MonsterIndia adds video resumes

Just noticed that MonsterIndia has the feature for jobseekers to add and upload their video resumes.

I wonder how many people are actually using this facility. The interesting thing is who would choose to use it. For people in sales and front office roles a video resume would be very helpful. It can help an employer to make a selection decision or otherwise.

The other point is would recruiters go through a full video resume or will they hit the stop button after a couple of seconds. In which case, how different would a video resume be from a photograph.

Oh yes, if you are not comfortable in front of a camera and are not too confident about your spoken and personal presentation skills, do NOT go for a video resume!

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Looking forward to work

Erik on the SucessFactors blog crunches some numbers:

For a global financial service company with about 2 Billion Euros of labor cost and 35K employees there is an average cost per employee of 57K Euros. With 6% absent for sick leave that would mean that 2100 employees are absent at a cost of 120M Euro per year. If that sick leave could be reduced to 5% this company would have 350 more people working while directly saving 20M Euro. This example though showing significant cost savings is only looking at the direct cost of this absence, and not at the more strategic impact of lost business opportunities, or the individual human costs. Though there are arguments for fixing systematic problems caused by over generous sick pay, there is really nothing organizations can do about it in the short term… or is there?

To find the answer I turned to one of SuccessFactors Research Thought Leaders Ken Scarlett who has been researching this, and the conversation left us with some very real solutions.

Aggregately speaking, the higher the Engagement level (as measured by an engagement index) the lower the sick leave rates, and there is no better way to predict the likelihood of abusing sick leave than by the responses to the questions “Do you look forward to coming to work?” and/or “Do you feel you work is important to others?” Ken’s research shows that the group who answered negatively to those questions has the highest propensity to max out/abuse sick leave. With the specific questions above, you can actually create a highly accurate forecast within 10% margin of error.

In any country and any industry your job as a leader is to increase the likelihood that your people answer the question “Do you look forward to coming to work?” positively.

Unfortunately while many leaders understand this question they think the answers can be changed by changing the external factors (which is why I understand a Professor in my MBA used to call HR folks the "Managers of Carpets and Curtains"), whereas the basic linkage of a great work and a great boss would be the only way people look forward to coming to work. The definition of great work would depend on a person's innate talents and strengths and this is why even chronic over-achievers can feel burned out and without passion in their work.hr

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CR and not HR?

DubDubs has a very insightful post on how the "resources" in HR are Competencies and not Humans.

My theory is not that we are the resource, but we have the KSA’s (in old school terms) that can be resources. In today’s terms, I think we’re talking about competencies. In general, we can manage the competencies into a master repository (with a decent knowledge management practice), but in practice, this does not really seem to have been well applied in most organizations. We’re still dependent on people to bring competencies to work with them every day.

Not to beat a dead drum, but this is what talent management is all about. It’s about growing competencies to increase the value of a resource within the organization. It’s about keeping those competencies (managing depreciation?) within the organization. And of course it’s making sure the competencies get used. Any asset in the organization that is sitting in the corner or on the shelf is actually costing the company money to hold and not use it. Same with a competency. We hired and pay a person to use all of their competencies. However, if a person is not engaged, they come to work and hold back some of their productivity or some of their knowledge.

The problem (or so corporations think!) is that competencies are made of three different aspects, Knowledge, Skills and Attitude (the KSAs that DD talks about) of which two can be developed (Knowledge and Skills) while the third - Attitude - is what an adult rarely changes, and will not do so merely because the organization asks or expects him to.

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Network 18 vs The Times of India

It seems to be a good time to be a business journalist in India. With Network 18 getting ready to launch Indian editions of Forbes magazine and the Financial Times.

So good that it's making the big bosses at the Times of India jittery. They apparently approached network 18 for a no-poaching agreement that was rejected, according to media blog Sans Serif:

With ToI executive editor Jaideep Bose, aka JoJo, being mentioned as a possible editor of FT, the Times group is understandably apprehensive of a newsroom exodus and an exponential increase in costs to retain talented staff.

(Senior staff at ET have received hefty hikes as high as 50 per cent in recent weeks but it is not proving to be enough for the privately-held Times group despite its deep pockets to keep its flock together. Network 18 is a listed company.)

