for helping these employees falsify CV information"

More interestingly as per the article
" IBM India recently sacked many employees for the same reason. Some are said to have worked there for two years."

My advice to a candidate, it is best not to lie on the resume, you never know when it will catch up with you, if you get fired after two years you having nothing to show for these two years. To an employer this means it is incumbent upon you to ensure that you put in place a rigorous process to verify the resumes that are submitted to you.

To me as a person running a placement firm, the most worrying part is the allegation of recruitment firms being involved in falsifying the resumes. I can therefore only quote Shakespeare “Something is rotten in the state of Denmark" if the placement agency which is supposed to help separate the wheat from the chaff is itself in the game of mixing the two.

Leadership Style

2006-03-16T09:01:00.000-05:00

Prof.Roderick M. Kramer has an article in the Harvard Business Review titled The Great
Intimidators in which he talks about the type of leaders who "exploit people's
weaknesses and insecurities." A copy of the article can be ordered from here.

As the article description says "Many great intimidators have done fine for a long time and continue to thrive.....They're rough, loud, and in your face. Their tactics include invading others' personal space, staging tantrums, keeping people guessing, and possessing an indisputable command of facts. But make no mistake--great intimidators are not your typical bullies. They're driven by vision, not by sheer ego or malice."
And the most interesting part says "great intimidators often attract the best and brightest. In the author's research, some individuals reported having positive relationships with intimidating leaders."
I sure will try to get hold of the article and read it up, if nothing else it will give a contrarion view of leadeship styles.

Saving HR from being outsourced

2006-03-10T13:39:00.000-05:00

While browsing through Gautam’s blog today, (full disclosure; I do this regularly and enjoy it too!) I came upon this post from his friend Sanjay Lakhotia on how HR folks can save their jobs from being outsourced. Some of it was good advice, some not so good however. Before I explain, I will request you to be patient and read through the full post.

My understanding based on the years that I have spent in the HR function, whatever little reading that I have done, and what I observe in the US where I am now based is as follows:

The HR department (like any other) has two functions, strategic and transactional. It is the transactional function that is being and generally will be outsourced by companies.Currently most companies have in-house HR functions and they are only slowly outsourcing the function.You can buy a Watson Wyatt report or read an excerpt here.

The transactional role does not add much value to the company in terms of helping it attain a competitive advantage through differentiation. Hence the focus here is usually on reducing cost, thus the desire to outsource. These are the areas of HR which are seen as the routine, repetitive tasks e.g. filling in HR forms like PF, ESI, etc., ensuring statutory filings, running the cafeteria, payroll processing, the time keeping function, transport for employees etc. .

In the strategic HR areas, companies will (or at least should) not outsource and will continue to keep these functions in-house. These functions help the company achieve competitive advantage usually by allowing it to differentiate itself from the competitors. These functions like predicting manpower requirements in the future, defining the organizational structure, devising the compensation plan,etc. will by definition tie in closely with the ‘business strategy” of the organization and will contribute to not only supporting the strategy, but help in formulating it. These functions will gain in importance in the company. (if they have already not done so.)

What does it mean for the traditional HR person who has come up learning the administration, IR function as the bread and butter issues of the department/function, and training/organization design/ compensation strategy etc as the peripheral? Is she doomed to be outsourced? (Not that it is a bad thing especially if it is to one of these firms like Genpact or Evaluserve in India where you are paid above the market and your skills are strategic and become business functions)Or can she stay relevant to the organization?

Using Porters Generic Value Chain as a model to clarify/elucidate how to stay relevant as a function.

We can see that the HR function is what Porter calls a support activity, something not really integral to the company. We therefore need to make sure that the function becomes integrated in a stronger way into the company value chain. If we identify the relevant firm-specific activities in the HR function, map how the process flows, and then isolate the activities that add value to our company, we will see that a large number of these activities (the transactional ones mentioned above) do not add value.
However if we link these transactional activities in a web, such that performance or cost of these activities affect that of other strategic activities that add value, we can ensure that the transactional activities add value . Competitive advantage, either a cost advantage or a differentiation advantage may be obtained by optimizing and coordinating linked activities.

What do I mean by this mumbo-jumbo? An example should clarify. Take our hypothetical company run by a traditional HR department, which has called our good friend “Mr. Consultant” for advice. He comes in, does a study, takes feedback from the employees (or clients of HR, or the internal customer whatever, maps the processes etc.) He then analyzes the stuff and comes up with his recommendations, we need to get out of the routine administrative stuff. Let’s outsource the cafeteria, it is a transactional activity, not strategic to the company and not one of the “core competencies” of the company, (unless you are in the business of running cafeterias.) The end result, consultant’s advice is followed. By the way it usually is. After all so much money has been paid to him, he has a degree from an MBA school, uses all the latest jargon, has made a fancy multi-media presentation, works in a big name consultancy (which has a Knowledge Center in the capital of your country) etc. etc. So what chance do you, a provincial Personnel Manager, with an undergraduate degree have against this juggernaut?

