5 ways to maximize your recruiting efforts

Simply put, your job is to hire people. But for you to do your job well means you have to hire the right person for the right job. This is where your job gets difficult. Oftentimes, the people that respond to your posting in a newspaper or online aren’t the ideal candidates. These people are cold calling a million other places and put little thought into where they’re actually applying. You need to find the person for the job you’re filling; the right person isn’t going to find you. Consider these five tips on better recruiting:

1. Extend your network. This is a common adage for the job seeker, but it works just as well for the employer. Contact local colleges and universities and speak with their career counselors. This is a great way to tap into a talent pool of young, educated, and eager people just hitting the job market. Career counselors know what type of candidates they have through interviews and are usually excellent judges of talent.

2. Look in-house. If you have a position you need to fill, who better to turn to than someone who already knows what you’re looking? Before advertising a job listing to the public do so internally. A current employee looking to advance in the company will know how the system works and will be more easily trained. It also builds employee morale when you hire within because it makes current employees feel valuable.

3. Look for experience. This sounds like a no-brainer, right? But going for someone who simply graduated from a top college doesn’t always translate into success. Look for people that have performed a similar job to the one you’re looking to fill and have done so successfully. This will make the transition easier and they’ll already know the professional landscape.

4. Advertise your benefits. Given the current economic landscape prospective employees want to know what you’ll give them beyond salary. Sure a competitive salary is crucial, but if you offer comprehensive healthcare then let it be known. Have a free health club? Have a great retirement plan? Sell it.

5. Tap your employee’s networks. Your employees know what type of person fits in the company and they can cut down some of the sifting through of resumes if you ask for their help. Offer a referral bonus and you’ll see your employees step up to the plate with viable candidates. They won’t risk putting forward a candidate if it’s going to reflect badly on them.

This post was contributed by Heather Johnson, who is an industry critic on the subject of how to become a nurse. She invites your feedback at heatherjohnson2323@gmail.com.

Lost Messages, Lost Opportunities

A Recruiter Shares Some Job Search Tips
As a third party recruiter and headhunter it is one of our obligations to our client, the employer, not only to locate and pre-screen qualified candidates but to assess their interest levels and follow-up skills. The reality is that the recruiter  becomes an extension of the client, closely following and professionally scrutinizing the actions of the candidates we represent–prior to and during the course of all interview activity.
If a recruiter places a call to set up interview with a prospective candidate and does not hear back within a reasonable time, the recruiter may assume the candidate either has lost interest or has poor follow-up skills. Since the bulk of our recruiting centers on sales and sales management it is expected that a job seeker will sell themselves to an employer during the interview process.Timely follow-up to phone calls, emails, faxes, and letters is critical. Unfortunately, unforeseen communication problems can derail a job seeker’s interview process and send the wrong message to both recruiters and employers.

Not too long ago I had two final candidates interview for a regional sales management position.We were near the final stages of the interview and our client called at the end of the day, a Friday, to schedule a flight early Monday.I called the candidate and left a voicemail on Friday night. I called again Saturday and left a message with a family member. By late Saturday I believed that he had lost interest.He had apparently never received either of the messages I had left for him. By the time he called me two days later another candidate was placed in that position. His unintentional lack of follow-up cost him a great opportunity. 

Job seekers must ensure that the contact information they provide on their resume is reliable. Your resume should be updated regularly.In response to one of our postings this week, one of our recruiters received a resume from a job seeker who had a disconnected phone number listed in the resume.The telephone is still a crucial part of the recruitment process; there have been other cases in which individuals are on the phone when we call, do not answer call waiting and allow the phone to continue to ring. Remember–if someone can’t leave a message for you, then they cannot offer you an interview or a position.
So how can a job seeker be better prepared if they believe that they are at risk of missing opportunities like some of the people I just mentioned?I have located a few Web sites that may provide solutions for the above-mentioned scenarios. Still, they should be used in conjunction with traditional communication services.There are many companies that provide free email services, but sites like uReach.com provide users with a simplified communications service including free email, voicemail, and fax services. Users can receive a free toll-free phone number that allows customized greetings and lets callers leave voicemail messages in the subscriber’s email inbox. Users can then either sign in online or call in and retrieve these messages remotely just as they might with their home answering machines. How simple and convenient! You can also activate the call forwarding feature that allows the toll free number to ring on any phone you desire. Web sites offering similar services are constantly emerging but some of our favorite picks are uReach.com, OneBox.com, One Red Cube, and Yahoo! By Phone. 