ToI brand director Rahul Kansal is reported to have sought a meeting with Bahl and Network 18 CEO Haresh Chawla last week to enter into a no-poaching agreement after the exit-JoJo rumours surfaced. With the Times group planning a business television channel to exploit the Economic Times brand image (which could see reverse traffic from CNBC-TV1 Kansal thought he had it all firmly sewn up.

But Network 18, whose print ambitions against the might of the Times group hinges on attracting top-flight business journalism talent, is believed to have nipped the proposal in the bud.

The Times group had entered into a tribal no-poaching pact with the Hindustan Times in an earlier skirmish for the Delhi market. The logic was that both groups would benefit by not trying to poach staff from the other, thus keeping journalists’ salaries in check. The two companies even set up a joint venture to bring out the tabloid Metro Now. But the only winner in the bargain has been the Times group.

Aware of that precedent, the Bahl-Chawla rejected ToI’s no-poaching overture outright.

Personally I feel that no-poaching agreements are regressive and show a lack of imagination on the part of the management. It's against the freedom of people to choose which employers to work for and against an employer's right to choose potential employees from the most eligible candidates.

In fact when an employer or employee wants to get around a no-poaching agreement they can resort to a lot of different permutations and combinations. For example, a friend of mine was a Resource Manager working for a MNC technology and consulting firm. She was working for a client which was one of the world's leading technology product companies. The client wanted to hire her but couldn't since they had signed a no-poaching agreement with the consulting firm. So the client manager suggested to her that she could resign from her role, work for any company for 6 months (or even stay at home) and then they would hire her! Yeah, a no-poaching agreement does not come into play when another employer is there in between.

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CEO and Co-founder of Reffster leaves

The Jobster.com idea took 2 years to unravel in the US, however seems like the referral jobsite idea in India is just too premature to take off. Ranjit Jatar who was CEO of Reffster.com has left the startup (covered on this blog earlier) and is currently being managed by the other two co-founders Arjun and Arun Yadav.

Ranjit blogs about his experiences here. Some interesting comments also.

If a new portal aims to replicate Naukri, Monster or Times–all very successful ‘vanilla’ platform models– that would not work since the space is already clutterred. If it aims to go beyond ‘vanilla’ and also value add that recruiting vendors do, then that will limit scalability with clients. Therefore a  100% Tech enabled value add led by new-age technology that matches Profiles with job descriptions to get ‘the right fit’, could be an idea that is innovative — and if another idea on the Sources of Revenue (from candidates rather than companies) is implemented, perhaps disruptive as well to the way existing portals operate.

Well, I disagree with Ranjit. Technology that attempts to match resumes with job descriptions will be open to manipulation by smart jobseekers and end up wasting a lot more time of the clients. I would be a lot more interested if jobsites can leverage the existing social networks where Indians hang out. Making apps that make sharing and applying to jobs and ride on the platforms that Orkut and Facebook provide. Wonder why nobody  has thought of that?

Jatar has some thoughts on management structures for startups also

In addition , I would urge all budding entrepreneurs who plan to partner to also spend quality time–as they would do building up their business plans — to carve out strategic and operational Roles at the outset. I would strongly advise co-founders to work out a Founders agreement during the incubation phase where future situations and how they would be tackled are thought through. Perhaps –and it would be interesting to get reader comments – it may not be a bad idea to also have a “First among equals” leadership Role assigned to one of the co founders at the outset for operational and strategic business decisions that will need to be taken after the launch( eg a casting vote in Board meetings) , though there would obviously be guardrails in place to ensure that consensus is enshrined for key strategic decisions e.g. exits, new partners, changes to Founders agreement etc.

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Job Ad for Creating Spam Blogs

On doing a search for the keyword blogging on timesjobs.com this brazenly unethical job description made me sit up and take notice! It asks people to copy paste articles from other sites.
Are people earning enough from AdSense to even pay people to create splogs like these?