You could ensure that this cafeteria becomes a source of pride, a way for you to distinguish yourself from the competition, something that adds to your ability to hire top level employees. Not possible you say, then read here and here.
In this way you have taken a transactional activity (running an employee cafetaria)and by linking it to a strategic activity (recruitment and retention of top flight talent, positive coverage in the media, health of the employees, building client relationships etc. etc.) transformed it into a strategic activity. “Non-value adding activities” can therefore become competitive weapons. Voila!

Integrating merged firms

2006-03-07T08:07:00.000-05:00

As this article at Investors Business Daily by Laura Mandaro titled Wave Of Takeovers Shows M&A Activity Remains Very High, highlights, 2006 seems to be another year when mergers will be fairly common.

"Global announced mergers, boosted by U.K. and European deals, has totaled $570 billion in 2006, topping the $430 billion at this time last year".

With the mergers comes the issue of integrating the two firms culturally and The Washington Post article titled Marriages of Convergence shows how widely divergent the approach to this critical issue can be.They vary from

"We want every employee to answer the phone 'BAE Systems' on day one,"

"An acquired company will eventually adopt ManTech's name, but not right away"

Hey as my mother say's, " Whatever works for you....."

Expatriate Work Experience

2006-02-28T09:42:00.000-05:00

Just read two interesting articles on the value of expatriate work experience and how it adds to your resume.
Hillary Chura writes A Year Abroad (or 3) as a Career Move in the New York Times. The article is on how students passing out of college are gaining experience abroad and finding that it helps them in their search for jobs in the US. " Foreign experience demonstrates entrepreneurship, resourcefulness and independence, .......people who work and support themselves overseas tend to be inquisitive, flexible and adaptive — valuable skills in today's workplace."

S. Mitra Kalita in The Washington Post in the article A Reversal of the Tide in India talks of how Indians returning from the US and other foreign countries find themselves highly valued employees. Their technical skills as well as undertanding of the foreign markets is welcomed."Companies here seek managers with U.S. experience ..........to connect American customers with Indian workforces"

My take away from the articles is that in an increasingly economically intertwined world working a few years in a foreign country will be more and more valued.

Should you lie on your resume?

2006-02-21T16:09:00.000-05:00

Hopefully this news item RadioShack Chief Resigns after lying should settle it once and for all.David J. Edmondson had to resign over discrepancy betwen his claim of having received the degree and the denial by the college where he claimed he had got the degree etc. etc.

Now the important part is that Mr. Edmondson has been working at RadioShack since 1994 and he has receied promotions in the company, but still he had to resign as he had inflated his educational qualifications. The lack of the degree was obviously not a hindrance in his job performance. So it begs the question, "Why the hell did he lie?"

Our takeaway from all this, stop inflating your accomplishments,educational or otherwise, you will get caught on it one day or the other.

The drive to measure

2006-02-15T14:23:00.000-05:00

CFO Magazine has an article The New Human-Capital Metrics that highlights how companies are increasingly measuring HR activities. It is an interesting read, especially as it is the harbinger of things to come for more and more companies.
The need to measure is intrinsic to all quality initiatives, which are necessary if you intend to improve. In this hyper-competitive global market, every company has to look at ways in which they can get an edge over their competitors, improve and evolve to survive.

Referral Programs

2006-02-09T14:30:00.000-05:00

Dave Lefkow has an interesting article on how referral programs will be more and more important for companies as baby boomers retire.The Future of Employee Referral Programs talks of how it will be necessary to :
1) Extend employee referral programs to passive job seekers.
2) Use employees to help you convert passives to actives. J
3) Leverage employee relationships and affiliations to get ahead of hiring demand.
4)Focus employees on top performers and key skill-sets.
5) Create a culture of rapid follow-up.
More importantly the way I see it, referrals happen not only if you incent the current employees, but also if you make sure that they are proud to be associated with your company. If you build the "Brand"
and convert your employees to be your "Brand ambassadors" instead of just relying on monetary incentives.

Company Loyalty

2006-02-04T19:13:00.000-05:00

Interesting article in HBS Working Knowledge for Executives, “Rethinking Company Loyalty” by Lauren Keller Johnson. Especially relevant as the economy strengthens and the labor market tightens. With increasing demand for employees, more and more companies will be hit by increasing employee turnover. The article suggests that though the idea of ‘cradle to grave jobs’ is dead, neither employees nor employers want to have job spans of only two or three years.
Some ways we can increase the length of jobs, careers in a ccompany that are suggested:

1. Align career growth with company goals.
2. Design work with variety and autonomy.
3. Focus on relationships.
4. Highlight the link between employees' values and your company's mission

Simple to say but difficult to execute as many an HR professional can tell you.