Communication is key, and the way you interact with recruiters and potential employers speaks volumes about you as a professional. If you are serious about your job search, don’t let small details derail your efforts.

 

Mark Yawitz
President, Search 180

Mark Yawitz is the CEO of Search 180, a Phoenix based executive search firm specializing in the placement of mid-senior level executives throughout the Internet and Technology industries. To contact mark you can email mark@search180.com or stop by the Search 180 websites http://www.search180.com

When work is hell

A 19-year-old flight attendant, angry at his job, was arrested in Minneapolis for setting a fire in an aeroplane bathroom. It might seem a bit extreme, but how many of us haven’t felt like choking our bosses at some point? Or felt that urge to throw in your resignation letter and go for a vacation (which, consequently you won’t be able to afford).

Just Google “I hate my job” and the search throws up 62,40,000 matches. A BBC survey of the top 10 most hated professions throws up surprising results.

If you thought the most hated profession would be that of a Proctologist – its not. Number One on the list was being a traffic warden.

Flapping your arms the entire day must be tough. Also on the list were politicians (I though we hated their profession, not them) and Reality TV show contestants – you’d hate it too if you were stuck in a house full of people like the cast of Big Boss.

What’s wrong with work? So what is it about a job, that makes people hate it even if it seems like a dream come true to those on the outside? Sanya, who works with a news channel says, “News readers have to sit glued to their seats an hour before the show starts. And as soon as the bulletin ends, everyone rushes to the bathroom.

I have to wait in a long line even to take a leak.” For others, work only gets worse with time and even making truckloads of money is not ample compensation.

Raj, who recently resigned from the post of a Sales Process Manager with a multinational company, says, “In this sales figure driven world, the individual and his or her demands are completely ignored.” Prateek, an engineer, says, “Hectic work schedules leave no time for a personal life.

I also hate the fact that I’m stuck in a cubicle instead of doing field jobs that I love.” For Rakesh Jha, an IT person, his is the worst job in the world.

“All you get is complaints – this doesn’t work, that doesn’t work. My whole day is marked with cribbing, frustrated people.

” Sounds familiar? But, no matter what the grouch, the sad truth is, we’re all heading to work tomorrow.

Source:Yahoo!

Tier 1 Indian cites to lose IT jobs to tier 2 cities

Kochi, May 29 (IANS) In five years, 1.7 million jobs in Information Technology (IT) sector in India will move out of tier 1 cities like Delhi, Mumbai, Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad, to tier 2 cities, Siddhartha Bhattacharya, Infopark’s chief executive officer, said here.

Bhattacharya was speaking Wednesday at a discussion organised by The Indus Entrepreneurs (TiE), a global not-for-profit organisation promoting entrepreneurship. Infopark at Kochi is a state government-owned IT Park.

It is the better quality of life and lower operating cost that are attracting the IT companies to these cities, he said quoting research reports.

He said among the upcoming IT destinations, Kochi has many inherent advantages.

‘The data transmission cost from Kochi is low. Seventy-five percent of the country’s data traffic goes out from Kochi. VSNL has a 15 gigabyte gateway here. The electricity and water tariffs are one of the lowest among all the states. Compared to Bangalore, house rent is low in Kochi. The attrition rates in IT companies are below 10 percent.’

At present around 40 companies in the Infopark employ around 7,000 people. ‘In next four years we expect the number of companies to go up seven to eight times.’