Job Function : IT/Telecom - Software Specialization : Internet/E-commerce Industry : Internet/Dot com/ISP Experience : 0 - 1 Level : Entry Level/Fresher Location : GUJARAT (Ahmedabad) ,KARNATAKA (Bengaluru / Bangalore) ,TAMIL NADU (Chennai) Key Skills : blog, blogger, wordpress, data entry,

JOB DESCRIPTION :   Basically copy the articles from other sites (Which I will provide) and all you have to do is copy the article, paste it in my wordpress blog Really simple! This is a really easy job. I need someone who will be reliable and able to do a good job. No mistakes! It takes 20-30 secs to post one article.

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Lessons from History

As the economy tightens and the 'good times' of the last couple of years head to a 'possibly not so good times' ahead, Sanjeev Bikhchandani looks back to the year of the dotcom bust. Good stuff for all wannabe entrepreneurs:

The most fundamental lesson from the dotcom fiasco is that, for most of us, there is still no quick and easy way to get rich. Most instantly successful companies take over 10 years in the making. Sadly, even in cyberspace, there is no free lunch. In order to realise value, you have to first create it. You need customers and you need to offer them a value-proposition. You need to sell them something that they want and you need to charge them an economic price for it. You need to provide quality service to customers and you need to focus on terribly unsexy things like the backroom, logistics, fulfilment and customer complaints. You don't need to run an idea, you need to create a business. Most of this stuff is pretty boring and old-economyish – far removed from the dreams of the starry-eyed 20-something MBAs, who were funded by other 20-something MBAs who worked at the VC firms.

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B-School Alumni Cells turn Placement Offices

That's what is happening in the US according to BusinessWeek

Free career services for life are a perk for most MBA graduates. And while most MBAs may not need them, in an economic downturn like the one we're facing, they're a valuable resource. Career services offices, which are reporting an increase in calls from alumni, are ramping up their offerings for MBAs.

While using a career center to help start your job search is a good move, it's also important to keep in touch and continue to build a network during periods of employment, say experts. In fact, many of the calls career centers are getting these days are from employed alums who want to help others who may be looking for work.

Unfortunately Indian B-School placement offices don't work like this. If they become more professional they can actually give the big-ticket headhunting firms a run for their money thanks to their database and the trust they enjoy with their alumni - and open up a much needed revenue stream for the B-School. Maybe then Indian B-School grad students will not be charged sky-high fees!

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Gifting me logo for my blog

Without even asking, a reader of this blog, Prem Saran P, decided to gift me a logo he made for it. His gift really blew me away.

Wow!

Thanks Prem!

So what do you think, should I remove my "eyes" header image and replace it with this logo that Prem made so well?

Featured in the Hindustan Times today

On an article on how blogging has changed people's lives!

When Riddhi Shah of Hindustan Times called me and said that she was doing a feature on how blogging has changed some blogger's lives, I was flattered. Gaurav Mishra is the one who referred her to me. Thanks, Gaurav.

Others featured in the article are Kiruba, Akshay Mahajan and Suman Kumar.

Another thing, the article makes me a couple of years older than I actually am! I hope that helps to get some consulting clients ;-) !

Image on top is how it appears in the HT Mumbai edition and the one on the right is how it appears in the HT edition in New Delhi

Using Linkedin to get career insights

I kind of missed this interesting development on Linkedin. They have now introduced company profiles. What is most interesting is the data that shows the most common companies people left to join a company and the most common companies people left the company for. An interesting data for HR people to look at and analyse HR processes and policies.

For example take a look at the McKinsey & Company profile page.

The most companies (in Linkedin profiles) that people leave to join McKinsey are:

• Accenture
• Procter & Gamble
• Goldman Sachs
• IBM
• PricewaterhouseCoopers

And the most common companies they leave McKinsey to join are:

• Google
• Microsoft

Another interesting data is the companies the employees are most connected to. And McKinsey employees are most linked to other consultants and academics:

• The Boston Consulting Group
• Bain & Company
• Harvard Business School
• INSEAD

Of course there is a skew in the data. The median age of McKinsey employees on Linkedin is 28 years and the common job titles are:

Associate	25%
Engagement Manager	12%
Consultant	12%
Business Analyst	9%
Principal	7%

So the data is not evenly distributed. However the insights should be interesting even then!

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The inspirational story of the Ma Foi CEO

K Pandia Rajan gets profiled by rediff.com. Inspirational Stuff!