Performance Based Pay

2006-02-01T15:34:00.000-05:00

The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article in titled The Best vs. the Rest: Companies Target Raises to Top Performers By Erin White. This stresses that more and more companies are differentiating between employees on the basis of performance.
I came across the article via this one by Kevin Wheeler. Kevin has a point when he says that "Only by constantly working internally to influence such things are compensation systems, performance systems, and communication — and externally to tune and refine our selection tools — can we attract and hire great candidates."

Google and Drucker

2005-12-13T10:52:00.000-05:00

Google utilizes Peter Drucker's insights to manage it's workforce, or at least that is what is claimed by their CEO Eric Scmidt. In an aricle in Newsweek, they lay down their Ten Golden Rules.

Some of them seem to make sense, such as
Hire by committee definitely good and recommended as it gives you more than one opinion, and eliminates any possibility of bias.
Others like
Cater to their every need sound like the dot-com days, especially this line Let's face it: programmers want to program, they don't want to do their laundry.
Now forget programmers, do you know anyone who loves to do laundry?

Now what is a non-expert to do?

2005-12-10T11:02:00.000-05:00

I just finished an interesting review in the New Yorker of the expert psychologist from Berkeley Prof.Philip Tetlock’s new book, “Expert Political Judgment: How Good Is It? How Can We Know?”.

I was directed to the article EVERYBODY’S AN EXPERT,Putting predictions to the test written by Louis Menand by this post in Gautam Ghosh's blog I'm not an expert, just a blogger !

The book seems to say that experts become fascinated by their one big idea and so tend to be wrong more often than they are right, i.e. score low in their ability to predict what will happen in the future. Prof Philip Tetlock uses the metaphor of hedgehog and fox made famous by Isiah Berlin in his article "The Hedgehog and the Fox".
He says

Low scorers look like hedgehogs: thinkers who “know one big thing,” aggressively extend the explanatory reach of that one big thing into new domains, display bristly impatience with those who “do not get it,” and express considerable confidence that they are already pretty proficient forecasters, at least in the long term. High scorers look like foxes: thinkers who know many small things (tricks of their trade), are skeptical of grand schemes, see explanation and prediction not as deductive exercises but rather as exercises in flexible “ad hocery” that require stitching together diverse sources of information, and are rather diffident about their own forecasting prowess.

So far so good, seems very plausible and believable and such a great thing for us dilettantes who wish to be polymaths and learn more and more, about more and more, so as to one day dazzle the world with our protean knowledge.

However the problem is the other expert who has studied organizations and why some seem to do better than others. I refer to the Management guru, Jim Collins, author of the immensely popular 'Built to Last' and 'Good to Great'whose take on the same line by Archilochus 'The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing' is that

Those who built the good-to-great companies were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs.

Now I can only lament Hamlet like
To be, or not to be--that is the question:
Whether 'tis nobler in the mind to be a hedgehog, know one big thing and score low on predictions while making great companies, or be the fox, predict more accurately, but never lead a great company!
Oh the agony of it all!

Networking effectively

2005-12-07T22:03:00.000-05:00

Interesting article on networking, how to evaluate your network, and build an effective network and actively manage it in the Harvard Business Review by Brian Uzzi and Shannon Dunlap titled How To Build Your Network.
Rare is the person who does not want to network, but rarer still are those who do it well. This is a great article showing you how to do it efficiently and effectvely, definitely worth a read.

Organizational Culture and Employee Turnover

2005-11-21T08:26:00.000-05:00

Today having woken up at about 4 am , I had a lot of time on my hand and so started to read thru the Wall Street Journal early in the morning rather than later in the day as I usually do. An article on Jim Collins, meant that I log on to Jim Collin's website and spend some time browsing through and revisiting material I had read some time back.

I was struck by this line in there
"The good-to-great companies showed the following bipolar pattern at the top management level: People either stayed on the bus for a long time or got off the bus in a hurry. In other words, the good-to-great companies did not churn more, they churned better."

I got to wondering whether this might not only be a result of the company/great leaders action to rid the company of a not so strong performer as Jim Collins suggests, but also a result of the "strong culture" in most such companies and the inability of some to fit in there. As a recruiter I often emphasize that cultural fit is necessary for a succesful tenure (at least a happy one!) and a lack of a fit should be a dealbreaker during the interview/recruiting process especially in companies that have a high-performance-high commitment work culture.

Manage or Contribute

2005-11-19T21:23:00.000-05:00

We have all seen the team in which no one seems to be pulling their weight, all the work is being done by the Manager of the team. There is an interesting article in a Science Magazine titled Lab Dynamics: Doing Everyone Else's Job on this by Carl M. Cohen, Suzanne L. Cohen. The article explains the case of scientist who complains that his research staff showed no initiative, but analysis by an outsider colleague showed that it was due to the team members not having any space for taking any initiative. Definitely an interesting read as it highlights the difference between technical and managerial skills.