He said that Kerala has the highest density of IT and science professionals. ‘The state’s infrastructure is pretty strong, especially in telecommunication sector,’ he added.

Infopark is in the process of coming out with a dedicated incubator to help start up companies. ‘This is an early life support system for start ups. We will help them with issues like government clearance, finance and also help them expand,’ he added.

Source: Yahoo!

TCS, Infosys, Wipro add over 57000 workers in 2007

NEW DELHI: India’s three biggest IT firms, TCS, Infosys and Wipro, together added 57,554 people to their payrolls in 2007, but rising staff costs coupled with impact of rupee rally and turmoil in the US economy have affected their average employee productivity.

The three companies have reported a surge of 20-25 per cent in their collective third quarter profit and revenue in the current fiscal, but when compared in terms of turnover per employee, only Wipro could improve its performance from the year-ago level.

The average turnover per employee for the three companies dropped marginally to Rs 5.75 lakh in the October-December 2008 quarter, from Rs 5.79 lakh in the year-ago period.
Wipro’s average turnover per employee rose to Rs 6.80 lakh in the third quarter of this fiscal, from Rs 6.13 lakh in the year-ago quarter. However, TCS and Infosys recorded a dip in their average per employee turnover to Rs 5.58 lakh and Rs 4.99 lakh, from Rs 5.85 lakh and Rs 5.35 lakh respectively.

The average per employee net profit of the three companies also declined to Rs 1.23 lakh in the latest quarter from Rs 1.30 lakh in year-ago period.

The combined net profit of the three companies rose 19.1 per cent to Rs 3,411.67 crore in Q3 of this fiscal from Rs 2,864.50 crore a year ago.

Their total revenue rose 25.4 per cent from Rs 12,679.73 crore to Rs 15,904.18 crore during the quarter under review.

At the same time, the total employee strength of the three firms stood at 2,76,662 people at the end of December 2007, against 2,19,108 on December 2006.

Source: ET

Story of 3 cos: ICI, HLL, ITC

As the Dutch firm Akzo Nobel assimilates its latest acquisition, the famous ‘ICI’ brand will fade into history. Along with HLL and ITC, ICI pioneered the management profession in India for eight decades.

Despite some initial similarity, the divergent destinies of these British subsidiaries exemplify lessons in corporate strategy, which is about the choices made over time.

Thirty years ago during the License Raj, India was an enigma for global companies. In response, ICI India changed CEOs relatively often and moved closer to the parent, leading to an unintended choking of the subsidiary.

HLL had long-serving CEOs, who balanced local and global priorities and persisted in keeping alive the flagging interest of Unilever. ITC management’s actions resulted in spinning the company out of the parent’s control.

Early into the 20th century, the chemical industry was like today’s software industry. It attracted large research expenditure, was the fast-growing industry, and fascinated people with its technology.

Four British companies became very successful: Brunner Mond (now owned by Tata Chemicals), Nobel Explosives, British Dyestuffs, and United Alkali. An irascible Glaswegian, Harry McGowan, amalgamated the four companies into a giant called Imperial Chemical Industries with 33,000 employees in 1926.

The Registrar of Companies objected to the use of ‘Imperial’ in the company’s name. Harry McGowan responded, “The name was chosen after very careful consideration…we are ‘Imperial’ in aspect and in name….this Company will be of enormous value in the economic position of the Empire…” The company developed a technically-oriented culture: Over 70 years, it owned 33,000 patents. One of its research leaders said, “The world can be changed in the laboratory, not in the marketplace.”

Up to the late seventies, the ICI group of companies was the largest multinational company operating in India, bigger than HLL and ITC. A career in ICI India was very prized and the ICI managers enjoyed operational freedom. Their actions were appropriate for the Indian market; they established subsidiaries to manufacture diverse products like synthetic fibres, fertilisers, explosives, and pharmaceuticals; ICI brands like Terene, Alkathene, and Savlon became household names.