Pandia Rajan was born in Vilampatti village in Sivakasi district. His father who was a worker at a match factory died when Pandia Rajan was just three months old. He was brought up by his grandparents in a joint family of about 40 to 50 people.

Later his grandparents started their own match factory.

After studying in the village school, the hard-working boy went to Coimbatore to study engineering at the PSG College of Technology.

Having stood first in the university, he joined XLRI, Jamshedpur for his MBA. That, he says, was where the seeds of entrepreneurship in the HR arena were sown in his mind.

"At that time, HR guys never became entrepreneurs, but I wanted to study HR and then be an entrepreneur. In my village too almost everybody is an entrepreneur. Unless you are on your own, you are a nobody there. So, you can say the entrepreneurial spirit is deeply ingrained in all of us."

But he had to wait for some time. After working for six years, and getting married to a chartered accountant (Hemalatha) in 1989, he and his wife decided to put all their dreams together in their own enterprise."

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HR Careers on the Upswing

From the Wall Street Journal.

As more employees consider changing jobs, demand has increased for senior HR executives who can help keep them. Most HR searches, recruiters say, are still for generalists -- HR managers who have done it all, from compensation design to organizational development to recruiting.

Meanwhile, talent development and management is emerging as a hot specialty. These specialists, some of whom may have backgrounds in recruiting, help identify and groom high performers for future positions through assessment, development and training. The function previously was handled by organization-development executives, but many companies now are splitting it off into a single role, says Greg Hessell, head of recruiter Korn/Ferry's global HR practice.

Against this backdrop of surging demand, pay for HR executives is on the rise. A 2004 survey by Mercer Human Resource Consulting, New York, found that top human-resources-management executives (whose duties don't include managing labor union relations) earned a median total cash compensation of $220,200, compared with $204,900 the previous year.

Among industries, hedge funds are proving a hot HR area, says Dan Kaplan, a partner in New York with search firm Christian & Timbers. These lightly regulated investment pools for high-net-worth individuals and institutional investors are expanding rapidly. Once their staffs reach about 40 to 45 people, they need to hire an HR executive who can help with recruiting and retention, says Mr. Kaplan.

HR needs people today with two complementary skills, the left brained analytical and financial skills and the right brained creative and relationship skills. Having one set means investing time to build expertise in the other.

HR professionals have had traditionally more relationship skills, and they now need to add analytical and business skills.

What we are going to see is also as the article says, HR people specialising in small high value businesses and the skills needed to succeed there would be very different from being the HR director at large traditional organizations. This reality will soon also play out in India. And it will be a new kind of HR professional who will succeed in such organizations.

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Best of Indian Business Blogging - Week 4

Well, here we are back, your trusted Indian Business Bloggers attempting to bring to your notice some great business blogging being done by Indians.

And today we have the following posts:

Sanjay Anandram and Vijay Anand have some insightful take on on why startups should choose their VCs/ boards carefully.
Wasn't it Galileo who said that "I can see farther because I stand on the shoulders of giants"? So entrepreneurs have to understand that they cannot do and plan everything. There's always merit in engaging with the right kind of advisors who have your long term interests at their heart.

- Vijay Anand and Snigdha Sengupta on what's wrong with BarCamps. I still haven't attended a barCamp but if Vijay is right and that it is similar to the Open Space Conference then I think the facilitation of the Conference probably needs to be looked at. I don't know if a facilitator is actually there at BarCamps - but in Large Scale Interactive Processes it is often easy to think that groups can 'self-organise' without design or direction. It's not true. Take a look at this.

- Jinal Shah wants to make sense of the chaos of the social web. Anybody keen to take up her creative challenge?

- The Sans Serif blog on the upcoming Hindu vs ToI battle in Chennai - well it was upcoming when the post was written and the TOI has already launched with a swipe at the Hindu's political--left slant and looks like the Hindu is jittery- dropping its prices. In these days of rising newsprint prices does the Hindu want to get drawn into a price war against a media behemoth that has TV, radio, the internet in its arsenal?

- Harish B looks at the relaunch of Tata Sumo as Tata Sumo Grande and wonders why the brand could not be renamed to Tata Grande as he feels that the Sumo was never perceived as a family vehicle and the new product is much more suited for that role.

Also see: Gaurav Mishra Week 1, Rajesh Lalwani Week 1, Ranjan Varma Week 1, Gaurav Mishra Week 2, Palin Ningthoujam Week 2, Ranjan Varma Week 2, Gaurav Mishra Week 3, Rajesh Lalwani Week 3, Ranjan Varma Week 3, Gautam Ghosh Week 3, Rajesh Lalwani Week 4.

Your Turn Now

We have done our part by starting the conversation. Now, it’s your turn to carry on the conversation by commenting on these posts, linking to these posts in your own blogs, giving us feedback on our idea and execution, or suggesting more posts for our next week’s digest.

The People

The present members in our network are (in alphabetical order):-

- Gaurav Mishra, that is, yours truly, is a marketer and a social media enthusiast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Gautam Ghosh (yep, me :-) is an HR professional and a blogger (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Kiruba Shankar is India’s original A-list blogger and podcaster and a regular speaker at technology conferences (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Palin Ningthoujam is a public relations professional and the founder of India PR Blog (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Rajesh Lalwani is the founder of social media agency Blogworks (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Ranjan Varma is the writer of personal finance online weekly Personal Finance 2.01 (e-Book, Blog, Facebook and Twitter).

- VeerChand Bothra is the organizer of Mumbai Mobile Mondays and head of business development at MyToday (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

Abhijit Bhaduri leaves PepsiCo to join Microsoft

Ok, here's a disclaimer: I am a big fan of Abhijit Bhaduri. As one of India's leading HR leaders, he's surprisingly open to learning and trying out new things like blogging and being on facebook !  The  reason, IMHO is that Abhijit is not just a HR professional - he's an author, a cartoonist, a theater person, has hosted radio shows in the US and has even acted in a Hindi film - and having a lot of interests and hobbies and passions is one of the things that makes a person ready for new experiences and to be creative.

Abhijit was also the moving force behind India's first large mainstream corporate Blog focused on showcasing it as an employer. In his final post at the Frito-Lay India blog Abhijit posts about the challenges of corporate blogging and social media:

To get it going there was a short 3 min video of What is it Like to Work for FritoLay? That video uploaded on Youtube (click here to watch it) got us a lot of eyeballs. Research (basically that means all the people I spoke to) showed us that it was the first place for candidates to get a feel of the culture of PepsiCo's Snack division in India. Candid confession: When I saw that a lot of people were using that to decide on whether they would fit in to this culture or not, I did feel a tad bit inhibited and stopped doing videos of giggling employees on candid camera kind of stuff. Thats was truly tempting given the number of applicants who wanted to come into work in a giggly environment! Honestly - someone did say that to me.Thereafter the focus was more on describing all the fun moments at work. The innovative people that we have here inspired us to do more. The media and other bloggers took notice and we got a gazillion suggestions on what to put into the blog. That made me realize that the challenge in having an unofficial corporate blog are two. One is to avoid sounding like a commercial for the company. More than that is the challenge of getting more than a few enthu guys to post. How do we update the blog continuously and frequently?

Abhijit now moves on to Microsoft India - and hopefully will continue blogging - there are lots of other HR folks in Microsoft in the US who blog - and I guess he will be the first in MS India :-) !

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Celebrating 200 followers on Twitter

Zindagi ki chhoti chhoti khushiyan :-) as we say in Hindi.

Am so happy that 208 people now think it's worthwhile to follow my 140 character updates on Twitter. If you’re not a follower and would like to be, go here and click Follow.

However, if you are wondering what is twitter and why should you be bothered about it read about it here.

Oh by the way, I have a friendfeed account too now! Here!

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Welcoming new voices to the blogosphere

Two people I know from other places who have started blogging recently are Sumeet Kapur, CEO of Global Groupware Solutions, which has an employee relationship management solution called Smiles ERM, appropriately called bringing Smiles to Work :-)

Another HR Technology person whom I had earlier interacted with, Amit Avasthi, has started HR Bytes, a blog about HR and technology. In this post, he posts about his take on my views. In particular this point of his intrigued me:

3. The tools would also mean faster exchange of information, referrals and jobs amongst these networked individuals. Thus making Organization Climate and Culture sound like Jurrasic Era terms.