In 1959, J M Lal became the first Indian professional manager to be appointed as the CEO of any multinational company in India. Some of today’s successful CEOs are ICI alumni, for example, Ishaat Hussain (Tata Sons), Adi Engineer (Tata Power), Prasad Menon (Tata Chemicals), Ashok Soni (Voltas) and Ranjit Shahani (Novartis).

After the premature death of J M Lal, ICI posted expatriate CEOs, who had relatively short tenures; for them, India was a hop-step in a global career (there were Indian CEOs from 1978-1987). ICI aligned itself to the parent’s priorities and product strategies and began to lose management vitality.

In 1991, when the Hanson Group bought a small, but threatening stake in ICI, a shaken-up management acted rapidly; they de-merged into two companies, ICI and Zeneca. Later, ICI made a highly leveraged acquisition of a speciality chemicals business and sank into a pit of debt, thus affecting ICI India’s degrees of freedom.

By the time the parent could restore its balance sheet, the company was, as The Economist put it, “no longer imperial nor chemical nor even an industry.” Akzo Nobel then made a successful bid for ICI, a bellwether of the London Stock Exchange passed into history.

Imperial Tobacco was the second ‘imperial’ company in India. Even before the Second World War, four factories had been established. Ajit Haksar, a 1948 Harvard MBA, rose to be the first Indian CEO in 1971 like J M Lal did in ICI.

Haksar recalled the atmosphere when he joined, “BAT looked at its investment made in India in 1902 as giving them the right to exploit the Indian company without the willingness to put in fresh capital and continue risk taking.” Haksar adopted an independent path from BAT.

Source: ET

Cognizant in deal with T-Systems

CHENNAI: Cognizant Technology Solutions has taken over the operations T-Systems India and its 1,150 employees as part of a system integration alliance with the company’s parent, Deutsche Telekom. In effect, Cognizant will become T-Systems’ supplier for offshore services from India.

The financial component and asset transfer involved in the transaction was not disclosed. T-Systems India, which operates out of Pune and Bangalore, provides system integration services for the telecommunication and automotive verticals.

Last year, German telecom major Deutsche Telekom said it was seeking a partner for the system integration business of its IT division, T-Systems. The race for the system integration business was closely contested between TCS and Cognizant.

Initially, the odds seemed to be in favour of TCS because Deutsche Telekom’s former chairman, Ron Sommer, is a non-executive board member of TCS. Also, in terms of verticals, while T-Systems and TCS both have a significant presence in the automotive sector, Cognizant is more focused on healthcare and manufacturing.

However, Cognizant president and MD R Chandrasekaran said in an e-mail interview, “This (the alliance) complements the capabilities of two leaders in two different sets of industries, and combined through partnership, they are stronger powerhouses.” Also while T-Systems is focused in consulting, IT and telecommunications, Cognizant has capabilities in consulting, systems integration and maintenance, BPO and IT Infrastructure services.

About the growth prospects for Cognizant through the tie-up, Mr Chandrasekaran said, “we expect the partnership to generate material revenue from both growing our offshore operations to support T-Systems’ existing clients, as well as revenue resulting from jointly winning new clients. In aggregate, we expect to generate at least $40 million in the first year of the partnership.”

Geography-wise, the deal will help Cognizant strengthen its presence in the European market. In terms of verticals, the company can gain access to segments such as automotive and telecommunications. At the same time, T-Systems will be able to leverage on its internally developed processes and serve more clients.

“T-Systems was functioning as a shared services center of Deutsche Telekom in India and developed very good processes internally. But it was restricted in the number of clients it served. The alliance would enable the company serve a wider basket of clients,” said Frost & Sullivan head-IT Kaustubh Dhavse.

Recruitment goes digital in the 21st century

New Delhi: Now you can be interviewed and hired for a job anywhere in the world right from your desktop.It begins by making your video resume on sites like whereismyboss, telecommentor or monster.com.

“Monster released the video resume concept very recently in India and we’ve had 1000 people load their video resume immediately. It’s a great way for call centers to see the body language and English, which they could normally not see unless the candidate comes in for an interview,” explained Monster.com’s head, Arun Tadanki.

Here is how to make that video resumé using a digital camera or web cam.

1. A good video resume is always under a minute long.

2. Always look your future boss in the eye, stay relaxed, confident and to the point

3. Showcase those talents that don’t quite stand out in plain print

4. Finally click upload.

“In my profession, which is sales, I don’t have Java or Oracle talents. Employers look to see communication skills, which they can do through my video resume. I’m sure it’s going to get me many more job offers. I’m sure many employers would reject my resume if they saw just the text version,” pointed out job-seeker, Jacob Verges.

Digital recruitment does not stop with video resumés. You can even do a live interview without shaking hands.The virtual conference room has been brought to India by companies like Polycom and Cisco. With one half of the room built here, and the other half at other cities around the world, when connected, you’ll feel as if you are sitting opposite the table from your interviewer. “Polycom’s telepresence lets companies save money and time in interviews and lets them conduct it remotely,” explained the company’s head, Yugal Sharma.Jobseekers aren’t the only ones you’ll find online; companies are also putting videos online to attract talent. So your next job could be a video clip away.

Source:CNN IBN

IT firms not to be affected by looming US credit turmoil

BANGALORE: The turbulence in the US financial services sector, hit by billions of dollars in losses owing to subprime and mortgage crisis, has not affected the fortunes of the Indian IT services biggies, at least for now. The BFSI segment has traditionally been the highest spenders on technology and it also accounts for significant portion of the revenues of India based IT services providers like TCS, Infosys, Wipro, Satyam, HCL and Cognizant.

For India based IT services majors, the latest quarterly results show that BFSI segment has recorded a very positive growth rate on a sequential basis, for some, in fact it has been higher than the company’s overall growth rate. Analysts felt they would be able to maintain the current growth rate even during the current quarter.
In the case of Infosys, the BFSI segment recorded 7% sequential growth while for Wipro Technologies, it was 9.8%. TCS CEO S Ramadorai said, “BFSI continues to be strong and it has grown above the company rate sequentially.” The BFSI segment accounted for 44% of TCS revenues during the third quarter.
However, the big question is whether, these IT biggies would be able to maintain this growth rate given the background of a likely slowdown of US economy and the large financial services giants cutting down on their IT budgets to cut costs.

Offshore advisory firm, Tholons CEO Avinash Vashistha felt that the worst of subprime crisis is over for the Indian IT services majors and they are likely to maintain the current growth rate, if not higher, from the BFSI segment. In case of Cognizant, the BFSI segment accounted for 47% of its revenue and it grew 7% sequentially.

According to its survey among its BFSI segment on the IT budget growth in 2008, 90% did not expect their outsourcing budgets to decline. According to Siddharth Pai of TPI India, it is very unlikely that there will be any change in the current growth rates in the BFSI segment as the compulsory IT spending will continue though there might be bit of an impact on the new projects.

The IT biggies felt that BFSI segment under pressure to cut costs will actually look forward towards increased spending on technology to deliver the benefits.

Infosys senior VP and head Ashok Vemuri said, “Challenges that they are facing are creating more opportunities and this will actually see an increase in the overall spend.” Though, Girish Paranjape, president, financial solutions, Wipro Technologies felt that a clear picture will emerge only in the later part of this year on the actual spending pattern in the BFSI segment.

500 TCS employees asked to leave

Mumbai: India’s leading software services firm Tata Consultancy Services Ltd (TCS) said on Tuesday that about 500 of its employees were asked to look for another job after their performance was rated poorly.”Those who cannot meet the performance requirements of our company were asked to look for another job commensurate with their abilities,” TCS spokesman Pradipta Bagchi said here.In the quarter ending on December 31, TCS appointed 4,037 employees, taking its total headcount to 108,229, up from 83,500 a year ago.

The export-driven software services companies have been winning large outsourcing contracts from western clients, but recession fears in the US and a rising rupee against the dollar has considerably affected their profit margins in the recent past.