Would faster and better communication using web 2.0 mean more painless change in organizational climate and culture? I would like to believe it, but know it is not the case.

Human beings resist change because of a mixture of rational and irrational fears. Information alone can address only the rational fears but what of the fears that are rooted in emotions, and the non-logical part of human consciousness. Would larger collaborative work actually mean richer collaboration? I have my doubts.

Reliance ADAG starts a HR Consulting and Outsourcing firm

This is interesting !

Reliance HR Services (RHRS), a human resources company formed by the Reliance Anil Dhirubhai Ambani Group (ADAG), will recruit half a million people for the group in the next four years.  These recruits will be deputed to Reliance Communications, Reliance Webstores, Reliance Capital, Reliance Consumer Finance, Reliance Money, Reliance Life Insurance and Reliance Energy.  About 90 per cent of these employees will be on sales functions, while the rest will be on the back-end and customer service functions. 

Amitava Ghosh, CEO, RHRS, said, “Currently, about 20,000 employees are on RHRS payroll, serving various ADAG companies.”  RHRS has also formulated a plan for the five forthcoming financial years to become a global HR outsourcing and consultancy organisation. 

“By 2013, RHRS will evolve into an end-to-end HR outsourcing provider and an HR consultant,” Ghosh said. By 2009, RHRS plans to offer HR outsourcing services.  “We can offer HR outsourcing services to companies that operate in sectors such as retail, IT BPO, among others,” Ghosh said.  RHRS also plans to offer consultancy services, including compensation surveys and feedback reports.

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The Best of Indian Business Blogs: Week 3

Yeah, I finally got to writing my share of comments for this initiative to give Indian Business Blogging a little more visibility

Rajesh Lalwani believes that companies offering probiotic products in India are under-utilizing Internet in general, and social media in particular

My take: I believe that Rajesh strikes the nail on the head when he suggests that health products need to tap the net effectively. However, when marketers think in India they still want to focus on shaping mass opinions, which is increasingly becoming fragmented. Maybe they believe that using different approaches over different types of media will give off mixed signals to a target group. A net savvy consumer would read the papers and watch TV too. Approaching him/her through a education perspective might clash with a overly emotional approach for mass media. However, brands do need to understand that they cannot hold on to the brands anymore. It would be better for the brands if they can be shaped by the social media and people are not just consumers but who can be co-creators. Who knows maybe the "crowd" can come up with a better brand identity for a probiotic (or any) product than a handful of brand managers

Sudhakar Ram, Founder and CMD of Mastek Ltd, looks forward to the third wave of Indian outsourcing

My take: Sudhakar urges Indian IT companies to "shift to Wave 3 work – which is strategic, value-added and non-linear." I actually have a problem with the first two words because they are context specific. In a certain time context cost savings via labour arbitrage can be strategic and value-added, specially because the competition and market does not offer it. However it is Sudhakar's usage of non-linear which is interesting. Any service business is linear. The gradient might differ, but it is always something that is charged per effort/outcome. It depends from the dish a master chef designs to one that is sold by a roadside "dhaba". To get 2x the revenue you have to do it again. The only area that non-linear revenues can be derived from is when reuse of product/by-product is possible. The biggest challenge for the Indian IT industry to adapt would be to change their systems and worldviews of working, IMHO and I wish Sudhakar had spelt it out in detail.

- Vijay Anand, founder of Proto.in, says that Indian entrepreneurs need to be more aware of their environment.

My take: Vijay is bang on when he stresses that people need to think in a systems mode. Not connecting with other realities and other stakeholders can actually negate an innovation to irrelevance.

- Kamla Bhatt believes that a pure-play corporate blogging approach may not be successful in India

My take: On the occasions when I have talked with businesses about using corporate blogging, I always try to focus them to articulate "why do we want to do this?" When the answer is a version of "the marketing/corp comm folks feel it would be cool to do it" I know the project is doomed before it begins. Organizations need to articulate what benefits they seek from blogging and then how they should plan to achieve it. It does not negate the approach of transparency and openness of social media. It does require discipline to stick to what one wants from the initiative.

- Atanu Dey discusses the dot-corn debate

My take: If you don't know much about what Atanu talks about then be like me - get to know about it :-)

What is this thing?

The Idea

The basic idea is simple: we form a network of five to ten influential Indian business bloggers to promote link-worthy posts from other Indian business bloggers in the form of a weekly digest published on our respective blogs.

The People

The present members in our network are (in alphabetical order):-

- Gaurav Mishra, is a marketer and a social media enthusiast (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Gautam Ghosh - that is me- an HR Consultant and a veteran business blogger (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Kiruba Shankar is India’s original A-list blogger and podcaster and a regular speaker at technology conferences (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Palin Ningthoujam is a public relations professional and the founder of India PR Blog (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Rajesh Lalwani is the founder of social media agency Blogworks (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

- Ranjan Varma is the writer of personal finance online weekly Personal Finance 2.01 (e-Book, Blog, Facebook and Twitter).

- VeerChand Bothra is the organizer of Mumbai Mobile Mondays and head of business development at MyToday (Blog, Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter).

The Process

Over the week, we share posts between each other, and select a set of 3-5 posts to highlight. The posts can include all business-related topics including marketing, advertising, public relations, human resource management, finance, and entrepreneurship. The idea is to not link to each others’ posts, unless one of us has written a real gem.

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Penelope and Joel talk jobs and other stuff

OK, this is an amazing video interview that Joel Cheesman (the Cheezhead) took of Penelope Trunk a.k.a the Brazen Careerist.

It's amazing because two of my fave bloggers are talking.

Hear Penelope talk about how men and women can get away by saying controversial things in different contexts, how organizations should blog and how millenials (or Gen Y) don't really need job boards. Penelope also says how job boards should move with the times.

Listen. Laugh. Learn.

Am still not sure if Joel was actually wearing pants. He writes he was, but we don't have video proof ;-)

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HR and the world of Web 2.0

Had an interesting conversation some time back with a person who works with a Fortune 500 firm and looks after the interesting way HR needs to adapt to the way work is getting reshaped by technology and demographic changes underway.

Primarily organizations can look at social and virtual communities internally for the following purposes.

1. identity creation - The biggest thing that technology helps us do is to connect with and network with social tribes that we identify with. These identities can help organizations break dysfunctional and outdated silos. Of course, they themselves can lead to different silos, so have to be crafted and stewarded with care.

2. Post Identity creation the ability to build a culture of collaboration and community is much easier. As the person said - 1 percent create content, 9 percent comment and the other 90 percent read and hopefully are enriched and engaged. So the struggle for organizations can be of the earlier problem - "How do we increase this 1% to 5% to be active creators?" However in my view that is one perspective only. The alternative thought can be can we further empower these 1% people to increase their knowledge and development, thereby leading to richer conversations for everyone else too?

Some other thoughts:

How do people move between the differing cultures of traditional management models and the collaborative web2.0 world?
How does work itself get redefined?
Will we see the traditional model compete with the new model for preeminence?
Will one always be seen as a counter-culture to the prevailing model?
And will this mindset be seductive enough for it not to go mainstream?

I guess we'll get to see as some brave organizations get ready to negotiate the rarely beaten path to becoming more collaborative and community in their approach to work and people.

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Best of Indian Business Blogging

Hi folks, while I was offline, Gaurav and others have put together a new initiative to promote Indian business blogging.

As Gaurav explains on his blog:

Over the week, we share posts between each other, and select a set of 3-5 posts to highlight. The posts can include all business-related topics including marketing, advertising, public relations, human resource management, finance, and entrepreneurship. The idea is to not link to each others’ posts, unless one of us has written a real gem.

Every Monday, all of us link to the same set of posts, with our own unique perspectives on them. By linking to the same posts together, we maximize the benefit we pass on to the linked blogs, both in terms of traffic and Google juice. By providing our multiple unique perspective on the posts, we hope to kick off conversations around these posts in the Indian business blogging community.

So check the conversations so far, and I'll be hoping to add two cents of mine to this initiative soon!

Gaurav Mishra Week 1, Rajesh Lalwani Week 1, Ranjan Varma Week 1, Palin Ningthoujam Week 2, Ranjan Varma Week 2.